Page 55 of Grouch-ish

“The twelve days of Valentine’s?” I shrug my shoulders, attempting to keep things light and hope my mishap disappears into the snowy abyss.

“Now that holiday is more than a day?” He chuckles. “I can’t keep up. Maybe it should be the fourteen days of Valentine’s.”

“That’s a lot of love-gifting.” However, is it any different than the twelve days of gifts from a true love at Christmas?

Brock continues to watch me while sipping his coffee. When he lowers his cup, his gaze never leaves my face.

“Might be worth the challenge.”

I chew on my lower lip. Does he mean me? I’m the challenge. Or does he mean fourteen days in another month would be a challenge? Like the twelve days he’ll have put in here at the farm. Has it been difficult to be here?

I hate the unwarranted doubt. Brock has taken each task I’ve given, mostly without complaint, and completed them. The fact our little forced proximity has turned into more hasn’t seemed to bother him one bit, either. But what happens when these twelve days are complete?

Would Valentine’s Day mean anything for either of us?

Would we both be alone again, like we were at the start of his sentence?

There are things I need to tell him.

I don’t want to go back to being alone.

I don’t want to go back to living without him.

Selfish.

“Snowflake,” Brock calls, and I blink, knowing I zoned out. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Just excited to milk some cows.”

Chapter 15

[Brock]

My heart should not have grown three sizes in my chest at her declaration.

I love you.

She didn’t mean me directly. She meant it in that off-handed way one says it, like when Ellie was little, and I’d come home with ice cream cones as a treat.

I love you. For ice cream.

And now cows? I snort. Way to try to dig out of that pile of snow, Pear.

Still, my chest seized, and I held my breath, inhaling false hope that she might mean the words. Like she might say them again and there would be honest emotion behind them that has nothing to do with livestock. And everything to do with me.

What a fucking idiot I am.

I’m equally stupid for giving in to sitting on a wooden stool that feels like it’s going to collapse underneath my weight and grab the teats of a cow.

“Just start at the top and give a squeeze. Don’t be afraid you’ll hurt her. She’s a mother. She’s tough.” Mr. Renshaw is exactly what one might expect in an older gent who has spent most of his life in a variety of seasons. His skin is weathered by the elements of extreme cold and blistering sunshine. Pride fills his face as well as gratitude as roughly a dozen or so people have showed up to help him milk his precious cows.

I’d offered to look at his machine or his generator in hopes that I could be of mechanical use instead of manual labor. Manual, as in, physically wrapping my hand around a cow’s distended nipple and milking it. However, Mr. Renshaw declined the offer. A repairman was on the way, but the cows could not wait.

“Don’t be afraid to give her a nudge, too. A gentle head butting never hurt.” He points to where another man has his head leaning into the side of a cow to keep her in place.

Personally, I want to bang my head on the side of this barn.

Then I look over at Pear whose smile is so wide, like she’s ready to lasso one of these beasts and take it home like a lap dog. For a woman who has lived in large cities most of her life, she’s embracing her inner farm-girl and loving this moment.