Page 85 of Promise

“Friends?” Tate practically spits. “You were like my fucking brother.”

We were like brothers. We were both a little rougher than Cortland and Clint. A little more reckless and daring. And I wonder where he’s going with this thought.

“And you fucking left me.” He smacks his chest.

What? “Tate.” My throat clogs, the lump inside like a ball of acid. “I tried to talk to you, it’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“Trinity is your sister.” I didn’t feel comfortable telling him about our sex life. The disconnection. The separation between us. He didn’t understand how deeply it hurt her to not have a baby. He didn’t understand how it was killing me not to give my wife what she wanted.

I wanted to be a father. His dad had been a wonderful example of one.

“That’s a poor excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse. And it wasn’t all about your sister anyway. It was about me.”

I sigh, turning my head and squinting in the morning light. “I was tired of feeling like a failure. I was just stuck.” I glance back at him. “Not giving Trin a baby. Not fulfilling my promises to her.”

His eyes widen.

“Even with Cort and Clint.” I glance over my shoulder, as if they can hear me. “I’d been working construction for more than twenty years. I needed to do something different. Something I could control. Something I could win.”

If anyone can understand the sensation of wanting to win, to be significant, it was Tate. He’d lived in the shadow of Cortland his entire life. Cort and his professional football success. Tate might have even been a better athlete than Cort, but he never got the break he needed to do more, be more. Part of that might have been because of his attitude. Tate acts like he’s owed something. He’s never seen how easy he has it, how much he already has.

“And you wouldn’t talk to me either,” I remind him.

Much like his sister, I called him. Tried to explain myself. Tate was all too happy to head to that old coal mine canyon and watch me race, but he wouldn’t speak to me once I left.

I assumed his issue was about hurting his sister. Watching as he turns his head, his jaw tight, I realize something. “This is about you.”

He whips his head back in my direction.

“You’re upset because . . . I did something for myself. I was a success.” It wasn’t that Tate wanted me to fail. It’s simply that I’d done something he hadn’t exactly done himself.

His brother had gone off to be a football star.

Petty had been famous with his band.

Marshall was a success with his distillery.

And I’d been victorious, for a little while, as a race car driver.

“Tate.” I sigh. “Don’t you see, man? It doesn’t matter?” He doesn’t need to be a football star or in a band, own his own business, or race laps around a track. He is a success in his own right.

“Easy for you to say. You left.”

It wasn’t about leaving. Nothing ever held Tate back in this town, other than . . . him.

“And now I’m back. Because the most important things are here.” I point at the ground. “Trin. And now Mirabelle.”

Tate scoffs.

“Just because you don’t want to be a dad doesn’t mean I never did. You had the best father, Tate.” My voice cracks at thoughts of Russell. His warm laughter. His kind heart. His belief in me.

“Don’t,” he demands, lasering his eyes on me.

“He was so proud of you, no matter what.”