Page 30 of Want You Back (Second Chance Ranch #1)
Chapter 30
Maverick
Faith barely made it as far as the old barn before whirling on me again. She was in a state. I’d seen the way Colt looked at her too. She was likely on something other than simply high on the news that there might be a way out of the will.
“I see you and Colt are all sorts of friendly again.” Her eyes flashed.
“Do you have a problem with that?” I met her angry stare for angry stare. She’d been supportive since I’d first come out. And for all our father was a bastard, if he’d had a problem with my sexuality, I never caught wind of it.
“Your love life is your business except when it’s clearly clouding your judgment.” She let out a loud huff. “You seriously don’t want to fight the will?”
“No.” My voice became firmer every time I said the words. “I want Hannah to do the school year here with Willow. They’re best friends now. Hannah needs the stability of staying.”
“Are you saying I can’t give her stability in Houston?” Faith’s highlighted hair gleamed in the August sun, a battle helmet.
“If you continue to drink and be absent like you have all summer, then, no, you can’t give her stability.” Admitting that made my throat raw and my chest ache. But dancing around the issues with her behavior wasn’t doing us any favors.
“My drinking isn’t a problem.” She gave me a steely-eyed glare. “I know when to stop.”
“Do you?” I kept my voice pointed. My focus was squarely on Faith. I’d prefer not to have this conversation out in the open, where any nearby ranch hands could hear, but some things needed saying regardless.
“I drink here for the same reasons as you keep slopping white paint everywhere.” Her voice was a scalpel, precise and deadly. “We can’t outrun the past, Maverick.”
The sun bore down on us and sweat gathered in the small of my back. I still wore one of Colt’s shirts. Last night seemed far away, but I was no less resolved.
“We can’t change it, but we can move on. Heal. Find a way toward peace. Something .”
“Put it on a T-shirt.” Faith rolled her eyes at me. For a second, she was eighteen again, beautiful and sarcastic. But then her face tightened back into its usual aloof mask. “You taking up ranching isn’t you healing. You’re still the scared, angry kid desperate for Dad’s approval.”
She wanted to wound me in an effort to make me back down. Knowing that didn’t make her claim hurt any less though. Like that glimpse of younger Faith, my teen self was never that far from the surface. Doubts bubbled inside me. Was that what this was? A bid for what I’d never had? What if I was staying for all the wrong reasons?
Unprovoked, my brain provided an image of Colt smiling the night we’d had our private drive-in. I had him. I had us. That was real and true and worth fighting for, no matter what Faith said.
“Me taking up ranching is me centering others for once in my life. Hannah. Colt. Willow. You.”
“Me?” Faith scoffed. “How in the hell does not selling help me?”
“Give us the rest of the year to try to make a go of it. Raise the value of the ranch. Let me show you that keeping it makes the most sense. Make your kid happy. Take time to decide what’s next for you while I watch Hannah. You can take a break, maybe go somewhere, get a new perspective on life. Wellness retreat?”
“I don’t need rehab.” She stomped off in the direction of the house, leaving me to follow. Predictably, she’d seen right through my euphemisms, but I had to try. She waited until we were near the back porch to continue her attack. “You don’t trust me with the money. Is that it?”
“You’re not in a good place right now, Faith.” Why I continued to use logic, I had no clue, but the alternative was to throw up my hands and rage at her stubbornness.
“ I know. I’m here. On this blasted ranch, surrounded by ghosts.” Her voice wavered, a crack in her polished armor.
“I miss Mom and Mel too.” We didn’t say their names nearly often enough. I’d spent twenty-five years now missing my mom and my big brother and stamping that pain down, trying not to think about the loss. I’d felt them, though, in every room I’d tackled at the ranch house. Making peace with the past had also meant a bittersweet letting go. “And I’d give anything to make the past better for both of us. We deserved more from our childhoods. But that’s why we need to give Hannah better right now. We can break the cycle.”
“Another great T-shirt or bumper sticker.” She gestured wildly at the ranch surrounding us. “We’re more doomed to repeat history if we stay, and you should know that.”
“You’re already repeating history.” There. I’d said it.
“Take that back.”
“I’m done pretending.” I met her anger with every bit of my own frustration and ire, a summer’s worth of playing ostrich. “You can’t see it, but you’re an alcoholic who has checked out of her own life. You’re miserable, and you’re intent on making everyone else around you miserable too.”
“Fuck you, Maverick.” A beep interrupted Faith’s curse, and she dug her phone out of her skirt pocket. She glanced down, cheeks pink and eyes continuing to spark. “Hannah’s going home with Colt and Willow. You can pick her up later.”
“I can?” Nice how she could delegate Hannah to me whenever she wanted, but I couldn’t force her to take the time to get well.
“I need to clear my head and talk to my new lawyer, and I can’t do either of those things with you hovering over me, only too ready to lecture.” She stalked toward her SUV.
“Don’t leave.” I hurried to keep up with her long, sharp strides. Her sandals were dusty, but Faith seemed beyond caring. “You’re in no shape to drive.”
“Fuck you, Maverick,” she said again. Her animated eyes seemed to bore into every painful part of my soul. “You don’t know me.”
“I’d like to,” I said softly. She and Mel had been the older kids, more friendly with each other than me. Being the baby had sucked for a lot of reasons. Never truly knowing my older sister was a big one.
“I’m out of here.” Faith slid into her driver’s seat and was gone in a cloud of dust.
I slowly returned to the ranch house kitchen, sinking onto the closest stool. I rested my head on the breakfast bar, letting the granite cool my heated skin.
“You okay?” Adler wandered up behind me.
“No.” There was zero point in lying to my friend, so I let the whole mess tumble out. “Faith thinks she’s found a way out of the will. The bigger issue is that she refuses to admit she’s got a drinking problem. She makes me feel like I’m the unreasonable one.”
“You’re not.” Adler pulled out his phone and started clicking around. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” I stayed seated on my stool. Faith wasn’t the only stubborn Lovelorn.
“I told you on the phone. There are meetings for people who love someone who has an addiction. I’ll go with you.” He gestured at the back door. “It doesn’t matter whether Faith thinks there is a problem. You do, and that matters.”
“I don’t know how me attending a meeting is going to help Faith.”
“It won’t.” Adler kept pointing, an unusual display of sternness from my happy-go-lucky friend. “It will help you.”
I inhaled sharply, sitting with that statement for several long moments. My stomach churned like a summer storm rolling in. “I might have to fight her for Hannah.”
“You might,” Adler agreed.
I made a frustrated noise. “And the ranch.”
“Yep.” He was back to looking more like his LA self in a band T-shirt and skin-tight red pants with shiny combat boots that wouldn’t hold up to even a short hike.
“I might lose.” I held up both hands. What if I’d finally decided to stay and then couldn’t? What if I did stay but failed to prove to Faith by the end of the year that we should keep the place? All the what-ifs were a tidal wave threatening to pull me under.
“You might,” Adler agreed again.
“You’re not a lot of help.” My voice came out much too sharp, so I immediately gentled my tone. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
“You’re hurting.” Adler clapped me on the back. “And I hate that I can’t fix it for you.”
“I might not be able to fix any of it either,” I admittedly softly. “That’s what sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.” He rubbed my shoulder, offering silent empathy until, finally, I stood. The time had come.
“Okay. Let’s try your idea.” I strode toward the door.
“Really?” For all he’d pressed the idea, Adler sounded rather shocked I’d given in.
“I’m willing to try anything right now.” Anything to take the boulder off my chest, the weight of a thousand acres and one sister bearing down on me, a helpless feeling I needed gone. “Let me message Colt that I’ll pick up Hannah afterward.”
Colt. That would help too. I needed to see him and Hannah both, remember what I was fighting for, what I was staying for.