patrick feely was thoroughly a mess.

it had started the moment you showed up at his gate with a clipboard and an attitude, sentenced to eighty hours of community service on his family’s farm. eighty hours of absolute mental torture for him. he still remembered it too clearly: the way you’d squinted up at the house like it had personally offended you, the way you’d asked if this was really where you were meant to be spending your summer. he’d thought you were trouble then. he hadn’t been wrong.

somewhere between fixing fences and mucking out stalls, between your complaining and your laughter and the way you never quite listened but always somehow understood, patrick had gone and fallen for you. badly. down to the bone badly. the kind of badly that had him replaying conversations while lying awake at night, the kind that made his chest ache when you smiled at someone else.

and then he’d gone and ruined it.

new year’s eve, too much drink, too much noise, not enough sense. kissing casey lordan had been a mistake. dating her after had been worse. patrick could admit that now, even if it made him feel like a right idiot. and when you’d started seeing hughie biggs, his best mate, something inside him had cracked clean down the middle. he hadn’t said a word. what was there to say? he’d made his bed. he just hadn’t expected it to feel quite so lonely lying in it.

so when word got around that you and hughie had split, patrick hadn’t exactly been devastated. he’d felt a flash of relief before the guilt came crashing down, heavy and sharp. he hated himself for it. hated that some small, traitorous part of him still wanted you, still imagined what it would be like if things had gone differently. instead of doing anything about it, he’d done what he did best lately. sulked. wandered the house. stared out windows like an old man with nothing better to do.

until biddies.

he still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. one minute he was out for a quiet pint, the next you were there, laughing too loud, swaying on your feet, insisting you were grand when you very clearly were not. he’d hauled you back to his place on pure instinct, grumbling under his breath, arm firm around your waist so you wouldn’t topple over. letting you sleep in his bed had seemed like the only option at the time.

in the morning, reality had hit him like a slap.

so he’d fled to the hayloft, hands busy, head down, throwing himself into fixing the fence he’d been putting off for weeks. anything to keep from thinking about the way you’d looked half-asleep in his sheets. anything to stop the what-ifs.

he hadn’t noticed you at first, standing on the rise of the hill, the grass bent around your boots, watching him work. not until your voice cut through the quiet.

“i’m going.”

patrick didn’t trust himself to look at you. he drove the nail into the plank harder than necessary, jaw clenched tight, knuckles white around the hammer. a sharp breath through his nose. grand. just grand.