Page 60 of Love Off-Limits
Tears welled in my eyes, and I nodded.
“As for Tyler, I think he’s someone special. You sure you want to risk messing that up?”
Tyler was special. I didn’t have any doubt about that.
“Thanks, Mom,” I whispered.
She reached up and cupped my cheek. “Anytime, love. Don’t be a stranger, all right?”
I was halfway to the door when Mom called my name. “Hey, Liv?”
I turned to see her leaning against the kitchen door jamb.
“Trust your gut. You’ve got good instincts. You always have. You’ll know what to do.”
It felt good, at least, to know that she believed in me.
I found Tyler sitting in the grass, his back against the gator, and Penelope snuggled in his lap. Late morning light filtered through the leaves overhead, dappling his skin with honey-colored sun.
Trust my gut?
Well, there was no question then.
What my gut wanted was him.
Chapter Seventeen
Tyler
I leaned against the solid wood of the bunkhouse’s front porch and stared at the text that had popped up a little over an hour before, not even trying to hide the grin on my face.
Olivia: Let’s play a game. I guess your favorite book, then you guess mine.
The text was totally benign. Friendly. And yet it felt...significant. Olivia and I hadn’t really texted at all since I’d arrived at Stonebrook. Why was she starting a conversation now? She’d been distant after we left her mom’s studio, and I’d left her at the farmhouse door feeling deflated and...well, disappointed. She’d been about to tell me something when her mom had interrupted, and the way she’d been leaning against me, responding to my touch, made me think it was something I would have liked. But the tension between us had snapped and fizzled the second her mom had shown up, and it felt too awkward to try and rebuild the moment once we’d left. Especially since I couldn’t even get her to look at me.
It had been almost a week since then, and now she was texting.
A group of farmhands pushed through the door and headed down the steps, one of them, Trey, looking back. “Hey, we’re heading up to grab dinner. You coming?”
Before I could respond, my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and saw Darcy’s picture. “My sister’s calling. But I’ll head that way soon.”
He nodded and caught up with the others.
The other farmhands were easy enough to get along with, even if they were all still convinced I hadn’t actually left my job with Isaac and was doing some kind of undercover thing. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other; I was too preoccupied with Olivia and trying to figure out my next step career-wise to care too much about forming close relationships with a bunch of college kids.
“Hey, Darce,” I said when I answered the phone.
“Hey, yourself.”
I smiled. Darcy and I had been texting regularly, but we’d only actually talked once since I’d left. It was good to hear her voice.
“What’s up? How are you?”
“Nothing. Same old, same old. I had dinner with Dad the other night and he asked about you. Told me to tell you hello.”
“And by hello you meantell Tyler to come home and get a real job?”
“It’s possible his words sounded more like that. But, oh hey, this is fun. I ran into Isaac and Rosie. They also asked about you. And made zero condescending judgments in the process.”
