In the Weeds (Lovelight, #2)

by B.K. Borison

An answering smile blooms on Luka’s face the second he finds her in the crowd. Watching them together is like shoving a cupcake directly into my face.

Not for the first time, I’m jealous. I’ve never had that with another person.

My mom says I’m impervious to the moods of others. That I could brighten even the darkest storm cloud. With Beckett, I feel like we’re both the storm cloud. Together, we’re a monsoon.

This isn’t where you’re supposed to be, a voice in the back of my mind whispers. It’s been getting louder and louder, that voice, a steady trickle of doubt. But if I’m not supposed to be here, where am I supposed to be? What am I supposed to be doing? I’ve spent my entire life curating this platform, building this audience.

I shake my head and force my attention back to Kirstyn. I’m all over the place today. I need a strong coffee and a six-day nap.

ST. JAMES SUNDRY STORE

“How long have you felt like this?” It’s settled in slowly, like a fog rolling in off the water. Everything lately has felt . . . off . . . and I don’t know why.

Poor social media influencer, sad she has too many followers and not enough friends.

It’s slow work but important, and we’ll spend the next couple weeks getting the fields ready for the shipment of saplings from the north. The trees we plant won’t be ready for at least five years, but that’s the nature of a tree farm. It’s all about patience.

The carrots are from the farm, and the bread is from Nessa, and the music is a playlist Harper made over the summer, and the delicate bouquet of wildflowers drawn on the back of her arm is by Nova. My dad whittled the spoon she’s using, and this whole kitchen is filled to the brim with pieces of my family.

I’ve always struggled with noise. It sets my teeth on edge, makes me feel like needles are pricking at my skin. The earmuffs buffer the sound without wiping it out completely. I can still hear what’s going on around me without an overwhelming wave of tension. And they never fail to make my mom smile. I slip them over my head, and my chest loosens a bit, as I’m able to participate now that the noise has been dulled.

I was happy standing in that field with my boots sinking into the mud, and maybe I should go back and see if I can find my happy again.

But that’s the thing about happiness, I guess. You can show whatever you want to the world and not feel a lick of it inside yourself.

I step off the ladder and tilt my head back to read the bold looping letters hand-stenciled across the canvas. WELCOME SPRING Right below it in a smaller font: SEASONS CHANGE AND SO DO WE I stretch my arms wide to the side and wiggle my fingers back and forth. So do we.

“Trying to be happy?” “No.” He shakes his head once. “That doesn’t work. Trying to be happy is like—it’s like telling a flower to bloom.” He crosses his ankles and drags his palm against his stubble. “You can’t make yourself be happy. But you can be open to it. You can trust yourself enough to feel it when you stumble on it.”

Evelyn is like a spring storm. She appears without warning, makes everything around her bloom, and then leaves with the wind.

“I’ll stay. I think I’m finding some happy out here.” She looks at her hands with a grin, the dirt caked over her knuckles. Her eyes find mine and her smile tips wider. “Out here in the weeds.”

That’s twice today I haven’t been able to keep my hands off her. I feel trapped between holding her at a safe distance and tugging her closer. A pendulum swinging endlessly back and forth.

They let me come on and paid me the same salary as my dad, even though I’m pretty sure I was useless the first couple of seasons.” I stare at Beckett. “You took your dad’s place at the farm?” He nods. “Yeah, when I was fifteen. I’ve been farming ever since.”

A field of wildflowers rolling out from the base of the hill in a patchwork quilt of color. Blue and purple and a smattering of rich gold, the sight of it so quietly beautiful that I don’t hesitate to walk right to the middle of it all and lie flat on my back. They must have bloomed to life during the last string of warm days, still standing tall despite the cold. Resilient. Stunning.

“It’s okay to want different things,” she says. “People change. You’re allowed to change. Doing less doesn’t make you less.”

Her smile lights up every damn corner of this room. The shadowed parts of me too, and all the pieces I keep to myself.

“Did you find your happy today?”

I stop right in front of him and he stares down at me. I trace the lines of his face, and I feel like one of those meteors he loves so much. Tearing through the atmosphere, a giant ball of light.

Beckett looking at me like I hung the damn moon myself. It’s so different from the last time we were together. Different but exactly the same.

“If we do this again, Evie, there’s no running.” His eyes are serious, his body held perfectly still between my open legs. “I don’t want to wake up alone.”

Maybe this is what happy is supposed to be. A person, a place.

I didn’t realize falling in love could be so simple. Bacon in a take-out container and earplugs in the bottom of a handbag.

I make a decision sitting in the front seat of my truck, my thumb across her knuckles. I don’t know what we’re doing, how long it’ll last, when she’ll leave again. But I’ll take all her pieces while I have her. I’ll take whatever she can give me, for as long as she can.

“I’ll come with you.” He shakes his head and shifts forward to brush a kiss across my lips. Soft. Perfect. “Stay here,” he says. He hesitates for a second and then curls his hand around my neck, his palm sweeping against sleep-warm skin. “Sleep in my bed while I’m gone, yeah? I’ll see you when I get back.”

The job is half remote office work, half traveling to small businesses around the country. Not all that different from what I’m doing now. It would mean I would have some flexibility as to where I stay. I would have options. Inglewild-shaped options. Beckett-shaped options.

I need to realize that sometimes a shooting star isn’t magic at all. Sometimes it’s just a bunch of space dust burning through the atmosphere. Sometimes you don’t get a wish.

Evie is always going to be leaving. And I’m always going to be the one standing here, wondering where she went.

“I tried calling her,” I explain. While sitting on the edge of my bed with a wilting blue flower in the palm of my hand. I dialed her number three times and listened to a generic voicemail message. I typed out seven different text messages before I settled on a simple Where did you go? I wanted to send another. Why did you go? “She didn’t answer.”

I have over a hundred trees left to plant, and it looks like rain. The anticipation of it hangs heavy in the sky, clouds thick over a blanket of stars. It occurs to me that it’s rained every time Evelyn has left, and it almost makes me laugh.

“What’s going on?” I shout over to my trio of unexpected assistants. A raindrop lands on my nose and slides down. Stella is leaning back on Luka’s chest, her head tipped against his shoulder. Her eyes are barely open, and for a second I think she’s asleep. “The phone tree,” she yells back, her call echoing out over the empty field. “We moved Dig Day up.”

I don’t think you’ll find work that makes you happier than this.” Happier. Of all the words he could have chosen. He hadn’t needed to say more than that.

Missing Evelyn is like missing the bottom step on a flight of stairs. I keep expecting her to be where she’s not.

“Because I love all of you.” “I’m starting to think I made a mistake, then,” my dad says quietly, his entire face lined with regret. He blinks quickly and clears his throat, never looking anywhere but right at me. “When I taught you how to love.” Something in my chest fractures. Worse than when Evelyn walked out my greenhouse door. “What?” “If you think love means having to sacrifice bits of yourself to make someone else happy,” he explains. “If you’re afraid to ask after what you want. Maybe I did something wrong.”

“Sometimes love is greedy, kiddo.” My dad sets his mouth in a firm line. “Sometimes it’s a little bit selfish too. You think it’s never crossed my mind that your mom deserves something better than the life we carved out for ourselves here? It has. A million times. A million and one. But I’m holding on to her with both hands. I’m trusting her to make her own choices. To choose me.”