Of course, he didn’t. He saw his mom, desperate and sad, depressed, always being denied what she wanted. She probably never went out in public with his father. And he hadn’t decided that one could save him. That was the difference between the two ofthem.
“I’m glad you think I’m fun,” she said. “Really.”
They paid for the hardware and got back into the truck. She was still turning over the conversation as they got out onto the main highway and headed back toward Painted Ridge.
“I believed that a relationship could save me,” she said, “because I thought that the glue of a family unit was the thing that was missing from my childhood. I thought it was what made my life difficult. So, I thought that if I could just make a family of my own, it would fix everything.”
“Oh?”
“I just wanted to tell you that because I understand why you didn’t know that a relationship could have happy moments. Because you didn’t see one. And neither did I, but I still… I don’t know if it’s because of princess propaganda or what, I still kind of bought into the idea that I needed a partner to save me. I really didn’t think of it that way. I have always felt like I was independent. But also, underneath it all, I felt like my marriage was the thing that made my life stable. Like it was evidence that I was different than my parents.”
“Well, your mom left. She gave up on your dad. My mom never did. So even though I didn’t see a dysfunctional relationship, what I saw was this grim determination to stick something out that just didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty. I knew that a relationship, love, wasn’t going to save anybody.”
How grim. She wondered if that was what she was supposed to learn from her divorce.
No. Not quite that. Maybe a relationship hadn’t saved her. Hadn’t made everything okay. But that didn’t mean that love wasn’t real.
Love that was something other than the kind of toxic love Cody’s mother had for his father. Love that was something other than the love that had existed between herself and Aiden. Love that was more about claiming stability than actually claiming the person.
She was here, standing on her own two feet, proving that she didn’t need love to survive, but she felt like she really wanted it. Like she still believed in it.
She felt like she could use it. And that it wouldn’t kill her. Not having it. Not losing it.
Because she had been through a lot. And she had gotten herself here. In praise of the girl that she had been, she had to look around, at the scenery, at Cody, and give thanks for all the strength that she had carried the whole time.
Maybe she’d had some wrong ideas about how she was going to survive, but she had survived.
Even her marriage to Aiden had been part of that survival, and she couldn’t even fully regret it.
It had brought her here.
Maybe it had been a necessary step on the path to her reaching… self-actualization? She wasn’t entirely sure.
But she felt okay. She felt strong. She felt like she knew what love was, and that it was real. She could see it, and the people all around her. And Cara choosing to stick with her, even though Aiden was her brother. And Cody, choosing to care for his siblings, even though no one had ever modeled that kind of care for him.
In the way Walker worked to fill in the things that Cody wasn’t good at, the way that Zane built shelves, even though he didn’t want to talk to anybody, but felt a bond with the Grayson family all the same.
The way that Nolan and Lila bickered, because they knew how to poke each other, knew exactly who each other was. Even if their relationship was antagonistic.
In the way that Cody had gone up to Painted Ridge and looked down at the ranch that could never be his, and set his intentions on it.
“How did you become a cowboy, Cody?”
“I got a job on a ranch,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I… because I felt like I should’ve been a cowboy. And if my dad had acknowledged us, I would’ve been. And it was another thing I decided he didn’t get to take from me. So, I took a job on a ranch, I met up with some old, crusty retired bull riders, and I started pursuing getting into the rodeo.”
She wanted to hug him. Not just him right now. The boy that he had been. The one who tried so hard to give everyone the best life possible, even himself, even in that way. But what about his heart? He didn’t think that he could have love. Not love outside of his family.
Or maybe… Maybe it just felt like a burden, after so many years of caring for people, she could understand that.
It just made her horribly sad.
Because he deserved more. He deserved better. He deserved everything.
Well, she was going to cook him some pasta.
