LITMIR.BIZ

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since Wyatt wasn’t going to burn a stack of his cash, and Olivia was going to remain pregnant regardless of his feelings on the matter, he didn’t see the point in rising to Wyatt’s bait.

      “Doesn’t worry me,” he said, grabbing a beer out of the fridge. He had every intention of drinking more heavily here. But he didn’t want to expose the fact that he was bothered by all of this. He really should have stayed with Kaylee, who would have imagined that he was heartbroken or wounded in some way. He wondered if that was what his brother thought too. That Olivia had broken his heart. She hadn’t. It was dredging up a past he didn’t like to think of.

      He wondered if it would be like this if he ever had his own children.

      That was a strange thought. Because of course he had been planning on having children with Olivia. But it had seemed an easy thing. Part of that normal life he was planning for.

      He hadn’t anticipated that it would make him think of his first girlfriend and the baby that they had lost all that time ago. The baby that nobody knew about.

      Nobody but Cole Logan—Olivia’s father and Quinn Dodge’s best friend. He’d been like an uncle to Bennett, and far enough removed from the situation for Bennett to feel like he could go to him for help without being terrified of being seen as a disappointment.

      Not even Kaylee knew.

      There was no point talking about something that had never become anyone else’s problem. He had intended on bringing the issue forward with his family when it had become something they couldn’t deny. But he’d been sixteen, and he’d been an idiot. He’d been caught up in feelings, and he sure as hell hadn’t been thinking.

      The acrid, burning shame of failure still sat in his gut all these years later. For that loss of control.

      He had never acted like that ever again.

      He had gotten caught up in passion, and he hadn’t taken care of Marnie. Hadn’t protected either of them.

      And after all the emotional turmoil of going over what they were going to do, of deciding that he was going to put all of his dreams, his life on hold, so that he could do the right thing and marry her and make a home with her, she had lost the baby. Then she had broken up with him and left town, unable to handle the pain of what had happened.

      He hadn’t heard much about her since. She didn’t stay in touch with her parents. He’d heard once through the grapevine she’d been arrested.

      She hadn’t been that person before. Not when they’d been together.

      He blamed himself, in part. For the fact that what had happened seemed to have damaged her in ways she couldn’t come back from.

      So of course when Olivia said she didn’t want to have sex until they were engaged he had honored that easily. He would never, ever pressure a woman into doing something she didn’t want to.

      And he would never act out of control again in his life. The consequence for that kind of thing were too grave.

      But nobody knew about that. They would all think he was acting weird because his ex was pregnant. They had no idea he’d nearly been a father once. And that this made him think of the baby he would have had fifteen years ago. That it made him wonder about what that might have been like. What that life might have been.

      It hadn’t even been a life he had wanted. It had just been the life he was coping with.

      But it was hovering there now. And he couldn’t even explain it to anyone.

      “Well, maybe at the barbecue I can set up a free vet check booth,” he said drily.

      “Yeah, not sure we want you doing any of that near the food.”

      “Like having hayrides near a barbecue is any less problematic? I don’t think it is.”

      Jamie sniffed. “Horses are not dirty.”

      “Just because you love horses more than you love most people doesn’t mean other people love them near their burgers.”

      “Well, then, they’re not people I want to know anyway,” his sister said.

      Sometimes Bennett wondered if Jamie had suffered the most from losing their mother at a young age. Jamie had been a newborn when their mom had died, and their dad had done his best with her—with all of them—but he’d had four kids, a working ranch and a shedload of grief to contend with.

      Ultimately Jamie had been left to go a little bit wild, running around outside and doing her best to keep up with her brothers from the time she was barely knee-high to a grasshopper. But then, Jamie was happy. Normal shouldn’t matter.

      But it did to him. That was the problem.

      It clearly did, because his entire set of goals had centered around having some version of a normal life. The house, the job, the wife, the kids.

      And it had all crumbled down around him and he didn’t know how he felt about it.

      But then, when push came to shove he hadn’t proposed to Olivia.

      Now that her pregnancy news was rolling over him slowly, and he was dealing with various ghosts from the past, he wondered if that was why.

      If, in the end, his past was part of what had held him back. The fact that he had known marrying Olivia and making a family with her was going to dredge up things he didn’t want to think about.

      But when it came to Jamie, he only cared about her happiness. And that much was easy. When it came to himself, it was a lot different.

      Sometimes he wondered if he deserved to be happy.

      Whatever, he had to quit sitting here feeling sorry for himself. He needed to go home. Now that he had given up on the idea of getting blind stinking drunk, he needed to get his ass in bed so that when tomorrow morning’s wake-up call came it didn’t feel like such an assault.

      “Well,” he said, “thanks for the... This little version of support that you all are able to give.” He tilted his half-consumed beer bottle upward. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

      “You’re not too drunk to drive,” Grant said, his tone dry, “are you?”

      “I don’t know how you’re ever not too drunk to drive,” Bennett returned.

      “I might not be,” Grant said. “But, seeing as I live here, it doesn’t really matter.”

      A couple of years ago Grant had sold his house in town and moved back onto the ranch. There were so many outbuildings and dwellings on the property that it was easy for them to all cohabit there and not see each other.

      Bennett preferred to have his own space.

      “Fair enough. Now you can just stagger across the property.”

      At least Grant wasn’t drinking alone. He wasn’t going to say that, but he was grateful for that. They all worried about Grant. They had thought that in a year, two years, five years, he would have done something in the way of recovering from Lindsay’s death. But Lindsay had been his high school sweetheart, his first and only love, and the fact that he had married her even knowing their marriage wouldn’t be a long one, knowing that eventually her terminal illness would take her, had made them a kind of tragic love story for the ages in Gold Valley.

      And unfortunately, Grant, it turned out, excelled at existing in tragedy.

      “I’m sure I’ll see y’all tomorrow,” he said. “If you end up needing any help on anything specific let me know.”

      He stood up and went back outside, feeling a little bit like an unsettled boomerang not sure what target he was hoping to return to.

      His hand itched, and he wanted to reach for his phone to call Kaylee.

      But it was late now, and she had probably gone to sleep.

      He had already interrupted her date, he didn’t need

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