Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tenor
I set my laptop on the conference room desk and slumped into my chair.
Teller was at the head of the table, watching me. “Who pissed in your Wheaties?”
I grunted and flipped the computer open.
Teller steepled his fingers, his attention on me, but I ignored him.
For two nights, I’d barely slept. Yesterday, I hadn’t talked to anyone. I was grateful Cruz and Lane were still out of town. I could do chores in the morning by myself. The horses and goats didn’t ask why I was in a shitty mood when I threw their flakes of hay over the fence. The chickens liked being spoiled by me, but otherwise ignored me, and that was just fine.
Tate and Summer entered. I didn’t have to look up. The tension in the air was palpable. I could practically hear them glancing back and forth, communicating with their expressions, but I didn’t care.
The numbers on my screen got blurry. I took my glasses off and scrubbed my hand down my face. I was such a creature of habit that the lack of sleep was making me loopy. I’d been at work for hours and caught myself staring at my startup screen for the first hour I’d been in the office.
I didn’t look up when Wynter and Autumn entered.
The room was quiet, but the weight of their gazes crushed me.
Teller’s chair squeaked as he sat forward. “Wanna dial Junie in, Wynter?”
I sat back and folded my arms. My reports were at the beginning of the meeting. Nothing had changed and we were only in the beginning of the third quarter. Everything was on track and my updates would be short.
“He-ey,” a groggy Junie said from the phone in the middle of the table. “How’s it going?”
“Wild night?” Tate asked.
“Yes and no. We’re nearing the end of the tour and I’m about to drop. I’ll get a second wind and finish it out.” Her yawn came over the line. “The jet lag is brutal though. So what’s up with everyone?”
“We’re good,” Teller replied. “Except for Tenor.”
“Oh no.” The fatigue washed out of her voice. “What happened?”
My family was worried about me. I was ready to avoid their interference. I massaged my temples. “Bobby Morgan is Ruby’s dad.”
The immediate silence made me feel both better and worse. Also justified. Out of everyone, they knew what I’d been through because of that asshole. How it had affected future relationships. Their shock meant I was right to be disturbed.
So disturbed I had trashed everything with Ruby. “And I broke up with her.”
A variety of responses peppered the air. I caught some oh no s and some shit s.
“You broke up with Ruby because Bobby Morgan is her dad?” Tate asked, genuine confusion in his voice.
“Yeah,” I answered like it was fucking obvious why.
“But Ruby’s nothing like him,” Summer said. “ Nothing .”
I shrugged. “She’s his kid.”
Their uncomprehending stares rested on me.
“I get some of the worst behavior in my class,” Autumn said cautiously. “And sometimes when I meet their parents, they’re complete jackasses. But some are gentle souls who are struggling to parent a troubled child.”
“And?” My crankiness was ratcheting impossibly higher.
“Sometimes,” she continued, “I’ll have the sweetest kid and one of their parents is a nightmare. I just hope the kid has enough good influences in their life to stay sweet. Ruby is that kid who stayed sweet.”
“That’s not exactly my situation,” I said tightly.
“Then what ‘exactly’ is the problem?” Teller asked with a flippancy that made me want to run him down with the riding lawn mower.
Tate rested his arms on the top of the table. “Didn’t Bobby ditch her mom almost immediately?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“So Bobby didn’t raise Ruby?” Tate pressed.
“He had visitation from the way Ruby talked. He’s still an asshole too. We played tennis yesterday.”
“Bobby Morgan plays tennis?” Summer asked like she was scandalized.
Thankfully, he hadn’t played in high school, or I would’ve been out the one place I could escape him other than home. “Now he does.”
Tate grunted. “I can see why it’s a shock to you. Are they close?”
I lifted a shoulder. “She knows what he’s like. She loves him. He’s her dad.”
“So she doesn’t condone his behavior?” Wynter asked.
“I don’t need my twenty-five-year-old girlfriend standing up for me to her dad,” I snapped. I ground my molars together. Goddammit. I’d thought I was done with this humiliation.
Teller tapped his fingertips together. “Is it the twenty-five-years-old part that bothers you or the standing-up-to-her-dad-for-you part?”
“Both, I wager,” Tate said.
My teeth ached as I clenched. All of it. It wasn’t the age gap but the difference it represented. I was almost her dad’s age, still working for my family, still getting food from my mama, still painting my figures at my kitchen table. “It’s an issue for her dad, and as much as I fucking hate it, he’s important to her.”
Summer frowned. “Wasn’t he older than you?”
“Yes.” It was all semantics. “He’s technically older.”
“Like four years,” Tate added.
“That’s not scandalous,” Autumn said. “She can deal with Bobby, and she can probably deal with him better than anyone. You like her, Tenor. Really like her.”
I liked her a whole fucking lot. “She only thought she liked me.”
“Ruby has always struck me as a person who knows her own mind,” Wynter said. “So is it the age, or is that an easy excuse?”
I shifted in my chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one. “No.”
“Are you sure?” she asked softly.
Yes. No? “Her dad?—”
“Is a prick,” Teller said. “A giant asshat. But you’re giving him a whole lot of power over your life—again.”
“It’s not that,” I argued.
“Then what is it?” Summer asked gently. “Because you really liked her.”
“It was fake.” There. I’d confessed.
They stared at me. Teller rolled his goddamn eyes.
“What was fake?” Junie asked.
I had forgotten she was there, or there’d be more attention directly on me. I pulled at my collar. “When we first started dating, it wasn’t real. The woman who used to make Ruby feel like crap in school came into the bar. She happened to be with Ruby’s dick of an ex. They were the wedding we went to a couple of weeks ago.”
“But it wasn’t fake after the wedding.” Teller tapped his fingertips together.
He might think he was making a point, but he wasn’t. “We started out as a lie.”
“Sounds to me like you grabbed on to an excuse to date her,” Summer said.
Tate drew in a sharp breath. “And now he’s doing the same thing to end it.”
Summer nodded.
“What the hell?” Did any of my siblings have my back? I wasn’t happy about the breakup. My sleep had been shit, and all I’d thought about was that disbelieving and devastated look on Ruby’s face when I’d said we were done.
“We don’t blame you,” Wynter said, her tone full of sympathy. “You want to protect yourself.”
“It’s not that,” I snapped.
They all stared at me.
I slapped the lid of my laptop down. “I don’t need my girlfriend’s pity.” I stuffed my glasses back on my face. “I don’t need my twenty-five-year-old girlfriend and her mother to stand up for me. I don’t need them to fight for my right to paint fucking game pieces or get home-cooked food from Mama like I’m seventeen. I don’t need Ruby to defend her boyfriend who never went anywhere and got by in life thanks to his family name.”
The silence could’ve choked me.
“I see.” Summer was the first to speak. She had one leg crossed over the other under the table, bobbing her foot, a line of concentration bisecting her forehead. “It’s not Ruby or her dad. It’s how the whole situation made you feel.”
That damn pity I hated pulled at Autumn’s features. “You went back to being that kid who just stood and took it from Bobby. And the man who stayed on the high road after Katrina claimed you were an overgrown mama’s boy who lived in the basement.”
No one talked about how the high road was full of losers. The respect I’d thought I’d get being the bigger guy hadn’t been there. There were no awards for turning the other cheek. Sometimes you just got dick punched again.
“Well, if that’s what you think about yourself, I guess I’m the same.” Teller stretched back and slapped his stomach. “I’ve been eating Mama’s fried chicken and rice all damn week.”
“Scarlett made her breakfast burritos this morning,” Tate added. “Hell, we all live on land given to us by our parents. Is that what you think of us?”
“Before you say I don’t play games,” Teller said, “I have to admit to losing an hour every night on that new word game Jenna mentioned last week.”
“Oh!” Wynter poked her finger in the air. “That one—yes. I caught Myles playing that the other day. He played too long and didn’t get the lawn mowed before it rained.”
“Fine, I get the point,” I said through gritted teeth, hating to admit that what they said did make me feel better. We were a close family, but I couldn’t see behind their closed doors to what habits they spent their time on. But we all worked for the family’s companies and greedily accepted Mama’s food. “None of that changes how Bobby Morgan is a self-made man who sort of turned his life around on his own. He’s going to use that to undermine me to Ruby.”
“Is she worth it?” Junie asked. Ruby was worth everything. I didn’t answer, just glowered at the phone’s speaker. “Is she worth standing up to Bobby until death do you part?”
“We weren’t getting married,” I said.
“That’s not answering the question,” Teller retorted. He swept an arm in my direction. “Are you happier like this?”
I bit my tongue and glanced away.
“Is it really worth going home alone every night to never have to see Bobby again?” Summer asked.
They weren’t going to let up if I didn’t answer. “She loves her dad. I’m not going to ruin that relationship.”
“He would be the one doing that if he alienates her,” Autumn pointed out.
Tate shook his head. “Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s the possibility that she might listen to her dad and behave like Katrina. The worst of both worlds.”
Acid in my stomach churned. The breakfast sandwich I’d had hours ago was like gravel in my gut. “She’d never behave like Katrina.”
Ruby would never do that.
What if she realized how much better she could do? I’d rather make a break before it destroyed me completely.
The crack in my chest was enough of a death blow.
“Ah,” Teller said on an exhale. “But she could leave like Katrina. That’s the real fear. And with Bobby as her dad, that makes it all the more likely in that big brain of yours. You ran the risk calculation through some spreadsheet formula you designed and it wasn’t absolutely zero. So you bailed.”
His claim was a metal hoop around my chest, cutting off my breathing as if I was the barrel getting ready to be shelved for years. Had I done exactly what Teller claimed? “I don’t know,” I said woodenly.
“I bet she’s worth knowing for sure,” Autumn said, her voice gentle, like I was one of her distraught students.
“She’s worth everything,” I said without thinking first. Because of course Ruby would never hurt me on purpose. She wasn’t like her dad. Nor was she like any ex I’d ever had—except that she was an ex now. “I fucked up.”
The truth was choking me. I had epically jacked up any chance I had with her.
“It’s not too late,” Teller said. “All you have to do is talk to her?—”
“She claimed I was stringing her along. I destroyed her trust in me.”
“Seriously, Tenor,” Junie said, her tone chiding. “It’s not too late. Rhys ghosted me on purpose . Then he planned to just let me go. Again . And now I’m June Bee Kerrigan Kinkade.”
Wynter snorted. “Talk about ghosting. Myles ditched me a few times. Then I ditched him. He had to earn his way back.”
“Jonah wasn’t going to try.” Summer gave me a pointed look. “He thought he knew better for me.”
“Gideon left me,” Autumn added. “Though he never sent the divorce papers, so there was that.”
“I don’t have a breakup story,” Tate said, “but you guys had to buy me for Scarlett and I’d had plenty of opportunity to ask her out.”
Teller leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “You’re going to have to work for it. Contrary to what you might think, you haven’t had to do that before.”
He had no idea what he was talking about. “I’ve been dumped by every girl I dated.”
“They came to you,” Tate said, “and when they left, you let them go without a fight. You never had to work that hard.” I opened my mouth and he snapped his fingers. I pressed my lips together. “ Those were the pretend relationships. Those were not the real Tenor trying to woo a girl.”
“The real Tenor wooed Ruby,” Junie said. “Just like the real Tenor had better make sure she doesn’t leave Copper Summit over this. If I have to find another social media manager, I’m going to burn your house down with those paints you use.”
The rest of my sisters nodded along.
They came to you.
Ruby had practically cornered me. And when our term was up, she’d walked. I’d gone after her. Then I’d gotten complacent. One road bump, albeit a fucking significant one, and I’d bailed. She’d been willing to talk it out. She hadn’t stormed off, embarrassed that I was the kid her dad had teased for years. Before that, she hadn’t left even after I had alluded to everything my exes had found wrong with me.
From the way Ruby acted, my work ethic, my love for my family, and my tame, useless hobbies were positive qualities. She liked me more because of them. She was the best damn thing to ever have happened to me and I’d tossed her away like a blown tennis ball.
“The next move is yours,” Teller said lightly, but his gaze was level on me. “You gonna win your girl back?”
Ruby
I poked at my cold pasta. To be fair, only the marinara was cold. The pasta was lukewarm. My mom crunched on her lettuce salad next to me. She kept peeking at me out of the corner of her eye.
I put my fork down with a sigh. “You can say it.”
When she swallowed, she reclined in her chair. “Your dad is worried about you.”
“About me or about how I feel over the way he treated Tenor as a kid?”
“Mostly you, but I think he’s seeing more of the lasting repercussions his behavior had. He’s never been proud of how he acted when he was younger.”
At least she didn’t try to downplay what a wrench Dad and Tenor’s shared past had thrown into everything. As for Dad, I wasn’t answering his calls. I hadn’t expected him to care, but he’d been trying to call once a day. When I didn’t answer, he’d send a text telling me he wanted to talk.
I wasn’t interested in hearing what he thought about Tenor, and I was even less interested in listening to him justify himself. Dad likely wasn’t going to wax poetic about how he was a changed man.
“Tell him I’m fine.” I picked up my plate and took it to the sink.
Boxes lined the floor by the dishwasher. More were stacked in the hallway and the bedrooms. This weekend, I’d help Mom haul them to storage. Next week, she’d close on the house. Then it’d be just me in Bozeman. Me and my job. Dad would still be in Helena, but I wasn’t sure when I’d want to talk to him again.
“He’d rather hear that from you.”
“Yep.”
“I’m not defending him, honey. But he’s your dad, and you’re one of the few people who has gotten him to be honest with himself.”
“You mean when he declared he couldn’t be a dad full-time?” My irritation reached a breaking point. “How in the world did you fall for him anyway?”
I was lashing out, but I couldn’t stop. The release valve on my emotions would burst, and I couldn’t wait until tonight when I cried myself to sleep.
A weary exhale sounded behind me. I also couldn’t bring myself to turn around.
“He can read people so well,” Mom said. “That’s likely what made him such an effective bully. He’d expose other kids’ insecurities and tear them down without lifting a finger. It probably made it harder for teachers to do anything, and knowing Robert, the less Tenor did, the safer he felt picking on him.”
Knowing Tenor, he’d probably taken it so Dad wouldn’t pick on anyone else. Didn’t mean Dad’s behavior was excused, or that it hadn’t affected Tenor long term.
“It’s reading people,” Mom continued, “that makes him charming. It’s why he’s so good at sales—when he can control his mouth,” she muttered. “I was like you. Overlooked. Bookish. An older football player giving me attention? I didn’t have a chance.”
I grunted and slid open the cabinet the garbage was in. Dumping my uneaten pasta inside, I refused to think about how good Mae’s lasagna would be right now.
I could see Mom’s point. Wasn’t that how I’d been with Brock? He had said the right things to seduce me, and then he had torn me down in a few words. But he had a stand-up job and, ugh, had played football in school. He’d given me attention and I’d continued going back.
“Like mother, like daughter,” I said sullenly. “Brock probably would’ve left me if I had gotten pregnant too.”
“You want to know why I never badmouthed your dad to you and why I encouraged a relationship between you two?”
Finally, I turned around. I hugged my arms around myself. “Why?”
“Other than because he wanted to be in your life when not many guys his age would’ve wanted that?” She gave me a pointed look. “Because he told me he didn’t have his shit together and he didn’t want to raise a kid who’d fail his or her way through school. He told me he’d get a job and make money, and someday, he could help financially, but he’d, in his words, ‘be a shit dad.’”
“His self-awareness is impressive,” I said impassively.
“I guess I thought so when I was seventeen. He’d at least said he’d sort of stick with me when my own parents hadn’t.”
I stared at the ceiling. None of this was Mom’s fault. I might make Dad self-reflect, but not enough to keep from insulting Tenor last Sunday. “The thing is, I’m sick of guys like Dad. They’ll tell me they’re going to do better, treat me better, and then they don’t.”
She turned in her chair, crossed one leg over the other, and put her hands around her knee. “Is that what Tenor did?”
“Yes.” I sniffed. “Sort of.”
When she didn’t speak, I dropped my arms and trudged back to the table. She’d also been messaging me to ask how I’d been doing since Sunday. When I had told her Tenor and I were over, she’d proposed dinner. I’d known she’d want to talk and I hadn’t backed out. I might as well talk.
“He never really committed. I should’ve seen the pattern. Everything was on his terms, and I went along with it, oblivious.”
“On his terms, or did you two just have similar interests?”
I scowled. “According to him, we don’t have the same interests. He didn’t bother coming to Bozeman to see how I live.”
She rolled her lips in. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So he’d come to Bozeman and you’d take him to your favorite bar?”
My frown deepened. “I don’t have one.”
“Your favorite hiking trail?”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“The movie theater that you don’t go to because why pay that amount when you can just wait and watch the movie in pajamas? The coffee shop you don’t read at because it’s too loud? My house when I’m never home?”
“He didn’t want to meet you guys in the first place.”
“Ugh.” A shudder went through her. “Meeting the parents is the worst part of dating.”
“Is that why you broke things off with Daniel? He wanted you to meet his parents?” Did I date people like my mom? I didn’t... Did I?
“He wanted to quit the trail and expected me to drop out too.” She scoffed like I should understand how audacious the request was. “All that planning and he wanted me to quit.”
Tenor would never let me leave a trail alone and injured.
My heart wrenched and I rubbed my sternum.
She pushed a lock of fine hair behind her ear. “Too bad Tenor didn’t want to see your reading nook.”
“I read in bed.”
She lifted a brow.
Point taken. “It wasn’t just that. He just never committed. I know it was new but, like, I felt something. Like we really had a connection. I was all in and he had one foot out the door the whole time.”
“You two didn’t date long.”
“Felt like I’d been with him for forever. Like we were two old souls who’d finally found each other. And then he just calls it quits. Because of my dad. Nothing I could’ve done. He just dropped me.” A hot tear rolled down my cheek. I swiped at it. “I felt less important to him than I ever did to the others.”
“Oh, hon.” She rose and enveloped me in a giant mom hug that nearly choked off my air supply. “I really am sorry. You should expect the best treatment from your partner, but I can’t help but wonder how watching me date and being around your dad hasn’t helped you. Lord knows, I don’t weather any conflict in a relationship well.”
“Dad was your first experience and you learned you couldn’t count on him. Yet it’s like you’re still waiting on him.”
Surprise mixed with dismay in her expression. “We’re connected, and despite his rough edges, he’s the only guy who hasn’t asked me to change who I am. He just rolls with whatever I want.” She leaned back. “But his hard personality made you too tolerant of assholes. If you think Tenor fits in that category, then I’ll trust your intuition.”
Tenor was not like Dad.
My dad hadn’t given up on me.