He stares at me, lips lax but eyes hard. The man is the perfect picture of compassion for me and utter rage for Fletcher as he reaches out to wipe a tear off my cheek with the back of his hand. I step away.
“Don’t,” he warns as I cross my arms over my chest, closing myself off to him physically as well as emotionally. I’m hurt and just want to be.
“Please, leave me alone.”
“Are you losing the ranch, Tate?” he asks again, and this time, my chin quivers in response. “Jesus fucking Christ!” He moves from one side of the room and then back as he processes. “You’re losing this place and you didn’t trust me enough to tell me? Talk about ironic. You throw words at me about sliding between your thighs . . . well, turn that around, will you? You let me sleep with you—make love to you—but you don’t trust me enough to tell me this place is being foreclosed on?” He stops as he passes in front of me and grabs my shoulders and shakes them. “I can’t help you if you don’t let me! I can’t make this work if you keep shutting me the fuck out!”
“That’s not what I was . . .” I shrug out of his grip and move across the room to abate the onslaught of emotions racing through me. Maybe if I move far enough, I can outrun some of the fear of letting him completely in. When I finally turn back around, my chest constricts at the sight of him standing there so obviously hurt that I didn’t trust him.
Trust.
My hands tremble as I draw in a breath. “The bank is processing the foreclosure papers on the ranch. I . . . I used the insurance money to pay off all the accounts and to keep them current, but that’s completely gone.”
“So, you took care of your accounts before taking care of you,” he murmurs, his voice calm and understanding and warm and everything I need, but my own shame coats it a different color so that I can’t see through it.
“It was the right thing to do . . . and—” I blow out a breath to combat the tears that burn in my eyes. “And I’m just barely keeping my head above water. I’m months late on the mortgage, but it’s a catch-twenty-two. I use the little income I’m getting to keep this place running so I can attract and contract with a client like Steely with the hopes of securing a steady revenue stream or pay the mortgage.” I can’t meet his eyes so I stare at my fingers twisting together in front of me.
“Tate.” He says my name and the broken way he says it screams that he’s disappointed in me.
“I’m sorry”—I hiccup over the word— “I just . . . I thought if people knew, if this town knew, then they’d make things even harder on me until they succeeded in pushing me out.”
“But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me.” There’s hurt in his voice. Anger. “After all the work we’ve done, the time we’ve spent . . . you pegged me to be just like everyone else. You expected me to try to hurt you too.”
“Jack!” But my plea isn’t enough to drown out the regret and pain in his voice. “I was afraid. I am afraid.” I take a step toward him. “Trust is what got me into this mess in the first place!”
“Save it, Tate.” He waves a hand at me as if he’s writing me off. “If after all of this, you don’t trust me . . . you never will.”
“I trusted Fletcher,” I explain in desperation. “That trust allowed him to run our finances into the ground, and I was the meek, mousy wife who let it happen. I didn’t question him when he told me the late nights he spent in the bunkhouse were because he was working when he was really on the phone with bookies all night. I didn’t realize that his highs were high only because he’d won a huge payout and that his lows weren’t my fault but were blamed on me anyway. Hell, I didn’t even question the trips he was taking to Montana before he died. He’d convinced me he was close to closing an exclusivity deal, but he’d come home empty handed, pissed at the goddamn world and refusing to talk about it. You tell me, Jack Sutton, how exactly does someone put trust in someone else again when the one person they should have been able to trust the most, screwed them?”
I’m embarrassed. I feel raw and vulnerable and just want to be left alone and hugged and fixed all at the same time.
“I’m not Fletcher, Tate.”
“I know you aren’t, but it’s hard to believe it isn’t going to happen again and even harder to admit that I’m in this position in the first place!”
He doesn’t react, but instead stares out the window at the guys working with the horses. “How bad is it? Will this deal with Steely fix things?”
“Most foreclosures take about six months once the ball gets rolling. The ball is already rolling.”
He chews his bottom lip, and I hate that he won’t look at me. “I’m not letting you sell Ruby, Tate.” His voice is calm and even. “That isn’t the way to go. I’ll get the deal. I’ll finalize it and figure out a way to get Steely to pay you progress payments during the gestation period.”
I shake my head. “And what if the foals don’t go to term? Then what? Not only will I owe them stud fees but also I’ll owe them for the amount they’ve paid toward the foal that died.” I scrub my hands over my face.
“Then I’ll float you the goddamn money until you get caught up to current. Christ, Tate. Quit being so goddamn stubborn.”
“Absolutely not. I won’t take your charity.”
“Then I won’t accept your half-assed apology about not trusting me.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Isn’t it, though?” He blows out a breath in frustration. “You won’t accept help. You kept this from me so that I couldn’t help. You didn’t trust me. What the fuck are we fighting for, Tate? So we can do all this, the everything”—he throws his hands out to his sides— “and you can lie down and die and lose it all?”
“That isn’t what I said. I’m not giving up,” I explain because I’m not. I’ve already decided that. My plan is to sell Ruby and do whatever else I have to do to get good with the bank again. I don’t want to do it, but like he said, it’s a last resort.
He finally turns to face me, but instead of speaking, he just shakes his head with sadness and disappointment pooling in his eyes before he heads toward the front door.
I suck in a ragged breath as the first sob hits me. Shame and grief and guilt mix and explode like a match to a powder keg in that first wave of tears. I’m mad at myself. I’m angry at the world. I’m furious at everyone but the man I just let down because I didn’t trust soon enough.
“Hey.”
He never left.
When I look up, there’s the silent click of my camera’s shutter.
“What are you doing?” I ask, feeling violated in the oddest of ways. There’s no way I want my stupidity documented. “Give it to me.” I grab for the camera in his hand, but he pulls it back so I can’t reach it.
“This.” It’s all he says as he pushes some buttons and then hands the camera to me so I can see what he’s talking about. “This is what I want you to look at. This is what I want you to remember about today. Not that we fought. Not that you were embarrassed that I finally found out the truth. Not that you finally learned to trust me and the sky didn’t fall in. Not any of that.”