“It’s okay to call it like it is.” I shrug like it’s not a big deal because I want her to know she doesn’t need to hold it in. There’s no one here but this cowboy and a bunch of chickens, and we sure as hell prefer the truth.
Veda bites down on her fat bottom lip, and my desire curls inside my stomach, but I tell myself to chill. She doesn’t know how much power she has over me.
“Do you know what? He is an asshole.” She shakes her head. “It’s hard for me to criticize him for something, but—”
“Come on,” I whisper. “He can’t hear you from here. Tell me what’s the biggest assholey thing he ever did.”
She giggles and thinks about it for a moment before nodding when she finds the right memory. “I’ve never had a birthday cake.”
“Really?” My eyebrows lift. This is not where I thought she was going.
“Yeah. He refused to get me a gluten-free one growing up, and I always had to watch everyone having cake on my birthday while I couldn’t.”
I blink, perplexed, and all she does is smile. “That was an asshole move.”
“Sweetheart…” I shake my head. “Asshole doesn’t actually cover it.”
I can tell my honesty pleases her. The chickens are happy too, so I let them be and lead Veda out of the coop and to the right-hand trail leading to the golden acre. It’s beautiful this time of day, and I want her to see Wilde Ranch in all its glory. It’s not like I’m trying to entice her to stay here forever. Please, I only met the woman.
The lie echoes inside my head, but I push it aside.
“Can I ask about your parents?”
She lifts a shoulder. “You can, but there’s not much to know. I never knew my mother. All I know is that she got involved with my father, but she didn’t want me, so she gave me up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I hurt for her. I’m so close to my family. I can’t believe she didn’t have this.
“It’s okay. Grandpa said she wasn’t fit to be a mother, so she left me with my grandparents and went back to Brazil, where she’s from.”
I don’t trust old St. James to be making decisions of who is fit to be what, but I keep that particularly dark thought to myself. She doesn’t needallmy truths.
“What about your father?”
“He was young when he had me. He was never in my life much. He married my stepmom and had a few kids, but I only met them once. I was kept apart.”
“That sounds like an asshole move too.” I try to control the anger in my voice, but I know she hears it. Her smile is soft, and she shakes her head as if she needs to soothe me.
“I never really cared about any of them. Grammie took care of me. She raised me good. But I lost her when I was ten.”
She delivers her story with a matter-of-fact tone that throws me off. So much sorrow, yet she doesn’t look sad while telling me about the deaths in her family. If anything, she looks numb, as all these disappointments are just facts of life. It’s insane to think. One of my grandfathers died a few years ago, and I cried like a baby for far longer than I thought I would. I don’t think it’s anything with her, though. It’s not her fault that she had to get thicker skin to survive.
“I’m sorry you’ve been through so much.”
She shakes her head, looking at the trail rather than back at me. “I don’t think I’ve been through so much. It’s better to love and lose than never love at all, right? I was just never really given a chance to do the whole love part.”
Love doesn’t come when permission is given. It’s not because people didn’t stay with her that she didn’t wish they had or that she didn't stop loving them. I don’t say those things out loud. Something tells me that I’m treading in murky waters.
Her words might come off as indifferent, but I know better. Her eyes are always focused somewhere, her hands closed in a fist. It’s a self-defense mechanism. She’s not ready to see people in her life as they are because she doesn’t have anything better.
It’s a dangerous place for an Omega, and it makes it obvious that Veda was neglected in many different ways. She’s been suppressed, knowingly or not. The anger pulses against my breastbone, but I swallow it down. She’s not ready to sit down with the hurt of what her family did to her, and it’s not my place to say anything.Not yet.I don’t want to put her in a position where she has to calmmedown. It’s not right.
“Come on.” I stamp a smile on my face and take her hand in mine. “I want to show you something.”
We make our way beside the barn, and finally, we can spot the golden acre along the trail. The sun hits it just right, and like this, it looks like a painting. Veda gasps, lips parting in awe, and I puff my chest as if this is all my doing. She needed something pretty, and this is the perfect distraction.
“Oh god,” she whispers, her voice full of wonder, and for a second, I think I did something right.
Her eyes shine with unshed tears, her face scrunches into something, and I see how wrong I am. She’s obviously not as impressed as I thought she would be. The panic is written on my face, but before I can ask what’s wrong, she swallows all her feelings and waves my concern away.
