“No,” he retorted, walking right up to her, towering over her, doing his best to intimidate her. “No, Amanda, no. It’s too late. It has been for years. I’m not telling my family and I’m not telling my friends just so you’ll feel better. I’m doing fine the way I am, and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Doing fine. You work yourself into exhaustion with your horses because it’s the only thing you think you can do. You can’t go visit your family and you can’t date anybody for fear that they’ll find out. You can’t read a paper or a book, and I have the feeling that you’ve never even seen Grayboy compete because you’re afraid of being lost in a strange town. Are you fine, Jake?”
“Don’t, Amanda,” he commanded, knowing he was teetering on the edge and hating her for it. Hating himself more than he ever had, even with all the practice he’d had. “Don’t push.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” she asked, hands clenched and white, her face so drawn Jake wanted to help her somehow. “I love you. I know what you’re going through, and I want to help you do something about it.”
He took her by the shoulders, fought the urge to shake her, to drag her to him and kiss her senseless, to take her back to that bed one last time and pretend she’d never found out and it could still be the way it was the last time.
“It had to be you,” he said, dying in pieces with the feel of her in his hands, with the sight of those liquid green eyes. “It had to be you who found out the truth about me. About what I am.”
Sudden outrage flashed in her eyes. “And just what are you, Jake? Are you human? Are you a man who’s done his best?”
“I’m illiterate, Amanda,” he snapped, his voice as hard as his words. “I’m a failure. You, of all people, should know. You got out. You fought your way past a childhood that makes mine seem likeLeave it to Beaverin comparison. You’re an author, for God’s sake. A teacher with degrees from some of the most important universities in the country. What do you think that makes me?”
Jake wasn’t sure what to expect. He didn’t expect Amanda to start cursing at him. Cursing at him in language he’d rarely even heard out in the corral. Her eyes snapped fire, and her hands hit her hips, and she pulled herself right out of his grasp.
“A failure?” she spat, now truly worked up. “How dare you, Jake Kendall? Howdareyou call yourself a failure for sacrificing everything you wanted in your life just so your family could survive? My God, do you think you had a choice? You were only seven when your father started pulling you out of school to try and help around the ranch. Seven! It was all you could do to help your family keep the title to the land, much less see your little sisters and brother to school. But damn it, you did it. You worked so hard that you’re a legend in the entire state, turning a failing, nearly bankrupt cattle ranch into the most respected horse ranch in the West. And you did it alone, even with the handicap of not being able to read. You did it so well that you put your sisters and brother through some of those same universities all by yourself so they could be what they wanted. And along the way you gave ex-convicts a second chance, and old drunks who didn’t have any place else to go. You saved them, you made them productive, and you call yourself a failure?”
She cursed again, sharp and succinct. “Sure as hell redefines the term failure in my book.”
“How did you know about that?” Jake demanded.
“About José and Clovis?” she retorted. “Don’t be silly. People have been dying to talk about you from the minute I set foot on this ranch. Whether you want to believe it or not, you great big stupid oaf, there are a lot of people around here who care for you.”
God, if only it were that easy. If only Jake could simply announce, By the way, I haven’t been able to read all these years. Everybody be patient with me while I catch up.
But he knew better.
He knew better.
“Amanda,” he said, “I’ve worked my whole life to gain the reputation I have in this town. To finally amount to something-”
“Amount to—”
“Shut up, Amanda. You grew up on a poor farm. You know what that’s like. What it was like for me was that it wasn’t until I snagged Grayghost that people finally stopped calling me ‘that poor Kendall boy.’ I grew up with the pity of this town, because of the ranch, because of my father, because that’s the way they’d always thought of the Kendalls. Just a little touched because they wouldn’t give in to the inevitable and either sell the ranch or turn it into a tourist concern.” He held her hard in his gaze, not letting her shirk his intent. “That look is burned in my memory worse than the sight of my daddy dead out in the barn, or the first time I tried to do business and couldn’t read a contract. That look is what propelled me all these years. Now that I’ve finally broken free of it, I’m not going back.”
“But Jake—”
“It’s not something you can do in the privacy of your own home, Amanda,” he challenged. “And I can’t afford to do it any other way.”
God knew, he’d tried. He’d tried to understand the kids’ books, to pick apart letter sounds that made no sense, to understand how to put them together. He’d fought, late at night, with those books, while everyone else had been asleep. But in the end, he’d had nothing to build on. Not even the memories of a schoolteacher’s interest, because all the teachers had known he was that poor Kendall boy and just figured he was a lost cause.
Well, he was.
“I’m not doing it,” he told her. “Not now, not ever.”
“Because you’re the only grown man in the world who can’t read?” she challenged yet again. “Well, let me tell you, pal. One out of every five adults in this country can’t read. And it’s not their fault, it’s the system’s fault. One out of five. Heck, you probably know somebody else in Lost Ridge who can’t read.”
He went rigid, pushed to the limit, the hurts too old and too deep to reason with. “Don’t preach to me, Amanda,” he demanded. “It’s not going to change things. I’m not doing it.”
“Even for me?” she asked. “Even if I helped?”
Jake sighed. He ached to take her back in his arms, to wallow in the silky sea of her hair. To make everything, everybody, just disappear. “Not even for you, Amanda.”
