Page 72 of On The Honey Side (Blum's Bees)

When they let me go, Jo took her seat next to me and Poppy knelt at my side, still holding my hand. Their eyes were big and sorrowful, which made me feel worse.

“We’re sorry,” Jo said. “You’re right. You don’t owe us anything, but we’re worried about you. And you haven’t told us anything. You tell us everything, but you’ve been dead silent and … well, we can’t help you through it if we don’t know what happened.”

“I know it feels that way,” I said, dabbing at my nose with a paper napkin, “but if I needed you, I’d come to you. Just … you just have to leave me be, let me do this on my own.”

“All right,” Poppy said, her eyes big and earnest. “We will. And if we don’t, call us on it and we’ll shut up. Deal?”

I nodded, sniffling. “Thank you.”

She stood and kissed my temple. “We love you, you know.”

“I do know,” I said on a quiet laugh.

“Good. And I think we should open a second pie,” she decided.

“Fuck that,” Jo said. “We’re sampling all four of them.”

“We’ll ruin our dinner,” I noted.

“Good,” Poppy said with a wicked smile, knife raised like a psycho before she went to town on the pies.

The conversation didn’t turn too far—Poppy began a long discussion regarding the project’s future, from halted production to the questions as to our opening and the people she’d hired to work there, promising them income sooner than we’d be able to finish, even if we stumbled across a miracle. And I ate pie, speaking when necessary, otherwise thinking. Thinking about Keaton, about the unfairness of it all. About the curse and the many ways it could present itself, like this. About Grant and my prayer that nothing would happen to him. Or that he wouldn’t decide to leave.

I didn’t fault them for prying—I’d have done the same if the tables were turned. Hell, I had been so nosy, inserting myself into their lives when I thought they were making mistakes. If I could have told them, I would’ve. But I wouldn’t risk Keaton’s sacrifice simply because I was heartbroken. I’d find a way to let him go, I just needed more time and the space to work through it on my own.

Absently, I wondered if there was such a thing as enough time and decided there probably wasn’t.

But I’d try anyway.

29

ALL TIED UP

KEATON

For a few days, they left me alone.

I’d redirected my efforts lately to our other projects, including wrapping up all of our pro bono contracts and overseeing my brothers with a little too much authority. They were annoyed with me, and I didn’t blame them. Didn’t mean I’d stop, but I didn’t fault them for fighting it.

As the days crawled by, I avoided giving Mitchell a hard affirmative. He’d reached out a few times for an answer, and I’d told him I was working on it. But I knew he’d heard Daisy and I were through, and I knew he knew what that meant regarding our shit garbage deal.

Still, I needed to give him an affirmative before our equipment was finished in the next few days, and I dreaded that encounter more than I’ve dreaded anything in my life. The thought of bending to him made me sick to my stomach, to my heart. It felt wrong, the sense of warning climbing up and down my spine like an bug with too many legs. Bending to him went against every instinct I had. But it was the only way. I’d lose everything else in my life if I didn’t.

Trapped. I was a caged animal, stalking and growling and wishing I could shred my keeper and get myself free. But I depended on my keeper to feed me, to keep me alive, our relationship founded on oppression and manipulation.

I’d just picked up Sophie from school, not because Cole couldn’t—I needed to get out of the house, and Sophie was an excellent buffer. I’d been using her as such daily lately, grateful for someone to pretend for, but more importantly someone who wouldn’t ask questions I couldn’t answer.

No, that wasn’t true. She asked so many questions, I sometimes wanted to knife my eardrums. But at least she let it go if I so much as gave her a certain look. It was a respect I didn’t get from my brothers.

I’d taken her by Bettie’s again, this time for a chocolate malt. As planned, it kept her quiet most of the way home. But when we got there, all of my brothers were home, sitting in the living room with ominous looks on their faces.

I frowned. “What?”

Sophie’s eyes bounced between us as she nursed her malt. She might as well have had a bag of popcorn too for as entertained as she was. She plopped down next to Cole, who kissed her head briefly before returning to his part-time job of glaring at me.

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