Page 176 of Dove
He took a step toward me. “Weare,Dove. If you’d let me explain?—”
“Josh,” I cut him off, sick of excuses. “I have given youplentyof time to explain. Iaskedyou about the farm, asked you to tell me the important stuff. You chose to keep me in the dark. So what the hell am I meant to believe? That you actually want to be here?” I laughed bitterly, the sound cracking in my throat as my heart splintered in my chest. “You left me here before, what’s to stop you from doing it again?” He grew blurry as tears gathered in my eyes, but I wiped them away angrily, hating that I was crying at all. Hating that I was proving to him I was weak—because thathadto be the reason he refused to see me as an equal.
My stomach roiled as a sudden thought struck—fast and sharp as lightening.
“Was this your plan all along?” I hated that I even had to ask. “To sell the farm and leave?”
“What?” Josh’s face slackened with disbelief, but I wasn’t having it.
“Do you even want to be here with me? Do you?” I asked again, voice rising.
“Of course I do, Dove.” He reached for me, but I stepped back before he could touch me.
The moment his hand fell away, so did his expression.
Somehow, that made me feel worse.
“My father left a lot of loose strings,” he rushed to explain. “I was gathering everything together?—”
Frustration swelled in my chest like a cresting wave, threatening to engulf me. “Don’tlie to me,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Dove.” He pinched his noise, exhaling sharply. “Can I please explain?”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms, glaring at him. When he just stood there staring at me silently, I gave an impatient wave of my hand, urging him to go on.
He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Withoutinterruptions?”
I mimed zipping my mouth shut, but the rage bubbling under my skin was impossible to hide.
He fiddled with the brim of his hat, looking guilty. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
I scoffed. “You didn’t want me to find out at all.”
“Well, that didn’t last long,” he tried to joke, but I was far from amused.
“Nothing about this is funny to me.” Anger stormed through me, fast and destructive, looking to leave nothing in its wake. The words flew out of me before I could even process them. “You’re just like everyone else, thinking I can’t do it. That I can’t handle it. Well, I’vebeenhandling it, Josh. Maybe... maybe the farm isn’t doing well,” I conceded, however much it killed me to, “but it’s still here.I’mstill here. It may be easy for you to leave your home behind, but it’s not that easy for me.”
His voice was hard as steel. “It wasnevereasy.”
“You sure could’ve fooled me,” I shot back, my tone just as biting.
Our gazes met in a battle of wills, both of us stubborn and hardheaded, neither willing to bend.
That is until his eyes softened the way they always did when it came to me, his shoulders slumping with a sigh. “Dove, I never meant for it to happen like this.”
All I heard wasI never meant for this to happen at all.
Those words, however unspoken, broke me.
“You know what? Go if you want to go.” I pointed toward his vehicle, the one I’ve always hated because it reminded me of a life he lived without me. One he clearly has been wanting to return to. “If that’s one of the reasons you’re so keen on selling the farm, then I don’t want you here.” The lie scorched my tongue, turning to ash the moment it left my mouth. “I can do this without you. I’ll find a way.” Another lie, this one just as bitter.
Josh’s face tightened into a cold mask, closed off and detached. It was a familiar look, though I hadn’t seen it in a while. He reserved it for his father, and he’d never aimed it at me before.
“If that’s what you want,” he responded calmly to my ire, which only managed to piss me off further.
“What I want?” I laughed through a sob, the hollow cavern where my heart use to beaching. “What I want is for you to never have come home in the first place.” I threw the words at him like a deadly, sharpened dagger, aiming straight for the bullseye of his heart.
He flinched at my harsh words.
