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“Ah, yes. That.”

Benji glances at me. His lips morph into a smile.

“Yeah, it’s a new thing,” he says.

I can’t help but return his smile.

Which, when I look at Lance, seems to have sent him back into the shock realm.

“Right, well, we’ve got places to go,” Emma says, setting the container on my counter with exaggerated care. “There’s a few meals worth of lasagna in there, although…” She sends a sly look at Benji. “It looks like you’ve got someone taking care of your nutritional needs.”

“Thanks for the food,” I mutter.

Benji and I are silent after Lance and Emma leave, so their conversation drifts through the open window.

“Oh, come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming,” Emma says.

“You mean to tell me all that arguing was actually foreplay?” Lance’s voice is full of incredulity.

I close my eyes and wince.

When I open them again, Benji’s looking at me with concern. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

His concern doesn’t fade. “Sorry, that was a shit way for you to have to come out.”

“I don’t care about that,” I say. And I’m being truthful. What other people think doesn’t matter to me.

What matters is that Benji’s looking at me like I might regret this whole thing when the truth is I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life. Even if my brother’s going to take the piss out of me until the end of time.

“So what are you worried about then?” he asks quietly.

“That my brother is going to think this means he can give me relationship advice.”

Benji laughs, then comes over to give me a quick kiss.

“You’ve got the best boyfriend in the world. You won’t need relationship advice,” he says.

I roll my eyes at that.

Benji dishes up the bacon and eggs, sliding them onto my mother’s old plates with their faded flower pattern. The domesticity of it should feel strange, but it really doesn’t.

We eat in comfortable silence, our feet tangled under the table as the morning sun streams through my kitchen window.

“I should head back,” he says eventually, though he makes no move to leave. “Got the vet coming to look at that heifer.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a bit to do this morning,” I admit. “Those lambs will start a ruckus if I don’t feed them soon.”

“You won’t want to keep Pepper waiting,” he says.

When he leaves, he kisses me at the door like he’s done it a thousand times before. Like he plans to do it a thousand times more.

I’m humming as I grab my jacket off the hook and head out the door myself.

The rhythm of farm work fills my morning, feeding the lambs, checking water troughs, moving stock. But there’s a lightness to it now, like someone’s oiled all the rusty gates in my life. And my muscles aching pleasantly from activities that had nothing to do with farming is a nice reminder.

As I’m coming back on my four-wheeler to the woolshed paddock, I glance toward Benji’s property and see the purple gate.