“Sounds good,” Mom mumbled before standing up and kissing my hair. “You need a haircut,” she chastised. “Ew! And a shower.”
“What?”
“Jake Robert Samuels, I love you. You’re my only son, so I need you to believe me when I say this, I’m saying it with love.”
Oh shit! She full-named me. This wasn’t going to tickle.
With a deadly serious look, Mom took a step back, set her hands on her hips, and stared at me. I held my breath, waiting for her hit to come. For some reason, when your own mother threw out hits, they hurt a lot harder than anyone else. Probably because your mother was biologically programmed to love you no matter what. So when she hit you between the eyes with something you didn’t want to hear, it sliced all the way to your heart.
“You stink,” she declared as a wicked smile crept across her face.
Fuck me sideways. That wasn’t what I expected.
Bouncing to my feet, I prowled toward her, amused as she backed away.
“That’s because I’ve been working.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” Mom countered. “We have people employed…”
“Don’t. You know I need to do something. I can’t sit around all day watching the others haul hay and chop wood. Not when I’m perfectly capable…”
Mom held her hands up in surrender. “I know. I know. But I need you to know I don’t expect you to. You’re not here to be another ranch hand, Jake. You’re here because you’re my son and now, you’re the boss.”
I gulped.
Responsibility was a big word, and it weighed a ton. It was something I’d been avoiding, and until this moment, Mom hadn’t brought it up. Something I was eternally grateful for.
“No. You’re still…” I started, only to see Mom shake her head.
“Jake, I don't want to manage all this. This was your father’s dream, not mine. I’m too tired to manage the staff and the animals and…”
I dragged my hands through my hair, tugging on the strands painfully. “I don’t know… I’m not ready.”
“Sweetheart, if you don’t want to do this, if it’s too much, we can sell it all.”
“But what would you do? Where would you go?” Panic washed through me. I had no idea how to run a ranch or manage a business, but the last thing I wanted to do was uproot Mom from her home because I was too chickenshit scared to do what needed to be done.
“I’d figure it out. I want you to be happy, Jake.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, the words bobbed around inside my head, already feeling heavy and like a mistake. “I will be, Mom. Just give me some time. And if you think I’m ready to take over running this place, then… then I want to do it,” I confirmed, sealing my fate and surprising us both.
ChapterThree
Kellie
I’d given myself at least half a dozen heart attacks today.
Every time I saw a damn black Dodge roll down the street, I found myself holding my breath. And the most frustrating part was I still didn’t know if I wanted it to be him.
It's taken me three days to recover from Mom’s little bombshell that he was back in town. For three days I hadn’t let Cass out of my sight before I started to breathe again and realized he wasn’t about to bust down the front door and demand I hand over my most precious possession—my baby girl.
Another week passed, and I’d progressed, or maybe it was that I'd regressed to watching every car.
Part of me was desperate to see him again. I wanted to ask him if he had missed me. If he regretted walking away. I wanted to see if his eyes could still hold me captive and drown me in their depths, all while promising me the world. But seeing Jake would be stupid. It would be like pouring salt into an already painful wound. So, instead of pointing my car toward his family ranch and driving out there to ask, I stuck to my side of town, going from home to work and back again.
We waved goodbye to the last kid of the day as he was hustled along by his annoyed mother with her fake manicure, lips, tits, and even faker personality. Ebony was one of those moms who looked like they had their shit together, but really all they had was a black Amex and access to their husband’s money. As she shut her car door with an overexaggerated hip bump, telling her son, Harley, to keep it down because she had a headache, like it makes a difference to a three-year-old, another black pickup pulled up across the street.
“Are you okay?” Taylor, one of the other teachers and my bestie, asked.
