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Something twisted deep in my chest.
It would’ve been easier if Elena was just as terrible as I’d convinced myself she was. I could justify the years of hating her if she was irresponsible, selfish, and incompetent.
But the truth was that Elena had taken care of the ranch. The truth was she’d taken care ofhim. And it was a hell of a lot harder to hate her knowing that.
“I don’t trust her,” I mumbled, but it was an automated response not rooted in today but in the past.
“Why the hell not?” Amos demanded acridly. “She’s the reason you got as much as you have in the ranch. She and Hunt. Fuck they work hard. Nash treated Hunt like a son, but Elena, he treated her like shit. She didn’t have to do this. Get that into your thick skull. Is Gloria still driving the Rolls? Still, have that big fuckin’ house with more help than the queen? Still?—”
“Keep my mother out of it.”
“Sure, son, not hard to do since she kept herself out of the ranch but never said no to the income.”
He was right.
I’d expected losses and debts, a mess of unfinished business, and maybe even parts of the ranch already sold off. What I hadn’t expected was this—a well-functioning, profitable operation.
Not that I cared about the state of the ranch. Not really. What mattered to me was that Nash had taken care of Mama and made sure she lived well. Not that she’d ever had to worry if Nash reneged on the deal he made with me. I had a trust fund set up by my grandmother, Margaret Wilder—Nash’s mother—old Texas oil wealth, the kind that lasted. Nash had been raised in it, molded by it, but my mother? She’d come from nothing. And she’d relied on him.
Mama was flaky, sure, and a little vain. She liked to swan around like a woman who never had to look at price tags. The house in a wealthy Dallas neighborhood, the staff, the vacations in France—Nash had paid for all of it.
I had to give the old man credit for taking care of her, even after everything. But I also knew it wasn’t just an obligation—it was guilt. Because while my mother was attending charity galas in Dallas, Nash was fucking the maid.
I clenched my jaw, hating the thought, hating how easily I could reduceherto nothing in my mind because she’d been a classy lady despite her relationship with my father.
I ran a hand over my face. My anger and resentment were justified. This place and those people had ruined my mother.
She and I had lived through two of her suicide attempts.
The first was when Nash had asked her for a divorce. He never asked again.
The second was when she’d found out Nash hadcheated on her. I didn’t know then who with, and I hadn’t really cared. I had other things to worry about, like coming home to find my mother in her bedroom, cold, barely breathing, pills scattered across the sheets.
I’d been sixteen. Old enough to call the ambulance, stay by her side, and clean up the mess so the world wouldn’t see.
I could still hear the sound of her slurred voice when she woke up. The way she looked at me, as if she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed to be still alive.
That had been the worst part. Knowing she could’ve died. Nash had tried to help after that. He’d come to Dallas, but I’d kicked him out.
I was too angry to let him stay. He had done this to her, hadn’t he?
We made amends later. Not right away. But slowly. I came to the ranch the summer I turned nineteen. That’s when I met Elena. She was so fucking sweet.
That summer had been a revelation. I had fallen in love with the ranch, with the land, with the quiet, with the way Hunt and my father taught me to be a cowboy. And withher.
When I returned the following summer, when I was twenty, Elena and I happened. It was a wildfire we couldn’t stop.
I went home at the end of that summer, still tangled up in her, still wanting. I told Mama about the ranch, about how things were, about the people. I’d been so excited. That’s when she dropped the bomb about Maria.Elena’s mother had stolen my mother’s husband and driven her to end her life.
I reacted rashly; I could see that now, but then I went back to Colorado, angrier than a bull fresh off the prod, looking for something to wreck.
I called Elena names I still couldn’t stomach remembering. When my father told me I didn’t understand, I walked out on him.
I’d been so damned angry—at my mother for being fragile, at my father for not loving her enough, at Elena for making me fall in love with her.
I blamed her for everything. Blamed her for me falling in love with her. Blamed her for not telling me about Maria. Blamed her for things that were not her fault—just like Nash had done. Like father like son? I’d shifted the blame onto everyone except myself. I had been with Elena. No one put a gun to my head. And, yet, walking away all but crippled me, and the only way I could do it was by hating her. I wasn’t sure if it made me young and foolish or a coward, maybe both.
I swallowed hard, clearing my throat. “Are you coming for the funeral?”