The hazel eyes that had been fixed on me throughout this conversation fell to the food in his lap. He chewed on his lip instead of a taco.
“Shit, I’m sorry. That’s probably a sensitive topic?—”
“No, it’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “It was in 2013. I was almost twenty-two.”
Twenty-two, in college, and raising a toddler. Holy shit, I couldn’t even imagine. “That must’ve been hard. Taking care of her while you were in school, I mean.”
“It would’ve been,” he said. “But I had Rhiannon. She’d let me bring Lizzie to the daycare anytime I had class. It was good for her, actually. So many people at the ranch, all thatcommunity, they helped me raise Lizzie. She pretty much sees Rhiannon as a surrogate mom.”
“I think we all do.” Shifting in the passenger seat to face him better, I leaned against the door behind me. “How do you know Rhiannon, anyway?”
“She worked at the ranch back when it was my summer camp.” He bundled the foil from his tacos, laid it on the dashboard, and swiveled in the driver seat to face me. “Then when the camp shut down during the winter, and later when she started turning it into what it is now, I came down to ride horses. My parents wouldn’t let me have pets, but I loved coming to the ranch and visiting them.”
“No shit. No one ever talks about how the ranch started.”
“Yeah, just a summer camp. When the owner passed, she willed it to Rhiannon. It wasn’t making much money by then anyway. So she turned it into what she was most passionate about.”
“That woman’s a saint.”
“That, she is.” He grabbed his soda from the center console and took a few gulps. “She was basically a second mom to me growing up.”
“Even though she was just your camp counselor?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. After a few hard swallows, he shrugged. “Things weren’t great at home. But I spent a lot of time at the ranch. The bus dropped me off at the gate after school most days, and I’d walk in, and Rhiannon would take me down to the animals, or have me sit down with some of the girls for dinner. Then she’d drive me home at the end of the night. Went on like that through most of my adolescence.”
“I wish I’d had someone like that when I was a kid.”
“Things weren’t great at your house either?”
“Yeah, not really.” I forced a laugh. “I never met my dad. I loved my mom, and she loved me. But she loved crack more.”
His brows raised. “Damn.”
“Not gonna lie, I figured if I dumped some of my trauma, you’d dump some of yours.”
A genuine laugh escaped him, widening that crooked smile. “I don’t know. My dad had a temper when he drank. And he drank a lot.”
“You get it then.”
“I get what, exactly?”
“What it’s like to love an addict.”
“Never said I loved him.” Sebastian chewed the inside of his cheek. “I know you’re not supposed to say that. Everybody’s supposed to love their parents. But mine was a prick. I hated the bastard. He’s why I left for college and didn’t move back until he died.”
I understood that, but I couldn’t relate. It wasn’t that I inherently loved my mom either. I loved her because she was a good person. She liked getting high, but at her core, she had a kind heart and an open mind. My memories of her weren’t all bad. Many were, but not because she was ever cruel to me. If she hadn’t been an addict, she would’ve been a great mom.
Some of her boyfriends, on the other hand, were more like Sebastian’s father.
“What about your mom?” Another chip in hand, I scooped up some salsa from the Styrofoam cup. “Did you guys have a good relationship?”
“Wouldn’t say it was as bad as my relationship with my dad. But couldn’t say we were close either.”
“And she wasn’t jealous of you looking at Rhiannon as a mom?”
He flapped his lips together in a trill. “I don’t know. Maybe? We weren’t a very talkative family.”
“Mine was. Well, my mom was. Crack has that effect on people. Kinda makes them talk a mile a minute.”
