I was heading to clean up some equipment in the barn when I caught sight of Hope grooming one of the horses. It made me pause, then pull out of the barn so I wouldn’t bother her. Instead, I stood right outside, with my back pressed against the wall of the barn and listened to her. She was humming as she worked, and I sighed, my eyes slipping closed.

Even though she didn’t have much experience working with the animals, she was doing great. She did everything just as I’d showed her and handled the horses well once she got used to it after a few tries. I was grateful that she quickly caught on.

It kinda reminded me of myself when I was a young boy, except that I never hummed while I worked. It had been hell getting me to work with the horses without spooking them, but my dad was persistent. Then I remembered going on to other little jobs all over the place and bothering the other workers just because I wanted to be a part of everything.

“What the hell have I been doing,” I muttered to myself.

Except, I knew exactly what I was doing the entire time. I’d been an ass to Hope, way before I left town, and even recently. She didn’t deserve it, but she stuck around anyway. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if one day she decided that she wanted to leave, and I didn’t blame her.

I chuckled to myself. “At this rate, nothing would surprise me anymore. I could picture her leaving me to tend to everything on my own, but I needed her help as much as I didn’t want to admit it.”

Still, as much as I didn’t want to get tied down, I didn’t see myself leaving her even in a year. I’d always known, and it was part of why I’d been so relieved to leave, but she deserved better, especially now when I was even worse off now than I ever was back in the day.

None of that is her fault, though, I thought to myself. I needed to do better than ‘I’m sorry’ because she deserved better. No one else stayed around to take care of the old man; not family, and not me. We all left him, but she stayed and made sure that he had food, medicine, and a clean place to live. She was a good woman.

With that thought in mind, I rushed away from the barn and back to the house. There were no maids left in the house, so all I could think when I found the kitchen restocked, was that Hope must have done it herself. I hurried up, fixing some lunch for the two of us. It was the least that I could do.

After I had our food ready, I searched around for a basket, I knew my mom used to keep one before, and after some minutes, I found one. Then I grabbed a blanket and arranged everything inside the basket.

Once I was satisfied, I picked up the full basket and headed outside with it, going through the back door, so I could walk right up to the barn. I sat the basket down just outside the doors and slipped inside. Hope was still there, working on a different horse.

“Hey, there,” I murmured, hoping not to startle her.

She jumped a little, and she slapped a hand over her mouth so as not to yelp out loud. The horse next to her startled as well, stamping its front legs as it shook its head. Hope was quick to calm it down, brushing her fingers over its neck and murmuring soothing words. I stood aside and waited for her to finish.

I had to admit that I was impressed with the way she could handle the horses with so little training or practice. She was a complete natural.

“What is it?” she asked after calming the horse, annoyed by me startling her.

I smirked at her grumpy tone. “Oh, come on, Hope. Can't I come by just to say hi?”

She arched an eyebrow and crossed her arms under her breasts. I almost expected her to start tapping her foot.

“What do you want, Curt?”

I shrugged. “I wanted to know if you were close to done here. It’s time for lunch already, and I made food.”

Her jaw dropped. “You made food?”

I rolled my eyes at her surprise. “I think we’ve covered that I can cook. Are you almost done, or do you still have more work to do?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “I was finished. I just need to put away my things. I was going to go in and start up on lunch, but if you did it already…”

“Try to hurry,” I said, waving her off. “Don’t want the food getting cold.”

She did so, giving me one last, unsure glance before she went back to the horse. I moved back to the barn door, glancing outside to check on the basket of goodies. She didn’t take long before she was coming my way.

Her surprise was evident on her face when she saw the basket. “What is that?” she even pointed at it with her finger, and I chuckled as I picked it up, “Curt?”

I shrugged. “I figured you’d like a break. I know I could use one. So, we’re going to be eating outside today.”

She grinned, overjoyed with my gesture. “But I have work I need to get to! And so do you!”

I winked at her, returning her smile. “We can take a break for a few hours; we’ve been working hard, haven’t we? Come on. I made all your favorites.”

She blinked at me, then her eyes narrowed. “Funny. I didn’t think you even knew my favorites.”

“Of course I know your favorite foods, Hope,” I said bluntly. “We were together for months, remember?”

She stood there, surprised, staring at me for a moment. Then, she cracked a little smile, and I felt like I’d won, though I wasn’t sure what.

“I didn’t think you paid attention,” she murmured.

Hope turned away and started to walk off. I followed after her immediately with the basket in hand.

I was never the best boyfriend to her when we were younger, but I paid attention; though I never showed it. That’s when it hit me how I’d never treated her the way she deserved to be treated.

Sure, we had a lot of fun times, and Hope was never far from my mind, but I never appreciated her—not until now.

“How far out do you want to go?” I asked as I hurried to walk beside her. “I wasn’t to be close in case someone needs me… and if we’re going too far, I’d like to take the car or a horse or something.”

She sent a teasing smile my way. “What, did you grow into an old man in your time away? We’re only walking for a few minutes.”

“I just meant we shouldn’t go too far,” I said with a huff.

Hope laughed, and I felt something in my chest warm up. When was the last time I heard Hope laugh? I couldn’t remember.

Finally, after walking for about fifteen minutes, we stopped. The house and the barn didn’t look too far away, so I set the basket down, then laid out the blanket.

“You went all out, huh,” Hope said, sounding impressed as she slid to her knees on the blanket. “What did you make for us?”

“Relax, and have a seat. I think you’ll like what I made.”

Still grinning, she leaned over on her knees to peek into the basket. I quirked a small smile at her impatience. It made me happy to see her excited over something so small and insignificant.

I set out some plates before I started pulling out the food. I watched her face light up as I arranged everything on the blanket, and she picked her plate and started filling it up before I was done pulling everything out. I laughed at her, but she just stuck her tongue out at me and dug into the food.

Once she was eating, I fixed myself a plate. I watched her in interest as she ate like she was starved. She probably wasn’t used to all of the labor that she’d been doing around the farm, and I didn’t blame her. I was out of practice myself.

Then suddenly, she paused and turned back to me, her expression wary.

“What’s the occasion?”

I shrugged lazily. “Why does there have to be an occasion? I can be nice just because.”

Still, she cocked her head to the side as she chewed her food as though she didn’t believe me, willing me to continue.

I sighed. “Okay, so I might have had something specific in mind. I wanted to apologize.”

Her eyebrow went up, and she tilted her head to the opposite side, confused. “You already said sorry, though.”

“I know I did, but I wanted to do it again. I haven’t been fair to you, and you could say I wanted the two of us to start over. Just… I know it will be hard, but I thought we could forget everything that went bad between us and just start new.”

Somewhere in the middle of my little speech, I’d glanced away, afraid to see her reaction. But I looked back to her, then, because I wanted to know her thoughts on this. We could live in the same house without technically getting along. We’d been doing it for the past few days, but if we were going to stick together for months, things needed to change. It wasn’t good for either of us.

“Okay,” she said.

I blinked, thrown for a moment. “I’m sorry?”

She shrugged. “I said, okay. As in, it’s fine. We can see just start over if that’s what you want. We’re stuck with each other, at least for now, aren’t we? There’s no reason we have to make ourselves miserable over that, right?”

I nodded slowly. It was exactly what I wanted, and yet, how easily she was taking it left me a little surprised. I’d expected more resistance, but I didn’t refuse, either, because it was what I’d wanted, after all.

Suddenly, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine. She pulled back, leaving me still in shock, and gave a wink and a coy smile.

“Eat up, honey,” she murmured. “We’ve still got plenty of work to do, remember?”

I cleared my throat to cover up the moan that wanted to raise my throat. She looked away, and I was sure she did it deliberately, and my eyes ran over her body as my mind shifted to other things. If we were all friendly now, it wouldn’t be wrong to want her, would it?