Chapter Thirty-Seven
I fucked up.
There’s no other way to say it, no prettier version that makes me look less like an asshole. I fucked up, plain and simple.
It was the night I told Ruby about her mom.
I didn’t plan it. I didn’t sit there, thinking, Tonight’s the night I shatter my kid’s heart. It just had to be done. One of those moments where the truth was the only way to protect someone you loved.
I sat her down on the couch. Her little face creased with worry because she could sense something was off all day. The overattentiveness from both me and her grandparents had her on edge.
So, I told her that her mommy was with Jesus now. That she wasn’t coming back. That she didn’t leave because she didn’t love her, but because, sometimes, people got taken from us too soon and it was nobody’s fault.
Ruby’s face crumpled in a way that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
She cried in my arms for hours. Not quiet crying. Not soft sniffles. The kind of wailing that happened when your heart was broken into shards. She kept asking me why Mommy couldn’t come back. If she could call her. If she could go see her in heaven.
And I kept telling her the same awful truth.
I held her and rocked her and tried to be the solid thing she could cling to after her whole world shifted.
I was the rock. I was the anchor. I didn’t get to fall apart.
And in the middle of all of that … I forgot.
I forgot about Shelby.
I didn’t check my phone. I didn’t think about the time. I didn’t think about anything but my daughter’s sobs and the way her small hands gripped my shirt like she was afraid I’d disappear too.
When she finally fell asleep against my chest, her face red and tear-streaked, it felt like I’d battled a dragon and lived a lifetime, all in one evening.
It wasn’t until the next day that Caison asked me if I’d talked to Shelby.
“Why?” I said, distracted, pouring coffee.
“She texted me last night,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d been hurt or something. Said you didn’t show.”
The realization hit me like a punch to the gut.
Fuck.
I grabbed my phone. Saw the missed messages. Missed call.
I hadn’t just forgotten a date.
I’d disappeared on her completely. Again.
I tried to text her back.
Me: I’m so sorry. Something happened with Ruby. I’ll explain everything.
Undelivered.
I tried again.
Undelivered.
I tried calling.
Straight to voicemail.
She’d blocked me.
And honestly? I didn’t blame her.
Given our history, the fact that she’d agreed to go out with me at all was a miracle. I knew what I’d done to her. I knew the ways I’d let her down. So, yeah, maybe blocking me was a little dramatic, but she’d earned the right to protect herself from me.
So, I was giving her space.
For now.
Because if she thought we were done before we’d even really started, she had another thing coming.
The week that followed was one of the hardest of my life.
Ruby was confused and scared and grieving in a way that didn’t make sense to her.
I kept her home from day care. We skipped barrel lessons.
I stayed with her, answering the same questions over and over, holding her through the tears, letting her sleep in my bed when she woke up crying in the middle of the night.
I would do it all again.
But I still hated that Shelby was hurt.
By the time Ruby starts to steady, Thanksgiving is around the corner. And with it comes something I’ve been both dreading and hoping for.
Cheyenne Briggs.
Candy’s little sister.
My dad’s private investigator tracked her down in Florida.
After their parents had died, she had gone to live with her best friend’s family.
They moved. She moved with them. Now she’s a cheerleader at the University of Miami, studying journalism, living a life that Candy would no doubt have been happy to know she was.
When she found out she had a niece, she didn’t hesitate. She booked a flight to Wyoming to meet Ruby over Thanksgiving.
Ruby is thrilled. Finding out her mother had a sister, that she had an aunt, was a big deal. She needs that connection even if she’s too young to understand it.
I plan to surprise Ruby today when Cheyenne and I both are there to pick her up from day care.
So, now, I’m sitting in The Prairie Pie, staring at the door like a nervous teenager waiting for a blind date.
I spot her the second she walks in.
She looks like Candy. Not exactly, but enough to twist something in my chest. Same hair. Same smile. Just … brighter. Less worn down by life.
I stand as she approaches.
“Waylon?” she asks tentatively.
“That’s me. You must be Cheyenne.”
We shake hands, then sit in a booth and order lunch. She talks—about school, cheer, her friends, her boyfriend, who plays football for the University of Miami Hurricanes. She’s vibrant and funny and full of life.
Everything Candy could have been.
“So, you and my sister?” she asks as she blows on a slice of margarita pizza.
“We were coworkers. Friends, I guess you’d say.”
She raises a brow. “Coworkers?”
“Yeah, she danced at a club I worked at. And we were friendly.”
“Oh,” she says. “I guess that makes sense. The dancing part. Freya danced her whole life.”
“She did?”
She nods as she swallows. “I mean, not that kind of dancing, but jazz, tap, ballet. She loved it.”
“Wow. That’s …” The words die on my tongue.
“She was a cheerleader too. Like me. Only she was better. She was supposed to cheer for the Hoosiers.”
“What happened?” I ask the question I’m dying to know.
She shrugs. “She met a boy the summer before she was supposed to leave for Bloomington. He was cool. Kind of a rebel.”
She grabs another slice. “My parents hated him. Thought he was too old for her. But Freya fell hard and fast. He supposedly had some job lined up in California, and he convinced her to go with him. Mom and Dad were furious. They told her if she left with him, she could never come home.”
“That was harsh.”
“It was. I don’t think they really meant it. Mom cried for weeks after she left.”
“And she never contacted you guys again?”
“Not that I know of. I think Dad tried to find her when our grandmother passed, but he didn’t have any luck. After a while, we all just accepted it.”
“Accepted what?”
“Her absence,” she says, and I don’t miss the sadness behind the words.
“Well,” I say after a beat, “I know of one excited little girl who can’t wait to meet you.”
Her face brightens. “Me too. Here I thought, I was all alone in this world without any family left, and now I’m an aunt.”
“I’m real sorry about your parents and about Freya,” I tell her.
Her eyes glisten, but she beats back the tears. “Me too.”
We polish off the rest of the pizza and another round of sodas, then head outside after paying the bill. I rest my hand lightly on her back, guiding her to my truck.
And we walk straight into Charli and Shelby, climbing out of Cabe’s old pickup.
My chest aches the moment I see her. And I want to spill everything to her right then and there, but her expression stops me. I watch as her stunned eyes flit from mine to where my hand rests on Cheyenne.
Shit.
“Stormy,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper, “I—this is.”
I don’t even finish the sentence before she shakes her head and walks right past me. I catch the scent of jasmine lingering in the air. She doesn’t look back at me, but Charli does.
If looks could kill, I’d be laid out in the middle of Main Street.
Dammit.
Getting her to listen is gonna be tougher than I thought.
“Everything all right?” Cheyenne asks as she looks from me to the door Shelby just slipped into.
“Yeah.”
“Was that your girl?” she asks as we make it to my truck.
“Working on it,” I say, opening the passenger door.
She climbs in. “I think you’re gonna have to work harder.”
No truer words have ever been spoken.