Page 20 of Marrying the Gardener (The Bachelor Brothers #3)

“Stuff?” he asks.

“Yes. Flirting is cute, but I don’t really care about it. It doesn’t tell me anything about you.”

“It doesn’t? Here I thought it revealed a stark absence of shame. Otherwise, my greatest-kept secret.”

“You’re still being cute, Kaleb. I gave you a packet that included an assessment of who I am and things I like, just in case you needed any of that information to be roughly accurate…

All things considered, my father likely wouldn’t know if you were right or wrong, and he’d hardly care either way.

I am of such little consequence compared to meeting him that knowing anything about me doesn’t matter.

” I believe I wasted a great deal of energy explaining my backstory when I could have stopped at exists with the anatomy of a female .

“The point is, you know a lot about me, but I hardly know anything about you beyond that you’re good at your job and like gardening. What other things do you like?”

“You.”

“Kaleb…”

He smiles. “Sorry. You left me wide open for that one.” His steady paintbrush strokes continue, coating more of the pot. “I like fairytales.”

“Fairytales?” I echo. That’s…unexpected.

He nods. “I had a book of Grimm’s Fairytales when I was on my own, after leaving my parents’ house.

It was one of the only things to my name.

I found it on a bus stop bench. I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but it was overcast that day, and I wasn’t sure it would be safe from the rain.

So I took it. And I read it. Over and over. ”

“Is that why you call me Rose-red? Wasn’t there a story about that character?”

“Yeah.” He smiles as he rinses his brush, chooses a smaller one, and dips it in the white I’m using.

“ Snow-White and Rose-Red . It’s a lesser-known story, overshadowed by Snow White and the Seven Dwarves .

Snow-white and Rose-red are completely different characters, but they’re sisters, and they marry prince brothers. ”

“Classic fairytale.”

“Quite. As the story goes, Snow-white was gentle. Rose-red was wild. Snow-white would often stay home and help her mother. Rose-red would seek adventure. Nevertheless, they adored one another, and whenever they’d go out together, they wouldn’t be far from the other’s side, pledging forever to stay united. ”

“Like Crisis and I.”

His eyes twinkle as he takes great care in outlining flower petals on his pot in white paint.

“Definitely a bond of similar intensity. My favorite part of the story is that the girls possessed something akin to a supernatural peace. They’d wander in forests and commune with the animals without any harm coming to them even if they fell asleep and stayed out all night.

Fairytales often give main characters this overwhelming sense of community with nature. I longed for that serenity.”

“And you’ve found it with gardening?”

Kaleb pulls his attention off the lilies springing to life around his pot. “I found something like it when I left home. I use gardening as a means to connect with it still.”

My chest pinches. “I’m so sorry your home wasn’t safe.”

“I’m sorry yours still isn’t.” He cleans his brush, dries it, dips it in green to draw stamens that he tops with yellow. “Soon, I hope it will be. And I hope that I’ll be a part of it.”

I focus back on my pot, check that the acrylic white has dried, then rinse my brush to fill it with red. “What was it like being on your own?”

“Exhilarating. I didn’t know how bad I had it until I had nothing and nothing was so much better than everything I’d had before.

Even though the guilt for leaving remained a constant companion, it never even suggested I go back.

Home was…vile, Crimson.” His voice softens, and I find myself watching him again, barely having added a petal to the idea of a nameless flower on my pot.

Eyes hard, Kaleb works a green paisley design around the lip of his pot.

“Nothing was ever good enough. They were always angry. They were selfish. They treated us like slaves, dogs… We existed to make them look better, but we could never do it well enough.”

I…know what that’s like. Softly, I ask, “We?”

He freezes, glances at me, wets his lips, and nods. “I have siblings.”

“Are they okay?”

“I’d…rather not talk about them.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He shakes his head, forces the edge of a smile to his lips.

“Don’t be. It’s okay. They are fine, now.

It’s just hard to think about how I was the one who left them to handle our parents by themselves.

I know they had each other, and I know I was the least favorite, the most useless, the one our parents hit the most because I mattered the least and they just…

they just liked hitting something that screamed.

” Kaleb’s wounded eyes dart past the several seats separating us from everyone else, and he gathers himself, keeping his voice hushed.

“I know that, but still. I wish I could have done something more. Something to save my family. All of us think like that, though. We all wanted to save each other. I was just the only one who gave up and left. I might spend the rest of my life beating myself up over it as I fight to accept how deeply they…still love me.”

“You’ve got a bond like the sisters in your story.”

“Yeah.” His smile falters when he focuses on me.

“Except I broke my promise to stay united, and I know, now that we’re older, no one blames me, but I still struggle to find my place around them when they had to suffer at our parents’ hands nearly a decade longer than I did.

While I was eating well and enjoying life and burying my frustrations in…

” He glances at my hair, looks back down at his hands, paints another shape.

“…in women…they suffered. I can’t forgive myself, even though they’ve forgiven me. ”

“Do you think that’s hard on them?” I ask. “Seeing you continue to hurt, I mean.”

“Probably. But I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to get past this feeling that I could have done something . I could have gotten older with them, stronger with them. And I could have been the one to—to get rid of our parents myself.”

My heart thumps. “You…you think you would have been able to…” I whisper, “… kill them?”

Devoid of anger, Kaleb turns to me, still, stable. Very gently, he says, “Yes. To protect my little brother, Crimson? I would have done anything had I just been strong enough to.”

Further up the table, a pot shatters, then a little girl starts crying, reminding us both that we’re talking about premeditated murder in public, so Kaleb exhales a laugh.

“Maybe…this conversation is better suited to the privacy of our evenings, Rose-red. I like fairytales. Besides gardening, I like fairytales. Is it my turn to ask a first-date question now?”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Do you know your love language?”

I arch a brow. “My love language? I thought love languages weren’t scientifically based and covered only a small portion of the possible ways there are to love someone?”

“Mine is acts of service.”

My lips part. “Really? Not physical touch?”

“If I had to rank them, physical touch is second, but acts of service mean the most to me.”

“Physical touch is probably last on my list, but I haven’t thought about it much before. I’ve never wanted to be in a relationship. I’ve spent most of my life hoping that my father also wouldn’t be interested in pawning me off into one. Everything I do is fairly duty-based.”

“What about Crisis?” Kaleb asks. “How do you love each other?”

In every way I possibly can. Crisis is my thread of sanity in this world of anarchy.

That woman talking to her fish makes my entire life better.

She’s a beautiful bundle of chaos, and I would give her both my kidney and my unlocked phone in a heartbeat.

“I think maybe quality time is my first choice. I like knowing that Crisis would drop everything if I needed her. Just sitting in the same room as her makes me happy. We don’t even need to be talking. Just having her there is enough.”

Kaleb scoots his chair slightly closer to mine. “I like that one, too.”

Inexplicably, my skin reacts to his closeness, raising the hairs on my arms. “That’s not an excuse for you to hang around me more. We’re already together a lot . I do need my personal space.”

He kisses my cheek. “I’m not going to be anywhere you don’t want me, Crimson. Promise.”

The way he says as much makes me think that he’s not going to be anywhere I tell him not to be, but everywhere else? Everywhere I don’t specifically forbid? He’ll be there. Waiting. Curling up in all the nooks and crannies.

Whether I realize it, or not.