by Emery Rose
“I’d have to buy a ticket to win.”
“When are you leaving?” Jude asked Austin.
“Beginning of August. When this opportunity came up, it was too good to pass up.”
“You have to do what’s right for you. The ranch was your old man’s dream, never yours,” Jude said.
Austin nodded. “Damn leg.”
“Fucking lousy break.” Jude shook his head and took a swig of his beer.
“Very punny.” Austin laughed. At least he could joke about it now.
In college, Austin had been the wide receiver for Texas A&M. He was supposed to get drafted into the NFL but at the start of his final season, a fractured tibia and fibula ended his football career. That was how he ended up back on the ranch he’d wanted to get away from.
“So… how’s your girl doing?” Austin asked me.
I took a pull of my beer. “I’m sure she’s doing just fine.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Jude asked, his eyes narrowing on me.
“You don’t understand English now? You need me to translate?”
“I don’t understand Brody talk. Because it sounded like you don’t have a fucking clue how she’s doing.”
I shrugged one shoulder. It had been four days since I dropped Shiloh off at the airport and walked away from her. Since then, I’d kept myself busy—always plenty of work to be done on a horse ranch, thank fuck—and hadn’t discussed this with anyone. Which was how I wanted it to stay. “Why would I? She’s gone.”
Brody and Austin exchanged a look. Then Austin rubbed his hands together. “Hell yeah. Does this mean my wingman is back in action?”
I snorted. “I’ve never been your wingman.”
“Whatever you say.” His eyes wandered to the other end of the bar. “Check out the two blondes over there. Since I’m feeling generous, I’ll let you have the first pick.”
I looked over at the blondes. Big boobs and bigger smiles. Had this been a couple months ago, I might have been up for it. But now, neither of these girls did anything for me. I turned my head away and took another pull of my beer. “They’re all yours.”
“Well, shit. This sounds serious. But far be it from me to argue with you.” Jude and I watched Austin swagger over to the two blondes and introduce himself.
“Hello ladies, this must be your lucky day.”
“What a douche,” Jude and I said in unison and then we both shook our heads and laughed.
I finished my beer and set the empty bottle on the bar. “I’m out of here.”
“Me too. I told Lila I was just stopping by for one.”
It was a miracle he could stop at one drink now. Just went to show how far he’d come.
On the way out we said goodbye to Austin. He was holding court, flirting with both girls, and it hit me all over again that this had been my life. Meaningless hook-ups with random girls I’d met in a bar. Now it struck me as so fucking sad.
Jude and I stopped next to my truck which was parked next to his white one. On the side it said Team Phoenix, with the logo for his not-for-profit organization.
“I don’t get it.” He stared me down.
“What don’t you get?”
“You finally found someone you love… who loves you… and you just let her go? Just like that?”
My jaw clenched. “What the fuck else was I supposed to do? She’s in the middle of a world tour. I have no place in her life.”
“Did she tell you this or did you just assume that?”
“She didn’t need to spell out something that was clear as day.”
“You didn’t even discuss it with her, did you?”
“You’re a pain in the ass.” I yanked open my truck door and climbed into the driver seat. He grabbed hold of the door to prevent me from closing it. “Let go of my fucking door.”
“For once in your life, would you listen to me, you stubborn bastard?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and exhaled loudly. “Be quick. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
“Bullshit. You don’t have anywhere you need to be. It’s a Friday night. Ridge is probably hanging out with his friends and Noah is at our house. So you’re going home to an empty house. You know why you thought you were in love with Lila?”
“Fucking hell. Not this again. Move your fucking hand before I smash it with my door.” He released his grip, and I yanked the door shut and turned my key in the ignition. Now he was hanging onto the frame of my open window. I exhaled loudly, communicating my impatience. “Let it go, Jude.”
“You were scared. And you still are. That’s why you clung to this notion that Lila was the girl for you. Because in your heart, you knew damn well she would never be yours. It was safe. You couldn’t get hurt if you never put yourself on the line. If you’d wanted Lila so badly you would have fought for her, the same way you fought for every other thing in your life that truly mattered to you. You’ve always been a fighter. It’s who you are. So why do you think it is that you never fought for Lila?”
“Here we go. You never could resist the urge to play Dr. Phil. Too bad you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
He huffed out a laugh. “I know you. I’ve known you for most of my life. Where do you think I’d be right now if I hadn’t fought for Lila? I’d be a sad, miserable fuck still clinging to my wounded pride and not much else. Is it because you don’t believe you deserve love? Is it because that asshole fucked you up so badly—”
“Don’t fucking say it,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Okay. Okay.” He held up both hands. “Forget I said that. It was out of line. You deserve to be happy. And from what I’ve seen, Shiloh is worth fighting for.”
Having said his piece, he backed away from my truck, and I drove away before he had a chance to say another word. Nothing good ever came of going to The Roadhouse. But his words had hit too close to home. I fucking hated it when he was right.
I walked into my empty house, grabbed a beer from the fridge and turned on the TV. After flipping through the channels and not finding anything I wanted to watch, I turned it off and went to visit my horses in the last of the evening sun.
Last week, I’d moved Dakota into a pasture with Cayenne and her filly, Phoenix and she seemed to enjoy the company. But even so, as soon as she sensed my presence, she turned her head to look at me then slowly made her way over to the fence. She hung her head over it, and I rubbed her forehead and behind her ears. It had taken months for Dakota to trust me enough to touch her like this. Now she loved the massages I gave her.
“Why would a girl like Shiloh, with the world at her feet, want a guy like me?” I asked Dakota, stroking her neck in long fluid motions, my mind drifting back to another time and place.
“Jesus don’t love you, boy. Ain’t nobody here gonna help you or hear your prayers. So you best do what I tell you to and keep your mouth shut about it.”
I kicked and I screamed, and I punched. The leather of his belt left welts on my skin, and he stuffed a dirty rag in my mouth to stop my screams.
“I like ‘em feisty. Makes it more fun.”
Nobody heard my prayers.
“Hey bro.”
Ridge’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. Why the hell was I thinking about that now? I scrubbed my hand over my face, trying to erase the memories. Then I turned my head to look at him, my eyes narrowing on his split lip and bruised cheekbone.
“You’ve been fighting?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No big deal.”
“Who’d you get in a fight with and why?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Matters to me. Someone giving you a hard time?”
“Don’t worry about it. I can hold my own in a fight. Been doing it all my life.”
Ridge and I were born and raised fighters. You could take someone out of a shitty environment and give them a good home, do everything in your power to make their lives better, but you could never erase the past or chang
e history no matter how much you wanted to. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
His gaze was trained on the horses in the pasture. “I think she needs you, man.” At first, I thought he was talking about Dakota. But she looked okay to me. “I don’t know what the deal was with you two but for what it’s worth, I could tell she made you happy. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
With that, he turned and walked away. When he was a few feet away from me, he turned and walked backwards. I thought he was going to say more about Shiloh, which seemed to be a hot topic this evening. “You’ll probably be getting a call from Patrick soon.”
“Why?”
“I quit my job.” He turned around and kept walking away with his back to me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose then strode after him. “What the hell happened?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find another job. I never wanted to work for him anyway. And I’m not gonna be on the goddamn football team either. Team sports aren’t my thing. As soon as I graduate, I’m getting out of this two-horse town. Texas sucks balls.”
I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me. “You wanna tell me what the hell happened to change your mind about everything?”
He stared at me with a stony expression. “Guilty until proven innocent, right?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ridge.” I looked over at Patrick as he strode toward us. “You wanna tell me why the hell you took off like that?”
“You wanna tell me why the first one who gets blamed is the white trash kid from the wrong side of the tracks?”
Patrick planted his hands on his hips. “I had to question everyone.”
Ridge huffed out a laugh. “But you didn’t, did you? You automatically assumed it was me. You accused me in front of everyone on that building site. So fuck that. I’m done with you.” He stalked away, his shoulders squared.
“Hold up.” Patrick grabbed his arm to stop him. “You mind telling me where you got the money to buy all that sound equipment you had delivered this morning?”
Sound equipment? This was news to me. Patrick picked up Ridge for work every morning so that must have been when he saw it.
Ridge shook off his hold. “Yeah, I do mind. None of your goddamn business. I told you I didn’t steal anything, that I’d never steal a goddamn thing from my own family. You should have taken my word for it. That should have been good enough. But you’re just like all the rest of them.”
Ridge strode away and I didn’t try to stop him. This time, he had every right to walk away. I glared at Patrick. My jaw was clenched so tight my molars felt like they might crack. “Why the hell would you do that to him?” I gritted out.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you know where he got the money?”
“No.” Although I had some idea. “But you should have taken him at his word. You should have put your faith in him.”
“He’s been known to steal in the past. And he’s Shelby’s boy, through and through. Looks just like her.”
As if that justified his actions. I shook my head, disgusted with this conversation. “Now I remember what it was like growing up under your roof. Funny how Kate had never made me feel like I was my mother’s son, but you always did.”
“Hey now. That’s not fair. I raised you the same as I did my three sons.”
“Keep telling yourself that. I was never treated the same. And the only reason you took me in was because Kate insisted on it.”
“That’s a goddamn lie. As soon as I got the call, I drove out to Odessa to get you.”
“When I was ten years old. What about all the times before that? When Shelby called you asking for help but you told her to sort herself out? Where the fuck were you then?”
“You were too young to remember any of that.”
“I heard and saw a lot of shit when I was a kid. I wasn’t too young to remember. I remember it all. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Ridge.” I pointed my finger at him. “You owe him an apology and I want you to do it in front of all the people you accused him in front of. Until you make this right, you’re not welcome on my land or anywhere near my house or Ridge.”
I strode away.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” he called after me.
His words stopped me in my tracks. I could have kept walking. Could have kept my mouth shut. But fuck it. I had plenty to say and I’d been holding my tongue for far too long. Growing up, I was scared that if I confronted him, he’d kick me to the curb so I’d kept my mouth shut, harboring a resentment I’d thought was long gone by now. But nope, still there.
I wasn’t a kid anymore and this was as good a time as any to get this off my chest. Slowly, I turned to face him. “I’m talking to my Uncle Patrick. My mother’s brother who never lifted a finger to help until the social worker called and forced his hand. I’m talking to the man who brought his Marine buddy home for a visit and introduced him to his younger sister. My mother and Ridge’s mother. She was only fifteen. You want to talk about that? You want to talk about how nobody in your family called it what it was? Rape. You think that might be the reason Shelby turned to drugs? You think that might have had something to do with how fucked up she was?”
For a few seconds, he stared at me. Too shocked to speak. Until he pulled himself together. “How do you even know about that?”
He couldn’t even deny it because he knew it was the goddamn truth. This would have been laughable if it wasn’t so fucking sad. “Like I said, I heard a lot of shit when I was a kid.”
“I never wanted anything like that to happen to Shelby.”
“But it did. And you and your asshole Marine father covered it up so your asshole Marine buddy wouldn’t get in trouble. Oorah fucking rah.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
Patrick shook his head. “I didn’t find out about that until years later.”
“It doesn’t matter. You could have done something to help her. She was your sister. You were always preaching the importance of family and yet… you turned your back on her.”
He stroked his jaw, considering my words. “You’ve never forgiven me for that.”
Whenever I thought about the hell he could have saved me from by coming to my rescue sooner, and maybe even Shelby, no. I’d never forgiven him for that. “If you were in my shoes, would you have forgiven and forgotten?”
He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, his gaze never wavering. “No. I’ve never been one to let things go so easily.”
At least he was honest about it. “Well, there you go. You raised us to be the same as you. Make things right with Ridge.” I walked away, leaving him to stew on his actions. It was too late for me, but it wasn’t too late to make things right for Ridge.
Did I hate Patrick? No. He’d raised me and had tried to do the best he could. But he’d failed my mother who had been eight years younger than him. According to my mother, she’d been kicked out of the house when she was seventeen. At nineteen, she became a mother. My father never married her. Always called me Shelby’s bastard. Unfortunately, he and my mother couldn’t seem to stay away from each other. Which was how we ended up living in Lafayette, Louisiana off and on until I was eight years old.
When I’d told Shiloh there was no shame in giving up her baby, I’d meant it. I used to wish my mother would have done the same.
But Shiloh was nothing like Shelby.
With me, Shiloh had been good and true and honest. Besides Noah, she was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
Shiloh made me happy, and I’d like to think I’d made her happy too. And fuck, I missed her more than I should have. More than I’d ever care to admit.
I climbed the stairs to the back porch of the guesthouse and sat on an Adirondack chair, my feet propped on the banister, my eyes on the lake. The guesthouse had been booked for most of the summer. New guests were arriving tomorrow but to
night it was empty. I slid my phone out of my pocket and did something I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. I Googled Shiloh’s name and scrolled through photos of her at Glastonbury earlier today. She was wearing a tiny black dress, thigh-high boots, and winged eyeliner, lips painted dark purple. The sky was overcast, the crowd shoulder to shoulder, and anyone could see she was in her element. She felt right at home on that stage in front of all those screaming fans. Bastian Cox joined her for the encore, and they sang “Damage” together. He looked like Johnny Depp a la “Pirates of the Caribbean.” His black eyeliner was almost as thick as hers and he wore a black fedora, a ripped T-shirt and silver rings on every finger. The fact I’d noticed all those details just went to show how closely I’d studied those damn photos.
A glutton for punishment, I kept scrolling, kept searching for clues to her life away from here, away from me. I stopped at a photo of her with Dean the douche Bouchon. It looked like they were having coffee at an outdoor café. His arm was around her and they were deep in conversation. I stared at the photo for a good five minutes. Had she gotten back together with Dean?
Fuck. I shut it down and pocketed my phone then stared at the lake through the trees. The stars were shining, and the moonlight glowed on the water. If Shiloh were here, we’d be naked and swimming in the lake. But she wasn’t here. She was five thousand miles away. She might as well have been living on a different stratosphere.
Come back to me, Shiloh.
The problem was I hadn’t fallen in love with the rock star. I’d fallen in love with the girl from the Louisiana Bayou. I’d fallen in love with the girl I’d skinny dipped with in a cool lake and went horseback riding with at sunrise. I didn’t know how to reconcile those two very different people.
But if I didn’t try, if I didn’t take the risk, I’d never know.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shiloh
My cell buzzed, dragging me out of my dream. Dammit. I rolled over and tried to fall back to sleep. I wanted to return to my dream. The one where Brody was walking through a sunlit field of wheat the same color as his hair. He’d been smiling. I’d called over my shoulder, Catch me if you can.