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“Yes,” she said. “Because I was attracted to you, and there was no one, surfer or otherwise, that I met down there who made me feel even half of what you did. And I told myself that I didn’t actually have a crush on you, I just thought you were attractive, because it wasn’t like I knew you or anything, but you definitely shaped my taste in male aesthetics.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“Well, I just thought you should know. Because whatever you thought about me, and what I thought about you when we met, you were missing that layer. It’s probably why I got riled up so easily, and so quickly. You made me feel things, confusing things. Things I really tried not to feel.”
“Your dad made you feel badly about your feelings.”
“Yes. I...humiliated myself chasing him. Begging him to stay. I mean, I had all kinds of dreams. Who doesn’t when they’re a teenager? I wanted to work the ranch. I wanted to leave. I wanted to go to college. I wanted you to kiss me, and I wanted to travel the world and be tied down by nobody. I wanted to get married and settle down. I wanted everything. All of it. Because that’s how it should be when you’re young and you haven’t been hurt. You should be able to see all the possibilities. It sucks when you lose that.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I remember that. Just vaguely. I dreamed about leaving. Riding in the rodeo. All that fame and glory. And the girls. I dreamed about going out to honky-tonks every night and drinking beer, doing whatever the hell I wanted, because, of course, my mother would’ve taken a dim view to such a thing.”
“Right. Of course.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
“No. Well, I still got to go to college. I knew I didn’t want love or marriage anymore, because it was so risky. I knew there wouldn’t be any world-traveling. I knew I couldn’t let Fia carry everything.”
“Is Sullivan’s actually in a precarious position?”
“As far as I know, there is a very old stipulation in the agreement that if we’re not profitable for too many years in a row, we might have to begin selling our acreage off to the other families. That has never come up. No one has ever acted like they wanted to do that, but it is something that I’m very aware of. We struggled. We struggled because the foundation was never quite as firm as the other ranches anyway, and then we got left to it really abruptly.”
“I relate to that, too.”
“I know. And a lot of the problems were caused by my dad. So, there’s another thing we have in common.”
“Your dad’s not the cause of all my problems. Definitely one that got me, but not all of them.”
“What gave you the strength to do that? To take care of everybody.”
“There was no other choice. I love my brother and sisters, and somebody had to take care of them. I could never let them get taken off the ranch. At the end of the day, whatever dream I had out there of the rodeo, of glory, none of that was real. This place is real. My family is real. And they were all I had left. So the decision was easy. And it wasn’t even really a decision. It’s clarifying, when you lose all that. You cling to what matters.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I know my parents didn’t die, but I actually do understand that. We’ve clung to each other because everyone else is off doing their own thing. So we have to love it. The land. We have to love what we do. We have to take care of it. We have to take care of each other. Because the simple truth is that nobody else will. So we do.”
He looked away, distant, and she only stared at him. He was just so handsome. So singular.
He always had been. And back then he had been unobtainable. Much too old. But right now, he was here, and she could reach out and touch him. She felt like that was a lesson. And something. She just didn’t know what yet.
“Did your parents know? About your school problems?”
“No,” he said. “They just thought I didn’t like school. That’s all. I’ll never know if they’d have figured it out. There was a lot going on. It couldn’t be about me. And then there wasn’t time.”
“Well, you’re allowed to be angry about that. About the fact that...you had to give out care you couldn’t have yourself.”
He looked over at her, his expression breaking. There was no other description for it. His forehead wrinkled, his mouth turning down. “Well. I guess that I am.” He frowned. “I...I wish it was different. Or maybe that I was. I wish I could have... I love my siblings.”
“But you never got to be a kid.”
“I never got to fully grow up. Which sounds weird, I know. It sounds like I had to grow up overnight, but what I had to do was learn how to take care of other people. How to be an invulnerable parental stand-in. I...I never learned to have relationships. Really, until I started working with the Huckleberry County Ranching Association, I didn’t even know how to deal with other people. Other adults. I have Damien, the one friend I’ve had since childhood, and otherwise... I wave to everyone in town. I do a good job of looking like I have it all together.”
“But you’re carrying so much on your own.”
He nodded.
Quinn’s heart squeezed. And she wanted to get closer to him. Wanted to lean on him. She and Levi both agreed on one thing. You couldn’t depend on other people. You had to stand on your own feet. But she wanted to lean on him, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with that. Because she knew better. Because he knew better. They both did.
“You want to stay the night?”
She dropped her fork into her macaroni salad. “Yeah,” she said.
