Page 69 of Even if It Hurts

“No.” I tipped her head up a fraction higher when her stare fell away again, bringing her that much closer to me, and repeated, “No. That isn’t on you, and they can’t put it on you. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry about your dad—but if he needed rest, he’d take it.”

A strained sigh left her. “You don’t know my dad.”

“Then tell me what you need.”

Glassy, blue eyes darted to mine, holding for seconds that felt so telling and significant, and had my heart pounding a fierce beat even after she looked away with a shaky exhale. “I, um...” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips before she abruptly shook her head in my grasp. “Why am I even talking to you about this?”

“I asked,” I reminded her as her slender fingers curled around my wrist to pull my hand away.

“Well, don’t.”

I hadn’t thought I could feel worse after this week, but the soft delivery of her plea informed me how wrong I’d been. “Lainey?—”

A soggy laugh burst from her as she reached for Kaia and quickly said, “We don’t eat that, sweet girl.” Forcing my stare down in time to see Lainey free the handful of dirt my niece had been lifting to her mouth.

Once she’d brushed the dirt off Kaia’s hand, Lainey scooped her up and stood. Her voice gentle and excited as she asked my niece, “Why don’t we get a basket and find more blueberries?”

“We need to talk about this,” I said as I followed her through the row.

“I said?—”

“It directly affects you working for me,” I said over her. “We’re talking about it.”

Lainey didn’t respond as she continued moving through the fields with ease, but I could see the frustration, pain, and indecision playing out on her features, shouting everything she wasn’t saying.

It wasn’t until she’d grabbed a basket from the rows near where everyone else was picking that she held it out for me to take, a rough whisper leaving her as she did. “I’ve never felt more torn over anything in my life, and I hate that I don’t know what the right path is. I know,” she added before I could begin to respond and pressed her free hand to her chest before wrapping it around Kaia, “Iknowwhat I should do. I should step up and take over.”

“But?” I prompted when she slipped down a new row.

“It breaks something inside me to actually consider it.” The words left her like a dirty confession. Those chaotic eyes found me for long, tense moments before she tore them away and focused on the giant bush in front of her.

“Have you told your parents this?” I asked after she’d carefully picked a handful of berries and placed them in the basket I was holding.

A bitter sounding laugh bled from her. “Yes—multiple times. But you don’t understand,” she went on, picking faster and faster the quicker her words came. “Before the whole college thing, I’d never gone against my parents. Ever. And even then, I was so sick over the thought of how they would react that I didn’t even really change my majors, I just doubled my workload by keeping the courses they’d demanded I take. Not taking over the company and working for you are the first true things I’ve ever done to defy them, and it’s...”

“It’s hard,” I offered when I realized she wasn’t going to finish.

She gave a subtle nod as she rolled a blueberry between her fingertips. “My entire life, I’ve gone out of my way to make everyone else happy; to make sure I never upset them. I’ve bent over backward to do everything that was ever asked of me, and more. And I hate that I’ve done that—that Idothat—but I don’t know how to stop.”

With a sigh, she squished the berry flat and fed it to Kaia, who was pointing at the bush and talking animatedly to it. When I tried grabbing some from the same branch she’d been picking at, she swatted my hand away and said, “Those aren’t ready.”

“I wasn’t gonna take the green ones,” I said dryly.

“Well, you don’t want the purple ones either,” she said gently, then held out a new branch, gently brushing the fruit there. “It’s all about the color—weren’t you listening to me explain all this a few minutes ago?”

My gaze slid to the side to see her looking up at me, her eyebrows twisted up in frustration that made her look adorable. But I just held her stare because I couldn’t tell her the truth.That if it’d been when she was talking to Kaia, I’d been taking in everything—every single detail.

Except her words.

But I knew exactly how light and free she’d looked while pointing things out to Kaia. I knew from how content my niece was that she was eating up this extra time with her favorite person. I knew exactly how beautiful Lainey looked out here in the late morning sun, and how much more beautiful she was when she smiled or laughed.

And I knew her gentle spirit and the joy that radiated from her was affecting my niece in ways that I would never be able to repay her for.

With a roll of her eyes, Lainey held up a fat berry between us. “You wantthisblue; the others will be ready soon.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, the corner of my mouth ticking up as I reached for the color she indicated.

For a while, we stayed just like that. Standing side by side but not saying a word to each other. Letting Kaia’s endless babble fill the silence as we picked berries and Lainey intermittently took breaks to play with my niece.

---