Page 14 of Marrying the Gardener (The Bachelor Brothers #3)

?

It’s a game of give and give.

Kaleb

“I am sober.” Dutifully, I nip at Crimson’s full bottom lip. “I still like you.”

Dutifully, she endures, gripping my clothes to brace herself as she practices the ordeal that is kissing me. “That’s not a funny joke, Kaleb.”

Every cell in me wants her, but I pace myself, keeping the fact she might be aro and ace forefront in my brain as I pinch her chin and slant my mouth over hers. “I’m not joking, Rose-red.”

A tiny sound leaves her, so I break away, lose myself in the trance caused by her rising and falling chest.

Soft, I ask, “Is this still exhausting?”

“Extremely.” Looking haunted, Crimson draws breath past her lips, then she attains composure, and frowns. “Which is not helped by your love confessions.”

“I’ve yet to mention love.”

“ Like confessions, then, Mr. Semantics.”

“No, no. I do love you. Love is fine. It’s just rude that you stole my confession from me.”

She shoves out of my arms.

I am now cold.

“Goodnight, Kaleb.”

“Crims—”

“Goodnight,” she says, sharp as a knife. “You did well today. You’ll do better not to tease me. It’s…uncharacteristically unkind.”

I catch her hand before she can get away. Firm, I hold tight. “I’m not teasing you, Crimson. What would you have me do to convince you?”

Her brow arches. “What would I have you do to convince me that you love me enough to offer me everything you have in exchange for nothing, even though it’s been less than a week since we first spoke?”

“I’ve seen you time and again over the past month and a half coming and going from the Bachelor manor to visit Crisis as you help plan her wedding.

You have struck me to my soul. Give me a chance to love you, however you desire to be loved, and I shall forfeit myself into your hands for the rest of my life. ”

Pulling free from my grasp, she pats my shoulder. “Honey, I think you need to go to sleep again. Something still hasn’t rebooted in your brain since you had all that whiskey.”

I had two glasses two and a half hours ago.

This direct approach isn’t working. I don’t think it’s just a trust issue, either. She’s completely cut off from the concept of and the desire for a relationship—in any capacity. My usual tactics have no ground here. She is immovable. Singularly focused. Unwilling to hear out any other options.

If I have to witness… No. If I have to participate in another display like earlier today, I don’t know how long it will take before I ask Viktor to destroy the Nightingales so completely there won’t be anything left for a will.

I’m not strong enough to watch her pretend to be a moron and subject herself to abuse like this.

I’m just not .

I understand why Crimson doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone, not even my brothers who clearly care about her as a friend.

Even though they’re my brothers , I feel the weight of leaving them constantly.

I feel indebted to Viktor constantly just because he loved me enough despite all my sins to bring me home, just because he still loves me. Even now.

It’s terrible. It’s suffocating. It puts this distance I don’t know how to close between me and the most important people in my life.

Yet, if it means saving Crimson, I will increase that weight of debt tenfold and ask him for her salvation.

It’s far easier to destroy this rotten family than it is to take over their assets. Even without conflicts and power plays, even through a will, it’s so much easier to just destroy them.

Crimson has to know that.

Crimson… has to know that there’s not just the options of staying enslaved or facing their wrath. She has to know that removing their power would allow her to live a normal life.

So that can’t be the only thing she wants.

She is tangled up in this mess because she wants to earn back what is rightfully hers. She wants to prove herself to people who don’t deserve her energy.

Whether she admits it or not, whether she realizes it or not, she wants her family to know that the person they cast out outsmarted them moments before she is powerful enough to safely tell them what they have always told her: I don’t need you.

She sees the angles. She’s smart enough. She’s made her choice…

Which makes me powerless to do anything.

Even though getting rid of her family isn’t where their abuse ends inside her.

Crimson has come to the conclusion that she does not need anyone.

She relies on herself.

She refuses to tell the people closest to her—the people who love her the most—that she needs help. Because she doesn’t want it. Because she’s not just after salvation.

She’s here for justice.

And I don’t know how to reach her.

Because when push comes to shove, I don’t seek vengeance. I just run.

Following that pattern, I forfeit this evening, send myself to my room, and hope the ambrosia of her lips overrules the revulsion of the day in my dreams.

?

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Crisis says, while I’m trying to find peace in the spare hours I have to garden today.

Crimson told me at the start of our contract that she wouldn’t have time to take me back and forth to the Bachelor estate so I could garden as consistently as I had been and I should inform Viktor in order that I might work something out with him.

As far as she knows, we’ve “worked it out.” Even though “working it out” just means I’m going to try not to ask to check on my plants more than twice a week.

After last night, I think when I told her I needed to tend to the Bachelors’ yard this morning, she was happy to be rid of me.

She took me to the shed I told her I lived in on the first night we met and left me there. Positioned at the edge of the property, the small building I keep my garden tools and supplies in is far enough from the main house that no one can see her come or go.

So she came.

And she went.

And I trekked the long way home to grab my straw hat and a set of work clothes from my real room.

While there, I learned that Zakery, Maelin, and Morana—along with a reluctant Kyran—have been keeping my indoor plants fed, and the entire way out to my koi pond, I couldn’t shake the sensation of gratitude and guilt.

My family loves me.

So effortlessly.

And the only thing I can bring myself to care about right now is a woman who wants nothing to do with me.

Trust me, Crisis. I am ashamed of myself. All the same, I ask, “Why?”

Crisis, distraught and making me nervous with how close to the koi pond she is putting her face, mutters, “You stole my wife, yet now you want my help wooing her?”

“Am I under the correct assumption that you know her better than anyone?” I ask, pruning the miniature roses I have bordering the stretching pond laid out before us.

Lily pads bob atop the surface while weeping willow boughs enclose the grove in partial shade.

I’m pretty much finished with these roses and should be on the other side of the water, across a short bridge that leads to flat stones, which wind toward an open rotunda housing a mermaid statue in desperate need of cleaning, but Crisis is known for disaster, and I’m worried leaving her side will result in the ground giving out beneath her and sending her tumbling into the pond.

Hence, trimming the crawling ivy I used to decorate my mermaid as well as the phlox I snuck into every crack leading up to the cool stone monument will have to wait.

“Of course I know her better than anyone.” Crisis makes fish faces at the koi as they skim to the surface, greeting her. “I’m her twin. We were formed in the womb together, holding hands, which will be how we die.”

I am almost positive that Crisis has known Crimson just over a singular year.

“Your twin is completely closed off from the idea of relying on other people.”

Crisis eyes me, blinks, says, “Huh. Wild. I didn’t know we had a triplet.”

Ignoring the accusation, I continue, “She is determined to do everything herself, even if it means breaking herself in two and sending her soul through a blender.”

Crisis pouts her lip and throws her hand up, palm open.

Sighing, I deliver a few round nuggets of the koi food that I have in my pocket into her grasp.

She sets the balls perfectly before the mouths of each koi, mimicking them as they gulp the bites down.

“You’re not going to help me, are you?” I ask.

“Crim has a savior complex. She likes me because I always need to be rescued. I exist as a built-in test for her usefulness. Every time she sees me, she knows that she’ll make my life better in quantifiable ways.

You’re too capable and self-assured. Not to mention, it sounds like you’re trying to save her .

She hates feeling like a damsel in distress.

She hates being told what to do. You’re sweet, Kaleb.

You give. But you’re both givers, and she’s too stubborn to take.

” Crisis pushes herself up off the moss into a kneeling position at the water’s edge. “Have you tried being utterly useless?”

I don’t exactly have the luxury of being useless unless I’m content to ruin her schemes, and no matter how they sicken me, I am not at liberty to make that decision for her.

It occurs to me while I’m trying to think of ways I could give Crimson opportunities to save me that I am also really, really, phenomenally bad at taking and Crisis’s triplet allegations hold some merit.

I’d rather continue selling myself as though I’m still apart from my family than rely on their offers to take care of me out of love. I’ve spent the past seven years in continued service to the world I knew while I was gone. I’ve gardened and served and denied every you don’t have to do this .

Just like Crimson is denying me.

“I’m…” I swallow and discover that the realization we’re very alike does not deter how badly I want her.

“…not sure what I feel comfortable taking from her. I don’t need her money, and she knows that.

” I can’t ethically request her body to save me from something as stupid as “desire,” not while she suffers through every touch she’s employed me to commence.

She acts like a sex-repulsed asexual. The last thing I want is to make her miserable, so there’s nothing for me to take without losing some piece of my moral code.

“Start with her time.” Crisis runs her fingers across the moss by her legs. “You could always go to a public school and lick doorknobs, too.”

My brain stutters. “I’m sorry. What?”

“To get outstandingly ill,” she clarifies. “She’ll kill you if you man flu, but if you can pop out a fever of 103? She’ll wait on you hand and foot. She’s very nurturing. Loves tending to and caring for her people.”

“How do I know if I’m one of her people ?”

Crisis lifts a shoulder. “You kind of just…know. You can tell. Her smile is different for you. She gravitates closer. And if you need her, she’ll drop everything.

” Crisis glances at me, scans me, then grimaces.

“Now, you will have to somehow overcome the fact you’re a boy. Crimson, fundamentally, hates boys.”

Yeah. I noticed.

Before licking doorknobs actually becomes a feasible option, I say, “How far do you suggest I press?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have already asked for a small portion of her time each day. She has forfeited it reluctantly because it is under the guise of meeting her means to an end.”

Crisis’s head shakes. “If it’s work, it’s work.

That’s not actually letting her give anything at all.

The trick is being useless when you can’t help it.

Men take advantage. That’s not what I’m suggesting.

You need to be vulnerable, and she needs to believe she can help.

” Rising, Crisis rustles my hair as she turns toward the quiet path home.

“You’ve got plenty of valid trauma, Kaleb.

Use it. Therapist Crimson is super hot. Five stars. Highly recommend.”

If Crimson gets any hotter, I will be in a world of trouble.

And if my options are unpacking trauma or licking doorknobs…well…

Someone get me a high school.