Page 97 of In The Weeds
He looks right at me, a smile hooking at the side of his mouth. He bends at the waist and grabs a piece of wood. He flips it over his shoulder and begins making his way to the ramp.
“Be selfish, Beckett. Just this once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EVELYN
“What did he say?”
I glance up at Josie from my collection of folded leggings—a frankly alarming amount of comfort wear that towers next to one of my moving boxes. “When?”
“When you left.”
He hadn’t said a thing. He stood in the entrance of the greenhouse with his arm braced against the door and watched me quietly move around his house. I only allowed myself a single look back, right before I walked out the front door. He had his back to me by then, both hands anchored in his hair.
I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.
I topple the whole stack into the box. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Has he said anything since?”
I glance at my phone and then shake my head. It’s been radio silence.
Not that I expected anything different.
It’s been two days and the only update I’ve received on Beckett is a banal text from Stella. A simplehe’s okaythat she didn’t choose to elaborate on, along with a picture of a baby duck with a cookie by his webbed feet.Otiswritten in icing on top.
Though I suppose that was an update in and of itself.
“I need you two to communicate,” Josie offers from the other side of the room, holding up a shot glass from … I have no idea, honestly. She rummages around above my microwave and finds a bottle of whiskey that is so old, it’s accumulated a layer of dust. I think the cap is fused to the bottle. “The miscommunication here is—”
She trails off, grumbling under her breath.
“What?”
“It’s extremely frustrating for me, as a bystander in this relationship of yours.”
She shuffles her way back over to me around a minefield of moving boxes and … more leggings … the bottle wedged under her arm. She collapses in front of me and hands me the shot glass, working at the cap with her teeth. She spits it towards the windows when it’s off.
“It’s not a miscommunication,” I reply. It’s Beckett thinking there’s no possible way I could find my happy on his farm. It’s him making a decision for the both of us out of a misplaced sense of … something. “I just can’t believe he thought I’d leave like that,” I sigh.
I see it every time I close my eyes. Beckett and the way his entire body went rigid when I walked into his space. The resignation on his face, like it was what he expected the entire time.
He really thought I left.
Josie fiddles with the bottle. “Well, did you ever tell him you wanted to stay?”
“What?”
“You know. ‘Beckett. I want your gigantic heart and your smoking hot body. I’m staying.’”
I open my mouth and then close it.
Josie continues. “You were very communicative with me about your plans.” She sniffs at the open bottle and makes a face. “What was his reaction when you told him about the new job?”
“He doesn’t know about that,” I mumble.
Josie makes a sound, exasperated. The bottle in her hand almost goes flying across the room. “So it is a miscommunication thing.”
