In the Weeds (Lovelight #2)(44)

“There you go with the duck again. What duck?”

“I told you about the duck.” He did, but I thought he was full of it. “We found an abandoned duck on the farm. The town vet hasn’t been able to find a home for him yet.”

“Is it a baby duck?”

He nods. I sink down an inch further in my seat and shove a fry in my mouth, picturing him sitting in that chair with a baby duck in his shirt pocket.

It’s devastating.

“Did you always want to be a farmer?”

I can’t help it with the questions. Josie tells me I have a curious spirit when she’s feeling generous. Nosy, when she’s annoyed by it. With Beckett, I feel like I’ve only ever gotten crumbs. I want to crack him right open and examine every tiny detail.

He looks uncomfortable with the attention though, shifting around in his chair.

“You don’t have to—“

“No, I’m fine.” He grabs another handful of fries and settles back in his seat with a sigh, knees splayed wide, dusk beginning to creep through the trees. Everything is a deep indigo tonight, the branches of the trees forming a canopy of midnight blue over the backyard. It feels like we’re in the pages of a fairy tale. Beckett glances at me out of the corner of his eye, a brush of pink on the tips of his ears. He looks so bashful and hesitant it steals the air right out of my lungs.

The prince. Or maybe the damsel in need of rescuing. I haven’t quite decided yet.

“Don’t laugh, okay?”

“I won’t,” I say emphatically. I’d never laugh at Beckett. Not ever.

He considers that, rolling his words around in his head as he squints out at the fields. “I wanted to be—” he laughs a little bit, his palm against the back of his head. “I wanted to be an astronaut.”

I think about the map of the sky he has taped on the front of his refrigerator, times and dates of celestial events scribbled in the margins. A book of the moon phases on the very top of his shelf.

“I think most kids want to be an astronaut for at least half their childhood. I guess I was just checking off that box. My mom got me a spacesuit for my eighth birthday and I don’t think I took it off for an entire year.” I imagine a tiny Beckett in a spacesuit with a helmet too big, his blue-green eyes smiling through the visor and my heart squeezes in my chest. “I thought I could work at NASA. Do research, or something. I don’t know. I just wanted to look at the stars.”

“You could have.” Stella told me Beckett built all of the sprinkler systems on the farm, a new design she’s been trying to get him to patent. He would have made an excellent engineer if that’s what he wanted to do. “Why didn’t you?”

“My dad worked at the main produce supplier for the state. Parson’s. It’s a couple of towns over.” I know the place he’s talking about. I’ve driven past it on my way in and out of Inglewild. It’s a massive farm. Rows and rows of produce, as far as you can see. “He had an accident. He fell from a ladder and he, uh—he was paralyzed from the waist down.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Beckett, I’m so sorry.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry about.” He settles down further in his seat with a grunt. “My mom didn’t work at the time. She went to cosmetology school to get her license once my dad was in a better spot. It took him a bit of time to—to deal with everything.” He rubs his fingers against his jaw absently, remembering. “The Parson family was really good about it, though. They paid all the medical bills, helped our family out however they could. 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. It’s been farming since.”

Beckett must see the look on my face because his whole body softens, a thoughtful look on his handsome face. “Nah, don’t look at me like that. It’s alright.”

“You were just a kid,” I manage around a throat that’s too tight. A pressure burning behind my eyes. I think about that little boy in a space suit, looking up at the stars. “You had a dream.”

“Found a new one,” he answers, smile kicking up the corner of his mouth. He leans back in his chair and tilts his face to the night sky, the stars beginning to wake. “And I got to keep the stars with me.”



I oversleep the next morning, my body sore from my shoulders all the way down to my calves. Muscles I never even knew existed protest as I pull myself out of bed, shuffling down the hall to the kitchen. Comet and Cupid trail after me, Vixen waiting patiently next to an empty mug by the coffee maker.

There’s a note too, a plain piece of paper with a scribbled map. I stare at it, trying to make sense of the figures Beckett drew. I’m assuming the penciled outline of a house with a cat on top is his cabin, a path marked in a neat line around several farm landmarks.

The big oak tree that splits at the trunk. The pumpkin patch by Stella’s house. The fields we were working in yesterday. All of it leads to a big X in the corner. He’s written SOME HAPPY in tiny block letters right next to it.

I grin.



“Did you find out about the sweatpants, yes or no?”