“The kids are fine. Ma’s got them making cookies.” He gripped my shoulder. “You need to talk, and you can’t do it in there.”
The front door opened again, and Tryst stepped out. He took one look at me, then descended the steps with the quiet authority he’d carried my entire life. After my father died, Tryst had stepped in without hesitation. He’d been the one who taught me how to rope, how to handle a stubborn horse, how to be a man when I was just a kid who’d lost his dad.
“Walk with us, Salazar.”
Our breath clouded in the cold air, and frost crunched under our boots. Above us, the cloudless sky was bright with stars. The three of us walked a few feet from the house, then Tryst stopped and turned to face me.
“Tell us what happened.”
Everything poured out. How I’d gone to the Hopes’ house earlier, how happy Saffron had been to see Felicity and the baby, how we’d all been celebrating the wine being bottled. Then, how I’d taken Felicity aside while Saffron was upstairs.
“We were talking in the dining room,” I continued. “I was trying to decide whether to tell Saffron something. Felicity said I shouldn’t. That it would only hurt her.” The memory made my chest tighten. “Saffron came downstairs and overheard us. She heard me say I’d been lying by omission the whole time.”
“What were you discussing?” Tryst asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” I took a breath and looked at Bit. “Right after Saffron came to me, asking for help with the wine, you told me you’d heard rumors about Hope Family Winery facing foreclosure.”
“I remember.”
“Saffron hadn’t told me yet. She wouldn’t admit anything was wrong. But I knew something was eating at her. I knew she was desperate even if she couldn’t bring herself to say why.” I shoved my hands in my pockets because they wouldn’t stop shaking. “So I went to the bank.”
Tryst’s expression didn’t change, but I saw understanding start to dawn in his eyes.
“I talked to Isaac Brennan. I told him I wanted to know the situation with the Hope account.” My confession came faster now, like lancing a wound. “He couldn’t give me specifics because of privacy laws, but I told him that whatever shortfall existed, I’d cover it. All of it. Whatever they needed. There was no way in hell I was going to let their family lose everything.”
Silence stretched between us. Coyote howled somewhere in the hills.
“You guaranteed their debt,” Tryst phrased it as a statement, not a question.
“Exactly.”
“Wow,” Bit muttered under his breath.
“Did you try to explain?” Tryst asked.
My throat tightened. “She wouldn’t let me. She just told me to leave.”
“So she doesn’t know about the bank,” Bit said.
“No. And I don’t even know what she thinks I was lying about.”
“It isn’t what it’s about, Salazar. It’s the deceit that hurts her,” Tryst said quietly.
“I know.” I looked down at the ground because I couldn’t meet their eyes anymore. “I know it was wrong. I should have told her. But she was so scared, and I just wanted her to have a safety net.”
“Your heart was in the right place,” Tryst said.
“Was it?” The question came out sharp, angry. Not at him. At myself. “Because I’ve spent the last two weeks furious with Kick for keeping secrets from me. For lying by omission. For betraying my trust.” I looked up. “And I’ve been doing the exact same thing to Saffron this entire time.”
The parallel had been eating at me since the moment Saffron accused me of it.
Bit moved closer and rested his hand on my shoulder. “There is a difference, Snap. Kick betrayed a confidence he swore to keep. You made a financial arrangement to protect the woman you love.”
“Does the motivation matter if the result is the same?”
Tryst sighed and looked up at the sky. When he spoke, what he had to say carried the weight of experience, of decades of watching people make mistakes and helping them find their way through. “The motivation matters. But so does the dishonesty. You should have told her.”
“I know.”
