Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Madison
I fluttered around Flatlanders. The bar was lined with sandwiches and snacks—chips, dessert bars, and light salads. Scarlett had made a few pitchers of lemonade. I wouldn’t be testing our payment system or mixing drinks, but I was grateful I had a place to send off Mom.
Teller was my shadow. He’d be chatting with his siblings and in-laws one second and then at my side the next, making sure I was doing all right and getting what I needed.
My gaze continued straying to the door. Tension rode over my shoulders and down my spine, an unwelcome shawl on a stifling hot day.
Mae took post behind the bar, looking at home chatting with her daughters on the other side. She’d probably worked the tasting room at Copper Summit a time or two. Maybe I could hire her so I could get away from town.
No. That was the shock of seeing Damien and Wendi. Of my nephew looking at me like he was going to run. He was just a kid and this had to be a confusing time. He’d lost his dad earlier this year and then a grandma he hadn’t known well. I was his only family on the Townsend side. How was Damien’s family treating him? I hadn’t been good enough for a daughter-in-law. How would they handle not only another man’s son but the son of the guy Wendi had cheated on to be with Damien?
A wicked part of me hoped they accepted Logan and gave Wendi the same shit attitude they’d given me. If they treated her like she was some unrefined peasant with relatives she should be ashamed of, well, I’d sleep a little better at night.
I brushed a tendril of hair off my face. “What can I get you?” I asked Lane. His lemonade glass was empty. I wasn’t serving alcohol, but the soda fountains worked.
“Not a thing,” Lane said. “But you can let me help clean up.”
“I have nothing else to do.” The saving grace of the last week had been my job. It’d worn me out enough to sleep during the day after my shift.
I should’ve scheduled Mom’s service for Thursday or Friday, but I’d wanted it over with. I’d wanted to put it behind me so I could figure out how to live without her. I’d been doing everything to care for her and now my future only included Flatlanders. The house was sold. The money was in escrow. This place was my last tie to my family. Except for my nephew. I peered out the window.
A BMW was parking a few spaces down from the entrance.
I lifted my gaze to Teller. He watched me, his jaw hard. His eyes asked me if I was ready.
I didn’t know. Were you ever ready to speak to your ex and the woman he’d cheated on you with? The love I’d felt for him had evaporated like raindrops in the sun, but the betrayal was there. The reminder that I hadn’t been good enough. Yet with Teller, it was all dulled. I nodded and brushed my hands down my skirt.
I was almost to the entrance when they walked in. The room didn’t go silent, but the conversation around me fell to a murmur.
Wendi entered first, then Damien right behind her with his hand on her back. Logan clung to Damien’s leg.
Good thing I had weeks of history with Teller, or that would’ve wrenched open the break in my heart. I had wanted kids, Damien had insisted we keep waiting, and here he was, with someone else’s.
I pushed it all away. Damien was a different life. I’d been a different person. At the moment, I almost believed it. “Hey,” I said. “Thanks for coming. It would’ve meant a lot to Mom.”
They both gave me dubious expressions, but I shrugged it off. Wendi’s brows drew together as she took in everyone, and she shrank against Damien. The bar contained more Baileys than there’d been when she and Teller had dated. The sisters were all married now, and the guys too, except for Lane and Cruz. She probably only knew of them from before she’d moved out on Scott.
Teller came up behind me and put his hand on the small of my back. Damien drew himself up straighter, but he’d never be the height or width of Teller.
“There are still plenty of places to sit,” I said.
Wendi gave her head a little shake. “When is the paperwork getting taken care of? Riley’s at the old salon a few doors down. I told her we’d pop in and sign whatever we needed to. Shouldn’t take long, right?”
“Excuse me?”
Wendi jutted her pointy chin out as if to prompt me.
I blinked. A “fuck” escaped Teller’s mouth.
“The will reading?” she said like duh?
My stomach churned. Of course. Why had I thought she’d come for any other reason? They weren’t here to pay their respects. Their body language and tone should’ve warned me, but I had hoped for the best. At what point would that personality trait be stomped out of me?
“What will?” My volume was louder than I’d intended, and she and Damien stiffened. Teller’s hand was a heating pad at my back. Will reading? What the hell did she think Mom had to leave behind? “Mom didn’t have a will.”
Wendi paled, then flushed as realization sank in. “Your mom had nothing?”
“Since you contested everything about Scott’s will and trust, I’d think you’d know better than anyone else,” I said tightly. Dad had left everything to Scott. What had been Scott’s was now mine.
“Nothing?” Her voice went up an octave.
I wanted to ask if she regretted not staying with Scott so she could’ve bled him absolutely dry, but I pushed the cattiness back. I was not my mother.
“No,” I said carefully. “She had her clothes in the home and an old chair. You’re welcome to that.”
She drew back. “And the house sale? Where is all that going to go?”
I had no clue anymore. I couldn’t comprehend that much money. But I did know that I didn’t owe Wendi an explanation. “That’s my business.”
“Just like this shithole?” she snapped.
This time, I flinched.
“That’s a bad word,” Logan said. Wendi pursed her lips and her gaze jumped between me and Teller.
His heat seeped into my side. “We’re not doing this here. You can talk to her through her lawyer.”
I soaked in his strength. He wasn’t censuring me, and I reveled in the aghast expression on Wendi’s face that he’d kick her out.
“Wendi, we should go,” Damien said quietly. “Riley’s waiting?—”
“Shut this bar down.” She wasn’t done with her demands, and her snide tone was back. “Scott used it to drain every last cent from the family and ignore his son. I guess you’re going to do that as Logan’s aunt.”
Her manipulation was almost tangible, and Damien had the audacity to nod.
Teller was stiff at my side. “It’s time to lea?—”
“Mommy.” Logan tugged on his mom’s hand. “You said she isn’t my aunt.”
Wendi jerked like his words were a whip.
My anger escaped its confines. How dirty was that? “You told him I’m not?—”
“And you’re my real daddy.” Logan blinked his big eyes at Damien.
Damien’s clean-shaven cheeks paled. “Not now, kiddo.”
“Shit,” Teller breathed quietly, echoing my dawning horror.
“But I look like you,” Logan insisted. Now he was pulling on Damien’s hand. “Right, Daddy?”
Horrible awareness crept into my brain, slowly at first, then bashing down the door of my complete ignorance to reveal years of betrayal. “Oh my god.” I looked from the boy to my ex. Same small ears. Same narrow-set eyes. No wonder I’d never been able to see any of my brother in Logan. Outrage poured through my veins like an oil spill.
“How long?” My voice shook. Logan was four . How long was the affair?
Wendi sucked in a breath and exchanged a glance with my ex. It told me enough. Half my marriage? More? Did it matter?
“We should go.” She spun so fast her blond hair flew up. Damien gathered Logan in his arms and rushed out the door, Wendi hot on his heels.
The bar was quiet around me. Blood rushed between my ears and my heart rate crept higher. The wound I’d thought was healed ripped right open, only this time I hurt for my brother. For his loss. For the anguish he must’ve been in.
Teller faced me, cupping my face with a big, warm hand. “Madison, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”
I knew I didn’t, but hearing someone else say it was more than I would’ve asked for before the night of the auction. “I didn’t. Neither did Scott.”
God, had he known. If he learned the truth, he would’ve lost his mind— Oh. My. God.
My mouth dropped open. “The night of the accident. He knew.”
Shock filled Teller’s dark gaze before fury darkened his irises. “Goddammit.”
I needed answers. That was the least our shitty exes owed me. I pulled away from Teller’s comforting touch and slammed out the front door. He stayed on my heels, not leaving me to handle this alone.
Riley was on the sidewalk, hovering by an empty storefront two doors down with a For Sale sign. She’d have to get her sugar daddy to foot the bill since she’d lost the bid for Teller.
Her gaze widened when she saw me, and she waved Logan over. “Come on in. I have some cookies for you.”
To make my fresh wounds burn more, he went right to her and they disappeared inside the empty store. Damien and Wendi stood guard, a united front against me, like I planned to run in and tackle Riley and spirit Logan away or something.
“That’s why he snapped.” I marched closer. “Scott found out.”
The guilt that flashed through Wendi’s eyes recounted the whole story. I could see it playing out. The stools smashed into the mirror. The pool cue shards. The hammer against the booths. The shattered light fixtures. Scott had been angry, and he’d been so damn hurt.
Damien propped his hands on his hips. “Madison. You need to c?—”
“If you tell her to calm down,” Teller growled, menace dripping from each word, “you’re going to find out what I’m like when I’m very much not calm.”
Damien snapped his mouth shut.
Teller stabbed his finger at them. “You two have been lying and using Maddy and her brother for years. You can answer a simple question.”
Damien’s gaze turned hostile. “You know nothing about?—”
“You coerced her to quit school to support you.” People were stopping to listen to Teller’s voice carry across the sidewalk. “You manipulated her into working three jobs to pay for your law degree and then left her with half your debt in the divorce like a goddamn weasel.” His livid gaze bounced back and forth between then. “You each cheated on us. You both financially screwed Madison over, and you still had the audacity to keep the lie going to try and cheat her out of more money. You both are pathetic.”
When we’d been married, I’d have never talked to him that way. Turned out I didn’t have to now. Teller had my back.
“We’re not the pathetic ones,” Wendi sneered, her flinty gaze pinning me “Look at you. Charging out on the street acting like your mom.”
I laughed, bold and obnoxious. “My mom never lied about how she felt about people. You let Scott think he was Logan’s dad as long as it suited you.” Wendi’s eyes went wide and her gaze jumped around. There were plenty of onlookers. Maybe someone was even recording. I had zero fucks to give. “When did you tell him that Logan wasn’t his? When you got mad he was using the bar’s money to care for our mother? Would you have rather he put an old woman out on the street so you could, what? Take another trip to Cancun? Fund Damien’s golf trips?” I lifted my gaze to Damien. “Nice tan, asshole.”
“You’re nothing but Mad Maddy and you always will be,” Wendi shot back.
Tingles spread over my body, bringing warmth where cold rage touched.
Teller slid his arm around my waist. “She’s my Mad Maddy, and she’s fucking perfect.”
I liked that nickname now, dammit.
“I can’t believe this,” Wendi spat out. She crossed her arms. “You two? Tell me, Madison. Are you ready to work your entire life and career around him? Around his family that will always be more important than you?” She stabbed a finger in my direction. “You’ll never be his priority. People wondered why I left him for Scott. For all his faults, at least Scott had ambition. Until he moved me back to this godforsaken town to run that dive bar. I wasn’t going to get dragged back to Bourbon Canyon to...” She lifted her dainty chin. “To become just another bitter Townsend.”
I sucked in a breath. I didn’t feel like a bitter Townsend. I felt like I deserved retribution. After finding out how long I was manipulated, how narrow my life had been because of them, I wanted to explode out of my skin and float away. Teller was anchoring me, his strong arm banded around me, but her words burrowed under my skin.
How much would I have to tailor my life if I stayed with Teller? He showed me how much I deserved. He defended me. But how far did it stretch outside the borders of a town I had never wanted to return to?
Regardless, I had too much Townsend in me to let her get the last word. “At least I can walk around town with my head held high knowing exactly who I am. Everyone will look at both of you and wonder who you’re trying to lie, cheat, and steal from. You won’t even be able to look at each other and wonder just how far that trust is gonna go. I bet there’s already question.”
Damien’s jaw went tight. I hit a nerve. “Come on, Wendi. We’re done here.”
“That’s the only thing we can agree on,” Teller said, his voice hard. “Don’t ever come to Flatlanders again.”
Damien tugged on Wendi’s arm and they disappeared into the building Riley and Logan had gone into. The block was quiet. People had stepped out of the surrounding businesses to watch us. I was in public, but inside, I was empty.
That was it. I had no family. None. It was me and this damn bar.
I had Teller. But Wendi and her cutting words had hit the mark. Was she right? Were his feelings for me constrained to this small town? Was I restricted to a place that had never wanted me?
Tires squealed around the corner and a pickup roared down the street. Guys’ laughter spewed out an open window. Two teen boys leaned out the passenger windows, and a third popped out the rear window on the other side.
“Get fucked, Flatlanders!” They all tossed something.
Teller’s strong arms cinched around me, spinning us around, and he curled over me. Splats hit the front of the bar and the ground in front of me. Drops of red, blue, and yellow littered the sidewalk. Paint?
“Are you all right?” Teller asked, his worried voice in my ear.
“Yes.” No. I wasn’t fucking all right.
I had no family left. My marriage had been a sham longer than I’d ever known. And the town hated this bar. It did not want me to succeed.
I straightened just as the front door banged open. Cruz and Lane sprinted down the block, their boots striking the cement. Tate and Tenor were behind him. Tate had his phone to his ear.
“Red pickup. Dent in the rear fender,” Teller told him. “Four kids. I think the Blake kid was driving.”
Tate repeated the description into his phone.
I took in Flatlanders. The paint was already drying under the hot sun, staining the window and the brick around it. The sign above the door, the one I’d just had redone, dripped with garish red paint.
A choking sound left me. I tried to swallow my sob, but I hiccuped instead.
“Hey.” Teller tugged me into his embrace. “We’ll find who did this, and they’ll pay. We’ll get it cleaned.”
“It won’t matter.” I sounded hollow to my own ears. “Nothing matters.” My vision got blurry, then cleared when tears streaked down my cheeks. Teller tried to catch them, but they were falling too fast.
I broke out of his hold.
“It’ll be all right, Maddy.”
“No. It never is.” My chest was so heavy I could barely draw in a breath. “Don’t you see? It never is. It’s always fucked way before I ever realize.”
Teller was a great guy, but then what? Would my relationship be done way before I knew it? Would his family and the whole town know before me? Or worse, there was no other way to be with him without continuing to sacrifice the life I wanted for myself?
I shouldn’t let Wendi’s words taint what I’d built for myself, but she’d always had a way to hit where it hurt the most. And there was something or someone at the ready to cause pain.
“I’m done here.” Not just with the reception. I was done with trying. I was done with waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I was done with Bourbon Canyon and the shitstorms it had given me. I was done worrying about what happened next. “I’m done.”
Teller’s brows drew together and concern infused rough, handsome features. He’d sensed what I meant too.
Fear seized my heart. I couldn’t be done. This couldn’t be done. But what was I supposed to do? My skin felt too tight. A cyclone spun inside of me and I couldn’t outrun it, but I was surrounded by reminders of everything I lost. Teller could be my tether, but I didn’t…
I didn’t have it in me.
Tate approached us. “We’ll get who did this, Madison. It’ll be all cleaned up before you open.”
“I’m not opening Flatlanders.” I was going to burst. Into tears, into a cloud of nothingness, I didn’t know. I wanted so badly to cling to Teller, to everything he’d given me. To all his kind words and his big, sweet heart. Terror clogged my throat. What if I lost him too?
I backed up a step, out of Teller’s shadow. Out of his ring of protection. Because I shouldn’t need it. I hated that I did. I didn’t want to hang around wondering when it’d all get yanked away. “I’m selling it.”
My mouth was working before my brain could catch up. I hadn’t planned to sell. Ever. Until now. Because I didn’t need this place. I didn’t need to keep it going for some attempt at filial duty or a feeble legacy. I didn’t need to stay here. I could go anywhere.
I was a millionaire, after all.
Teller
I tracked Madison through the bar. My family watched us. Even the kids stayed quiet. She charged right to the hallway, strands of her dark hair fluttering behind her.
“Selling?” I asked as anxiety stacked high in my chest. She’d closed herself off from me. I saw it happen.
She pushed out the back door. In the quiet alley, she inhaled, long and deep, and tipped her head back. A flurry of voices and car engines were audible from the street on the other side. Sirens from the police. But Madison ignored it, like she was stealing a morsel of peace where she could.
“I’m not staying in Bourbon Canyon,” she said barely above a whisper.
“What does that mean?” My heart stuttered. The meaning couldn’t be clearer. I was in Bourbon Canyon. She’d just announced she wasn’t staying.
“I have nothing,” she said hoarsely. “No one.”
“What about me?” I loved her. I’d told her she didn’t have to say the words, but had I been wrong? Didn’t she feel what I did?
Her expression crumpled. “Would you still love me if I wasn’t convenient?”
“How are you convenient?”
“What if I wasn’t stuck in Bourbon Canyon? What if I was able to go live my dreams and travel? Then what?” She lifted her arms and dropped them. “Because I can. For once in my life, I don’t have to be tied to anyone or anything. The sale of the house is nearly complete. Cara will make sure I get a good deal on Flatlanders. I can go anywhere . Do anything .”
She said it like a challenge. I was in a competition I didn’t know how to finish.
“You want a family to go with that perfect house.” Her eyes shimmered. “You want a quiet life where you get lost in work and then go home to your perfect wife.”
“Don’t you want the same?” My question wasn’t helping. It made her sound like the convenient partner she feared she was. Just more obligations for her.
“I never wanted to run a bar. To get sworn at because I won’t let someone drink and drive. To clean piss off the bathroom walls. You know those boys in the pickup? They hated Scott for turning them into the cops for trying to use fake IDs. Scott’s been gone for months . How long am I going to pay for what people thought about my family?”
“You don’t have to open Flatlanders. You can still sell and be with me.”
Indecision flickered through her gaze, but she lifted her chin. “I never had the choices you did, Teller. I never had options. Someone’s wants and needs always came before mine, and with us... You would come before me.” She blew out a hard breath. “I promised myself I would never be like my mother. I thought I meant how she acted, but it’s also her circumstances. She got mean trying to put herself first. You’ve treated me well. So good. But for how long? When push comes to shove, what are you going to choose? Your family’s legacy, a family that cares for so many others? Or the girl who has no one else?”
I’d always choose her. “I’m sorry. About them. About Logan. You didn’t deserve any of it.” I wanted to go to her, to hold her, but she wrapped her arms around herself.
“I know,” she whispered. “I can’t stay here. I want more, Teller.”
Yet she didn’t think I could give it to her. The fear was scrawled into the lines of her beautiful face. “You can still have more. We can figure this out.”
“What if I want to move? What if I want to travel for years? Would you give up your part of Copper Summit and follow me? Would you leave Bailey Beef?”
I clamped my teeth together, hating the gut punch of my initial response. No. I’d never leave. The work I loved was here. My family was here. They were my foundation. They were what made me me . I had been born and raised in Bourbon Canyon and I’d die here. But my happily would be her prison.
“That’s what I thought,” she said quietly.
“I love you, Madison.”
“Do you love me, or do you love the idea of me?”
“The idea of you was a girl who told off anyone who pissed her off.” I had fallen for that girl too. “Someone from the wrong side of the tracks who acted just like everyone expected her to because that’s all they looked for. Then I got to know you and I fell hard. So goddamn hard, Madison.”
“Oh, Teller.” Hopelessness was heavy in her eyes. “I don’t know who I am.”
I flinched. Goddammit. I had no response. I couldn’t make her stay. If she had to mold herself into the partner she thought I wanted, she’d never convince herself that I loved her for her. I loved her fire. Her drive. The way she’d told off our exes was hot. The joy on her face when she baked could sustain me for life. But it didn’t matter what I thought or how I felt. In the end, if she wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy. “What are you going to do?”
She hugged herself harder. “I’m leaving.”
Nothing about her forlorn expression said she wanted to go, but the idea of staying here bothered her more. “Where?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere.”
“Okay.”
Hurt shone in her eyes and she swallowed. I wanted to take it all back. I didn’t want her to fucking leave. I wanted her by my side forever. I wanted to see her soar.
“Okay.” She took a step back, then another.
I squeezed my hands into fists, or I’d reach for her, but I’d become just another person holding her back.
She bit her lower lip, and her gaze stroked over the back of the bar. “Can you, uh, lock up here?”
Shock gut punched me. “You’re leaving now ?”
Distress rippled over her features. “I can’t go back in there.” She crept closer to her pickup. “I’ll call Cara. She’ll take care of the rest and get it up for sale.”
“Madison. Right now?” An invisible band constricted around my chest. What about her things? What about me? I wanted more time with her. A few more minutes. The selfish part of me hoped she’d change her mind if she stayed. I wanted forever, but if I loved her, then goddammit—I had to help her make what she wanted a priority.
She opened the pickup door. “I have to.”
“What about your stuff?”
“Do whatever with it.” She paused before she climbed in. “Thank you. For everything. I mean it. I’ll never forget you.”
Then she jumped in and tore off. Out of my life.