WYATT HATED EVERYTHING.
Everything.
His ranch. The sun, which shone in spite of the fact that everything was terrible, the dumb-ass cows that had broken his fence earlier today.
He hated himself most of all. He was an idiot. And he was an asshole. And he had to get this place in perfect condition by the time the big barbecue happened, or they were probably going to end up looking like a two-bit, rinky-dink operation that wasn’t worth sending customers to. That wasn’t worth booking. And then he was going to have failed absolutely everyone. From Lindy on down to Jamie.
His dad would win, and Wyatt would lose.
And Wyatt did not fucking lose.
Except he already felt like he had.
And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.
He couldn’t have the kind of relationship she wanted. He didn’t want a relationship like that. He didn’t. So he didn’t know why it tore him up now that he had told her so. She was the one that had gone back on their agreement. She was the one that had changed things. He hadn’t changed anything. He was exactly what he had said he was. A man who wanted a sex-only relationship.
She was the one that had gone and made it about feelings. She was the one that had gone and made it...
“Dammit,” he swore, as he brought his hammer down on his thumb. “Damn cows,” he shouted. “I’m going to make you into steak. No. Steak is too good for you. I’m going to grind you up and make you into burgers. I will enjoy every bite of your damned hide.”
“Do you feel better?” Wyatt turned and saw his father standing there—of all people—hands in his pockets, his cowboy hat pulled down low over his face.
“Don’t push me right now,” Wyatt said, shaking his hammer at his father. “I hit my damn thumb.”
“Which would drive even the most sane of men to cussing at bovines. I suppose.”
“Whether or not I’m sane is currently up for debate,” Wyatt growled, turning back to the fence. “Unless you wanted something specific, I’m busy.”
“What crawled up your ass and died?” That was his dad, exhibiting the Dodge charm. And butting in when he wasn’t wanted. Rather than being around when he was needed.
He tightened his grip on the hammer, anger and pain swamping him. “What the hell are you doing here, Dad?”
“I’m here for the barbecue,” Quinn said.
“The barbecue is in four days.” Wyatt slammed his hammer down on the fencepost, doing nothing in particular but hitting the thing. “You have no call to be here now. You checking up on me?”
“Do I need to be?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” Wyatt shot back.
“You’re spoiling for a fight, boy, and I’m not about to give it to you.”
“Oh, bull, Dad. You’ve never paid enough attention to me to give me a fight. Why would you start now?”
Silence fell between them, hard and heavy. And Wyatt was just...sick of this. Of all the things that were left unsaid between them. Of all the things that had gone unshouted for the past twenty years.
Lindy had asked him about the day his mother had died, and he had shoved that aside. He didn’t like to think about it, and he and his dad had sure as hell never talked about it. But maybe that was part of the problem. They didn’t talk about a damn thing. His dad acted like he wasn’t there half the time.
“Why the hell are you doing this to me?” Wyatt asked. “Why don’t you just punch me out? Why don’t you just yell at me? Tell me what you really think of me. None of this passive-aggressive bull. Putting these impossible standards out in front of me so you can watch me fail. You know you’re setting Grant and Jamie and Bennett up too. And I thought for sure that you cared a little bit about them.”
“What the hell is the matter with you, boy?” his dad asked.
“The same thing that’s been the matter with me from the beginning. You don’t care. Not about me.”
“I only spent all those years raising you for the hell of it? What do you mean I don’t care about you?”
“Did you raise me? You let me work your ranch, you walked by me, you ignored me. From the day Mom died. When you let me cry in the dirt by myself. You walked right by me.”
“Wyatt...”
“No,” Wyatt said. “You came out here to talk, I assume. So let’s talk. Let’s really talk. I’ve been spoiling for this fight for the better part of my life. Let’s have it. And if you take the ranch away after... I don’t care. But I’m not going to do this anymore. I can’t do it anymore. I needed you, and you weren’t there for me. I want to know what the hell is wrong with me.”
“Nothing,” his dad said, his voice rough. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
“You sure as hell could’ve fooled me. I tried to get your attention. I tried. I did everything you asked me to do. Be a man, that’s what you told me. Be a man for Jamie, for Bennett and Grant. You asked me to do that when I was eleven years old. But who was a man for me, Dad?”
Quinn looked like Wyatt had hauled off and decked him. But Wyatt wasn’t in the mood to pull punches, verbal or otherwise. “You didn’t...didn’t give me a damn thing. After she died it was like you were just looking through me. I needed you. I needed you to tell me it was all right. Dad, I saw her after she died. And you never talked to me about it. You could barely look at me after. We were close and then I lost her, and I damn well lost you too.
“And then you brought her home. Louisa. At least she saw me.” Louisa with her dark hair and eyes, who had touched him. Just casually at first. His shoulder. His hand.
He hadn’t been touched in years at that point. He was just doing his best to please a father who looked through him, working the ranch, taking care of his siblings.
He’d felt guilty when he’d started feeling something other than comfort from that touch. She had been so pretty. In her late thirties, but there was a vulnerability to her that called to something starving in him. He had needed attention from her, but there had been something intoxicating in her needing him too.
She’d come to him vulnerable, and had made him feel like he could be the protector. Like he could find some new strength in himself.
And for the first time since his dad had told him he had to be a man, he’d felt like a man.
He’d been torn, with the desire to please his dad, to get back what he’d lost...and his desire for her. In the end, his desire for Louisa had won out. She’d come to his room one night, and said she needed him.
He hadn’t had it in him to turn her away. He’d needed her too. It had been more than sex, though at seventeen, sex had mattered on its own. But it had been deeper.
The only time he’d ever let it be deeper.
He’d been consumed with her. With someone caring so much, needing him so much.
And then it had all gotten blown to hell. They’d gotten caught by his father and Louisa had left. Quinn had taken the most important thing Wyatt had. The relationship Wyatt wouldn’t have needed if his dad had been there in the first place.
One that would never have started if Quinn had been paying attention to his oldest son at all.
“Do you know what?” Wyatt asked. “I loved her. I loved her more than I loved you. You brought her home, giving her all that attention, and love and care that you never gave me. Using her to heal your grief. What about mine? You told me to be a man. Dust myself off. Pick myself up. But I didn’t feel like one. Until her. She treated me like a man. And I loved her. I loved her. It killed me, you know. To betray you like that. But I felt good for the first time in so damn long and I just couldn’t...” He swallowed hard. “And then it was only worse after. You found out. Sent her away. It destroyed the one good thing I had, and you got worse after. You couldn’t even make eye contact with me.”
“Whatever you think, I’m not punishing you for it, Wyatt. I’m not. And I never have been. You were seventeen. You didn’t know what you were doing. You were a boy.”
“A boy you told to be a man. Don’t you dare absolve me like I didn’t know what I was doing. Don’t treat me like a boy now when you wouldn’t let me be one then. I can’t be both, Dad. I can’t be a grown man expected to carry on with his head held high, not feeling anything, not talking about anything, and also be a boy who can’t be held responsible for what he did.”
“Wyatt...”
“No,” Wyatt said. “If I was a boy, if I was innocent, then you should’ve been treating me like your son and not your ranch hand. And if I was a man you should’ve punched me out. But you didn’t do either. You just shut me out even more.” Wyatt tightened his jaw, tilting his chin up. “You couldn’t shut out the money I sent though, could you? You took that. You spent it. You had to acknowledge me then.”
“You think you were invisible?” Quinn Dodge closed the gap between them, and he shocked Wyatt by grabbing hold of the collar of his shirt and dragging him forward, surprising Wyatt with the strength that he had left in his body. “You think I didn’t care? I didn’t know what the hell to do with you.” He released his hold on Wyatt, and Wyatt stumbled back. “I know I didn’t deal well with losing your mother. And then I tried... I tried to fix things by bringing Louisa around. But she didn’t help you. I let you get hurt. I didn’t know what to say to you. I didn’t know how to talk to you about what had happened. I wasn’t angry. Not at you. I was so damn angry at myself, Wyatt. Because I could see that what I’d done...it hurt you, the way I handled you, the way I didn’t handle you...”
“Why couldn’t you handle me? You can handle everyone else?”
“Because you were the one who saw it,” Quinn said. “And I didn’t... Wyatt, you have to understand... I’m no good with feelings.”
“No kidding,” Wyatt said.
He threw his hammer down on the ground, the clawback sticking into the dirt. “I lost both of you,” Wyatt said. “I lost both of you when Mom died. And I wanted... I needed something.”
“She took advantage of that...”
“I loved her,” Wyatt said. “She was the first thing I loved for a long time. And then I lost her too. And you didn’t...step in. You didn’t try to fix what was broken. You weren’t paying attention to what had been going on under your nose for months, and then when you did find out you didn’t check to see if I was okay. You didn’t check to see if I was broken. And so I learned. I learned not to need again. When Mom died, I lost the two people I needed most. Then I let myself need, just one more time. Just one more. Not again. Never again.”
“I’m trying. I’ve tried in the past few years, Wyatt, I have. I’ve had more than twenty years to figure this out. But it was only just... When I called you and said I was going to sell if you didn’t want it... All of that was when I started realizing some things. I have Freda to thank for that. She cleared some stuff up inside me that had been jumbled for a long time. You saw me break. You saw that moment... I didn’t know how to face you after that. When every time I looked at you all I could see was you coming to tell me that your mother wouldn’t wake up. When I knew that you had seen me on the floor like that, completely undone. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. We were like survivors of the war. And every time I looked at you I flashed back to it. Not just to what happened to her... But to what I failed to do for you. And so I tried to give you freedom. I tried to give you work to do. Anything that was going to let me off the hook. It was never you.”
“And you’re still playing these games with the ranch...”
“What I said to you is true. I don’t want you trapped here. I don’t want you in over your head like I was for so long. I spent so many years barely keeping my head above water. Drowning in grief, drowning in debt. Don’t you think it pains me that you... The son that I felt most... That you are the one that bailed me out? I didn’t deserve that. Not from you. And I wanted to be able to keep an eye on things here and bail you out if it was going wrong.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Dad. Pick one. Am I a boy or a man?”
Quinn stepped forward. “You’re my boy,” he said. “And whether or not you’re a man now, it doesn’t matter. You’re still my boy. And I’m going to protect you. I should never have put all that on you back then, but I was trying to...to find a way to make it hurt less for both of us.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“Why?” Quinn asked.
“Because I’m screwed,” Wyatt said. “I wanted to love you. I tried. You didn’t give it to me. So I found someone else to love. And then you killed that too. And now I... I got a woman I think I could love. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to go forward. You’ve already messed me up. You don’t get to come in and apologize for it now. Everything I can’t have is because of you. Mom died, and she couldn’t help it. You... You just pulled away.”
“Listen to me,” Quinn said, his voice low. “I loved your mother. I loved her more than anything. I never wanted to love another person in the whole world. She was my compass. She guided me. And when I lost her... I lost my way. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I hurt you, Wyatt. It was my fault,” Quinn said. “I messed up. I wasn’t a good father to you. I didn’t know how to be. I was too lost in my own pain. I couldn’t see yours. And that is a terrible thing to do when you’re a parent. There. Does that help you?”
No. It didn’t. It damn well didn’t. He had shouted it all now. His triumph over having stolen her from him. Over having hurt him when he had caused Wyatt so much pain. And his father had admitted his mistakes.
But the ache in his chest wasn’t gone. Knowing he was right, that he had a right to be angry... It didn’t fix anything.
“I want the ranch,” Wyatt said.
“Will that fix it?”
“Yes,” Wyatt said, his voice gruff.
“Then you can have it.”
It didn’t feel like a win. Not at all.
“I’m still pissed off at you,” Wyatt said.
“What do you want me to do? You want me to crawl over broken glass? You want to punch me. Because you can punch me.”
He took a good look at his father, who looked the same as he always had. But old. Wyatt’s height, his dark brown hair faded into a gray.
Somehow, over the passage of time, his father had aged. Wyatt supposed that was how things went, when the world turned on as it should. And that man that he had been so angry with as an eleven-year-old boy. And then as a seventeen-year-old... He was gone. And in his place was this old man in front of him. Not an old man, not really. But not the same one. And Wyatt couldn’t go back and yell at the father he’d been. Sure, he could punch the father he was now. His dad had offered it up. But it wouldn’t take them back. None of this would restore time that was already gone. None of it was going to fix the thing that hurt now.
And then there was Lindy.
He could have Lindy now. If he just... If he just found a way to let go.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying not to care. Because it hurt too much to want something from you I didn’t get. I didn’t want to need someone, not again.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “I know it’s too little too late. But that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry all the same. I’ve always loved you, though. I was just too mired in my own pain to figure out how to show it.”
It was on the tip of Wyatt’s tongue to shout again. To be angry again. But then he thought of Lindy. Of the way she looked at him. The way she’d asked for him to love her.
He already did. That was the thing.
Perhaps he had from the moment she had walked into that bar. Like a moment of faith. One he wouldn’t ever fully understand. Like he had seen her and known something, deep in his bones. Like he had looked into a crystal ball. And still, when she had spoken those words... He hadn’t been able to tell her what she wanted him to.
He hadn’t been able to tell her what he wanted to.
“I think I understand that,” Wyatt said, surprising both of them with those words. “I... I spent so long feeling like I couldn’t have love. That on some level I must not deserve it. And I thought I at least gave you a reason to hate me when I took up with her. That was what I wanted. To make it something other than a flaw within me that made you hate me...”
“I never hated you. I hated myself. I couldn’t reach out to you because of it.”
“That has to stop,” Wyatt said.
He didn’t know much, but he knew that.
“I agree,” Quinn said, his voice gruff. “Freda has helped me a lot. Loving someone has helped me a lot.”
There were other things that needed saying. More that needed to be talked about. But right now Wyatt needed to know one thing. The most important thing. “How did you let yourself love her? After everything. After the way you shut yourself down, how did you open yourself back up?”
Quinn shook his head. “You don’t choose to get hit by lightning.”
Wyatt thought it was the damnedest description, because he knew exactly what his father meant. Because he’d been hit by that same lightning five years ago.
“I don’t suppose. But, you still have a choice of what you do after. How did you choose her instead of being alone?”
“I failed at a lot of things with you, Wyatt. I’m going to do my best not to fail you here. If you have someone who loves you, don’t turn them away. Because it doesn’t matter whether you might get hurt in the end. Fear is the enemy. That’s what destroys things, don’t you see? I didn’t think I could love you right, so I just didn’t try at all. I tried to protect myself, and look what happened. Love only adds to you. It doesn’t take away. You gotta trust it. You gotta believe it. If you found a woman who loves you... It’s the best gift. The best in the world. It’s not about deserving a damn thing. If you’ve got it, hold on tight with both your hands.”
It occurred to him right then, that the real problem was his arms were too full of a whole bunch of stuff that couldn’t be fixed. Not now. So he just had to set it all down. He had to be willing to do that, so he could step into something new. So he could have something better. He tried yelling. He tried anger. It hadn’t given him anything. A small amount of satisfaction, maybe. But only for a moment. He couldn’t go back. He could only go forward.
He was just going to have to decide to do it. Because his mom was gone. And so were all those years he spent being mad at his father. But right now, his father was here. And Lindy... Lindy might still want him too. And hell, if she could open herself up to him after all she’d been through...if she could be so brave, how could he not do the same.
“I love you, Dad,” Wyatt said, the words slow and deliberate. “I always have. Even when things got twisted up in me, and I betrayed you like I did...”
“Don’t you apologize to me,” Quinn said, his voice rough. He reached out and grabbed hold of Wyatt, drawing him in for a hug. The first hug they’d shared since Wyatt was eleven years old. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t a good father to you. I’m sorry I didn’t love you like I should have. Didn’t protect you like I should have. And that I tried to meddle when I had no call to. I’m sorry I tried to protect you when it was a day late and a dollar short. I want to do better and be different. I’m real sorry I messed up.” He clapped Wyatt on the back and pulled away.
“The ranch is yours if you want,” his dad said. “If that’s what you want to pour yourself into, then you deserve the chance to do it. I’m not going to stand in your way. Not anymore. I trust you,” Quinn said.
Wyatt hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear those words. How much he needed to know that that trust so willfully destroyed between them all those years ago could be fixed.
“Why don’t you show me around your place?” his dad said.
“Thanks, Dad,” Wyatt said. “I’d like that.”
Quinn walked ahead of him for a moment, and Wyatt closed his eyes, and he felt something like a release wash through him. A weight that he had been carrying around for most of his life easing away.
He needed her. Plain and simple. Need was something he’d avoided for a long damned time. He’d made it his mission to stand on his own, to be self-contained. And that had been rocked, shaken the first moment he’d seen Lindy Parker.
Need.
It had haunted him, filled him, ever since. And it had changed, deepened.
He had come back home to make something permanent. He had thought all this time that it was the ranch. But a ranch could burn away. People could be taken too, he knew that. But there was only one thing that endured. That lasted. That lived on even after people died.
It was love.
And of all the temporary, vain things in the world, it was the only thing that would stand tall in the end. It was the only thing that was worth the fight.
And Wyatt Dodge was going to go down swinging.