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He couldn’t stand that.

She could leave anytime. She didn’t need to keep on trying this, and he didn’t have to treat her nicely. She didn’t have to be here.

You’re feeding her lunch...

Because starving her was a bridge too far; he’d covered that already.

Also, caregiver habits died hard. He hadn’t always wanted to care for his siblings, either. He’d literally raised Camilla from the time she was two. It had been hard. He hadn’t enjoyed every moment of it.

He’d had to take their grief and walk them through it, while he stumbled through his own darkness blindly. He’d seen his brother through teenage heartbreak, when he’d never had time to experience his own. He’d walked his sisters through puberty, when he’d known sweet fuck-all about how to handle all that, but he’d learned.

Pads, tampons and Midol for cramps? He was a pro at providing whatever they needed.

He’d become their mom and their dad before he’d become a whole person himself.

He was good at caregiving. Sweet little else.

In some ways, they’d passed him up. Because he’d never really learned how to live life as a whole adult.

He’d felt like he was running with a gun to his back, for years. With someone snarling in his ear: don’t stop or everything falls apart.

He’d never stopped to take a breath. He’d grieved while learning to run a ranch, while taking care of his siblings. He’d let go of any aspirations he’d had outside the ranch, any dream that wasn’t what was right in front of him, because there had constantly been fires to put out. So you couldn’t look ahead, not any further than the immediate path in front of you.

He’d wanted to be in the rodeo so damned bad. He’d had a gift for it. It was the thing that had sustained him while he was trapped in classrooms wishing he could be outdoors more than anything.

He’d have been good at it. Better than managing a ranching spread. But in the end, it hadn’t been a choice. In the end, he’d had to give everything of himself over to that place.

And he could never, ever stop moving. Not to catch his breath. Not to shed a tear.

He didn’t resent it—it was how life had gone. What could you do?

It had made him who he was.

He was a parent, in every way that mattered, and he couldn’t just not...

He took care of people, even if angrily. It was kind of his brand.

“You think that you’re smarter than me because you went to college,” he said flat out, because he might as well make her say it.

“I think...” And she was squinting again and trying very hard not to confirm that, but the thing was, he was fairly certain it was true, and he was 100 percent right about her.

He waited a good while, and she didn’t continue her sentence. “What is it you think, Miss Sullivan?” He kept his voice low and measured on purpose.

“I think,” she started, “that I worked very hard to get myself to college because I valued it.”

“And you think that somebody who didn’t go didn’t work hard?”

She sputtered. “No. I think perhaps we had a different value system.”

“And what do you suppose my value system is? Beer and tits?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, turning the color of a lush, ripe strawberry.

In a perfect world, those would in fact be his priorities. But his world had never been perfect. He’d prioritized taking care of his ranch and taking care of his family over anything that he might want to do.

That seemed to be what Quinn Sullivan didn’t understand. It was all fine and good for some to be able to do whatever the hell they wanted. Not that he would’ve chosen that anyway. It was just different worlds. Different philosophies. They didn’t see eye to eye, and they wouldn’t.

But he was bound and determined to force her to admit that she was a snob. That she had judged him. He didn’t really know why. Well. Yeah. He did. Because all fine for her to have the life she did, and pass judgment on his.