Page 35 of The Pumpkin Patch Sisters

Beckett looked at his hands, his fingers tracing the edge of his cotton cloth. When he looked back up, his eyes were unreadable, holding a defensive caution that made her feel like a stranger again.

"Last night was last night," Beckett murmured. "It was comfortable. But a week of hard labor doesn't erase years of planning, and it doesn't change what you built in the city."

"Is that what you think?" Dahlia asked, her breath catching. "You still think I’m just looking for a comfortable distraction before I leave?"

"I think you have an offer," Beckett replied, his voice steady, his pride holding him perfectly upright. "And I think you’re going to read it. I’m not going to stand in your kitchen and beg you to choose mud and broken gears over a career you sacrificed your marriage for. That’s your choice."

"You're not even going to fight for us?" Dahlia demanded, her chest tensing, her voice rising slightly in the quiet shed. "You’re just going to pull back and let me leave without saying a word?"

"I won't beg," Beckett said, his jaw tightening slightly. "I’ve spent three years keeping your family's farm from falling apart because I cared about this land, and because I cared about you. But I’m not a target on a spreadsheet, and I’m not a box you check when you’re tired of the city. If you stay, it has to be because this valley is where you belong, not because you’re hiding from your old life."

He picked up his tool chest, his movements efficient as he began packing his brushes and wrenches away. He didn't look back at her, maintaining his professional boundary with absolute consistency.

Dahlia stood silent, watching him close the metal latches with a loud click. The cold draft from the open doors swept between them, carrying the scent of oil, dry grass, and the bitter hint of coming frost. She wanted to reach out, to shatter the proud barrier he’d built around himself, but his shoulders remained set, his face turned toward the dark pastures.

"You're just going to let me go," she said, her voice cutting through the silence of the barn.

He didn't turn around immediately. He finished wiping the threads of a bolt, his broad shoulders tensing under his canvas coat. He set the metal piece on the wood with a quiet click before he slowly turned to face her. His expression was a neutral mask, his eyes unreadable.

"You have an offer," he replied, his tone flat. "A senior director track in the city. It's what you spent years trying to reach."

"You didn't even ask," she countered, drawing closer until she stood a few yards from the tractor. She curled her fingers into her palms to steady her hands. "You saw a car in the driveway, and you decided my life for me. You shut down. You pulled your walls up before we could even have a single conversation about last night."

"I didn't decide anything for you," he said, his voice remaining quiet but holding a proud edge. "I'm not the one holding a contract. I'm not the one who keeps her bags packed."

"I don't have my bags packed," she insisted, her throat tightening. "But I have a career. I have a life that I spent a decade building while this farm was slipping away. It's not something I can just throw into the dirt because we spent one night together."

"Nobody asked you to throw it away," he murmured, his eyes holding hers with an intense focus. "I told you last night that I don't want the girl from years ago. I want the woman who stands here now. But that woman has to make a choice. I won't beg you to stay. I won't be the reason you look toward the highway every autumn and wonder what you sacrificed for a struggling orchard."

"You're a coward," she whispered, the word slipping out before she could stop it. "It's easier for you to let me leave. It's easier to play the proud martyr who was abandoned than to actually fight for what we have. If you cared, you'd tell me to stay. You'd tell me that you want me here, that we can figure this out."

His jaw tightened, a muscle leaping in his cheek. He shifted his weight, his tall frame looming in the dim light of the barn as he closed the distance between them. His eyes were no longer neutral; they burned with a long-buried pain that made her breath catch.

"You think I don't want you here?" he asked, his voice dropping. "I've wanted you here every single day for three years. I watched this farm fall apart because she was too sick to manage it, and I spent my winters fixing her fences and clearing her roads because every time I looked at those trees, I remembered what we'd had. I stayed. I didn't run when things got hard. I didn't look for a glossy exit the moment the bills piled up."

He paused, his chest rising and falling in rapid cycles.

"But I have some pride left," he continued, his tone quiet but unyielding. "I won't plead with a woman who always keeps one eye on the highway. If I have to force you to choose this valley, then it's not a choice. You're just staying because you feel guilty, or because you're hiding from your old failures. I want you to stay because this is where you belong. Because you want this life. Not because I begged you."

Dahlia stood motionless, the silence of the barn settling over them like a weight. The raw honesty of his words stripped away the defensive anger she'd used to shield herself. She looked at his weathered face, realizing the devastating truth of what he'd said.

He was right.

She'd spent her entire adult life keeping her options open. She'd built her career around flexibility, moving from contract to contract, target to target, never fully committing her heart to anyone or anything. Even her marriage was a series of polite boundaries, a shared house where neither of them had to risk the absolute vulnerability of fully choosing the other. She'd done it so she could always claim an exit if things crumbled. It was a protective cage.

"I'm terrified," she confessed, her voice barely a whisper as she met his burning gaze. "I don't know how to live without a plan. I don't know how to belong to a place that doesn't have a spreadsheet or a target. If I stay, and the farm fails... I don't know who I am anymore."

Beckett watched her, his expression softening slightly, though he kept his hands flat on the wooden workbench.

"None of us have a plan," he murmured, his voice returning to its steady cadence. "The crops fail, the frost comes, and we fix what breaks. That's the only plan we have. But we do it together."

He didn't reach out to touch her, respecting the boundary she'd built, but the space between them felt charged with a quiet, waiting tension.

"But you have to make the call," he added. "I can't make it for you."

Dahlia looked at the red paint of his tractor, then back to his proud face. The silver-gray envelope that now sat in her coat pocket felt like a cold stone against her ribs, a physical manifestation of the predictable life she could return to. It was a world where she knew how to win. But looking at Beckett, she knew that winning there would mean losing the only place where she'd ever felt truly alive.

Dahlia crossed the gravel driveway, keeping her eyes on the lights of the farmhouse kitchen. The silver-gray envelope in her coat pocket felt colder now, pressing against her ribs with every movement. She'd left Beckett standing in his high-timber barn, his proud face etched with a quiet defiance that she couldn't shake. He'd challenged her to make a choice, to stop treating her life like a series of safe exits, and the truth of his words was still vibrating in her chest.