9. Kade
Chapter 9
Kade
Another day, another hangover. If I wrote a story about my life, I think that’s what I’d call it. Or How to Fuck Up 101 .
Last night, after I was a complete asshole to Presley for no reason, my flask and I became best friends. I tried to resist, but the whole situation with Cricket pissed me off. And now, my new coworker probably thinks I dated Cricket and she cheated on me. In actuality, I was standing up for my brother. He had dated Cricket before he met Blake, and she’d cheated on him after Dad died.
The kicker is, I have nobody but myself to blame for last night. Before my accident, I gave Cricket some mild attention to piss off my brother, and she’s been trying to get in my pants ever since. She’s probably also trying to piss off Gavin and make him jealous, which will never happen since he’s utterly head over heels in love with Blake.
What really sent me over the edge was not just the fact that Cricket was being rude to Presley—I still don’t understand why that pissed me off—but that when Gavin came in, he acted all upset that I was even getting on Cricket’s case. It proved to me that I can do no right when it comes to him, even when I’m trying to be a good brother.
“Are you going to stare at your coffee or drink it?”
I lift my eyes from the coffee in question, which has probably gone lukewarm by now, and meet the honey-brown eyes of Momma. She’s wearing her favorite pair of worn jeans and a rose-colored long-sleeve sun shirt Blake got her for her birthday, her silver-and-blonde hair tied in a loose ponytail.
“I thought you’d be out in the garden already,” I say, taking a sip of the bitter liquid that indeed has gone cold.
She walks over and pours herself a cup before sitting next to me at the kitchen table. “Slept in a little.”
Momma tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles, the morning sun creating a halo around her head. The picture she makes has me thinking of Dad. He always called her a natural beauty, the girl that everyone wanted in high school but he got lucky enough to have. Now, in the year since his death, grief has aged her. She’s still beautiful, but more lines have appeared at the corner of her eyes and around her mouth, and there’s a slump to her shoulders I’ve never noticed before.
Guilt gnaws my gut, because I know my actions have given her many of those lines and wrinkles. I’ve contributed to the sadness in her eyes.
I take another sip of my coffee. “That’s good. Glad you got some rest.”
She nods, silence settling around us so all we can hear is the old clock ticking in a staccato cadence. The longer we don’t talk, the louder the ticking seems to get. I tap my fingernails on my mug, the lack of words between us leaving me to my thoughts.
I used to talk to Momma all the time, and I never had a problem thinking of what to say. Even before my accident, I could charm the hell out of her. She knew I was drinking, seeing girls most nights, but she never tried to stop me or said anything about it. Gavin attempted to get her to scold me, but she brushed him off. It was one thing I appreciated, that she was letting me have my space to grieve my way. To figure things out.
But after that day at the cemetery and the accident, our relationship shifted. Now, I find it hard to talk to any of my family members, especially Momma. I know she’s in pain. I can see it on her face every time she looks at me. I know she regrets not trying to talk with me before the accident, but I imagine finding out the love of her life had been keeping secrets from her for years wasn’t easy, either.
In a lot of ways, I think we can relate to that disappointment. Dad was my best friend, and I loved him. We may not have talked about our feelings, but we talked about everything else. Except the truth, which is what mattered most.
Given all of that, I’d have thought talking to Momma about everything would be easier, to talk about the pile of shit Dad left for us. How he betrayed us with his lies, how Gavin continued that lie. But speaking about big things, being vulnerable, it’s not something the Montgomerys have ever been good at. It’s not something anyone in Randall is good at. Life is hard out here. You simply learn to pick up the pieces when shit goes wrong and move on. You don’t have time to glue them back together.
“Kade,” Momma’s timid voice says.
I blink, unsure of how long I’ve been staring at my coffee again. I meet her eyes, my caffeine- and alcohol-filled stomach turning over at the concern I see in them. I know she says she’s forgiven me for punching Gavin at the cemetery and for getting myself hurt at Devil’s Rock, but I don’t believe her. I know she’s disappointed in me, and I’m positive Gavin’s made her aware of my behavior the last few days since my doctor’s appointment.
“Are you alright, Kade?”
I grip my hand around the mug. I should be glad she’s asking me how I am now. I know she cares for me, but her question just adds to my growing anger because I’m sure she’s asking because of Gavin.
“I’m fine.”
Her eyes scan my body, stopping on the center of my chest like she’s trying to see if my heart’s beating. I clench my jaw, and that stabbing pain in my sternum returns. I know she’s thinking of the day Dad died from his heart attack, the day he went off to till the soil and never came home. Momma was the one to find him, and it still crushes me that she had to see that .
I reach my hand across the table and place it over hers. “My ticker is fine, Momma, I promise.” She brings those comforting brown eyes of hers to mine, blinking away the tears that threaten to fall.
“Good. That’s good,” she says, as if trying to reassure herself. With a tight smile, she pulls her hand out from under mine. I think she’s going to sit back, but instead, she grabs my hand and squeezes.
“You’re so much like him, you know? Look just like him, too.”
I bristle, my features turning hard. I was not expecting her to say that. She hardly talks about Dad now, and I can’t say that I blame her. And while once I would’ve loved to be compared to Emmett, that’s changed. I should probably just leave this conversation now, but my curiosity gets the best of me.
“How so?” I remove my hand from hers to sit back.
She looks disappointed to lose contact with me, but I push any feelings I have down. I want to know how I’m like the man who lied. Who ruined this family.
“Well, you’ve got the same eyes.” She smiles. “Same hair.”
“You know that’s not what I meant, Momma.” I sit a little taller in my chair. “I want you to tell me how I’m like the liar who ruined our lives.” The last part comes out with fire, fire I didn’t initially intend to have behind my words.
Her eyes widen, and her nostrils flare. “You don’t talk about your daddy like that, young man!”
“I’m only speaking the truth, and you know it.”
“He was a good man, and he taught you to be better than this.”
I slam my eyes shut. Her words sting my body like acid rain, burning away at my skin and eating me alive. While Momma is right, that he could be a good man, she doesn’t know shit about what he taught me. Yes, he did teach me manners among other important life skills like a damn good work ethic, but he also gave me my first drink when I was fourteen. He taught me the different notes of a good whiskey when I was sixteen and how to flirt with girls.
I suck in a tense breath through my teeth and smack my lips. “He taught me to be exactly who I am right now, Momma.” The angry truth of it spills out of me.
“You’re not acting like yourself,” she says, hand gripping the table.
I want to laugh, because she sounds exactly like Gavin. The urge to throw my coffee mug from the table hits me like a freight train—it’s time I leave this house before I do something I regret. I don’t want to hurt Momma any more than I already have, and right now, I’m not in control of my words. I stand up from the table and push in my chair.
“You’re going to leave?” she asks.
“Yep. I don’t want to say more. Trust me, you don’t want to hear it.”
She stands and faces me. I’ve got a lot of height on her, but she’s always been intimidating for a small woman with her strong shoulders and strong will. “Say what you want to say, Kade. I can take it.”
I walk to the sink and thunk my mug down into the basin before I grip the countertop, knuckles turning white as I try to force down my anger. But no matter how many breaths I take, I can’t stop the events of the past few days, of the last year, from rising to the surface.
I turn back to face her but keep my distance, saying what’s been weighing on my heart. “You think I’m like him because I drink too much and I have a temper. Not because he was a good man.”
She shakes her head. “Emmett didn’t have a drinking problem.”
“You’re delusional if you think that.”
“Kade!” she chides again, her voice louder now.
“You said you could take the truth, so I’m giving it to you. That man was not who you thought he was. He’s not who any of us thought he was. He drank like a fish, and he fucked up this family. He almost lost us our home, our land!”
“He was doing the best he could!”
“And you never questioned him about anything. Just like you never questioned Gavin. Just like you never questioned me until now. You just let things happen, Momma. You just stood by while Dad royally screwed things up and then Gavin took his place. If you want to compare the glorious Emmett Montgomery to anyone, maybe compare him to my fabulous big brother that you love so much!”
“Enough!” Gavin’s voice bellows from the door.
“Speak of the fucking devil.” A chuckle of disdain spills out of me as I throw up my hands. “You’re always coming in to save the day, Gav. Do you have everywhere I go bugged?”
My big brother steps into the kitchen and goes straight to Momma, ignoring me. “Are you okay?” he asks her.
She brushes a tear that’s escaped from her eye and nods. “Fine. We’re just having a conversation.”
I shoot my brother a long and hard stare. “You think I would purposely hurt our mom? She wanted to know the truth, so I’m giving it to her.”
Gavin narrows his green eyes at me, and for the first time, there’s something akin to hatred in them. I’ve seen a lot of looks from my brother, but nothing like this. Maybe I’ve finally tipped him over the edge.
“There’s a way to speak to people, and this is not it. You need to take a step back and figure your shit out, Kade.”
“Are you for fucking real right now?”
“Watch your language,” he scolds, like he’s my fucking dad.
I point an angry finger at him. “I don’t understand you, Gav. I don’t understand any of you. You want me to talk. You want me to tell you how I’m doing. Then when I’m honest, I’m the one who gets looked down on. I’m the one you get angry at.”
“You know that’s not why we’re upset with you. ”
“At least you admitted you’re upset with me instead of just trying to disguise it with concern.”
“Kade, we only want to help,” Gavin says.
“Help me with what?”
“Dealing with what happened.”
“Maybe y’all need to deal with it. I’m dealing with it just fine.” My esophagus burns with acid, and my mouth feels heavy with my lie. But I’m sick of this conversation, sick of being looked at like I’m the problem. I’m not the goddamn problem.
My family just wants me to talk about my feelings, to apologize and say that I’m the one who causes all the issues so they can feel better about all their sins. Then I’m supposed to smile and be happy, to keep my mouth shut and act like I’m okay with everything. Not just the lies and deceit, but everything that’s happened since.
They want me to just accept that our family’s ranch is being turned into a tourist attraction to save it, to accept that the only reason that’s happening is because we got a loan from Blake to dig us out of a hole. But I’m not going to. And I’m not going to play nice anymore or hide my true feelings. I don’t care if they don’t like it.
“Kade.” Gavin sighs. “Stop pushing us away. We’re your family. We care about you—”
“If you cared about me, you would’ve given me the land like Dad wanted. You would’ve listened to me months ago.”
“Young man,” Momma says, stepping up next to a now silent Gavin. “You know that’s not Gavin’s fault. He didn’t know—”
“He didn’t know then, but he knows now.” I glare at my brother, and his eyes are dark, his jaw set in a hard line. He needs to know how I feel, that I still think it’s all bullshit.
“I thought we settled this,” Gavin says. “I thought you’d moved on.”
“You thought wrong. ”
“Then you should’ve talked to us about it. Instead, you’re taking your anger out on Momma and me, and you’re drinking yourself silly.”
There are a million things I could say right now. Many of them I have, but he never gets it. He thinks because Blake found a solution by turning our place into a dude ranch and paying off our debt that suddenly I don’t care about him getting the land. He thinks that since we’re working as a family, as a team, to save the Montgomery family name, that I feel like the land is also mine.
But that’s all horseshit, because it’s not mine. It’s never been mine. But Gavin’s too dense to see that, to understand what that feels like on my end. To have nothing and nobody who understands you. To have lost the only person you thought understood you only to then find out you were the one to not understand them. To not know them.
I step back from Gavin and Momma, grabbing my hat from the table. “I’ve got work to do.”
“We’re talking here,” Momma says, her voice desperate.
If I were a better man, I would stop and try to talk. But maybe she’s right. Maybe I am more like Daddy than I ever thought.
“I’m done.” I turn and step toward the doorway, truly meaning my words.
“Don’t walk out that door, Kade,” Gavin says in a warning tone. “Don’t do this to us again.”
To us . Fuck, that hurts. What about what they’re doing to me, what they’ve already done to me?
With a sad chuckle, I continue to the front door. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, big brother,” I say over my shoulder, “just like you do.”
He calls after me as I walk away, but I don’t turn back. I have work to do and, most likely, people to piss off. Just another fucking day in my life.
At least now I can stop holding myself back.