“Maybe it’s the exact right time for you to have a complication. Did you ever think about that? What have you ever done for yourself?”
“A lot of things. I went and made a name for myself in the rodeo, for myself. I earned a ton of money for myself. I’m building this place partly for myself,” Cody said.
“I don’t believe any of that. You’ve done it for us. And if she’s something that makes you happy…”
He snorted. “Happy isn’t the right word.”
It wasn’t. It was intense. He didn’t have time for intense.All the intensity he could possibly bear already came from inside him.
He couldn’t add anything else. Not now. Not ever.
The reality was, he was deeply aware of all the things he had done for his siblings.
The most selfish thing he had done was go off to the rodeo. Traveling half the year when Lila was still young. Then later, trading off with Walker as best he could.
But the reality was, even while he was being selfish, he had the pressing concerns of a parent. Because that was the position he’d been put in with his siblings.
He had been the one who was responsible for them. The one who was responsible for keeping them… On track. For making sure Lila didn’t become their mother, for making sure Walker didn’t make women like his mother.
For making sure that they didn’t make the kinds of mistakes that would determine the course of their life forever when they were only teenagers.
And it didn’t matter if he went off on his own, it didn’t matter that they got older, nothing could take away those worries. The sense of responsibility.
Nothing.
Everything felt like it carried so much weight, because it always had.
He was the oldest, and he had always felt like it was up to him to determine the course of everything.
Here they were now, on the cusp of everything being fine forever. Okay, that was simplistic. There was no way they could ever trust that a place like this would just run on its own. But they were making progress. He was as sure as he could be that he had set his family up to be taken care of.
Now Walker had said that he couldn’t get rid of the nagging sensation that he needed something for himself.
Not for everyone. Just for him.
He looked up, across the barn, and Marlowe’s eyes caught his and held. His stomach went tight, his body going hard.
Yeah. Not happening. He had royally messed that up.
“I don’t know. You seem obsessed,” Walker said.
“Obsessed isn’t a good thing,” Cody said. “You and I both know that.”
That wordobsessedspurred him to look up again, but Marlowe wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t in the barn at all.
That should be a relief. It wasn’t. He was consumed by the thought that she might have left with someone else. And then just with the fact that she wasn’t there anymore.
But he was committed to staying the whole rest of the night.
It wasn’t only the employees who were there. There were people from town, businesses they wanted to partner with.
He had to grit his teeth and smile while people talked to him who had hated him only ten years ago.
He shook hands with Bob Carey, whose daughter Addison was having her wedding here at the ranch in a few months, and who had tormented Walker mercilessly in high school. Both he and Walker managed to be nice and kind and pretend they didn’t know that if someone in school was mean to them, it was because their parents were the original shit-talkers who had set the stage.
“How is Addison?” Walker asked, tapping his beer bottle.
“She’s about to announce her candidacy for mayor,” Bob said. “The election will be after the wedding, of course, but she’ll be very busy in the run-up to both. She’s marrying Alan March. His family owns the golf course in Sun River.”
