Page 24 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

C ash Young pulled open the door to the high-end steakhouse that his father loved, expecting to see his daddy already seated. His father rarely ran late these days, and Cash had been chasing him his whole life.

He swallowed against the emotions gathering in his throat, the pinching, twisting awfulness of them almost more than he could handle. He didn’t understand why God kept pushing him toward Coral Canyon. There was nothing for him there.

“Hey, there you are, buddy.” Dad rose from the end of a bench, and Cash pushed his way through a couple of people to reach him. His father hugged him, clapping him heartily on the back, and then he stepped over to the hostess station ahead of several others.

“He’s here,” he said.

The young woman there literally cut off another person and said, “I’ll be right back.” She already had two menus in her hand, and she gestured for Cash and his father to follow her.

Cash almost wanted to apologize to those still waiting. Daddy had probably called ahead and then flashed money when he got here. He hadn’t ridden in the rodeo for a little over a decade now, but Jackson Hole was cowboy central, and lots of people still knew about him.

Cash felt like he was following a larger-than-life version of himself as he dodged through the restaurant to the booth in the far corner, where, sure enough, a reserved sign sat.

“Right here, sir,” the woman said, sweeping it away. “Is this okay?”

“This is perfect,” Daddy said. “Thank you.”

He sat down with his back against the wall facing the restaurant, and left the other side that only faced the window for Cash. He got recognized sometimes too, as he was a current bull rider at the top of his game.

But the truth was, Cash was still coming into his celebrity and success, while Daddy had already lived it. He picked up one menu and used the top corner of it to push the other one closer to Cash.

“I’m surprised you’re not in Utah,” he said.

Cash was sure he was. “Yeah, I didn’t do that rodeo this year,” he said coolly.

In fact, he’d done his last rodeo for the foreseeable future last weekend. He’d spent the last week going through laundry and making arrangements for someone to pay his bills and rent for the next six months.

On July first, Cash would show up in Coral Canyon at the Silver Sage Mountain Resort and Lodge. He’d spend two nights with Boston there before he settled into the vacation rental he’d secured for the month of July.

After that? Cash had no idea.

“Why not?” Daddy asked. “They’ve got a couple there that are usually real good.”

Cash had been avoiding this exact conversation for far too long. He hadn’t, and didn’t, pick up his menu, choosing instead to look steadily across the table at his father. “I’m going to take a break for the rest of the year.”

Daddy lowered his menu, his dark eyes filled with shock. He was made of shadows and night, and the only reason Cash had any lighter features at all was because of his mother, who had blonde hair and blue eyes.

Cash could easily blend into the night the way his father did, especially when he wore a black leather jacket and a black cowboy hat, both of which Daddy wore right now.

“You’re done competing for the year,” he said slowly, as if trying to put the words together in a way that made sense.

“Yes.” Cash nodded decisively.

“Why?” Daddy asked, and wasn’t that the million dollar question?

Cash couldn’t tell him that he was terrified of getting injured, though he was. He couldn’t tell him that he didn’t love the rodeo, though he didn’t. He’d been incredibly blessed and given amazing opportunities, some that any man would probably kill for, and he didn’t want to be ungrateful.

“I just….” he started, but the extra time he’d given himself to talk to his father about this particular thing still had not allowed the words to come into his mind with any clarity.

“I don’t know why, okay?” he said almost in a combative tone. “I just know that there’s this uneasy feeling in my gut, and I’m shaking every time I get on a bull—and not because I’m on a two-ton animal who wants to buck me off.”

No, Cash was way past those nerves.

Daddy’s mouth set into a tight line. “I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, well, join the club,” Cash muttered. He just wanted to go home, order some greasy French fries, and ignore life.

“I’ve been mentoring a good talent,” he said. “He’s going to continue to ride this summer, but I need a break.”

Cash felt stupid telling his father he needed a break from a career that he’d only been doing for six years.

Of course, he’d been in the rodeo a lot longer than that.

It had consumed his life since he’d moved to Coral Canyon at age twelve.

Heck, even before that, as he’d religiously followed everything his father had been doing on the circuit.

“I’m coming to Coral Canyon in a couple weeks,” he said.

“You are?” Daddy asked. “When? For how long?”

“I’m staying with Boston for a couple nights,” Cash said. “And then I’ve got a vacation rental up in that new neighborhood they built just south of the apple orchards.”

“You’re not going to stay with us?” Daddy’s demeanor darkened, but Cash simply shook his head.

“No,” he said. Cousin night was on Monday, and Cash could definitely attend, but that would put him in town earlier than he’d anticipated, and would spur a whole host of questions Cash didn’t want to answer.

“Have you told your mother?” Daddy asked.

Cash shook his head, grateful when a waitress arrived and asked for their drink orders. That introduced a sense of normalcy to this steak dinner, which was really a confessional for Cash.

“Are you going to go see her?” Daddy asked.

“I don’t know, Dad.” Cash didn’t mean to sound so defiant, and his father had let him have his own relationship with his mother, however he wanted it to be. “She doesn’t really care when I come,” he said. “It’s more of a nuisance to her than anything.”

“Cash, buddy, I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” Cash said. “You don’t know. You’re not there.”

“All right,” Daddy said, holding up one hand.

“She’s got her own life, Dad,” Cash said. “And I’m just part of the past.”

“I’m sure she’d be really upset if she heard you say that.”

Pure irritation filled Cash, and it quickly morphed into anger. He’d been dealing with this quiet, simmering madness his whole life. Daddy had taken him to a therapist in Coral Canyon for years, and that had helped, but Cash had gotten out of that habit as his rodeo training had accelerated.

“I don’t know why she’d be upset,” he said. “Her actions have spoken volumes. Everyone’s have.”

The waitress arrived with drinks and a basket of bread. “Do you guys need another couple of minutes?” she asked.

“I don’t,” Cash said, looking up at her. “Oh, hey, Gina, how’re you doing?”

“Just fine, Cash. How ‘bout you?”

“Yeah, doing great. This is my daddy, Blaze.”

“Hey,” Daddy said, barely looking at her.

Of course. Daddy could be a real grump when he wanted to be. Cash sighed and handed her the menu. “You know what I want.”

“Ten-ounce sirloin, medium rare, French fries, no coleslaw.” She grinned at him in a way that Cash had seen before; she liked him. “You got it.”

When he normally would have smiled and flirted with the pretty waitress, today he just looked across the table at his father.

He put in an order for a ribeye and a baked potato with everything on it, and he swapped out his coleslaw for the green beans, before handing his menu to Gina. She grinned at Cash and walked away.

“I’m going to be in town until the end of July,” he said. “After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do, probably just come back here and keep working with a few other guys.”

“Do you want to be a trainer?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“Don’t think that I missed the part where you said, ‘Everyone’s actions have spoken volumes.’”

“Well, they have,” Cash said. “What do you want me to say? Mom has a new husband, and he still had little kids. She doesn’t need me in her life anymore, and neither do you. You have a whole new wife and a whole new family, and it doesn’t matter. I don’t matter.”

“Cash, that is not true.”

“Well, it’s how I feel,” he said, the words surprising him as much as his dad. Cash had not come here to tell him how neglected and abandoned he felt, but the broken pieces of his life suddenly came together into a bigger, better picture.

“Rowley moved on,” he said, also something he hadn’t told his father.

“He did?”

“Yeah, and it’s fine. I get why he’d want to go work with the Texas cowboys, but he took a couple of guys with him, and I wasn’t one of them.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Daddy said.

“What would it have changed?” Cash asked. “Would you have left your wife and your four little kids to come train me in Jackson Hole? I don’t think so, Dad. You didn’t when I turned pro, and you won’t now.”

“Is that what you wanted me to do?” Daddy asked. “I have tried to be with you every step of the way.”

“Yeah, I know you think you have.”

Daddy fell back against the back of the booth, his surprise turning to disgust and then anger. At least one thing about him was he couldn’t really hide how he felt anymore. He’d done it so much on the rodeo circuit, and Cash had actually heard him say to Faith that he was tired of it.

“I could have quit the rodeo circuit,” Cash said. “And not said anything to anyone, and no one would have noticed.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Daddy said.

“Really?” Cash asked. “What? You and Uncle Jem are getting together and watching all the local rodeos?”

Daddy’s jaw jumped, but he didn’t say that they were. Of course they weren’t.

“Mom doesn’t care. You don’t care. None of the uncles care. Faith doesn’t care. The little kids don’t care, and it’s fine,” Cash said, though it really wasn’t.

His stomach boiled, and he hated how his eyes grew hot. He would not cry here, not over this.

“You have your own life. Everyone does,” he said. “And maybe Rowley leaving has just been hard for me, but I’m just really tired of never being a priority for anyone.”

“Son, you’re a priority for me.”

“That’s just not true, Dad.” He spoke softly, but with plenty of conviction. He shook his head and scooted to the end of the booth. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to have this fight.” He pulled his wallet out and threw a few bills on the table.

“Where are you going?” Daddy asked.

“Somewhere else.” Cash shoved his wallet in his back pocket and glared at his father. “I know that you’ve done the best you could,” he said. “But I also think you’re totally delusional if you don’t think what I’m saying has some ounce of truth and some merit.”

Daddy simply glared, and his silence was usually acquiescence.

“There’s a reason Harry has cousin night with everyone from the first marriages.

We don’t fit , Dad.” He waved his arm through the air.

“We’re like this, this—this long chain of islands that everyone has forgotten about once they got their new wife and their new kids. You know, the ones that really matter?”

“Cash, that’s not true.”

“It doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not,” Cash said. “Don’t you get that, Dad? It only matters how I feel about it, and how Boston feels about it, and how Harry feels and Joey and the others.”

He really needed to leave, but Cash had gone all-in and might as well finish. “And look, I’m real happy for you and Uncle Jem and everyone else who’s gotten their happily-ever-after. But if you think that didn’t come at a cost to someone, you’re wrong, and those someones are still here.”

He shook his head, trying to tamp down the anger running through him.

“I didn’t think this conversation would be this.

It’s fine. I was just going to let you know I’m not doing the rodeo the rest of the year.

I don’t know if I’ll go back. I don’t know what my life is supposed to be, but I know one thing.

There’s only one person on this planet who cares and puts me first, and that’s me. ”

“Cash, I care about you.”

Cash ignored him. “I’ll find a way through the crippling loneliness and the bitter thoughts that everyone in the family is off living their best life—except those of us who have been forgotten.”

“You are not forgotten,” Daddy growled. “Stop saying that.”

Cash probably wasn’t, but he’d gone down the rabbit hole and he couldn’t get back up right now. “I’m just gonna go,” he said. “Take the steak to Jem. He likes medium-rare.”

“Cash,” Daddy said as he turned around.

He walked away.

“Cash,” Daddy called again.

The loud music and chatter in the restaurant drowned out his father’s call, if he’d even made a third one. Cash felt like a raging bull as he charged through the restaurant and out the door. The summer heat and sunlight assaulted him, but he went toward his truck.

“Cash,” a woman called, and he turned with his hand on the door handle. Gina ran toward him with a white Styrofoam container in her hand.

Pure humiliation combined with the dangerous storm inside him, and Cash didn’t know if he should get in his car and drive away or wait for the pretty woman to catch up to him.

“I saw you standing at the end of the table,” she said. “Looked like you were gonna leave, so I boxed up your dinner.” She reached the tailgate and extended it toward him, somehow feeling that she shouldn’t come too close.

Cash knew how to flip switches inside himself, because he had to do it all the time for public relations in the rodeo.

He did so now, painting a smile over his face.

“Well, thank you, Miss Gina,” he said as he swaggered to the end to the back of the truck.

He took the container from her and gazed down at her. “What time do you get off?”

Cash had never had a problem getting a girlfriend, especially since joining the rodeo.

“I’m the early shift tonight,” she said, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Nine-thirty.”

Cash nodded and crowded in closer. “Maybe I’ll come over.”

Gina grinned at him and nodded. “You remember where I live?”

“It’s that place up on the bluff, right?” he asked.

“Yep.” She popped the P and reached out and ran one blood red fingernail up the front of his jacket. “I probably won’t be there till ten.”

Cash nodded, and Gina giggled, turned on her heel and hurried back to the restaurant.

Cash watched her go, and at the door, she turned and waved her fingers at him before ducking inside. His father had not followed him, and that surprised Cash as much as it ignited a new round of anger to flare through his chest.

No, he didn’t really know what to do with his life. But what he had said to his father was true—he only had himself to rely on to figure it out.