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“No,” I finally replied.
Nash wouldn’t give a shit about the hoopla. He’d only care that he was with Mama.
“Would he want me there?” Duke mused.
I cleared my eyes of emotion and looked into his blue ones, and for once, they weren’t spitting daggers at me. “You should’ve come around when Hunt told you Nash was dyin’ and asked him all your questions.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what you think it does. I don’t have answers for you. I can tell you that Nash craved your forgiveness until the end and…I lied to him and told him youhadforgiven him. I lied and told him you were on your way. He was so delirious, he didn’t know that I kept up the same lies for days…or maybe he knew, and he didn’t care because he liked the lies.”
“Why would you do such a fool thing? Why wouldyou lie like that, Elena? What right did you have?” He took some steps toward me, his hands clenched into fists.
Grief struck me like a 1,200-pound bronc—wild, unbroken, and determined to drive me into the dirt. I dropped the brush, letting it clatter against the stall floor.
Jasper flicked an ear, shifting slightly beside me, waiting. I reached for him out of habit, running my fingers along his neck, scratching the spot he liked just below his mane. The rhythmic motion steadied me and gave me something to focus on that wasn’t Duke’s anger pressing against me like a storm about to break.
“Because he was dyin’, Duke, and I was giving him respite from the regrets that ate at him.” I bent down and picked up the brush, dusted it off, and started again—long, even strokes over Jasper’s coat, the simple, familiar act pulling me back from the pain. I kept at it because if I stopped and looked at Duke now, I’d see too much. And I wasn’t sure I could handle what was in his eyes.
“Why did you take care of him? Why not get a nurse?”
“Hunt told you he kept firing nurses, got upset, screamed, and all in all made a nuisance of himself. I could get someone to be around him part of the day, but not if he needed to be bathed or fed…or…he wouldn’t let anyone get close to him with all the medication he needed in the end. I had to do it.”
And while I had done all that, I wished Duke would come to see his father, hold his hand, and let the man die in peace. Nash deserved that much. Gloria didn’t deserve Duke’s loyalty, but that wasn’t my business, andNash would never let Duke know the truth about his mother. So many secrets and all it did was tear a family apart in the worst way possible. Duke was still carrying tremendous anger. Gloria was still manipulating her son.
But Nash was dead, and none of it mattered anymore, did it?
“He wantedyouto be his nurse?” he scoffed like it wasn’t believable.
“Yeah, Duke, he did.” I stopped brushing Jasper and took a deep breath like I was about to give a confession. I looked at Duke again and saw the sneer on his face, so much like Nash’s when he talked to me. “He hated me. Blamed me for losing you. He wanted me to be there, to witness him dyin’ so I’d feel guilty about it for the rest of my life.”
“How do you know that’s what he wanted?” Duke demanded.
I went back to brushing Jasper. “Because he told me. He told Hunt. He told anyone who cared to listen to him.”
I heard Duke’s indrawn breath and then, after an infinitesimal moment, felt him sigh. “You were…are to blame. You could’ve told me who your mother was. You could’ve left Wildflower Canyon so I could be there for my father.”
I nodded, not looking at him, not bothering to defend myself against a man who was too blind to see, who was deliberately turning away from the facts he knew so he could blame someone who wasn’t him for his choices. Hewas a lot more like Nash than he’d liked to believe—like father, like son.
“You’re right.”
Before Duke could throw some other poisoned arrow at me, Ben called out to me from outside the stable. “Elena, something is wrong with Biscuit’s hoof. The infected one. You wanna come take a look.”
“Yeah, I’ll be out in two seconds, Ben.” I faced Duke, suppressed my pain at his words so he’d see the Elena I had become—quiet, in control, hard. “Was that it?”
“Yeah. I don’t want you anywhere around here. Don’t want her to see you by accident.”
“Noted.”
“Where will you go? To Kincaid?”
“Why do you care where I go, Duke? I’ll be out of Gloria’s way, and soon, once the horses are sold, I’ll be out of yours, too.”
CHAPTER 8
duke
Ihadn’t seen Elena after I talked to her at the stables. It had been forty-plus hours since I saw her. Not that I was counting! What bullshit! I felt like I was twenty again, waiting to see her, smell her, be with her, be inside her.