Page 8 of Almost Perfect
I’d officially lost it. That mental argumentwith myselfproved it. The stress of the last few weeks—scratch that, months. Years. Decades?—had gotten to me. Which was exactly why I’d come here, and why I wasn’t leaving until they forced me out.
Warrick Saint moved around the space quickly, popping into a locked closet to check the furnace before pointing out a few things his brother had mentioned the night before. Within five minutes, he’d done everything and let himself back out onto the porch.
“You’re our first tenant, so I want you happy and safe. If anything goes wrong, call this number and one of us will be over to address the issue immediately. And if you need anything or have questions about stuff to do around here—whatever, feel free to text me. The cleaning service will be here every Wednesday, and I can help with anything that comes up in between.”
“Thanks.” I hadn’t originally planned on a cleaning service—though I’d been thinking about it—but since he’d lumped it in with the rent, I might as well have one less thing to deal with. Kristoffer would be pleased.
“All right. Have a good one!”
With that, he tromped down the stairs and disappeared from view.
Huh. He hadn’t seemed nervous, and he certainly hadn’t been making excuses to hang around me. Between him and his brother, I felt entirely… ordinary.
And holy crap, what a glorious feeling that was.
FOUR
Wyatt
Ipulled my truck into the garage attached to the house, annoyance nipping between my shoulder blades.
I’d hired help for my business in the last few months, and it was great.Really.
Except when it was terrible, like now.
About two years before the oldest of the four Morrison kids—and my friend—Liam Morrison teamed up with Jonas Bauer and shook things up for Silverton, my cows got attention. Soon, they were fetching premiums akin to imported Kobe. I’d been building my stock steadily over the years, far more than anyone locally knew. I hadn’t kept it a secret, but sometimes, being removed from the small town helped. I had land all over thanks to methodical acquisitions and a generous inheritance from my late grandmother, and the small herd I moved down through Silverton each October was a fraction of it.
Mostly, what this meant was I’d been working a hundred or more hours a week spring, summer, and fall, and stressing my guts out winters making sure everything was taken care of.
Samantha, my girlfriend of eight months, hadn’t complained, but I never saw her. And since I’d always wanted a family and knew we needed time together to get there, I’d planned to pull back on work.
Way, way back. Hired a manager, overseer, hand foreman, marketing staff… I hired out a full company’s worth of employees and should’ve felt damn good about it. They’d started in a matter of weeks, then I’d trained them, and then I’d stepped back. I’d certainly merited the help, but I’d ended up replacing myself and leaving only the barest duties that didn’t really matter for when I wanted to do them.
This was not a smooth transition for a man who’d worked nearly every day of every year since he’d turned fifteen.
I woke up on my thirty-seventh birthday—another birthday my father had never reached—and I didn’t know myself anymore. Samantha had been concerned over my big change.
That’s right. No celebration or excitement, butconcern.
As Warrick had put it, me and Samantha had been as exciting as a cardboard box. And I’d realized we weren’t going anywhere. I’d barely been able to make time for her, and once I did, after numerous failed promises, she hadn’t felt like doing the same for me. Ultimately, it was too little, far too late, and her patience had already run too thin. I couldn’t really blame her, either.
Not exactly marriage material.
We’d called it off, all amicable hugs goodbye and promises to get lunch. Even that struck me as terrible. Shouldn’t one of us have cried or gotten a little emotional?Something?
I remembered hearing about Jamie Morrison breaking his now-wife’s heart in high school and the decade of fall-out before they reconnected. A few months ago, Cody Keller and Charlotte Lane had finally gotten their heads out of their behinds and acknowledged what everyone around them had seen and it’d been like a fire started on the street corner. I’d been downtown at the time and had had to look away, both because they’d needed a minute and because it hurt to see so starkly what I was missing.
So that morning, I saw some man I didn’t know in the mirror and it was like seeing myself for the first time in years rather than hours. I’d grown a successful business—almost too successful since demand far outstripped supply, but that was the nature of being “boutique” anything. But what hadn’t I done?
Found a wife. Had children. Grown a family.
The things I’d always said I wanted to do.
The realization shouldn’t have hit me the way it did—like someone took a thick-handled steak knife and stabbed it into my heart. Alas, I felt it between the ribs, right at the core of me.
There had been relief in that, though. Because part of what I’d been looking for with Samantha had been something. Just…something. Some fire like Cody and Charlotte. Passion like Jamie and Bel or even Leo and Jonas. Excitement. Reason to hope.
Maybe essentially hanging up my business hadn’t been the best way to elicit a change, but it’d certainly clarified things between us. No more wasting time with her and I was sure she ultimately felt the same about me. Sadly then, I entered the bleak landscape of online dating and damn, it could feel like wandering in a desert.
