“You don’t know everything.” I shake my head. “But you deserve to hear the truth—from me. Even if you hate me for it.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You should.” I meet his gaze. “I never loved your brother, but I chose him, Dean. You offered to take me away, and I stayed. I chose him, and I lived with him, and I accepted his proposal. I let him fuck me”—the words choke on the way out—“at least, I let him fuck me until he started fucking everyone else. I was with him foryears. You should hate me. Or, at the very least, be disgusted.”
Dean’s teeth grit. I’m being blunt and harsh, but I don’t soften what I’m saying because I know he’s doing what he always did—what he did when his mother was dying—he’s ignoring what bothers him and pretending it doesn’t. He’s refusing to face his emotions. And if he does that with us, we’ll never have a real chance. We’ll never move forward. We’ll stay in purgatory like I’ve been for years. I can’t do that anymore.
“I don’t hate you, Willa. And I’m not disgusted by you, no matter who you slept with. You couldn’t put me off if you tried.” He wipes his hand down his face. “I’ve done a lot of shit myself over the last twelve years. Fucked more women than you’ll ever want to know about and tried just about every drug you can come up with. I spent a year behind bars, and honestly, that was the easiest of the crap I’ve survived. Considering the blood on my hands,they shouldn’t have ever let me out. If one of us should be bothered by the other’s past, it should be you. Anything you’ve done, I’ve done worse, ten times over.”
“Except what I did, I did to you.”
He doesn’t argue with that because it’s the truth. Dean might be a fuckboy and a killer. He might be a walking red flag. But the things he did weren’t to me. He would never hurt me.
Dean squares his shoulders. “You don’t need to apologize if that’s what this is. And we don’t need to talk about it.”
“We do though. You know we do.” I sit up tall, refusing to back down unless he kicks me out of the bathroom. “I thought I was doing the right thing. As fucked up as that sounds, it’s the truth. When I chose Kincaid, I did it for you.”
“That’s fucked, Willa.” Anger finally bleeds into his tone, and I’m glad because it means he’s finally feeling something.
“Yeah, it is,” I agree with him. “It’s completely fucked up, just like everything was back then. And it was worse than you ever knew because you refused to talk to me about it, so I didn’t tell you everything either. My father… he…” I rub my arms.
“Did he touch you?” His voice turns deathly cold. “Did he fucking lay his hands on you, and you didn’t tell me about it? I’m going to drive to Texas and—”
“No.” I hop off the counter and walk over to him, resting my hands on Dean’s chest. “Dad never hit me. I swear, he didn’t lay a hand on me ever.”
He didn’t need to. Dad’s methods of torture were always mental. Little comments. Slowly picking me apart until I was nothing except a weak girl he could mold. I was worthless, begging for scraps of his acceptance.
“He didn’t touch me,” I say again. “But we both know he didn’t need to in order to get me to do what he wanted. And he always got what he wanted.”
Dean rests his hands over mine on his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Remember that summer the cattle started dying?”
“My grandpa almost lost the ranch.”
I nod. “Until a private investor stepped up and saved it. My father was that investor. He’s the one who gave your grandfather the money to keep the ranch afloat. I found out about it the night my mom died. That’s what started the fight we were having.”
“Why would his investing in my family’s ranch start a fight?”
“Because I found out it was Dad and Tate who poisoned the cattle. They set your grandfather up.”
Dean’s eyes darken. “What?”
“Your grandpa was getting sicker, and your mom was gone. They knew your grandpa favored you over Kincaid, and they were worried how that would play out if something happened. They needed leverage to make sure Kincaid’s interest in the land was solid. You know Tate is always using his son to pull the strings.”
Dean nods, his jaw tight.
“They poisoned the cattle to force your grandpa to the brink of bankruptcy. When my dad bailed him out, hegave him a share of the land. My dad and Tate set him up all so they could strengthen their position if your grandad died and left the land to you instead of Kincaid.”
“That piece of shit.” Dean wipes his hand down his face, anger radiating off him.
“I confronted my father, and we started arguing. There was a lot of yelling to the point where Eden locked herself in the bathroom. Mom tried to break Dad and me apart, and things just—” Bile rises in my throat, and I swallow it down. I press my hand to my stomach. “He punched a hole in the wall. He’d never been physical with us before, but he would throw things sometimes. And when I tried to run, he reached out to stop me. Mom got between us right as I went to push him away. I didn’t realize she was right there, and I didn’t see we’d moved to the top of the staircase.”
Tears stream down my cheeks as the room starts to spin. I can barely see through the tears as Dean cups the sides of my face.
“I was the one who pushed her down the stairs. I didn’t mean to. It all happened so fast that I couldn’t catch her before she fell. When she hit that last step, I heard it. Her head hit too hard. She died at the hospital, but she was gone long before that. It was an accident. I swear—”
“Willa.” He pulls me to him.
