Page 53 of Take Me Home

“Hey Jake, I need to borrow you for a while. We need to unload that hay before the market,” she said. I leaned on my shovel, removing my hat and wiping my forehead with the sleeve of my t-shirt.

“Alright.”

She looked at me, concern crossing her face.Now you decide to care about me. “Let’s take a four-wheeler back. We could both use the break,” she offered.

“I won’t argue with that.”

She sent Caleb to pick with Becca and to pass along what time Becca needed to come down to leave for the market. Darcy threw her leg over the four-wheeler and started it.

“You’re driving?” I asked, an irritated edge in my voice that I wasn’t trying to let show. Darcy whipped her head back in surprise.

“You coming or not?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me. It wasn’t like me to be like that to her, and I felt bad as soon as I saw her face. Yes, I was upset with her for pushing me away. But despite everything, I still really liked her. I was just hurting. So I didn’t object any further, climbing on behind her. My legs sandwiched hers, but of all things, touching her might have broken me. If she touched me, if she hugged me, the dam in my chest might let loose all the things I’d been holding in: missing my dad, being annoyed with my thesis project and its demands on my time, and wanting her so bad it hurt.

I turned my baseball hat backward so it wouldn’t fly off while she drove and she gave me a little smirk over her shoulder. If I’d learned anything from years of playing baseball, it’s that chicks love a backward hat. I can’t explain it. It’s just a thing. Seeing her fall victim to my charms perked up my mood a little. I wanted her to want me again so desperately.

“You have your water?” I asked, softening my tone from the grouchy asshole I’d been moments before.

“Yes, doctor,” she quipped. “Better hold on.” She gunned the gas and then slammed the brake, shoving my body into hers. I had no choice but to hold onto her if I wanted to stay on. At first, I made my hand into a fist and leaned my body away. I was really afraid of what might happen if I held her while I was so upset.

But as we rode, she felt so nice that I had to have more. It was a balm on my tired, asshole soul to have her in my grip. My aching muscles relaxed with her against me. I needed Darcy. I flattened my palm against her belly, wrapping my fingers around her waist, and resting my cheek against the side of her face. She didn’t seem to mind the closeness, pressing back into me to some degree. Maybe everything wasn’t totally ruined between us.

“Sorry I smell,” I called over the wind whooshing past our ears. I felt her cheeks expand in a smile against mine. Darcy was always comfortable with jokes.

“I’m sure it’s no worse than me,” she yelled back. “Pretty swampy out here today.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence, my arm acting as a hook to anchor me to her. In the barn, she stood, puzzling over how to best get the hay to the loft without a forklift. We settled on backing the truck as close as we could get it and her handing me the bales on the ladder. I then threw them over my head into the loft. If I hadn’t already been shoveling all day, it wouldn’t have been that hard, but I was starting tired.

Once we’d loaded all the bales we could fit on the ledge, we climbed the stairs to the hay loft to pull them to the back wall. We didn’t talk, probably a product of my shitty mood and the fact that we were in a time crunch. I must have been huffing around because Darcy took note.

“You alright?” she asked, breathless.

I straightened and wiped the sweat from my brow. “I’ll be okay. Let’s just get this finished. We gotta get you girls to the market.” I tried to sound bright, but my tone was flat and shitty again. I knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it.

She eyed me cautiously. “I mean, physically, yeah, we’re both tired, but,” she took a breath, “Is there more to it?”

She stood, hands at her sides, watching me. She knew, of course. She knew that I was sad about her, but she didn’t know everything else. And honestly, it was the combination of all the things that made me not give a shit about what happened on Monday in the tack room. I just wanted to hug her. And anyway, Monday had been amazing, right up until the moment she ran away and claimed she regretted it all.

I wanted the comfort of her touch so badly. But I knew it would all come loose if I did, and there wouldn’t be any taking back the things I’d say. Once I told her how I felt about her, it would either be on or it wouldn’t. I couldn’t take her rejecting me again on the date of my dad’s death.

So I just said, “I’m fine.”

We kept working, my mind turning over all the things that had me in a rage. I did my best to clear my head and focus on the work. I felt Darcy watching me, getting ready to say something.

“I understand if you’re mad at me about Monday.” Darcy’s voice was quiet and vulnerable, bare nerves exposed. It threw me off.

Literally.

My foot slipped at the edge of the hay loft. There was no railing, nothing to grab onto. My arms flew out to try to rebalance me, like falling on ice. But before I could plunge down into the truck bed below, Darcy’s hand was around my wrist. Using what I could assume was all of her body’s force, she yanked me back and threw me to the ground. As I fell, I grabbed her shoulders in a clumsy kind of partner dance, pulling her down with me.

I landed hard on the wood floor of the hay loft, my head luckily cushioned by some loose hay. Darcy and I both let out a cartoonish “oof” as I hit the ground, and she landed on top of me. The top bale of hay in our stack came crashing down on her and bounced off.

We were stunned, staring at each other and panting as our brains caught up to what happened. Adrenaline coursed through me, my heart pounding.

“Are you okay?” Darcy asked, panicked, ripping off her work gloves. Her eyes frantically searched mine, loose curls falling out of her ponytail and into her face.

“Yeah. Are you? That hay bale just hit you,” I breathed, pulling off one of my work gloves and swiping her hair out of her face. She was beautiful, sprawled on top of me, checking on me.

“Yeah,” she said, bewildered. “It just hit my legs.”

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