Frankie opened her eyes and found regret staring her right in the face. She had yelled at her boss's son. What had she been thinking? Frankie slapped her hand over her eyes and groaned, as if that would take away the gnawing sensation in her stomach.

She held her breath when Dan entered the kitchen that morning, her coffee mug suspended right in front of her face as she watched his every move, his every expression. But all he did was take a long sip, sigh, then look her straight in the eye and ask, "Ready, Frank?"

Frankie could breathe again. And just in time, too. She tried meeting Johnny's eye, to nod a silent thank you, as she followed Dan out the front door and passed Johnny as he headed for the kitchen. But Johnny kept his eyes firmly on the ground.

Frankie found she could somehow spend even less time in the main house over the next few days. Now, not only did she have a family reunion to avoid but also one of its members. Work offered the perfect distraction and Frankie found she didn't have to say a word to anyone about anything other than the job at hand for the rest of the week.

Consecutive nights alone in her apartment grew lonely quicker than she expected and Frankie turned to working at the woodworking station Dan had set up for her the year before just to get out of her apartment. It was the first time since the springtime, and Dan's accident, that Frankie could stand in front of her drafting table, with all her supplies laid out in front of her, and know that no one needed her.

Working on the small wooden medallions with the farm logo and name was a welcomed distraction from her mind's tendency to run back over everything she had said to Johnny and everything he had said right back. However, the work brought up memories of Frankie's father and all the things he had taught her growing up, woodworking being one of them. Frankie took her punishment of the bittersweet memories and settled on enjoying the quiet atmosphere of the barn.

By Sunday evening, Frankie decided she had spent enough time away from the house that it was safe to approach but froze in her tracks, her hand hovering over the door handle at the sight before her.

Through the kitchen window, she could see Johnny sitting at the kitchen table with Dan and Hannah. Hannah was crying. Frankie could see she had been for a while by the number of crumpled tissues on the table. Dan was frowning so hard Frankie knew he was trying hard not to cry as well. And Johnny was sitting between them, his face in his hands, his expression invisible to Frankie but she could guess what he was feeling by the posture of his sunken shoulders.

Frankie let them be and retreated, once again, to her work table.

The next morning, arriving bright and early at the farm store to open up for the day, Frankie's heart stopped when she found the big red sliding doors already unlocked. She ran through that week's work schedule and the list of people who had access to a set of keys for the store. If this really were a robbery, as Frankie feared, it'd be Hummel's first in two years.

Pulling open the doors, Frankie found a maze of boxes filling the main floor. She followed its path to a ladder set up in the middle of the room and followed the ladder to the person standing at the top. She almost didn't recognize him if hadn't been for his skinny jeans as his expensive shirts had been replaced with one of Aaron's old flannels and a down vest that was a continual piece for anyone that needed it.

Johnny turned back over his shoulder, his hands over his head, at the sound of squeaking wheels against metal as the store doors opened. He met Frankie's wide-eyed gaze and nodded, his only explanation for why he was surrounded by Christmas decorations and currently focused on placing a large garland wreath from the center of the rafters overhead.

Frankie didn't have time to ask as her two new employees showed up just then. The two local teenagers carefully stepped around the storage boxes as Frankie had. Frankie approached and grabbed their attention before they could ask why Hummel's local superstar was standing at the top of a ladder, hanging Christmas decorations because Frankie didn't know how to answer that.

"Hi! Caleb, Rachel, thanks for getting here on time. Welcome to Hummel Farms. Let's get started!"

Frankie did her best to run new employee orientation with Johnny working in the background. It was harder than she expected as both Rachel and Caleb turned out to be Late Nights fans and their attention kept wavering. Frankie couldn't blame them. The sight was shocking to her too.

But they made it through well enough and Frankie had the two of them working the cash registers by the time she flipped the closed sign to open and customers started trickling in.

To his credit, by the time customers showed up, the storage boxes had been put to the side and Johnny's work on the center of the room had been completed. Frankie was impressed at the speed with which he had hung Christmas lights all along the perimeter of the room and then moved to the outside of the store. By lunchtime, he was finished.

Johhny approached the cash register as Frankie was calculating inventory behind the counter, sticking around in case Caleb or Rachel needed help.

"I'm all done here," Johnny said, grabbing the attention of all three people behind the counter as he spoke to Frankie. "Mind if I borrow the truck to haul all the boxes back to the house?"

Frankie looked from Johnny to her workers and found them both staring.

"Take lunch you, two. I'll mind the register," Frankie said.

Caleb and Rachel reluctantly moved away but Rachel broke off to hesitate a few feet from Johnny.

"Hi. I'm Rachel. Big fan."

Johnny nodded and smiled a warm smile Frankie saw him put on like it was nothing.

"Hi, Rachel. Nice to meet you. Thanks for the support."

Rachel opened her mouth to say something else but Frankie's look shut her up and sent her to the back room.

"Nice kid," Johnny said, nodding in the direction Rachel had just disappeared. "So. The truck?"

"Sure. Bring it right back. I need it later," Frankie said, pulling the keys from her pocket.

"On it," Johnny said.

He grabbed the keys from Frankie's outstretched hand with a mock salute that Frankie wasn't sure how to respond to. Johnny started for the door but paused when his eye caught one of the knickknacks they sold by the cash register.

"Hey, cool! Where did we get these?"

He grabbed one of the medallion bracelets Frankie had made by its leather straps and examined the familiar Hummel Farms logo of a maple tree on the front, turning it over to examine the Hummel Farms name on the back.

"I made them," Frankie said, not looking up from her clipboard on purpose, feeling her cheeks warm as Johnny admired her work. He let out a low whistle and an "Impressive" under his breath.

"How much?" Johnny asked. His question caught Frankie's attention.

"How much?" She repeated.

"Yeah."

Johnny started pulling out his wallet, looking for a price tag near the stand, which he found.

"Ten dollars, huh? Here's a twenty. Put the extra in the tip jar for the kids."

Frankie took the money he was handing to her and watched as he tied the leather straps around his wrist.

"Cool," he said to himself. Frankie's bewilderment was melting under the warmth of pride.

"Thanks for the keys," Johnny said.

"Yeah," was the most Frankie could reply.

She returned her attention to the clipboard again but looked up when she sensed that Johnny was hesitating. He hadn't moved when she looked up.

"Was there something else?" She asked.

"Uh, yeah, actually, there was."

Frankie watched as he adjusted his down vest and cleared his throat, twice.

"I was wondering if you were doing anything this afternoon."

"Why?"

Frankie couldn't help the suspicious tone in her voice.

"Things have changed so much around here, I was wondering if you could show me around. I'd ask Dad but he's busier than you are and I figured you knew just as much about this place as he did."

Frankie eyed him for a long moment. All the animosity she had been expecting from him after their encounter the previous week was nowhere to be found. His face was relaxed, his smile genuine. And he was looking Frankie dead in the eye.

"Um, yeah. Okay. Sure. Meet me back here in an hour. Bring the truck."

Johnny nodded and his smile widened.

"Great. Awesome. See you then."

He left whistling one of the Christmas carols that had been playing through the loudspeakers.

*

Johnny pulled up in front of the store fifty minutes later. He stood waiting for Frankie, leaning against the driver's side door until she handed the job of babysitting the new recruits over to Joe, the head farmhand, when he showed up for his shift.

Johnny stood up straight when he saw her coming and pulled open the driver's side door for her.

Frankie paused, checking his shoes to make sure she could do the full tour she had been planning in her head for the last hour. His fancy sleek black boots had been replaced by a pair of old work boots. The sight of his skinny black jeans tucked into them made Frankie want to laugh but she kept it together, so as not to harm the tentative peace that had settled between the two of them.

She nodded to the orchard behind her, that took up the acre of land to the left of the store.

"We're going this way."

Johnny closed the car door and followed her as she headed off.

She took him through the orchard first, reciting facts about the four kinds of apples they grew, how they were recovering from a bad harvest the previous year and how many people came each fall to go apple picking. Johnny responded only to remark that the orchard had doubled in size since he had left home.

The next stop was their beehives, currently empty. They were working with another farm to bring in a new batch by the spring. Johnny stayed a safe distance away until Frankie reassured him that they were truly empty. The honey they sold in the store was from a beekeeper two towns over.

They walked along the perimeter of the vegetable patches, the land lying dormant under several inches of old snow. Frankie explained what they were planning on planting in the spring, what vegetables thrived here and which ones did not and all the trial and error they had gone through to find the perfect selection.

Any awkwardness Frankie had felt around Johnny since he had arrived melted away as she showed him around. It was hard for her not to get excited when talking about the farm. It was pretty much all she thought about. And Johnny seemed happy to just listen, only putting in one mention or two of how things had changed since he was a boy.

Frankie drove him past the main house to Aaron's property and showed him the grove of maple trees responsible for a third of their maple syrup sales. They sold syrup from two other farms in the area to give their customers variety and to make sure they carried enough stock.

Past that she took him to the long neat rows of saplings they had planted a few years ago that would be ready for cutting down by next Christmas and explained that the Christmas tree endeavor was the newest to Hummel Farms.

Driving back to the house, Frankie pointed out the stretch of land Dan wanted to build a stable on. That piece Johnny had the most questions about, asking when Dan had come up with the idea, why they hadn't gotten to it before, why they weren't starting construction right now.

Frankie hesitated to bring up the medical bills they were just now finally paying off as it referenced the argument they had had for the first time all day.

"We can't. Not yet, at least. Not enough funds" was the best way Frankie could think to put it.

Johnny took her reply in stride, his eyebrows creasing as he listened hard to Frankie's answer. He looked like Dan when he did that.

"And for our last stop, the barn," Frankie said, climbing out of the truck and heading for the barn as Johnny did the same.

"Not much has changed in here," he said, moving to greet one of the cows that were slowly chewing on some hay.

"Not really. This is new."

Frankie led him to the end of the row of stalls, to the last one on the right. There was her standing lamp, her work table, and the stool she used when her legs got tired.

"This is yours?" Johnny asked, looking at the few pieces she was currently working on.

"Dan heard I did woodworking and offered to set me up with all this. To make bracelets for the store."

"These are incredible."

Frankie officially blushed. She cleared her throat as if that would help.

"Thanks."

After admiring her work in silence, Johnny headed for the exit. He paused before walking out onto the driveway and looked to the right, where the garage stood, with Frankie's apartment at the top.

"Do you mind..."

Frankie followed his gaze to her row of windows.

"Uh, no, actually, I don't," Frankie said.

"I've just never actually seen it-"

"Then let me show it to you."

Frankie climbed the stairs and the sound of Johnny's boots on the metal followed her. She unlocked the door set into the wall and led him into a small mudroom where she slid out of her boots. She didn't have to ask for Johnny to do the same.

Through a second door lay her apartment. Johnny entered and let out a low whistle that bounced across the ceiling.

It was one long room, the ceiling peaking from an A-line sloop only a few feet overhead. Frankie's mattress lay on the floor in one of the far corners, her blankets thankfully neat that day. On the other side was her lounge chair with its side table topped with books and a single lamp. Frankie turned it on to illuminate the room. She had never bothered with the overhead lights set into the ceiling. They were too bright and she liked the warm low glow of the table lamp.

"This place..."

Johnny's words trailed off as he took in all in. The small kitchenette Frankie had set up in one corner, the stacks of books she had lining the floor where the ceiling met the carpeting. His eyes landed on the guitar where it sat in its stand in the corner. Frankie had found it in the attic within a month of her stay with the Stephens. It had taken her another month to work up the courage to ask Dan's permission if she could play it.

"Hey! My old guitar!"

"It's yours?"

Frankie's words barely made it out. Johnny crossed the room and picked up the old guitar, slinging the worn leather strap over his shoulders, his hands falling instinctively to familiar chord patterns on the neck. A warm sound filled the room as he strummed.

"Do you play?" He asked, looking up from the guitar.

"Uh, yeah. I do. I didn't know it was yours. Your dad-"

"It's fine! Really. I'm glad actually."

"Really?" Frankie's confusion must have read on her face.

"I always felt bad that this one was just sitting in my attic while I was playing other guitars, better guitars, much more expensive guitars."

"It's not a bad guitar."

"No. No, it's not."

Johnny placed the instrument back in its stand with extra care than it needed.

"You can have it back. I don't-" Frankie tried to say but Johnny cut her off by shaking his head.

"No. Keep it. It's nice knowing it's being played."

He stared at the guitar for a long moment.

"I learned to play on that guitar."

His eyes then moved to rove around the room again, his body slowly being pulled to the wall of windows and the view beyond. Frankie followed at a respectable distance.

"It was my idea to convert this place into an apartment."

Johnny's breath fogged up the window as he looked out onto the field beyond the house.

"I wanted to move up here so bad when I was kid, to have a place of my own, somewhere private, somewhere that didn't smell like manure."

Frankie had to laugh as it was a realistic part of living on a farm. A smile broke through Johnny's serious expression as he turned to Frankie.

"I'm glad my dad finally listened to me. It's being put to good use."

Frankie looked out the window so she didn't have to look at Johnny. Now that he looked at her with something other than bemusement or curiosity, or worse, disdain, she was all too aware of how bright his eyes were.

"You were right," Johnny said. He paused and waited for Frankie to meet his gaze. "Wednesday night. What you said. You were right."

His words hung between them and Frankie waited for him to specify which parts of what she had said had been right. But his prolonged silence told her everything. Everything she had said to him he now understood to be right.

"You were right," he said again, looking down at the carpet, leaving Frankie to wait for him to meet her eyes again. "You don't know me." He took a breath as that proclamation filled the air. "And I don't know you," he continued.

Finally, he looked up and looked right at Frankie.

"But I'd like to."

Frankie nodded, unaware that she was doing so. Her brain caught up to her words just as they came out of her mouth.

"I'd like that."

A/N:

Anyone else got emotional whiplash? No? Just me?

Geez. And I wrote this!

I think it works! But I've been wrong before.

At least they're getting along! Although I don't think I'll be getting the image of someone wearing work boots with skinny jeans out of my head anytime soon.

Read on, my friends. Read on!