Page 136 of Then You Happened
“Not the ranch. Not the business. Me.” Her chin quivers as she fights back tears, and it guts me. Absolutely guts me. “You let this happen, Jack. You caused this.”
“Tate . . .”
“You made me believe you. You made me believe in me. You made me hope. You made me dream the dream that wasn’t really mine.” She hiccups back a sob. “You made me love you. Even worse, you made me trust you when I swore I’d never be able to trust again . . . so yeah, you fucked me over.”
I watch a single tear slip down her cheek a
nd know there’s nothing I can say to fix this, at least not in the heat of the moment . . . maybe not even a few hours removed from my sister and her bullshit.
So I tell her the truth.
“You’re right. I did all of those things. I saw you that first day on the porch with your hand on your hip and your threat to shoot me and I knew my brother didn’t deserve a fucking ounce of your love. Not fucking one.”
“It doesn’t change a thing, Jack. You still lied. You still—”
“I was wrong.” I run a hand through my hair to try to find something to say to get her to hear me. “I was determined to hate you at first sight. Sure, we’d talked on the phone and you had offered me the position, but I expected to look at you and know you were just as much of an asshole as your husband was. I thought I could show up and walk away and that might be enough to convince my conscience that I had tried to make good with what I’d promised my father.” I itch to reach out and touch her. I crave any kind of connection with her but know she won’t have it. I’ll have to make it through words. “But there was something about you, Tate. I don’t know if it was your beauty, the pain in your eyes, the defiance in your posture . . . but there was something about you that told me I should stay and see for myself exactly who you were.”
Her hand grips the doorknob so tightly it creaks under the pressure, but I see her bottom lip quiver. “I meant what I said. I need you to go.”
Tears course down her cheeks, the pain I caused in every single track they leave.
“You don’t mean that.”
She nods. “I do.” But her eyes say differently. “Please be gone in the morning.”
“I love you.”
She physically rejects the words with the grimace on her face, a hitch of her breath, the shake of her head.
“I know,” she whispers. “I believe you . . . but . . . but I lived a life with a man who thought it was okay to lie to me. It didn’t start that way, but it morphed into it. When he died, I promised myself never again. I told myself I deserve better. So I can’t . . . I won’t allow myself to walk into a relationship that’s been a lie since the beginning.”
She hiccups over a sob.
“Don’t do this.” When I step toward her, she steps back into the house.
“You were leaving in a couple of weeks anyway. We were walking headfirst into a heartbreak as it was. This way, we just save ourselves a bit of false hope and whispered promises we’ll never keep . . .” She takes another step back, the physical distance her way to reinforce the words she’s telling me. “It’s just better this way.”
“I meant everything I said, Tate.”
“There was a lot you didn’t say that you meant too.” Her breath hitches. “Goodbye, Jack.”
54
TATE
I hear his protest when I shut the door.
I see the knob wiggle after I turn the lock.
And then, before I allow myself to change my mind, I’m running down the hallway and falling onto my bed as I succumb to the hurt.
To the betrayal.
To everything I thought we would have together—a today, a tomorrow, a forever. God, how silly those thoughts are, have always been.
Jack Sutton was never going to give up his life on his fancy ranch for a small-town life here.
Jack Sutton, the man who moves over and over again to avoid falling, wasn’t ever going to stay.
