Fourteen goddamn years.
Fourteen years of anger. Fourteen years of thinking she’d just stopped loving me. Fourteen years of believing I wasn’t enough for her, that I’d done something wrong, that I’d lost her because I’d been too fucking small for her world.
And I’d been wrong.
So fucking wrong.
I let out a harsh breath and slammed the truck door shut, the sound echoing off the barns. My throat burned. My chest felt like it was caving in.
“Fuck.” The word ripped out of me—rough, hoarse, helpless. Not rage. Not even grief. Just the kind of raw, broken sound that comes when everything you thought you knew falls apart in your hands.
The wind shifted, carrying the smell of rain and the faint hum of the windmill turning slow in the distance. The ranch lights glowed warm against the darkening sky, but I couldn’t make myself move toward them.
For the first time in fourteen years, I wasn’t angry at Ivy.
I was solely angry at myself.
Through the kitchen window, I could see Mom sitting with Ivy at the table, their heads close together. Ivy's shoulders shook—crying, probably. Still crying. The way she'd looked at me in the diner, like she was breaking apart all over again, haunted me.
The family had scattered when I'd stormed in—Clay disappearing to the barn, Hunter to his shop, Maggie to her office. They knew to give me space when I was like this. Only Dad remained on the porch, watching me with those patient eyes that had seen too much.
"Your knuckles need tending," he said finally.
"They're fine."
"No, son. They're not." He came down the steps, moving with the careful dignity of a man who'd earned every gray hair. "Nothing about this is fine."
"Did you know?" The question came out raw. "Did you know why she left?"
Dad was quiet for a long moment, considering. "I suspected. Your mother and I both did. The bruises she couldn't quite hide. The way she flinched at sudden movements. The fear in her eyes when her father's truck pulled up."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Tell you what? Our suspicions? So you could do exactly what you did today—nearly kill a man in front of half the town?" He shook his head. "She never confirmed it. Never asked for help. And we respected her right to handle it her way, wrong as it might have been."
"Her way destroyed me."
"Her way saved you from yourself." Dad's voice held a weight I'd rarely heard. "Come on. Let's take a walk."
We headed toward the north pasture, the afternoon sun brutal on our backs. Dad didn't speak for a while, just walked with that steady pace that could eat up miles. Finally, when we reached the fence line, he stopped.
"My father was the meanest drunk in Copper Creek," he said quietly, words he rarely spoke. "Beat me regularly from the time my mother died when I was six. Said I killed her by being born weak, needing a C-section that got infected, and she never quite healed from it."
I knew this part, had heard fragments over the years, but Dad never talked about it in detail.
"Every mistake, every calf we lost, every fence that broke—it was all my fault, and he made sure I knew it with his fists." Dad's hand absently rubbed his ribs. "The ranch nearly died under his watch—too drunk to work it properly, too mean to let me fix what he broke. The whole town knew. They'd see me come to school with black eyes, split lips, walking careful from cracked ribs. But nobody did anything."
"Until Mom."
A smile ghosted across his face. "Your mother was eighteen when we met. The preacher's daughter—pure and wild all at once. She was supposed to be untouchable, especially for the Blackwood boy whose father was drinking the ranch into ruin." He shook his head at the memory. "But she saw something in me worth saving. We fell hard, fast. Made all kinds of plans."
"What happened?"
“Her father found out,” Owen said quietly, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the room. “Reverend Carmichael took one look at me—bruised up from my latest round with my old man, standin’ on a porch that was fallin’ apart, same as the ranch behind it—and decided I was bad news. Told Louisa she wasn’t to see me again. Sent her off to college the next damn week.”
He let out a long breath, rough and tired. “Four years, Wyatt. Four years with barely a word between us. She wrote me every week without fail—little pieces of her life on paper, askin’ about mine—and I couldn’t bring myself to write her back.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw, eyes going glassy with memory. “I wrote plenty, mind you. Got boxes of unsent letters sittin’ in the attic even now. But I never sent a single one. Kept tellin’ myselfshe deserved better—better than the town drunk’s son, better than a broke-down ranch hangin’ on by a thread. Thought my shame was mine to carry, not hers to share.”
