Page 109 of Pick Me This Time

Dad cut me off. “Emotionally, son. Just by leaving, you’re gonna hurt her.”

“I know.”

“And look, Eric only knows you from back in the day. He only knows your history with women back then. He’s never seen you serious, and he has no reason to think anything has changed. Try to put yourself in his shoes for a minute. Would you have trusted you with his sister?”

I paused for a beat, my mind racing back to those early days when we’d first discovered girls didn’t have cooties. “Yeah, I guess I see what you mean. I got around a little bit before I got with Fiona. It’s not like that with Daphne, though.”

He held up his palms. “I didn’t think it was, but if you really do want a chance of getting this relationship off the ground, you need to let him see that it’s not like that with her. Better yet, you need to show him.”

“Well, I mean, I would have, but I’m going back to New York,” I said.

My dad folded his hands in front of him and sighed. “And there you go. See? Eric is right to be concerned.”

“I would ask her to come with me, but she won’t do it and I don’t want to ask her to give up everything she knows and loves for me. Especially because once I get back to the city, I’m hardly ever even going to be home. I practically live in my office.”

“That’s no way to live, son,” he said. “It’s your choice, of course, but you need to ask yourself what will make you happy. The girl or the job.”

I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face. “Tonight is the reunion and I leave on Monday, the day after the fall parade. She’s helping out with that, so this is probably going to be the last time I see her for a while. From where I’m sitting right now, there’s just no way to make a go of this thing.”

Dad didn’t say anything for a long minute. Leaning back in his chair and sipping his coffee, he just stared into the middle distance—or he was looking at the stove. I couldn’t quite tell if he was seeing it or not, but that was where he was looking—Mom’s domain.

Something about the way the lines on his face deepened told me he was thinking really hard about this, but he’d known I was going back and when. I had no idea what he was mulling over so intensely, but it made a little more sense when he finally spoke again.

“I thought you hated your life in the city,” he said, tilting his head slowly to one side as he looked at me like he was trying to find something on my face. “If that was true, then why do you want to go back there? Why leave at all?”

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

I’d been kind of hurt when I’d told him I’d be getting on that plane for my flight out after all, and he had just accepted it. But now, I realized that he’d been working up to asking me these questions. It felt like he’d simply been waiting for the right time, and since he and I were talking openly now, I supposed he had found it.

“I don’t really want to go back, but I have to, right? Just logically.” I shrugged. “I’ve got a great job at a firm that’s almost impossible to get into. I’m first in line for a promotion most people would give their left nut for. I have my apartment and my cars. It seems crazy to turn my back on all that, but I’m not going to turn my back on you either. Even when I leave, Dad, I need you to know that I’m still going to be there.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked cautiously.

It seemed I’d also found the time I’d been waiting for to broach this with him. “I’ve got a few ideas about the farm. If you’re willing to hear me out.”

“Alright,” he said finally. “Let’s have it. You want to hire these guys, don’t you?”

“I do,” I replied confidently. “You need help around here and these new hires have already gotten the lay of the land. I think they handled themselves really well at our busiest time of year, which means it could only get better now that things will start slowing down again. The farm can get ahead instead of trying play catch-up all the time.”

Dad didn’t turn me down immediately, which was a pleasant surprise. Deciding to keep going now that I had the ball rolling, I laid it all out for him. “Jake and his team have agreed to keep working on the maintenance and repairs. They’ll be fitting us in between other jobs, so they’ll probably be coming and going for a few months, if that’s okay with you?”

“As long as they stay out of my way,” he said after considering it for a moment. “Jake does good work, but he’s not coming into the house.”

“The gutters⁠—”

“They can clean the outside, but I don’t want people traipsing in and out of here as they please. The only other person I want in here is you. And I suppose your girlfriend, for as long as you can call her that.”

“Deal,” I said, ignoring that last bit. “I’ve also reached out to⁠—”

Daphne came creeping down the stairs, her eyes wide and panicked when they met mine. Dad must’ve heard the creak of one of the old floorboards because he suddenly smiled.

“I already know you’re here, Daphne. There’s coffee.” He stood up and nodded good morning to her when she joined us in the kitchen. “Maybe my son will show I raised him right by making you a cup. Well, I’m off to work. Good to see you, Daphne.”

With that, he turned and walked out. I grinned and filled a mug from the cabinet. I brought it to her at the table, along with cream and sugar. I didn’t know how she took it.

We drank coffee together like we hadn’t gone back on our agreement to be just friends. Between that and the fact that I was leaving in a couple days, I wondered just what the hell happened next?

In a little over forty-eight more hours, I would be buckling up my seatbelt and taking off to settle back into a life over four hundred miles away.

It wasn’t that far, but it sure was far enough to make a romantic relationship damn near impossible.