“I can explain,” he says interrupting me.
“I trusted you.” I can see each word reach out and punch him. I can see each syllable make impact.
But they don’t hurt him enough.
Nothing can.
He lied to me. He made me believe him and then he lied when I trusted.
“I promise. There’s an explanation. Everything is not what she said. That is not what—fuck!”
“But it is what she said.”
I can’t breathe.
Oh, God, why can’t I take a damn breath?
“No.”
“Was Fletcher your brother?” The question might as well be acid in my throat.
His nod is subtle, but the defeat in his eyes has me covering my ears and shaking my head, not wanting to know. Knowing that no matter what he tries to explain, it will never be good enough.
It’ll never be enough.
It will never make any of this any better.
Everything we had was all a fabrication so he could get something he wanted.
I finally believed in my ability to trust again . . . and . . . and . . . I vomit the contents of my stomach on the side of the driveway. Over and over until there is nothing left in me but despair.
“Tatum.” He puts his hand on my back and I jump away from him again.
“Don’t you touch me!” I scream through clenched teeth as the shock gives way to anger, as the trust gives way to deceit. I double over, and my arms wrap around my midsection as I stumble a few more feet toward the house.
“Goddamn it, Lauren!” He’s still shouting at the top of his lungs, and the horses begin to stir at the disruption. “It has to be about you, doesn’t it? Always about fucking you. You didn’t have my attention, so you had to make sure you stole it by coming here. You didn’t like that, for once, I’d found my own happy, so you had to come here and ruin it. You . . .” It’s the broken sound in his voice that breaks me further when I thought I was already broken enough.
My tears slip over.
“It’s your fault you didn’t tell her the truth. Not mine.”
“Shut your fucking mouth! Shut it, or I swear to God, I will disown you as a sister, and the next time you fall into a bottle, I’m going to let you drown. I won’t pick up when you call or bail you out or help you hire a lawyer when your piece-of-shit dead husband decides to take those kids from you!”
“You wouldn’t dare.” She laughs and is still laughing as Will comes barreling out of the stables to see what the commotion is about.
“Jack?” he calls out, confusion and concern ringing through.
“Get her to the bunkhouse,” Jack orders Will, flinging his arm in the general direction of the building. “Get her out of my fucking sight.”
But when Jack turns to look at me, when our eyes meet, all I can do is shake my head and reject the words he hasn’t even spoken yet. Reject the apology and fear in his eyes, because he doesn’t have any right to feel them when I’m the one who was just blindsided.
“No.”
It’s on repeat with the shake of my head as I step back up the verandah steps.
“Tate, let me explain.”
“Get your shit and leave.” Why does this hurt so badly? “I don’t want you here anymore.” Why do I feel like a grenade just detonated in my chest? “You’re fired.”
“Knox.” My name is a weighted sigh.
“Exactly,” I say, my voice steady for the first time. “I was someone else’s woman once. Just like you, he wasn’t the man I thought he was either.”
When I step into the house, when I lock the door at my back, I finally allow my knees to give out, and I slide to the floor.
It’s only then the gravity of the entire conversation hits me full force.
It’s only then that I realize just how much I love . . . loved Jack Sutton, who is just as much of a liar as my husband . . . his brother.
53
JACK
“Damn it, Tate.” I pound on the door, her muffled sobs just on the other side. “Open up. I need to explain. This was never supposed to happen. You were never supposed to happen. Fuck!” I give it one more pound and then lean against it as the weight of what Lauren did pulls me under.
My chest hurts.
My breath is harsh.
My eyes burn.
Fucking hell.
All I want is for Fletcher to be alive so I can beat the ever-loving shit out of him for the hurt he’s caused my family.
For the hurt he’s put Tate through.
For goddamn fucking everything.
But I can’t.
I can’t because he died and I lived and all I wanted was to see if his widow was worthy of the inheritance check my father left him.
All I wanted was to see the life he lived and remember why I was proud to be a Sutton when all he wanted was the money attached to the name, not the honor it held.
All I needed was to learn about the man he turned out to be and validate my hatred for him.
Hell if I didn’t get all of that . . . but I also fell in love with his widow.
Every-fucking-crazy-thing about her.
“Open the door, Tate.”
I pound the wood as I slide to the ground and rest my back against it.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to sit here until you talk to me. And after you hear it all, if you want me to go . . . then I’ll still go.”
“Go away,” she says, voice muffled and laden with hurt but still there.
At least she’s still there.
It’s something.
“A few months before my dad died, he found out he had another son. He ran into an old mistress somewhere, and when she heard he was sick, she told him about the son he never knew he had. To make a long story short, he contacted him and asked to meet. The son didn’t believe him.”
I remember being in Tennessee and the frantic call from Lauren, having to tell her to slow down, to explain what in the hell she meant by, “We have a brother.”
“Apparently, Fletcher found out our dad owned one of the largest cattle ranches in the United States and decided to hear the old man out. At first, my dad was too blinded by his guilt to see what Lauren saw in Fletcher and then later would relay to me. He charmed the sense right out of our father and didn’t give a rat’s ass about him or that he was dying. All Fletcher wanted was his money. He convinced my father that a paternity test wasn’t needed because, damn, didn’t they have the same eyes?”
I snort, remembering how pissed Lauren was every time he’d come around or call. How I was too tied up with the Gerard deal to head back and pay this any attention.
Especially because every time I tried to talk to my father about it, he’d make excuses and avoid the topic.
“We tried talking to my father about Fletcher. We tried to tell him the sides we saw of this new family member and how it was odd that Fletcher kept asking too many questions about the ranch and its worth and laying the charm on way too thick, but my father couldn’t see it. Instead, he bragged to me about whatever bullshit accomplishment Fletcher convinced him was true.” My exhale is frustration personified. “The whole thing caused more of a rift between my father and me. Here is a man I’d spent my whole life trying to get any kind of approval from, any kind of compliment from, to no avail, and he gives it to this snake-oil salesman without flinching. He told lie after lie, and my father fell for each and every one of them when I couldn’t even get him to congratulate me on being one of the top professionals in my field.”