Page 94 of When the Stars Rise

“I’m not asking you to buy anything. It’s the damn truth.” Maybe it wasn’t in the past but it is now.

My dad strokes his jaw, still not convinced. “You’re a lot like me. You might forgive, but you sure as hell never forget. I know you lost a lot of faith in me. You were dealing with something nosixteen-year-old kid should ever have to, and then you find out your old man betrayed you like that? I don’t blame you for being angry.”

I don’t know why he’s dredging up ancient history but I guess we’ve never really discussed any of this. Not my dad’s fault. He tried but I used to always shut him down. “How about more living and less dwelling? I’m not sixteen anymore, Dad. It’s cool.” I look him in the eye and hold his gaze, so he knows I mean it. “We’re cool.”

“Maybe so, but I just need to get a few things off my chest, and this seems like a good time to do that. It’s been a while since it’s just the two of us.”

That doesn’t seem right, but I guess it is.

Once I moved away from home, I haven’t had a lot of one-on-one time with my dad. Whenever we spend time together these days we’re always surrounded by family.

I don’t think he’s trying to make me feel guilty. Just telling it like it is. So there’s no point in arguing.

“I’ll tell you something,” he says. “I struggled with that for years. I hated keeping that secret from you, especially when you got older and you and Hayley became more than just childhood friends. But I made a promise to Shiloh, and what good is a man if he breaks his promises? A worthless piece of shit if you ask me.”

My dad and I are a lot alike so I know exactly where he was coming from. “I know why you did it. I understand,” I assure him.

And I do.

At the time, though? I felt betrayed. The timing couldn’t have been worse either.

My dad and Shiloh broke the news to me the morning after the accident, only hours after I’d carried Hayley up that hill. They couldn’t wait any longer to tell me because there wasa news crew outside and it was already all over the tabloids, thanks to Shiloh’s douchebag brother who sold the story and sold out his own sister.

I was already an emotional wreck, just trying to keep it together for Hayley’s sake, and then to find out that Shiloh was Hayley’s birth mom?

That pushed me right over the edge. Let’s just say I didn’t handle it very well.

I was six years old when my dad met Shiloh. She came to stay at the guesthouse on the ranch.

At the time, she was one of the most famous rock stars in the world. She had no ties to Texas or the Hill Country—she was from Louisiana and lived in LA—so how and why she’d ended up in Cypress Springs was a mystery.

I was too young to question it then, but it made sense when I found out the truth.

Shiloh came to Cypress Springs looking for Hayley, and somewhere along the way, she fell in love with my dad and built a life with him.

I guess what hurt the most was that all my life, I’d looked up to my dad.

He’d always put a premium on honesty and had never given me any reason to doubt his word.

Finding out that he’d been lying to me for all those years shook me to the core.

But I’ve had six years to deal with it, and plenty of time to see it from my dad’s point of view so regardless of what my mom thinks, I’m not holding a grudge against my dad anymore.

At the time though, everything felt so complicated. My emotions were all over the place and I didn’t know how to handle any of it. So I didn’t.

I just tried to shut it all out, pushed my dad away, and told everyone I was fine, nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, I wasgoing out and getting drunk and high and seeking thrills. The higher the danger, the better.

I can barely remember half the shit I did that year, but I remember waking up on the railroad tracks one night in the middle of a flash flood, soaked to the skin to find Jude crouched in front of me. No idea how he even found me, but he hauled me to my feet, threw me into the passenger seat of his truck and started driving without saying a word.

Miles passed and he navigated the flooded roads but still he didn’t say a damn thing. No lectures. No reprimands or words of wisdom. Nothing.

Finally I cracked. “What are we doing?”

“A bridge collapsed and homes are being flooded so we’re going to do whatever we can to help.” He glanced over at me before focusing on the road again. “It’s the best way I know to quiet those demons in your head.”

Everyone in my family has a different coping mechanism, I guess. Jude has his disaster relief work. My dad heals broken horses. And I threw myself into extreme sports.

But if my dad wants to talk about it, we might as well get it all out there and clear the air. I guess this conversation is long overdue. “You want to know how I felt? I’ll tell you. Yeah, I was angry at the time. I felt like you betrayed me. Can’t say I was too happy to find out that I was Hayley’s stepbrother either—”