Savor You (Fusion #5)(51)

“Hello.”

She still doesn’t look up at me, so I decide to enjoy the quiet and just work next to her for a while. Her wheelbarrow is across the yard, so I fetch it and load it with the weeds she’s already pulled, then I start at the opposite side of the garden from her and begin to pull weeds myself. When I’m about ten feet from her, I gather my weeds and toss them in the wheelbarrow.

“How are you today, Mia?”

“I’m pretty good,” she says quietly.

“You know, I realize that I owe you an apology for something I said yesterday, but I’m not entirely sure what that is. What did I say?”

She finally sits back on her haunches, pushes her hat high on her forehead, and looks up at me. She’s wearing sunglasses, but she takes them off, and I’m glad to be able to see her blue eyes, which are a bit shiny, as if she was crying earlier.

“I know that it’s considered funny by men to accuse a woman of being on her period if she’s in a bad mood. I get it. But frankly, I don’t think it’s funny.” She stands and takes her gloves off, slapping them against her leg to knock the excess dirt off. “In fact, I think it’s a passive aggressive way of calling me a bitch. So, you called me a bitch.”

“That’s not at all what I meant.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says with a shrug. “I heard a really good quote once that went something like, ‘When a person tells you that you’ve hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.’”

“I would never intentionally hurt you, Mia.”

She nods once, glances down at her gloves and then sighs. “I know that I can fly off the handle, and most of the time, I’m told that I’m being irrational. But between the morning I had before you came in, and then hearing you call me a bitch, it was the perfect storm for me to be pissy. And I’ll apologize for taking it out on you, because that was my fault, and it wasn’t fair.”

She swallows hard and bends over to pull one weed that she missed.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t realize how upset you were,” I reply and reach out to brush some dirt from her cheek.

“I overreact,” she says, but I shake my head in disagreement.

“You’re passionate,” I reply. “I don’t think you overreact at all. You feel your emotions deeply, and you express them passionately. You’re not trying to be a drama queen.”

She’s watching me now with wide eyes. “You know, I’ve never thought of it that way before.”

“It’s true.” I pull her in for a hug, and feel the weight of the past twenty-four hours lift from my shoulders. “What else can I help with?”

“Well, if you don’t mind watering the plants with the hose over there, I’ll start picking some of the veggies. I haven’t done that yet, I was too busy weeding.”

“I can do that.” I kiss her forehead and hold her chin in my fingers. “Are we okay?”

“Yeah.” She grins. “Thanks for coming over.”

“I tried to text you but I didn’t get a response.”

“I turned my phone off last night and haven’t looked at it since. I need some time to just be. I’m sorry if you were worried.”

“I’m okay.” I turn on the hose and drag it over to the garden, and begin to water the plants. The nozzle on the hose lets just a trickle of water out, so although it takes longer to water, it doesn’t harm the plants.

“Look at these carrots,” she says with excitement, holding up some impressively big carrots. “These are going to be perfect in the salads.”

We work side by side for a while. When her bounty is all collected, she takes it inside, then returns to help clean up. She’s just dumped the weeds out of the wheelbarrow, and turned back toward me when I decide to point the hose at her and turn the spray up.

“Oh my God!” she cries and holds her hands up over her face. “What the fuck?”

She’s laughing, so I spray her again. She runs to the opposite side of the house, and before I know it, she returns with another hose turned on full blast.

“Two can play this game, buddy.”

She sprays me, and then turns her back to me so my spray hits her shoulders.

“It’s so cold!”

We run all over the backyard getting each other and everything else sopping wet.

“Uncle,” she cries and drops her hose, holding her hands up in surrender. “I can’t.” She’s laughing so hard, she can hardly catch her breath. “Seriously.”

I drop my hose too and tackle her to the ground, roll us until she’s under me, and drag hair that worked its way out of the ponytail off of her face.

“I love you, Mia.”

She immediately stops laughing and stares up at me. “Wait. What?”

“You heard me.” I kiss her cheek and then her forehead. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“I don’t know.” She leans away so she can look in my eyes. “Maybe because you’ve never said it before.”

“I’ve been wanting to say it for a long time,” I admit with a shrug and then kiss her sweet lips. I should have told her weeks ago, but I didn’t want the moment to seem forced. “Playing with you, watching you laugh, is one of my favorite things with you, and I just couldn’t help myself.”