Page 9 of Harvest Moon

He wasn’t mad. Not even unreasonable. He’d just written me, “Do you have time to get lunch or something this afternoon? I need to be back home by six.”

My chest felt heavy all the sudden, like I’d swallowed a bunch of rocks, or hit the water of the quarry where we swam in summer just the wrong way so it knocked all the air out of me. Alexis deserved better, but I was all bent out of shape from that meeting, and the only thing I could imagine knocking me all the way out of it was Alexis’s sweet smile.

Maybe I couldn’t front a three-course meal, but I could take the guy out for a coffee. Wasn’t like I needed to save my money for a down payment or anything.

“Absolutely,” I typed back. “How bout I come pick you up and we can go to Tastee Freez? Frozen mocha, my treat.”

I sent the message, got a thumbs up a second later, and headed to my truck, wondering if Sterling would want to put an offer in on that too while they were at it—take everything from me in one fell swoop.

5

Alexis

Oh sure, now he wanted to pick me up and buy me a meal.

Or just coffee, whatever. It didn’t matter. If he’d made that offer the day before, or any offer at all, I’d have jumped for joy.

If he’d made that offer the day before, I might not have all my stuff packed in my trunk by the door, waiting for Birch and Claudia to come pick me up that evening.

I shook myself as I saw his truck pull up in front of the house, heading for the door. “Going out for coffee with Ridge, Mom. Back in a while.”

She poked her head out of the kitchen. “With Ridge? I thought you weren’t—well, don’t be gone long. You said your cousin would be here for dinner.”

Poor Mom didn’t know who to be more disapproving of, Ridge or Claudia. She was erring toward Ridge, though, since she didn’t think Claudia was going to ruin my life forever and ever.

“We’re just having coffee, Mom.” I didn’t listen for her to say anything else as I closed the door behind me. I didn’t need her approval of my friends, or my life.

It was a good thing, since I would never get it, unless I went and lived a way different life than the one I wanted.

When I got to the truck, Ridge was... not right.

Yeah, that was vague and annoying, but I didn’t have a better way of putting it. He was quiet, but he was always quiet. He was tense, but he’d been tense yesterday too.

This was different. His shoulders were hunched inward, eyes down, and his body was practically vibrating with tension. Without even thinking about it, I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

His shoulders dropped like he was a puppet with his strings cut, but then he pulled himself up straight, shoulders square and head high. He turned a tight smile on me, and though it still didn’t reach his eyes, he was at least trying.

“’M fine,” he mumbled, turning back to the road. “Long summer.”

I sighed. “Tell me about it. I was afraid the college people were going to keep you another year when you didn’t come home in the spring.”

He sighed and nodded. “Had to finish one last class, and my apprenticeship.”

I wasn’t going to lie, I didn’t know the first thing about college. All I’d known was that my grades weren’t good enough for scholarships, and I didn’t have a strong enough passion for any subject to take out loans.

Not like Ridge. He’d always wanted to know every single thing about how to make stuff grow. Passion didn’t even seem strong enough a word for how he felt about working the land.

I’d gotten into more arguments about Ridge and his passion as a teenager than anything else. People thought that because Ridge was quiet, and because his voice was heavy with country, he wasn’t smart. They thought he didn’t know things.

They couldn’t have been more wrong. He was even clever about the things they cared about, like books and history; he just didn’t talk about it. If you gave Ridge a plot of dirt and a quiet afternoon, he was happy.

He didn’t need to have smart conversations about literature in order to feel good about himself.

Damn it.

I pulled my left hand off his shoulder, where I’d left it, and twined it with my right, already sitting in my lap. I didn’t have the right to touch Ridge. I wasn’t the omega he needed.

That was why I’d asked to meet.

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