49. Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Four
Colt
I am up early, just shy of the sun rising. And I would love to say it's because I had a good night's sleep and I’m ready to take on the day like a functioning human being who has his life together.
But no.
I didn't sleep.
I spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, still in yesterday’s clothes, lying on top of the cover, while the cabin creaked and groaned through the night on my behalf.
Every time I thought I was close to drifting off, something from the parking lot resurfaced, dragging me back to full consciousness again.
Eventually, the sky outside transformed to that greyish hue that means morning is coming whether you're ready for it or not.
I wasn’t ready for it. But I got up anyway, because lying there was only giving my brain more time to replay last night’s events on an endless loop.
That’s how I have ended up in the barn before the rest of the ranch has even started waking up. Putting my hands to work and keeping my mind occupied with tasks that don’t require much thinking.
Just because my life has fallen apart doesn't mean I get to let my ranch fall apart too.
Yes, my ranch. One of many revelations from last night, though definitely the kinder one. The one that doesn’t make me want to put my fist through something. The ranch has been mine since Gramps passed. Gramps, who—as of approximately twelve hours ago—isn't my Gramps. Not by blood, anyway.
I didn’t know that yesterday morning, and now I do.
And somewhere underneath all the wreckage of last night, that fact is sitting quietly, waiting for me to have the capacity to deal with it.
Right now, I don't. Right now, it's just another thing that happened, lined up behind all the things that hit harder and hurt worse.
I find my rhythm in the work, the way I always do. The rake in my hands. The brush moving over the mare’s coat. The quiet company of horses who don’t care what your last name is or who your father might be. Long as you show up, do the work, and don’t let them down, they’re good with you.
Makes one of us. Because that's all that's running through my head this morning, round and round on that same relentless loop.
Who is my father?
Did my actual father know I exist?
Did he want me?
My head feels like a pinball machine, bouncing from one question to the next so fast I can barely keep up. I don’t have answers to any of them. They keep stacking up until the weight of it all feels almost physical, slowing me down at jobs I could normally do half asleep.
I’ve been trying not to think about Maeve, but I’ve not been doing a great job of it.
I can still see every detail of those photographs when I close my eyes.
The images have been branded somewhere I can't reach.
And I know, somewhere in the rational part of my brain, that she didn't owe me anything.
We weren't together. She told me she wasn't interested. She never made me a single promise.
But she was my friend.
My only friend on the ranch.
And sure, maybe some of what I felt for Maeve was never quite what I thought it was, but I still thought I could trust her. As my friend. As the person who made me feel like maybe I wasn't too much to be around, wasn't too difficult, wasn’t too emotional.
She made me feel like I could start to enjoy life again.
And the whole time, she was sleeping with him.
While she was being my person, the one I felt like I could count on, she was his too, and more, if those photographs are anything to go by.
I don’t know what to do with all this at the moment.
Where to put it in my head until I’m ready to deal with it.
It’s not like there’s a shelf in my brain for everyone around you is lying to you, your father isn’t your father, the girl you like is sleeping with him, and apparently, you own a ranch now.
I let it sit there instead, taking up every waking thought.
I press my forehead briefly against the mare’s neck and breathe, then pick the brush back up and crack on with my jobs like it’s a normal day.
Just with an even louder head.
The barn is done in no time, so I take myself into the office, shutting the door behind me firmly as though a bit of wood and an old brass handle are going to protect me from the knowledge that she is also in this house.
I pull up the riding school files. Budget breakdowns.
Scheduling. The dozen small details that are still waiting on me.
I put my head down and throw myself at them, and for a while, for a blissfully, mercifully short while, it works.
The numbers require enough focus that there isn't room for anything else.
That is until the door begins to open.
The hinges give that slow, deliberate screech that means someone is being careful rather than just walking in. Wade steps into the room and closes the door quietly behind him.
I haven't seen him since the parking lot.
He looks just as rough as I feel, which is saying something, because I feel absolutely fucking terrible. The lines around his eyes cut harder than usual. Hat turning slowly between his fingers. His hair looks like it hasn’t seen a brush.
It’s strange, seeing him like this.
In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wade Carter look anything less than solid. Well, up until yesterday.
Seeing him standing there looking like absolute shit should feel satisfying, and yet it doesn’t.
Neither of us speaks.
We just stare at each other as the hum of the computer fills the silence. I lean back in my chair and cross my arms, keeping my face steady.
I break the silence, mainly because I can’t stand it any longer.
“You’re not my father.” I throw it out there to see what he does with it.
“No,” he says after a moment. “Not by blood.”
I knew that. But hearing him say it out loud, hearing him confirm it, hits differently. The truth sits there between us now, nowhere left to hide in the empty office.
I lean back in my chair. Cross my arms. Keep my face as steady as I can manage.
“Who is he?”
I want to know, at least I think I do.
Wade is quiet for long enough that I look up from the desk. He's turning his hat again, slower now. He’s moving like a man choosing his words carefully because he knows how much damage the wrong ones can do.
“His name is Gino Martinez,” he says. “He was the guy I told you about.”
The air goes out of the room.
Gino Martinez.
The name hits me like a punch to the throat.
Of course it’s him.
Couldn't be someone decent. Couldn't be a mistake made with a good man who just wasn't the right fit. It's him. The man who handed my mother her first hit. The starting point of every single bad thing.
Maybe that's why everything keeps going wrong for me. Maybe it's just in the blood.
“Colt.”
Wade's voice pulls me back. I realise I've been staring at nothing for too long.
“Did you always know?” I ask.
“Yes.” No hesitation from him. “Your mom was pregnant when I got back from tour. The timing didn’t make sense for you to be mine.”
I look at him properly then. “Why didn't you leave?”
Wade moves toward me, taking a seat across from me. He leans forward slowly, resting both forearms on the desk, and for a moment, he sits with the question like he's turning it over, making sure the answer that comes out is the real one.
“Because you needed someone,” he says. “And so did your mom. She needed someone to stay, not someone walking out the door.” He pauses briefly, a slight tug on his lips forming something that could resemble a smile.
“And when I held you in my arms for the first time…” He stops.
Shakes his head once, a short quiet movement.
“There wasn't a single thing I wouldn't have done for you after that.
Didn't matter what came before. Didn't matter whose blood it was. You were mine.”
I scoff, dropping my head low. The irony of it is almost funny.
The man who stayed, who chose me before I could choose anything, who built a floor underneath my feet for years while I was too busy resenting him to notice.
Somehow, the whole thing still ended up here, in this office, with this much broken between us.
“I know how that sounds,” he says quietly. “Given everything.”
I can’t bring myself to answer him. Not right now, because anything I want to say will simply add more fuel to this bonfire. Wade doesn’t rush to fill the silence, which makes me feel worse.
“I spent a long time,” he starts, and his voice is rawer now.
“I spent a long time doing what I thought was right. Making sure everyone had what they needed, and at one point that’s all my life became, looking after everyone else to the point I stopped letting myself want anything.
Stopped letting myself have anything.” He shakes his head slowly.
“I told myself that was just how it had to be. That some things weren't for me.”
I can see the regret forming across his face. “I should’ve told you about everything. You deserved that. And maybe if I'd opened up sooner, we wouldn't be sitting here like this. But Colt—about the Maeve thing…”
Every muscle in my body locks. I wasn't ready for her name. I don't think I'll ever be fully ready for her name, but especially not right now, in this room, with all this still raw.
“I couldn't talk myself out of it the way I had with everything else,” he says quietly. “Not this time. I tried. I want you to know that. I talked myself out of it more times than I can count. Because I knew. I knew what it could cost.”
He shakes his head once, looking frustrated with himself. “But for the first time in a long while, I felt like someone actually saw me. Not the role I was playing. Just… me.”
His eyes lift again.
“I knew what I was doing. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But it wasn’t to hurt you. Not once.”
My eyes sting before I can stop them. It’s getting too much. I want to shut down, block it out, go back to bed—anything but sit here and take more of it.
But Wade doesn’t stop.
“I fell for a girl who was never supposed to be mine,” he says. “For more reasons than one. And I was too selfish to deny it when maybe I should’ve been stronger than that.” His voice is rough at the edges now. “For that, I am sorry. Genuinely. Whatever that’s worth to you right now.”
I look at the desk, at his Stetson sitting between us, thinking about Maeve pushing me toward him. Acting like a friend. All while being on his side the whole time.
I think about Gino Martinez’s blood running through me. About Gramps pressing his hand to my shoulder, calling me his boy, and knowing I wasn’t his by blood.
There is so much I want to say. I want to ask Wade why he didn't tell me the truth sooner.
I want to ask him if any part of him ever resented it—the choice he made, the life it cost him.
I want to tell him that I'm angry, that I'm grateful, that I don'tknow how to hold both of those things at the same time and it's tearing me apart. But there’s nothing left in me anymore. So I stay quiet.
Wade stays quiet too. For a long moment he just sits there, both of us in the hum of the office, the weight of everything said and unsaid pressing down on the room. Then, he picks up his hat from the desk and gets to his feet. Slowly, like it costs him.
He crosses to the door. Stops with his hand on the frame.
“I know I've got no right to ask anything of you right now,” he says to the door. “But I'm not going anywhere. Whatever you need, space, answers, someone to shout at, I'm here.”
I press my fingertips hard into my thigh. Using the pressure to keep me in the room. To keep me from saying something I can't take back, or breaking down completely, or both.
“You're my son,” he says quietly. “And you will always be.”
His voice drops to almost nothing on the last part.
“I love you, Colt.”
Then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him.