“And nothing’s changed.”
A storm of rage was swirling in my gut, and the longer I stayed, the worse it got. What the hell was I thinking, coming home? I should have stayed in New York. With or without a job, it probably would have been better than coming home to this crap.
Why I expected him to change, I didn’t really know. The old man had always felt the need to pick on me for everything. Hell, I couldn’t remember a time in my life when he was actually proud of me. He didn’t even come to my college graduation. There was too much work on the farm to do.
And I could see now that nothing was going to change him.
“Is there anything you like about me?”
“Ryder, your father loves you!” my mother gasped.
But I didn’t look away from the man’s cold eyes. I wasn’t sure why he couldn’t just be happy for me. Why couldn’t he just tell me he was proud or ask if I needed anything?
“You ran away when things got tough, and now you’re running away again,” he said, leaning forward.
“I ran away from you and this ranch to go to college,” I said slowly. “I came home because I wanted a change of pace.”
“You wanted to leave your troubles behind!”
I laughed at the hilarity of it all. “You’re pissed when I leave, and now you’re pissed I came home. I can’t please you. I never could!”
I shoved out of my seat and headed for the door. This was a mistake. Everything about coming home was turning out to be even worse than staying in New York.
“That’s right! Run away!” my dad shouted as I stormed out of the house.
“Ryder!” my mother called after me. “Ryder, stop!”
As angry as I was, I never could deny my mother anything. And when she told me to stop, I damn well stopped. Reining in my anger, I turned around and faced the woman who was always on my side.
“Don’t leave.”
“Mom, I need to get away.”
“I mean, don’t leave again,” she whispered, her chin quivering as tears shimmered in her eyes. “I know you want to go back to New York, and I have no right to ask you to stay, but?—”
“Mom,” I sighed, glancing off in the distance. “I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. I just can’t sit in that house and listen to his bullshit.”
“It’s not his fault,” she whispered.
Yeah, I had heard all this before. “You can’t keep making excuses for him, Mom.”
“You don’t know what it was like for him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snapped, already losing my temper. “What he went through is not an excuse for him to treat me like shit.”
“You—” She choked on a gasp. “You just look so much like him.”
I knew that. And fuck, I really hated that.
“How much longer do you want me to pretend that anything I do will ever be good enough for him? When is he going to look at me and see the person I am instead of some ghost?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly.
My gaze dropped to the ground as I struggled to say the one thing I had wanted to say to her since I was a kid. But it was past time for my father’s anger to drive all my decisions in life. If I wanted to move on, I had to stop letting my mother’s feelings get the better of me.
“I’m your son.”
“I know?—”
