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“I’m not taking your money,” she said.
“Please,” he said, feeling as if his body were being turned inside out. “Let me do this for you. For all the years—”
“Fine,” she snapped. “But only because I can’t keep working my guys like this without facing mutiny. And I’m paying you back.”
Fine, he thought. He’d take it any way he could get it.
“I’m also going to put some money aside for Dad, for when he gets too sick and you need help.”
“That could be years—”
”Whenever it is, I just want you to have what you need to care for him.”
Again, she nodded. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, Mia,” he said.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said. She didn’t smile, had never been one for comfort, cold or otherwise. He remembered what she’d said in Santa Barbara, that he had always been a damn coward when it came to the hard stuff. But she was the pro. Handling the hurt he’d unwittingly handed out, without ever letting on that she was in pain.
Regret burned through him again.
“I’m a big girl, Jack. I made my own decisions.”
“If I had known…” He didn’t finish the thought. Had no way of finishing it. If he’d known, would anything have been different? Truth be told, he probably wouldn’t have married her.
“I would have died if you’d known,” she said. “I didn’t tell you for a reason. I’ve known, Jack, all along, that you didn’t love me.” She took in a deep breath and then put a hand on the truck as she let it out.
“Are you okay?” he asked, wishing he could comfort her.
“My husband is leaving me, Jack.” She said it as a joke, even managed to smile, but he couldn’t laugh. “Oh, come on, Jack, lighten up. It was always going to be temporary. My feelings don’t change anything.”
But what about mine? The thought erupted from nowhere, surprising the hell out of him. He stood there, blinking into her face, wondering what was happening to him. He didn’t worry about his feelings because he so rarely had them.
But it was all changing. That jumble of emotion on the periphery of his life was collapsing and the mess was epic.
“Thanks for fixing the well,” she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.
He cataloged everything about her, as if she were a water table chart. A map. He took her in, once piece at a time, so he could remember the whole of her better in the years to come—her wild hair, the bright eyes, the flushed skin. Her body, all those curves in such a little space.
“Thanks for getting me out of that bedroom,” he said. “For bringing me back to life.”
“You would have done it on your own,” she said. “In time.”
“I don’t know, Mia.” He shook his head. “I was in a bad place.”
“Then I’m glad I could help. I’m glad the ranch could help.” She tried to sound bright, and it was close, but not convincing enough. She was shaking underneath her skin. “It was good you came here,” she said. “Though you should talk to your dad before you go.”
“What’s the point?”
She blinked at him. Opened her mouth and then closed it again. Classic signs of a torn Mia, a Mia biting her tongue.
“Just say whatever you want to say,” he told her, reading her cues like a well-marked map.
“You…you need to deal with what your mother did to you,” she said. “Your father, too.”
He started, angry that she was somehow making this about his childhood. His childhood was a distant memory. Forgotten. “What are you talking about?”
“You live in a cold world, Jack,” she whispered. “Maps and work and water tables. And I think your folks put you there. Science was safer than relationships. But, if you ever want something lasting with someone—”
“I have you,” he snapped.
She swallowed and looked at her boots. “Not anymore,” she whispered.
“Oliver…” He trailed off, a numbing pain buzzing over his skin, separating him from his body.
He didn’t have anyone. The minute he stepped off this ranch, he was alone. And for years, if he’d been asked, that would have been the way he wanted it.
She was right; science was safer than relationships.
“Where will you go?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“Africa?”
“I think maybe you were right when you said I swoop in and change things without sticking around to see the results, and I think the way we were drilling, going in every few months…I think that was doomed to failure for the same reason. Africa needs water, but they need organizations there for the long haul. And that’s not me.”
Her brow furrowed. “So what does that mean? For you?”
“I don’t know, Mia.”
She reached up, her cool fingers touching his cheek, and for a second he saw past the prickly exterior to the woman underneath. The woman in pain.
