47. Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Two
Colt
Mom?
My eyes lock on the woman standing near the back booth. I blink once. Then again. Still there. Eighteen damn years, and she is here. Like it’s not a big deal when it is a big fucking deal.
Jae’s hand lands firm on my shoulder, squeezing it slightly, but whatever he’s saying gets swallowed by the blood pounding in my skull.
Everything’s too loud and too tangled to make sense of what the fuck is going on, but before my brain can catch up, the anger hits fast and hard.
Like a fist straight to the gut, taking the air clean out of my lungs.
Maeve steps into my line of sight, those bright blue eyes finding mine, bringing a sense of calm that cuts through the panic faster than anything could. Stopping the simmering panic attack from boiling over.
“Colt.” She says, simple and steady. Just what I need in this moment.
I drag in a breath sharp enough to hurt my ribs as they expand.
I just about manage to give her a small smile, but over her shoulder I catch sight of Wade still standing on the stage.
He looks as blindsided as me, though he isn’t the kind of man who falls apart like I do.
No, he just stands there. Jaw locked so tight I can see the muscles ticking from across the room, eyes fixed on Mom with the same hollow look he wore the night she left.
I haven’t forgotten that look, mainly because I spent years believing it was a look of someone heartless, who didn’t care—I was wrong.
Gina moves fast, lifting the mic back to her lips. “Guys, we’re gonna take a quick intermission—”
The crowd groans, but recovers as soon as the music starts again, clueless of how my world has just been turned upside down.
Moms settled herself into a booth at the back.
There’s something theatrical about the way she sits.
Spine straight, one hand resting delicately on the table, dressed for something far fancier than this honky-tonk bar.
But even from this distance, I can see what the years of drug abuse have done to her.
She’s slim, far slimmer than I remember her. Her face is hollow enough that her cheekbones cut sharp beneath her skin, and she looks more bone than flesh. Her fingers keep moving too, thumb scraping along the side of her hand over and over again, like she can’t stay still.
I thought seeing her again would bring happier feelings, but instead there is only grief.
Grief for the version of her I carried around in my head all these years.
The woman who I thought would eventually come back for me.
Reality is, she ain’there for me. For the son she abandoned.
The only reason she can be here for are the divorce papers.
Wade moves, stepping off the stage and crossing the bar in long strides that eat the distance fast. Everything about him is tight—shoulders rigid, hands hanging at his sides with clenched fists. He stops beside her booth and points sharply toward the front door.
Mom rises slowly, wobbling slightly in her heels before following Wade outside, one hand catching the edge of the booth to steady herself.
I’m moving before I’ve decided to. I need answers.
“Colt—”
Jae is right behind me, his boots clacking against the floorboards. Maeve’s softer step follows a beat later.
I shove through the front doors into the cold air. The Lone Coyote sign buzzes overhead, washing the parking lot in red and amber light. Music thumps faintly through the walls behind us, muffled now beneath the tension hanging thick outside.
The second I step outside, both Wade and Mom look over. Mom wears that same unsettling calm she had inside, like she isn't standing in the middle of a bomb she's already lit.
Wade is the complete opposite. He looks like he is ready to come out of his skin, so wound up that I can practically see the steam radiating from him. But the moment his eyes land on me, it all disappears. Turning back into the solid, steady, and unshakeable man I’ve grown up with most of my life.
Only now I'm close enough to see it for what it really is—a mask.
“You need to leave, Ruby.” Wade demands, voice low and controlled.
“No.”
“Whatever it is you want, we’ll deal with it through the lawyers.”
Her mouth curves slightly. “Oh, so you do know why I’m here.”
Wade says nothing, but the flush climbing up the back of his neck onto his face says everything.
I step closer, gravel grinding beneath my boots when my eyes lock with my mom’s—and in that moment, I’m thrown back to being eight years old, sitting on the porch step watching the end of the driveway.
Ten years old, checking the mailbox every day for two weeks around my birthday.
Fifteen years old, lying in bed staring at the ceiling, doing that thing where I try to picture her face and wondering whether she ever does the same.
“Hello, Son.”
She says it so easily, almost casually, like she’s picking up a conversation we were having moments ago instead of eighteen years of silence.
My throat burns. There’s so much I want to say to her, years of it stacked up inside me, but standing here with it all pressing down on me, I can’t find a single word worth using.
“Don’t.” Is all I manage.
“Oh, Colt…” She gives a practiced sigh. This is all one big performance for her. “I’ve missed you.”
A laugh crawls up my throat, because if I let anything else out, it won't be a laugh.
“Missed him?” Wade cuts in sharply, and whatever composure he was holding onto starts to fray at the edges. “Ruby, don't. Don't do that. Tell us what you want and then get the hell out of this town.”
The performance stops, but the smile doesn’t disappear. Instead, it shifts into something harsher, stripped of any fake softness she had been putting in it before.
“Half the ranch,” she says. “That’s all I want. Then I will sign those stupid documents you want so badly and disappear again.”
I hear movement behind me; Maeve rushes out through the doors, stopping dead in her tracks the moment she sees us looking like we’re about to have a three-way shoot-out. Iris is just behind her, placing a hand on Maeve’s shoulder. All we need is an audience to broadcast my family’s shit to.
“The ranch,” Wade repeats flatly.
“I want what's mine.”
Silence settles over the parking lot.
Wade stares at her without a word or a blink.
One hand hangs at his side, fingers curling slowly until his knuckles whiten and I can see the tendons in his forearm from where I'm standing.
Whatever is happening behind his eyes, I can't read it.
I don't know what his next move is. I don't even know if he's breathing.
Then, he laughs. It's the hollowest sound I've ever heard come out of him.
“The ranch isn’t mine to give you.”
Whatever composure Mom’s held onto tonight cracks. Surprise moves across her face like a shadow, and I can see her working double time to try and pull it back. I know she wasn’t expecting that.
Hell, neither was I.
“What?” Her voice pitches up, having the same effect on everyone’s ears as nails on a chalkboard would have had. “What… What do you mean? It is yours. Don’t fucking lie to me, Wade.”
“My father signed it over,” Wade says, and his eyes slide from her face to mine. “Before he died. It belongs to Colt.”
I don’t know if it is even possible, but everything goes more silent. Either that or my head is too busy trying to make sense of all this.
I stare at Wade. “What?” The word barely makes it out.
“It's yours,” he says. “Has been since Gramps passed away.”
I own the ranch. My Gramp’s ranch. The land he spent his whole life building, the thing that's felt like the only constant through everything. Why would Gramps do that?
As if he can hear all of it, Wade looks back at Ruby.
“I knew something like this would come. Knew that eventually you'd show up wanting to pick at my father's legacy.
Our son's future.” She scoffs. He doesn't flinch.
“Signing it to Colt was the only way we knew how to keep you from getting your hands on it.”
He skipped over leaving the ranch to me…
Another thing he has quietly done for me.
I think of all the times I’ve come at him in the past. All the blunt conversations, the digs I’ve made.
He just took it all. Every single time, he just let me do what I need while showing up for me behind the scenes in ways I was too busy being angry to notice.
And Ruby, the Mom I idolised, she only came back to get her hands on the ranch. Not for me. The man I spent years blaming for her absence was the one quietly making sure I had something to stand on when she eventually did.
The realisation settles heavy in my chest, painful and sobering all at once. That is until I hear Ruby’s laugh, soft but with a hint of malice behind it, like she is amused by this revelation.
“Wade fucking Carter, everyone!” She claps, voice loud enough that I’m surprised the whole bar hasn’t stormed out to watch.
“The great family man! Can't do a thing wrong, can he?
Everyone loves him. They don't see what you really are. How you abandoned me. Left me to raise a child alone so you could run off and play cowboy hot-shot.” She's moving now, pacing in short, jerky steps, hands gesturing in a way that don’t quite match the rhythm of her words.
“I deserve the money. I am not leaving here empty-handed, Wade.”
“I'm not playing your spiteful routine.” His voice turns to ice. “We go through the lawyers. I'd get yourself a good one.”
“Low blow.” Her pacing slows. “You used to love me once…”
“Yeah! Long damn time ago. You’ll get what you get, Ruby. This ain’t up for discussion.”
Mom’s hand disappears into her purse, desperately looking around for something. When her hand reappears, there’s a phone in it. She angles the screen toward Wade, and only Wade, keeping it out of my eyeline entirely.
The change in him is immediate. What is on the phone?