Love Rents A Room
Chapter 235: Pain Of Her Absence

Chapter 235: Pain Of Her Absence

Joanne stood, holding the wooden railing of the porch as she leaned forward slightly to see. From afar, she could make out the figure walking toward their home. The stride. The hesitation in every step. Even before she saw his face, she recognized him.

Robert.

Ever since Brianna had walked out, Robert had spiraled. Not outwardly—but inwardly, he’d collapsed. The family rallied around him, but some voids couldn’t be filled by company or comfort. Maybe he’d never fully understood how much space Brianna took in his life until she was gone.

A month ago, he vanished on a "vacation"—a concept so alien to him that even Jeffrey raised his brows. Joanne joked that he’d probably booked a ticket to orbit Mars or go yacht-sailing with billionaires. She hadn’t expected to see him now. Not here. Not like this.

Yet there he was—standing at the bottom of the porch stairs, shoulders sagging, shirt slightly wrinkled, eyes dulled with exhaustion. He looked like someone who had run out of places to go and only just realized he needed a pause, not a plan.

Joanne was reminded of Jeffrey then—when she had found him like this not so long ago. Wounded in a quieter, deeper way.

Robert looked up at her, his voice barely scraping past his throat. "Can I stay here... for a while?" His words trailed off as if he couldn’t even pretend to know how long he needed.

Joanne didn’t hesitate. She smiled—not just from her lips, but from her heart.

"Of course," she said simply.

Because that was who she was.

Because she knew what it meant to be lost—and how healing it could be to be found by someone who said yes without asking for reasons.

And just like that, in the guest room once Jeffrey occupied, stayed Robert, Jeffrey’s cousin.

-----

That day, Robert followed Jeffrey out to the barn, walking a few paces behind him. He stood leaning against the rough wooden door, watching in quiet disbelief.

Jeffrey, in worn jeans and a rolled-up flannel shirt, was in the middle of sweeping out the goat pen, his boots sloshed in muddy straw. A thick bale of hay rested nearby, half-rolled open, and Jeffrey was deftly tossing feed into troughs, pausing only to rub the muzzle of one of the friendlier cows who nudged at him with affection.

Robert blinked. He didn’t even know goats needed their hooves trimmed. He didn’t know you had to wipe down udders or change water buckets daily. Never in his life did he know this sort of job existed—this sort of messy, mundane, utterly hands-on task. And never in his wildest imagination did he think that Jeffrey Winchester—the reckless, luxury-loving cousin he grew up with—would be doing it. Willingly.

He’d been staying here for almost two weeks now. Not that it was part of some grand plan. The whole vacation thing with his friends had crashed and burned. Turned out, he only liked those people because Bri liked them. They weren’t really his friends. They were hers.

And when he’d tried returning to his life, nothing fit right. The sleek apartment felt sterile. The city too fast, the people too loud. He wasn’t ready to be alone with his thoughts. He wasn’t ready to confront what he’d lost. So he came here—to Joanne’s farm. The same place that somehow healed both his grandfather and his cousin. Maybe it had something to offer him too.

It wasn’t comfortable. Not even close.

He was sleeping in the old bed Philip used—lumpy and creaky, with a weird tilt that made him wake up sore. The barn smelled. The animals made sounds at ungodly hours. The dogs barked at the wind. The local teenagers treated the farmhouse like a second home, stomping in with stories, pies, and mud on their boots like they owned the place. Joanne just smiled and fed them.

He didn’t get the appeal.

And yet... he stayed.

Joanne’s cooking might’ve had something to do with it. The woman cooked like she ran a five-star restaurant and a village inn at the same time. He who once meticulously weighed his lettuce and counted calories was now on his third helping of her potato stew with no shame. And somehow, despite the calories, he felt stronger. Healthier. There really was something in her hands. A kind of magic.

But he still didn’t know why he stayed.

He had a perfect apartment, high-speed WiFi, espresso machines that cost more than most people’s rent. And yet he was still here, standing in a barn, watching his cousin wrestle with hay bales and shovel goat dung.

Jeffrey dusted off his palms and came over, wiping sweat from his brow with a rag. "Jason took off today," he said, jerking his chin toward the empty stall. "If I didn’t do it, Jo would’ve done it herself. And she’s too close to labor now. I don’t want her lifting a thing."

Robert just nodded. His cousin didn’t need affirmation. He was doing what any good husband should. What any man in love would.

Still, Robert couldn’t help but wonder why. Why choose a woman like Joanne, knowing it came with a million quirks, a busy farm, and apparently, friendship with bears?

That’s right. The other day, he caught her chatting with a bear in the woods like it was a neighborhood grandma. She had said—without a hint of irony—that it was her friend Tanya. And the bear had left. Like it understood.

Weird. Beyond weird.

But Jeffrey didn’t just look content. He looked fulfilled. Like all the missing pieces inside him had been found and glued together.

Maybe that’s what it was. Happiness.

Jeffrey had it. Robert didn’t.

His own happiness—Bri—felt like a memory he wasn’t ready to revisit. But the ache she left behind wasn’t going anywhere. He tried to push her out of his mind. It didn’t work.

She was everywhere. In the way Joanne’s laugh echoed through the house. In the music he avoided. In the way he involuntarily reached for his phone to text her something funny before remembering he couldn’t.

He wasn’t going to compromise on his pride or his principles. But it hurt. It hurt like hell that she wasn’t here.

And no matter how much he tried to stop thinking about her...

He couldn’t.