Chapter 19 #2
She looked ashamed, but not of him. Of herself. “We withheld his inheritance and his access to the family money. He wouldn’t get the ranch unless he ended it.”
The words rang in my head like a cruel bell. He’d lost everything, his marriage, the child he’d thought was his, and a friend, and his family had pushed him to let it all burn. I swallowed hard, bile creeping up my throat. I swallowed it down with more wine.
All this time, I’d thought Trent was just grumpy, dry, emotionally unavailable, and annoyingly stoic. A man who’d chosen loneliness. I’d had no idea that he’d been gutted.
I drained my glass, torn. Claira quickly refilled my wine all the way to the brim again before she pushed the glass back toward me.
“He was willing to give it all up for puppy love,” she said softly.
“Savannah was the one who eventually pulled the plug on the whole thing when Trent’s money started drying up.
She’d bled him dry and then she moved right on.
Divorced him and married her affair partner, who’s now quite wealthy after investing all that money Trent gave her. ”
Her lip curled ever so slightly. “Last I heard, they moved to Florida. Boca, I think. Trent eventually got the marriage annulled. There’s no record of it. Only whispers.” She sighed. “It’s been so long now. Ten years or so.”
She kept talking, telling me something about how Trent had never brought another woman home after that, how he’d poured his heart into the ranch, but her voice began to fade out, her words blurring into each other as my heart sprinted.
A baby. A marriage. Betrayal. Public humiliation. Financial ruin. A mother forcing her son to let a child go. A woman who used him, hollowed him out, then threw him away.
Trent. Oh, Trent.
So this was why he’d barely been able to look at Savannah last night and why he’d shut down the second I’d mentioned her. He’d done everything right and it’d backfired in the most catastrophic way.
I felt sick. After finishing my wine, I stood up and managed a small, probably watery smile. “I think I need to get some air. I’m not used to drinking this early. Thank you for breakfast, Claira.”
She lifted her glass to me in response. “Any time, honey.”
As I practically stumbled out her back door, I saw her sink down at the kitchen table, a faraway look on her face and her glass clutched in her hand. The heat hit me like a wall when I stepped outside, but it wasn’t enough to burn off the knot of anger tightening in my chest.
I walked and walked, rage building with each step until it was blooming beneath my skin, ugly, hot, and protective. How could someone do that to him? How could she take all that good, all that softness he hid, and twist it until it broke?
Unintentionally winding up at the stables, I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t move, so when I saw the tack room unlocked, one of the gentler geldings already saddled from earlier chores, I didn’t even think.
I just went for him, grabbing the reins with trembling fingers, my chest so tight it was like the air itself resented me. I led him out of the stall, whispering apologies I didn’t even know were for him, Trent, or myself.
“Charlotte.” Trent’s voice cracked through the barn like a whip. “Horse theft is still a hanging offense in Texas.”
My whole body went rigid, but I turned slowly. Trent stood in the aisle with his hat in his hand, damp with sweat from work, but his eyes were laser focused on me. I knew what he must be looking at, that my face was probably flushed and contorted with the rage pounding through my veins.
“What are you doing?” he asked slowly. “And what’s wrong?”
Everything. Everything is wrong. My voice wouldn’t come out, though.
He stepped closer, a lot gentler this time. “Charlotte? I was kidding about the hanging. I mean, it’s a real law, but I know you’re not stealing Chili Pepper.”
For some reason, maybe because I knew what he’d survived or because I’d been walking a tightrope of feelings I didn’t understand, I snapped.
“I’m furious, that’s what’s wrong!” I exploded, the words ripping out of me before I could stop them. “Absolutely livid.”
“Livid?” Those blue eyes widened a fraction. “At who?”
“You!” I hurled the word at him like it might land and shatter on the floor. “I’m mad at you, Trent.”
He stared at me like I’d spoken a language he didn’t understand, his chest rising and falling a little faster and his jaw tightening, but he didn’t yell back and he didn’t interrupt. Somehow, that just made me angrier.
Every moment we’d shared burned with white-hot meaning after I’d found out what had happened in his past, but maybe it was just me. Savannah had broken his heart once upon a time, and for minute there, I’d hoped the damage hadn’t been irreparable.
But now, as he stared at me with those blue eyes blazing and his hands sliding into the pockets of his dusty jeans, I had to wonder.
Was all the chemistry between us nothing more than a figment of my imagination?
Was he even capable of feeling anything for a woman anymore, and if he was, was that woman still Savannah?
Did he still love her and did anybody else even stand a chance?
Right now, I honestly didn’t even know, but I was determined to find out.