Page 66 of Then You Happened
“No. I deserve the guilt. Sometimes, when you make decisions when you’re young, you stick to them when you’re older even when you shouldn’t so that they weren’t made in vain. Pride can be a nasty bitch. It was in my case.” He takes a bite, and I move my dinner around on my plate because he’s hitting closer to home than I’d like to admit.
His description of how he felt when he’d visit even more so.
I think of when I lost the baby. I had been six months along and I was scared and sad and just needed my mom. Sure, I was still new on my adventure with Fletcher, but I was so homesick and so lonely that I’d tried to call her. She picked up.
Then my dad hung up on me.
But she never called me back.
Nursing a broken heart from both the loss of my baby and the official loss of support from my mother, I still spent months checking the missed call logs, hoping maybe she would call.
She didn’t.
And I hate my dad for that.
“He got sick. He didn’t tell anyone until it was too late for anything to be done to save him. My sister called me to come home.” Pain flickers through his eyes as he clears his throat. “I—I was in the middle of a huge deal. A transaction of sorts. I was trying to be the big wig throwing his weight around—”
“What was the transaction?”
His attention stays locked on the slow swirl of wine he creates in his glass. “I was buying a ranch, taking advantage of the owner of a small ranch that was going belly up by throwing him a shitty bone from a rich landowner. I knew from the start that the buyer was essentially going to take everything that rancher’s family had worked decades to build and dismantle it.”
His gaze lifts to meet mine, silently asking me if I understand things he hasn’t even said. I twist my lips, and my hands tighten on the stem of my glass.
“Yeah, Knox. You heard that right. I was screwing the little guy for the sake of the big guy. I thought I was making a name for myself, so when my dad called, I assumed my sister had fallen off the wagon, and he just wanted me to come home and clean up her mess again.” His throat bobs. “He wasn’t playing.”
“Oh, Jack,” I say, the break in his voice killing me. The pain on his face is so raw and unguarded that I reach across the table and squeeze his hand. I’m actually surprised that he lets me.
“When I finally took the call from my sister and she was sober and crying and begging me to come home, I knew it was serious. We talked as I ran through the airport to try to get to him. I made him every promise he asked for just so he’d hold on a little longer, but he died before I could get there. I was young and so stupid to think I was too good for him and his ways . . . and he was old and too stuck in his ways to see that all I needed was a bit of freedom before taking on the responsibility that came with the name Sutton.”
“Don’t you think he knew? Don’t you think he was proud of you?” My voice is soft, laden with compassion as I voice words I often wonder about my own father.
He clears his throat and nods. I give him a minute to gather himself before he continues. “He let me roam when I needed to. He let me make mistakes so I could learn without stepping in. He let me live out from beneath his shadow, and I didn’t realize it until it was too late to thank him for it.”
“And now?” I ask.
“And now his ranch is mine and Lauren’s, who’s my sister, and we have to figure out what to do with it.”
“Is that where you’re heading when you’re done here?”
He nods and takes his time placing his fork atop his knife on his plate. “Yeah. It’ll be the busiest time of the year on the ranch then. The place could run by itself really, but it needs someone to lead it all. That and I promised Lauren I’d be back.” He runs a hand over his jaw and purses his lips. “It’s going to be hard . . .”
“How so?”
“I’ll acknowledge the one thing I’ve never really done before—that I am proud to be a Sutton. That I am proud to be his son.”
I shift in my chair, my feet accidentally bumping his beneath the table, and let the heaviness of the conversation settle.
“Why here, Jack? Why me?”
“I told you. A friend of a friend of a friend . . . and because of karma.” His voice is barely a whisper, his eyes taking their time to find mine.
“Karma?”
It takes him a moment to respond. “That transaction I brokered didn’t sit right with me. Sure, I made good money off the knowledge I exploited, but when I stepped back, when I went home and looked at how hard my dad had worked for everything just so I could have it one day, it really hit home.” He leans forward and taps his wine glass to mine. “I needed to make right with what I did to the other rancher . . . with a lot of things, really. I needed to help someone save their ranch instead of help the sharks take it.”
Tears well in my eyes because he has no clue how long I’ve been keeping the wolf knocking on the door at bay or how much I really do need his help, even if I’ve only just admitted it to myself.
“Hey.” He squeezes my hand, and I draw in a deep breath. “I’m not a bad man, Knox. I’m just trying to find my feet and figure out who I am.”
