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JT ground his teeth and shoved his hands in his back pockets, afraid in that moment that he would slam a fist into his father's face. "You and Cort brought it up. I said it was a bad idea and they'd never be interested."
"Eileen seemed pretty interested today. I think she's ready to offload the place, not live all the way out here by herself."
"How much could you possibly offer, anyway?"
His jaw dropped when his father named a figure.
"There's no way the ranch can afford to pay that. Even if you could get a loan, the payments would bankrupt us."
"That's the thing, we wouldn't need a loan. We can make an all-cash offer."
"How—" then it suddenly dawned on him. He gripped the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "It's Cort, isn't it? Cort's giving you the money."
"Turns out he's really serious about this grass-fed cattle thing. He has a couple friends who want to go in on it with him and they'll help us pay for the land and the livestock, and hire people who deal with all of the certifications we need. And if we have the Murphys' land, it'll be easier to fence off a few hundred acres around it to make sure that's all in compliance and still have access to the creek."
JT shook his head and gave a harsh laugh. "That's great. Fucking great. You want to invest millions into a business that'll take five years to break even, but you don't want to spend a tenth of that to make improvements that would actually grow our core business."
"Now son, don't take it like that. Once this operation gets off the ground, we can look at building the new cabins and making those improvements down the road."
Unfuckingbelievable, he thought as he watched his father's truck pull out of his driveway.
Except it wasn't. No matter how hard he'd tried to prove himself the last few years, it was clear that his father and his uncles weren't going to let him run the business the way he wanted to.
No, it was more than just how he wanted to run it—it was how the business needed to be run if they wanted to keep it going for future generations.
But no, they were too narrow-minded, too focused on doing things how they'd always been done in the past to see it.
He went inside, scraped off his boots in the boot jack, and proceeded to the bar where he poured himself a generous glass of whiskey. He tossed half of it back in one gulp, gasping a little as it burned the back of his throat. He topped off his glass and sat heavily on the couch in his living room.
The couch where, just a few nights ago, he'd sat with Colleen snuggled up to his side. Resting her head on his shoulder, she'd laughed at the movie they were watching and sipped her wine. Before too long the feel of her warm, curvy body tucked up against him was distracting him from the movie, and he had her stretched out along the length of the couch, his hips cradled between her thighs.
Just like his family, she couldn't let go of the past. He was so fucking tired of being punished for what had happened before. Maybe he'd be able to accept it because of things he'd done. He was all about taking responsibility.
But no, he was being shafted for things that weren't even his fault. For his family's complacency and fear of change, and for Gregory's shitty character and crappy treatment of his wife.
He was so stupid, thinking he could change their minds. His family's. Colleen's. So naive to believe if he proved himself by action, over and over, to be knowledgeable, to be sensible, and in Colleen's case, trustworthy, they would come to have faith in him.
They would believe in him.
They would trust him.
The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. If that was the case, the men in the white coats should be pulling up any minute now.
He slugged back the rest of his whiskey, leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. And was immediately assaulted by visions of Colleen. At the bar, flashing him that smile that made him feel like he hung the moon. In bed, under him, her plump lips parted on a moan as they drove each other to the edge of madness.
Biting her lip at the movie theater when she nervously acknowledged that they were seeing each other. Her sweet, vulnerable smile last night when she'd tentatively told him he made her happy.
Her agonized expression earlier today when she thought he'd been working with his father to go behind her back. Her stony refusal to believe he would never do that to her.
"Fuck it," he said, the words choking around the lump in his throat. His eyes burned and his chest felt like a gorilla was sitting on him. He eyed his phone on the coffee table in front of him.
He could call her, try to explain.
He shut the urge down. He wasn't going to go chasing after her, fighting her demons of fear and doubt. He wasn't going to waste his time trying to prove himself to her, prove himself to anybody.
He was sick and tired of the insanity. If he was going to have a life that was anything close to what he wanted it to be, it was time to try something different.
Chapter 21
