The way they all did every year.
Maybe, Riley thought, he and Rae weren’t the only people around stuck in cycles that turned for no reason and never seemed to stop.
By the time they all sat down around the table, Riley was almost lulled into a false sense of security.
But he should have known better.
“Will you pass me the sweet potatoes?” Amanda asked. She smiled when Riley obliged. “That was an intense dance with Rae last night, wasn’t it?”
Riley stared at Brady like he ought to do something, but his best friend only shrugged, so he redirected his glare toward his sister. “What dance? You weren’t there.”
“I was there,” Jensen announced, reaching over to help himself to the stuffing and getting his grandmother’s frown for his trouble. Though, being Jensen, that didn’t stop him. He only grinned unrepentantly and—being Jensen—got away with it. “I danced with Rae too. It wasn’t intense at all.”
“Good thing,” Riley muttered. “For you.”
And only after he’d said it did he realize what a reflex it was. Especially when Jensen grinned even wider in response.
“I received multiple reports,” Amanda said, a certain look on her face that Riley recognized all too well. It brought him back a year to last fall, when his little sister had charged out to have her own life no matter what anyone else thought about it.
He hadn’t liked it much then, either. He liked it less now.
“I doubt very much that Riley wants to talk about this,” his mother said. In her usual chilly way that probably meant she didn’t want to talk about it. Or anything else that veered too close to an actual feeling.
Riley wanted to cheer. But then, it wasn’t as if not talking about it all this time had saved him from having to talk about it, was it? Because here they were.
Just as Rae had predicted last night when she’d told him there was a countdown.
That only pissed him off more.
“By all means,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s have a family roundup about my marriage, here and now. I’ll start.” He glared at Zack. “I’m tired of you all sandbagging me with your opinions.” He shifted his glare to Amanda. “Or worse, Rae. Ask me whatever you want at this table, or forever hold your peace. That’s the deal.” He shared his glare around, from Jensen’s too-innocent expression to Connor’s frown to his father’s usual remote and unreadable look. “Any takers?”
“Do you get to make that kind of deal?” Amanda asked, and he could see that she was enjoying herself. “I’m trying to think about how it worked when it was my relationship that everybody wanted to talk about.” She pretended to think it over while, next to her, Brady sighed. “Oh, that’s right, you all threatened Brady with bodily violence. And you, Riley, punched him in the face.”
“I deserved that punch,” Brady said at once.
“You did,” Riley agreed.
“I’m not going to punch Rae in the face,” Amanda said sweetly. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I wasn’t worried about it.” Riley scowled at her. “Should I start worrying? That will give the town something else to talk about, won’t it?”
“The town is going to find something to talk about, Riley,” Amanda replied. “Even if they have to make it up. Don’t you worry about the town. Creative telling of tales is what we do.”
“Seriously, man.” Connor, still frowning, shook his head. “Welcome to Cold River.”
“This is a pointless conversation,” Zack said in his usual authoritative way that clearly irritated each and every other member of his family. Except possibly their grandparents, who looked as if they either didn’t understand what was going on or were deliberately reserving their judgment.
“Because you say so?” Connor asked Zack. “Weird how I’m suddenly convinced there’s never been a conversation with more of a point.”
Zack ignored him. “Riley likes letting Rae walk all over him. No point talking about it anymore.”
Riley should have taken that as a cue to prove that like him, his family had no idea what had gone on between him and Rae. He should have leaped at the opportunity to do something about what he’d learned last night. Throw it on the table and let them choke on it, since they wanted to know what had happened so badly.
But it wasn’t theirs.
It was his, and it was Rae’s. There had been a baby and she couldn’t trust him, and he’d thought he knew their history inside and out. He’d thought all kinds of things about why she’d bailed on him, depending on the day or the week or the year. And now his own memories seemed twisted to him. He did too.
God, he thought he was twisted up so bad he might never get himself unknotted again.
“I really think that—” Amanda began.
“You want to talk to me about my marriage?” Riley asked with a deadly calm. “Go right ahead. I’m not going to stop you. But, Amanda. Leave Rae alone.”
Amanda flushed. “I never—”
“She doesn’t deserve it,” Riley growled. “And even if she did, it’s not up to you. Is that clear?”
“It’s clear to me that all of you need to mind your own business,” Grandma tutted, her tone enough to make everyone else sit up a little straighter. Even Riley’s father, which might have amused Riley at another time. Janet Lowe Kittredge cast a steely eye around the table. “In my day, we considered that a virtue.”
And everyone sat there in a silence broken only by the sound of utensils scraping against plates, until Grandpa brought up football again.
Riley could practically hear the universal sigh of relief.
Later, Riley helped with the dishes. In his mother’s house, that meant nudging her aside so he could take over. Not that Ellie then wandered off and put her feet up. Perish the thought.
For once, Riley was grateful that his mother preferred to keep her own counsel as she puttered around, wiping down surfaces and emptying loads of washed dishes as fast as she could. It was a pleasant sort of vacation from the rest of his family without his having to leave, giving them something else to talk about.
And when all the dishes were cleaned and put away, Riley and his mother stood there in the bright, happy kitchen where he remembered her screaming and screaming at his father. Tears pouring down her face, accusations flying, sometimes even lunging at Donovan.
Good times, he thought darkly.
Ellie fixed herself a cup of coffee. She raised a brow at him, then fixed Riley some coffee as well when he nodded.
She brought both mugs over to where he still stood at the sink, looking out the window. And for a moment, he and his mother stood there in a quiet sort of companionship, looking out over Kittredge land, tucked up in its blanket of snow as the shy winter sun made a break for the mountains.
But the longer they stood there, the less companionable it felt.
“Go ahead and say something,” Riley muttered when he couldn’t take it any longer. “You standing there, not saying anything, is pretty noisy, Mom.”
“You made it clear you don’t want opinions,” Ellie replied coolly.
“Suit yourself.”
But Ellie didn’t move away. She stayed there, tall and elegant as always, even after spending hours cooking and cleaning. He thought about Rae telling him how much she’d looked up to Ellie over the years, and he didn’t know why that seemed to sit in him differently today.
Something about Rae in her red dress, tears pouring down her face. When if things between them had been the way they should, she ought to have been nothing but gorgeous and happy. The way she deserved.
But then again, everything was different today.
For him, he amended. Rae had known all of this all along.
“Did a baby really bring you and Dad together?” he heard himself ask as the sun melted down behind the hills off to the west, leaving a little light behind in the frozen sky as if it didn’t quite know what it wanted.
He could relate.
Riley felt his mother’s gaze on the side of his face. “Do you mean your sister?”
“Since we’re all so interested in sharing opinions today.” Riley blew on his coffee even though it likely wasn’t hot any longer, then set it aside, anyway. “I guess that’s a choice I don’t understand.”
Ellie appeared to think that over. And when she spoke, her voice was very careful. “Are you being called upon to make that choice?”
“No.”
“I could explain to you the inner workings of your parents’ marriage, if that’s what you’d like, Riley.” Riley could hear her amusement, hidden in that cool tone that was always so distancing. Deliberately, he’d always thought, because he could remember when there was no distance at all. And only yelling. “But I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you really wouldn’t like that at all.”
“I don’t need inner workings, Mom. But maybe you can explain…” He shook his head, and maybe the kitchen was what got to him. Or the fact that his own history wasn’t what he’d thought it was, so maybe nothing was. Even this. “All I remember is the fighting. You fighting, mostly. And Dad just … a wall. I don’t understand how you switched from that to this. It’s like you had Amanda and stopped being who you were.”
His mother didn’t say anything. It felt like an indictment.
Riley was so sick of indictments.
Because that was why he felt the way he did today, wasn’t it? Rae had stared at him, crying, telling him a terrible story that was about them. And all he could think about was what she wasn’t saying.
That he should have saved her, or helped her, and he hadn’t.
That, at the very least, he should have seen that something was wrong and tried to fix it.
His whole relationship with Rae had been based on her flying off the handle and him quieting her. Her thinking the worst and him soothing her.
She was the catastrophe. He was the calm.
When they fought, she was the yeller. He was more about the quiet, lethal responses.
Until she threw herself at him, and neither one of them was quiet.
That was how they’d worked. And he guessed that was why they hadn’t worked too.
Inside him, there was this mess—more like a dark, tangled swamp—of what he’d lost that he hadn’t even known he had. And underneath that, but in some ways even more dislocating, the loss of who he’d been so sure he was throughout this thing.
He didn’t know how to say that to his mother. He wouldn’t have said it, anyway.
Instead, he tried to concentrate on the only other marriage he’d ever seen up close and personal. “It’s like one day you woke up and magically decided to accept that Dad was never going to change. So you changed instead.”
“Riley.” Ellie held on to her mug, her gaze focused on the dwindling daylight outside the window, though who knew what she was seeing? She was as much a mystery to him as ever. “What do you want me to say? Yes, that’s exactly what happened. And no, that’s not at all what happened. You’ve been married. You know exactly how complicated the simplest things are. And at the same time, how simple some incredibly complicated things become.”
That landed on him with a heavy sort of thud, but he didn’t want it to.
“Thanks for not answering,” he muttered.
He should have known better than to try. He turned, but his mother shifted to catch his gaze, and he saw a kind of fire there in her normally serene gaze. It stopped him in his tracks.
“I did answer you. You don’t like the answer. And that’s fine; you don’t have to.” Somehow, her gaze got even more penetrating. “But I actually did see you and Rae last night. It’s never been over between you two, has it?”
Riley didn’t actually growl. Because this was his mother. “If you wanted to talk about me and Rae, you should have taken the opportunity I gave everybody at the dinner table.”
Ellie sighed. “I don’t need an opportunity to talk to or about my son, Riley. I’m your mother. I haven’t listened to your rules before, and I’m unlikely to start now.”
Riley didn’t pretend to hide his astonishment at that. “Wait. Is this maternal concern? You can see how that might be confusing. After the last entire life I’ve had with none of that.”
He shouldn’t have said that. He knew he shouldn’t have. But the truth was, he felt as if something inside of him had come undone. And whatever it was, he lacked the tools to put it back together.
Riley had no idea how to put any of this back together.
Especially him.
He thought Ellie would do what she normally did. Disengage. Sigh, retreat behind that cool veneer of hers, and walk away, leaving him to deal with his guilt alone.
But instead, she met his gaze head-on. And worse, held it.
“You are so much like your father,” she told him, very distinctly. “It’s mind-boggling.”
That went through Riley like she’d reached over and tossed the contents of her mug in his face. Then lit him on fire.
“I’m nothing like him,” he managed to get out, with no control over his voice at all. He was lucky he wasn’t shouting. “Why would you say something like that?”
Ellie didn’t look away. If anything, her gaze seemed to intensify. “You are deeply unforgiving, Riley.”
He thought of all the times Rae had turned up at his door, all the years she’d let him think she’d left him … just for fun. “That’s not even a little bit true.”
“Ask me how I know,” she said softly, and his own words came back to him. Words he shouldn’t have said about his own mother, his parents’ marriage—and none of it particularly kind. It had literally just happened.
But she didn’t wait for him to face himself.
“You’ve been lucky enough to always know exactly what you wanted for your life,” she said in the same devastatingly quiet way. “Not everybody has the same luck. Some of us are human, disastrously so. We flail, fall, and don’t have the slightest idea how to pick ourselves up again. Or figure out the right direction to head in once we do.”
He could hear Rae saying almost the same thing the night before, and it tore around inside him like a terrible storm. Part of him wished it would pick him up and carry him away. Because anything had to be better than feeling like this.
Than feeling all of this.
“Your father was always the same,” Ellie told him. “He knew the ranch was going to be his since he was small. He never wanted anything else. He put his head down, worked hard, and never had the slightest doubt that he was heading in the right direction. Sound like anyone you know?”
Riley wanted to tear the cabinets apart with his hands, if only to prove that he was nothing like the walking slab of impenetrable granite that was his father.
“Your father lived on his own the minute he turned eighteen,” Ellie said. “Out in the bunkhouses behind the stables, so he had access to the horses 24-7. He was running his own breeding program before he left high school. He and your grandfather used to knock heads all the time. Again, are you hearing anything familiar?”
It wasn’t that Riley hadn’t known these things. He had. But he hadn’t … put them all together in a pattern that made sense of a man he’d long ago decided wasn’t worth the fight, so had written off—more or less.
A thought that moved in him a little differently today.
Because he sure did make a lot of decisions about people without knowing the full story, didn’t he?
“I guess that’s convenient,” he managed to say to his mother. Who he’d thought had checked out so long ago that having her see right through him tonight was as surprising as it was painful. “It’s Dad’s fault for being exactly who he was. And my fault for knowing what I wanted. I see how those things make us both into monsters.”
The irony wasn’t lost on him that somehow he’d ended up not only defending his father but linking him and his father together. It was taking twisted to a whole new level.
“I’m not t
he one who thinks in terms of monsters, Riley,” Ellie said softly, her eyes on him.
Through him.
Riley shook his head, wishing the floor felt a little more solid beneath his feet. “That’s not how I remember it, Mom. All the yelling. All the screaming. The poking and poking. I couldn’t wait to get out of this house.”
His mother barely reacted. All she did was tilt her head forward the littlest bit, and it still made Riley feel like dirt.
“I know you did. You put down roots as quick as you could, so you could do it differently. Better.”
Riley felt his mouth twist. “You don’t have to point it out. It worked out really well for me. I’m aware.”
Ellie’s mouth curved, though her eyes stayed steady on him. “The thing is, Riley, you aren’t doomed to repeat the mistakes of your parents. That’s a choice.”
He shoved his hand through his hair. “Rae and I have nothing to do with you and Dad.”
But even as he said that, he wondered. Until last night, the Rae he’d known had always been fiery. Determined. She flung herself at him. Stuck her finger in his face. Hauled off and hit him sometimes. She had always been the one to push. Poke. He had always been the one to stand stern, to insist they never compromise.
To insist he never compromised, and he hadn’t. Not ever.
Whatever he wanted to think about what she’d told him last night, Rae had clearly, honestly felt she couldn’t tell him about this huge thing she’d gone through. Why? Because according to her, he was so definitive he’d given her no room to be anything but.
Where had he seen that play out before?
But he couldn’t accept that. He didn’t want to accept it. He shook his head at his mother. “For one thing, Rae left. You never did.”
“I never did,” his mother agreed. “And let me tell you something about that. If you’ve never heard another thing I’ve said to you in your life, hear this.”
“That sounds ominous.”
And he felt chastised when all Ellie did was smile.
“Marriage isn’t a charity,” she told him. “If you want to fix things, it has to be because you love the person you married. With your whole heart. And for no other reason. Because otherwise, Riley, it won’t work. No matter how long it takes you to come to that conclusion, I promise you—it won’t.”
Secret Nights with a Cowboy Page 24