“You didn’t tell me you had someone with you.” My mother’s voice suddenly shifts and changes. Her tone is syrupy sweet, kinder, and she’s taken it up an octave. Here’s the woman everyone else gets to see. “I think that must be Jake I hear?”
I shoot him a look as he shrugs. “It is. Riley kindly offered to show me around, so I’m tagging along to see this farm today.”
“Don’t forget to get to the rink and do your drills.” She chuckles. When did she get so savvy in hockey-speak? Not that drills are hockey-speak, but come on. “Travis will kill us if we don’t take care of you and keep you on schedule. You’ve got a reputation to uphold.”
Biting my lip, I shake my head and try not to laugh. Of course, she’d round it back to reputation. Jake squirms in his seat, his shoulders shaking.
“Yes, ma’am, you’re right. I’ll make sure to practice once we’re done.”
“Good.” She’s quiet, and I can almost hear the gears turning in that head of hers. “Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later, Riley. Drive safe and have fun, you two.”
And the line goes silent. Jake opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up a hand to stop him, taking that moment to press “phone off” on my screen.
“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure we were properly disconnected before we spoke,” I say with a laugh. “And now, you’ve met the real side of my mother.”
“Does she always talk to you like that?”
Lifting a shoulder, I let it drop as I slow the car down. “Not all the time.”
“She’s not like that with Travis. And she definitely doesn’t act that way when I’m around her.”
Hitting my blinker, I turn onto the old country road that will take us to the Porter’s. “And she won’t. I think it’s just me who she gets a little crazy with. My dad thinks she just wants the bestfor me, but I feel like there’s some disappointment laced with competition, if that makes sense? Like she wanted me to follow in her footsteps, but because I’m a little more independent than that and I do things my way, she wants to go tit for tat sometimes.”
Jake’s quiet, but I can see him nodding his head out of the corner of my eye. “Parents are tricky, aren’t they?”
“Do you have something going on with your parents, too?”
He shakes his head. “My mother died when I was younger, and my dad has always worked hard to be here for me. Had two jobs to keep up on the bills and pay for my hockey lessons. But in working so hard, he built a wall of anxiety that has shown up as hoarding. He’s been in and out of therapy over the past two years for it.”
“Oh, wow,” I manage to say, my heart aching just hearing this. “I’m so sorry about that. How is he now?”
“He’s good, getting better each day. But he’s the one I do this for.” Jake gets quiet, and when I look out of the corner of my eye, I see he’s gazing out the window, watching the world go by. “I promised myself I’d be the one to take care of him, so now it’s my turn. I don’t want him to ever want for anything. I want him to feel as safe as he made me feel at a time when we were at our most vulnerable.”
I stay quiet as he continues. “I think it’s why I respect and also appreciate your brother so much. He gets me, and he knows why I show up to the rink every day, why I want to do well at hockey. If I do well, I get paid doing what I love. And that means the people I love are taken care of.”
Jake stops talking abruptly before turning his body fully toward the passenger window. Getting the feeling he needs a minute to breathe, I take my cue and focus on the road ahead. He hasn’t said a lot, but what he has shared is big. Heavy. He’s carrying a load of his own, and if he isn’t careful, he could buckleunder the pressure. I don’t want to be the one to trip him up. In fact, the more I get to know him, the more I want to help him.
Sighing, I turn up the volume on the radio and sit back, thinking about Jake’s father, going through hoarding as a result of his anxiety after the love of his life passed away. But the lengths he went to for his son? Amazing.
I look at Jake; he’s turned back around and facing the right way, his eyes closed. Within a matter of minutes, I’m tapping his leg and pointing to a driveaway ahead of us.
”We’re here,” I say as I hit the brakes and maneuver the car up the long entrance to the Porter Farm. Not going to lie, though. I’d like to keep on driving so we can keep on talking, because there’s more to this hulk of a man than meets the eye.
NINE
Riley
“When I was a little girl, we came out here every weekend to see the Porters.” Getting out of the car, I look around at the familiar turf and can’t help but grin. I’ve had some of my best summer weekends at this place.
I point to a large orchard toward the back of the property, just behind a large barn. “That’s the truffle orchard. Mary, she’s the matron of the family, specializes in growing them here. She started farming truffles about ten years ago. Someone my dad knows introduced her to the idea of planting loblolly pine seedlings, with inoculations of truffles, and before you knew it they were in business and became one of the first white truffle farms in North Carolina.”
Jake stands with his hands in his pockets looking around beside me. He nods his head toward the open barn door. There’s a country song spilling out and someone is singing off-key. “Is that where your friends are?”
“That wounded animal is probably Levi.” I flick a hand over my shoulder and head toward the building. “Follow me.”
Swinging the barn door open to its full potential, a wave of excitement washes over me. The converted space is one of my favorite things about the farm.
The rustic charm of the barn has been preserved, with exposed wooden beams overhead and the faint scent of hay lingering in the air. But instead of housing livestock, it’s been transformed into a vibrant workspace that exudes creativity and fun.
