Though he did pause in the doorway to take a look at the old man.
For the second time today, he looked at someone else and saw himself, but this time in the other direction. It made him feel about as close to dizzy as he’d ever been without a head injury. Those tiny, new faces that were the way his had been. This old, weathered face that was the way his was heading.
The driving force that had led him here tonight, the snow be damned, kicked in again.
Harder than before.
“You knew that Rosie Stark had my babies and didn’t tell me,” he said, shoving his way in through the door.
He hadn’t forgotten that she’d told him that, though there had been other things to focus on in the moment. It had been one more drum beating inside of him the whole of the night, and it got almost too loud to bear as he navigated a slippery path through the snowstorm that had blown in when he finally headed home.
After he’d had dinner withhis childrenfor the first time. After he’d watched Rosie be a mother, making them dinner and arguing them in and out of the bathtub. Reading them stories, then tucking them into bed.
Do you live here?Levi had asked while they were snuggling into the bed they still wanted to share, in a small bedroom with horses and trucks all over the walls.
I don’t, Ryder had told him.
Ryder is your daddy, Rosie had said, very matter-of-factly, with only a sideways look at Ryder to indicate that she knew this was a huge thing, this acknowledgment.
He’d actually held his breath as he’d waited for the boys to respond.
Jacinta has a daddy, Eli had said, like that settled the matter.
Rosie had bitten back a smile as she’d informed Ryder that Jacinta was Eli’s best friend at nursery school.
Is he my daddy too?Levi had asked in a stage whisper.
I’m both your daddy, Ryder had said then.And it’s past your bedtime.
If he’d found himself sweating from a performance far more precarious than any he’d given before, he certainly didn’t want anyone to see it. Just like he didn’t want to tell anyone—because he didn’t know how to feel about it—that the act of tucking the boys in and leaving them in their bed, sleepy and safe, made his heart actually, physically hurt in his chest.
Rosie had walked him out. They had said very little. Everything was too big, maybe. The ramifications were still coming at them, fast, and she probably knew as well as he did that the reckoning was only just beginning.
That Ryder Carey had knocked up Rosie Stark and left her on her own for a couple of years was going to take some digesting, and not just on his part.
Whatever it was, all he’d done was nod at her, stiffly, and then take himself home. He’d been glad it was dark and cold. He’d been glad that he’d had to focus on the road to make sure he didn’t slide off and over the side of the mountain.
He’d driven in total silence, save that drumbeat inside of him. It had gotten deafening by the time he made it to the ranch. He’d driven past the turnoff to his and Wilder’s plots and straight on to the house, where he could see the lights on inside.
If they hadn’t also been on in the barn, he would have turned around, gone back to his Airstream, and looked for answers in a bottle of whiskey. They were never there, those elusive answers, but a complicated life meant a man kept looking.
Zeke glanced up from what he was doing with a mild expression on his face.
“You’re not going to lie to me, are you?” Ryder asked incredulously.
“I’ve been many things in this life,” his father said in that slow drawl of his that always made Ryder stand a little bit straighter, like he was still a kid. “But a liar has never been one of them.”
“How could you keep something like that to yourself?”
“I thought about telling you.” Zeke turned his attention back to the metal in his hands. “But we’re talking about two boys’ lives, Ryder. You made it very clear that bull riding comes first. Above and before every other thing in your life. Why add to that list?”
“That’s fucked up and you know it.”
Again, Zeke seemed profoundly unbothered. Maybetoounbothered, though Ryder couldn’t think why that was.
“Children aren’t a game,” his father told him. “You can’t pick them up and put them down when you’re bored.”
That seemed profoundly unfair, given Ryder had known he was a parent for only a handful of hours.