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“I won’t let that happen,” he insisted.
“What happens if you can’t stop it?”
The question hung between us.
“We have to start thinking about what happens if this doesn’t go away. Where’s the threshold of loss? How long until we’re bankrupt or worse? If this keeps going like it is, we won’t be able to replace the cattle. And then what?”
He watched me, his brows low, his eyes dark. “Then we’ll figure it out,” he ground out.
“And what if we can’t?”
“What exactly are you getting at?”
“You’re too stubborn to consider any outcome but success. You think you can overcome anything by the sheer power of your will. But you can’t make something from nothing. You can’t just decide it’s going to be okay. It’s time we thought about what happens if it isn’t. And the fact of the matter is, we can’t do this alone.”
“We can sell off stock. Downsize.”
“We don’t know how many cattle we’re going to lose—we might not have anything left to sell.”
“The bank then. Another loan—”
I shook my head, my tears choking me. “I tried. That’s where I was—the bank. They won’t give us any more money, Jake. We don’t have the capital or the equity to save ourselves. Without an influx of cash, we’ll never make it. And the more stock we lose, the deeper our debt.” When I tried to take a breath, it hitched in my chest. “I ran into Chase today, and—”
He backed up. Stood. Looked down at me. “If you propose Chase Patton help us, I swear to God, Olivia, we are through.”
The ease with which he’d thrown something so serious at me left me gaping. “You would leave me just for suggesting something?”
“If that something is rolling over for the Pattons, then yeah. I would. Because that would mean we fundamentally disagree on the most sacred point—loyalty to this farm and everything it stands for. Not to mention that they are the ones who did this to us.”
“What else do you suggest we do? I don’t want to do it either, but I’m out of ideas. Who else has the money to help us? If not them, who? Chase might be our only option. You were right—the Pattons were after us. James Patton sent Chase to infiltrate, and Chase told me. He didn’t lie, didn’t try to sneak around me. He came straight out and told me, just because it was the right thing to do.”
He glared down at me with all the anger and all the betrayal of the apostles finding Judas. “When did he tell you?”
“Fourth of July—”
“You’ve known this for weeks?”
“I … I didn’t think—”
“No. You didn’t think.” His chest heaved. “I thought we were on the same page. You don’t know me at all if you think I’d ever consider shaking hands with those thieves. And I guess I don’t know you either, not if you’d keep this from me. Not if you’d suggest we take money from a Patton.” He drew himself up to his full height, his face shutting me out like a door blown closed by the wind. “I’m not taking their filthy, tainted money. You kept the truth from me—the Pattons have been after us this whole time, just like I said. You knew, and you defended them. If you think Chase doesn’t have an angle, you’re a sucker and a fool. But worse than that—you trust him over me. You’d choose his word over my wishes.”
“I’m choosing the farm over pride, not him over you. You’re just too blinded by your grudge to even consider he’s not the evil you’ve made him out to be.”
“And you’re too gullible to consider he’s full of shit. He’s got you eating out of his fucking hand, Olivia. If you think that a hundred-and-twenty-year-old feud is all of a sudden dead and that taking money from the Pattons is a solution, you haven’t been paying attention.” He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, his eyes on the ground for a long moment. “You say you’re loyal to the farm. To me. But if that were true, you’d never have uttered those words. You’d never have opposed me on the matter of the Pattons.”
He turned to leave. I scrambled up from beneath Alice to catch him, touching his arm.
“Jake, let me explain—”
He shrugged me off with a jerk so sharp, I nearly tripped. He didn’t look at me, just kept stalking toward the barn door.
“I understand just fine,” he said coolly. “You’ve done enough damage for a lifetime, Olivia. No amount of explanation will change that.”
I stood in the middle of the barn and watched him until he disappeared. My cow lay sick and dying behind me, our farm caught in quicksand, our future slipping away.
He’d cool off, I promised myself. We’d talk just like we always did. We’d work together. Talk about what-if. Find a solution. But we couldn’t do it without help, not if things got even a little worse.
