And it’s those words, the ones I needed to hear that make me laugh louder and longer than I should.
They also tell me what I already know.
I’m having sex tonight.
Holy shit.
18
TATE
“You said the other day that someone died, and that’s why you needed a change of pace. Do you mind my asking who?” My sudden need to know more about him stepping in the way of what comes next.
His chewing falters momentarily, and he takes his time finishing his bite before leaning back in his chair. There’s something in his expression, almost as if he’s questioning whether or not he should tell me.
“It was my father.”
My heart clutches for him. I think of my own father and how love doesn’t overshadow what he did. Much in the same way I feel about Fletcher I guess.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” It’s all he says, and I give him a few moments, thinking the conversation is over but hoping maybe he’ll give me a bit more of himself. “He was a tough old bastard. The two of us were oil and water. Butted heads more than anything. I was . . .” When his sigh crawls across the space, the regret in it is audible. “I was stubborn. He wanted me to stay and help him. He wanted me to bend to his every will, and I refused.”
“What did he do?”
His smile is soft, his eyes have a distance to them, but he looks down to what’s left of his steak when he speaks. “Horses. Cattle.”
“Was it a big ranch?”
“Nah.” A quick shake of his head is followed by him taking a sip of his wine. “I felt smothered. Undervalued. I wasn’t a ranch hand, I was his son, damn it, and didn’t I deserve the respect of that? I did everything I could to win his approval while others just walked into his world and got it.”
The raw honesty in his voice is heartbreaking. The regret and hindsight he learned in time palpable.
“Like who?”
“My sister. My brother.”
“I can see how that would be hard to grow up with.”
“It was. I had a sister I resented because he was always consumed with her and her problems and I was sick of being overshadowed by that. When my brother was still alive, he brought his own set of issues to the table.” He twists his lips and nods retrospectively. There is a big part of me that wants to know what happened to his brother, but I’m not going to ask.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
“Thanks. I don’t know, maybe I wanted to prove that my dad was a dinosaur and his ways were archaic. Maybe that I was better than him. But . . . horses are horses. Cattle are cattle. The land is the land. Sure, there will be advances in technologies and methodologies, but in the end, those three things remain the same.”
“I think we all go through that phase.” I know I did and can still replay that last conversation with my parents verbatim. It never gets easier either.
“Yeah.” He pours more wine in both of our glasses. “But he was from the generation that thought boys were always supposed to act like men. His rules were brutal, his punishments for breaking them even more so. My sister could do no wrong when I could do no right.”
“Did you ever go back to visit?”
“When my sister screwed up, I’d be summoned back. He was too busy with the day-to-day and would make an excuse for me to return home so I could fix what he was tired of fixing.”
“Your sister . . . what . . .” I don’t want to pry more than I already am, but I’m trying to understand him and maybe trying to find answers myself too.
“Alcohol is her poison of choice. It was how she coped with our mom skipping out when we were kids.”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“It is what it is. My dad wasn’t exactly the most faithful man, and she got fed up with that. Or, at least, that’s what she said. Personally, I think she felt like she was too good for the lifestyle my dad lived and too selfish to want to be strapped down with kids. Too bad she didn’t realize that before she had us, huh?”
My heart hurts for the little boy who had to go through that as well as for the grown man who I’m sure is still affected by it.
“He didn’t remarry?”
“No. It’s probably for the best he didn’t.”
“So, you just left and never went back? What about your brother?”
His eyes hold mine for a beat as he works through his thoughts in that measured way he has.
“I went back, but things between my father and I were always strained.” He shrugs, focusing on my first question. “So, I went back less and less. I made excuses as to why I couldn’t make the trip. Of course, I regret those decisions now because I know he was trying to teach me how to be the man I needed to be to deal with what life was going to throw at me.”
“Jack—”
“No. I deserve the guilt. Sometimes, when you make decisions when you’re young, you stick to them when you’re older even when you shouldn’t so that they weren’t made in vain. Pride can be a nasty bitch. It was in my case.” He takes a bite, and I move my dinner around on my plate because he’s hitting closer to home than I’d like to admit.
His description of how he felt when he’d visit even more so.
I think of when I lost the baby. I had been six months along and I was scared and sad and just needed my mom. Sure, I was still new on my adventure with Fletcher, but I was so homesick and so lonely that I’d tried to call her. She picked up.
Then my dad hung up on me.
But she never called me back.
Nursing a broken heart from both the loss of my baby and the official loss of support from my mother, I still spent months checking the missed call logs, hoping maybe she would call.
She didn’t.
And I hate my dad for that.
“He got sick. He didn’t tell anyone until it was too late for anything to be done to save him. My sister called me to come home.” Pain flickers through his eyes as he clears his throat. “I—I was in the middle of a huge deal. A transaction of sorts. I was trying to be the big wig throwing his weight around—”
“What was the transaction?”
His attention stays locked on the slow swirl of wine he creates in his glass. “I was buying a ranch, taking advantage of the owner of a small ranch that was going belly up by throwing him a shitty bone from a rich landowner. I knew from the start that the buyer was essentially going to take everything that rancher’s family had worked decades to build and dismantle it.”
His gaze lifts to meet mine, silently asking me if I understand things he hasn’t even said. I twist my lips, and my hands tighten on the stem of my glass.
“Yeah, Knox. You heard that right. I was screwing the little guy for the sake of the big guy. I thought I was making a name for myself, so when my dad called, I assumed my sister had fallen off the wagon, and he just wanted me to come home and clean up her mess again.” His throat bobs. “He wasn’t playing.”
“Oh, Jack,” I say, the break in his voice killing me. The pain on his face is so raw and unguarded that I reach across the table and squeeze his hand. I’m actually surprised that he lets me.
“When I finally took the call from my sister and she was sober and crying and begging me to come home, I knew it was serious. We talked as I ran through the airport to try to get to him. I made him every promise he asked for just so he’d hold on a little longer, but he died before I could get there. I was young and so stupid to think I was too good for him and his ways . . . and he was old and too stuck in his ways to see that all I needed was a bit of freedom before taking on the responsibility that came with the name Sutton.”