Chapter Eleven
Ethan stood at the rail long after her footsteps had faded up the stairs.
Rowdy had entered the barn at some point during all of it and was now very deliberately not looking at him from the far end of the arena. Ethan appreciated that more than he could say.
He walked into the barn and kept walking until he got to Vulcan’s stall. He unlatched it, went inside, and stood with his hand on the horse’s neck and stared at the wall.
She was right.
That was the thing he kept coming back to.
She’d known. She’d spent thirty-three years building walls around that particular wound for good reason.
He’d come along with his intact family, his Sunday dinners, his complete inability to imagine a mother who didn’t want her child, and he’d told her to open the door anyway.
He thought he was helping. He’d been an idiot.
Vulcan shifted beneath his hand, and he absently stroked the horse’s neck and thought about her face when she’d said, ‘you made me doubt myself’. The way her voice had cracked on it and how much it had clearly cost her to let that show.
Ethan had done that. He heard the barn door and looked up. Rowdy appeared at the stall.
“Everything alright, boss?”
“Fine.” He latched the stall behind him. “If you’re done for the day, Rowdy, head in. It’s late.”
Rowdy looked at him for a moment, then nodded and disappeared.
Ethan walked out of the barn and stood in the yard. The dusk to dawn light just coming on. He could see the light on in her apartment window from here, a warm square against the evening sky.
He needed to give her time. He knew that. She’d asked for it and he owed her that much at least.
He just didn’t know how much time was enough and how much was too long. He went inside, sat at the kitchen table, and stared at nothing. He’d never once in his life felt this useless.
Ethan couldn’t wait any longer, he gave her an hour.
He knew it probably wasn’t enough, but he couldn’t sit at that table any longer.
He’d tried to eat and given up, tried to watch television, and given up on that too.
He’d called Cole and hung up before it connected because this wasn’t something he wanted to talk through with his brother, not yet.
This was something he needed to fix himself.
He grabbed his hat, left the house, walked across the yard to the hay barn and stood at the bottom of her stairs for a moment looking up at the light still burning in her window. Then he climbed the stairs and knocked.
Silence.
Then footsteps, slow and deliberate, and the door opened.
She’d changed into sweats and one of his T-shirts that she’d claimed weeks ago and never given back. Her hair was down and her eyes were red rimmed. It hit him square in the chest.
She looked at him and said nothing.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “A real one, not the one I gave you this morning.”
She leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms, but she didn’t close the door.
He took that as permission to continue.
“I pushed you toward something I had no right to push you toward. I thought I understood what I was asking and I didn’t.
I’ve never had to protect myself from a parent and I can’t imagine what that costs a person.
I should have respected that you already knew what you were dealing with.
” He held her gaze. “You were right. I made you doubt yourself and I’m sorry for that. Genuinely.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“She never wanted me,” Naomi said quietly. “She wanted whatever she thought my grandmother left behind. That’s all I ever was to her. An inconvenience and then an opportunity.”
“I know that now.”
“I knew it before.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes were bright. “I just let you convince me I was wrong.”
“I know.” He took a step toward her. “I’m sorry, Naomi.”
She looked at him, her jaw tight, her arms still crossed.
“I hear you,” she said. “And I believe you meant well. But that doesn’t make it hurt less, Ethan.
She sat across from me and let me think she actually cared, and I believed her because you made me think I should.
” Her voice stayed even but barely. “I opened a door I’d spent my whole life keeping shut and she walked right through it, and proved me right and herself worthless, and I have to live with that now. ”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.” Her voice cracked. “You don’t know. You can’t know.”
He stood there and took it because she was right and because she deserved to say it.
The silence stretched between them, long and uncomfortable.
Finally, she uncrossed her arms and looked away.
“I’m not ready to be okay about this yet,” she said.
“I’m not asking you to be.”
She looked back at him. “Then what are you asking?”
“Nothing.” He held her gaze. “I just needed you to hear me say I was wrong.”
Another silence.
She stepped back from the door, but it wasn’t quite an invitation. More like she was tired of standing.
He stayed where he was.
“Goodnight, Naomi,” he said quietly.
He turned, walked back down the stairs, strode across the yard, and entered the house.
He hung his hat on the peg, went to the living room, and dropped into the recliner. He stared into the empty hearth for a long moment.
“Shit,” he said quietly.
He picked up his phone and called Cole. Then Seth. Told them both the same thing, come to the house. Neither asked why. Neither hesitated. They just said okay and hung up.
That was the thing about his brothers. When it mattered they didn’t ask questions.
Fifteen minutes later he heard boots in the kitchen, then they appeared in the doorway. Cole took the sofa. Seth pulled the other recliner around and sat. Neither of them said a word.
They waited.
Ethan leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked at the cold fireplace, then told them everything.
When he finished talking the room was quiet for a moment.
Cole leaned back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. Seth turned his glass in his hands and said nothing.
Then Cole looked at him. “You pushed her.”
“I know.”
“You pushed her toward something she’d already made peace with not having.”
“I know, Cole.”
“Because you couldn’t imagine a mother who—”
“I know.” Ethan looked at him. “I know what I did. That’s why you’re here.”
Cole nodded and let it go.
Seth leaned forward. “How’d she leave it?”
“She said she wasn’t ready to be okay about it yet.”
“But she didn’t tell you to go to hell,” Seth said.
“No.”
“That’s something.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” Seth set his glass down. “Ethan, she’s hurt. She’s allowed to be. You overstepped and she’s telling you that, and that means she trusts you enough to be honest with you instead of just shutting down completely. That’s something.”
Ethan looked at him.
“Ryan did that to me once,” Seth said. “Early on. Said something, she thought was helpful that wasn’t and I shut her out for three days.” He shook his head. “Worst three days of my life. And when I finally let her back in I realized she’d been trying to find her way back to me the whole time.”
“Give her time,” Cole said. “But not too much. You don’t want her sitting up there thinking you’ve given up.”
“How much time is too much?”
Cole looked at him. “You’ll know.”
Ethan leaned back in the recliner and stared at the ceiling.
“I love her,” he said. It came out simpler than he expected. Just a fact.
Neither brother said anything for a moment.
Then Seth smiled. “Yeah. We know.”
They stayed another hour, the three of them talking about nothing in particular like they did when one of them needed company more than conversation.
Cole told a story about a fence repair that had gone badly and Seth argued about the right way to fix it and Ethan sat in his recliner and let the sound of them fill the house.
It helped. It always did.
When they finally stood to leave Cole gripped his shoulder on the way past.
“She’s not going anywhere,” he said quietly. “She’s got her horse here, her job and her apartment. She’s not going anywhere.”
Ethan nodded.
Seth paused in the doorway. “For what it’s worth, I think she loves you too.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” Seth smiled. “But Ryan does. And Ryan is never wrong about these things.”
He followed Cole out and Ethan heard the kitchen door close behind them, then the sound of their trucks pulling out of the yard.
He sat there a while longer, then got up, went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water, and stood at the window looking out at the dark yard.
The light in her apartment was still on.
He watched it for a long time before it finally went out.
He stood there in the dark kitchen a little longer anyway.
Then he went to bed but didn’t sleep much.
****
Naomi entered the barn the next morning and made her way to Vader’s stall. She smiled when the horse pranced and pushed his nose against the bars.
“You’re ready to go, aren’t you boy?”
“Good morning.” Serena appeared beside her, but the smile faded when she got a look at Naomi’s face. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve been crying. Did something happen between you and Ethan?”
Naomi frowned. “What makes you say that?”
“Please.” Serena smiled gently. “We all know you two are together.”
“All of you?”
“Every single one of us. And we’re all happy about it.” She tilted her head. “Ethan has been alone too long. And the way he looks at you—” She shook her head. “He’s never looked at another woman like that. Not even Claire from what I’m told.”
Naomi turned to face her. “Can I tell you something? Just between us?”
“Of course. I would never betray your trust.”
Naomi nodded and told her everything. The abandonment, her mother showing up, Ethan pushing her to give her a chance, going to the motel, finding out what her mother actually wanted.
“I’m just so angry with him right now,” she finished.
“You shouldn’t be.”
Naomi blinked. “What? Why not?”