Page 38 of The Lies We Told Ourselves

Reece jumped, and I pushed her up, completely underestimating how light she actually was, and she shot up into the air with a squeak of surprise. Thankfully, I still had hold of her leg, so instead of firing her over Doc’s back, I pulled her back down into the saddle instead.

She landed with an oomph, and when she’d recovered enough to loosen her iron grip on the saddle, she scowled down at me.

Doc gave him his due and didn’t even move a step.

“Sorry about that.” I grinned up at her, and she instantly relaxed. “I forgot you were a skinny thing.”

Reece cocked her head to the side as she thought. “I’m going to just believe that was a compliment and move past it,” she quipped.

“I promise you’re going to have fun,” I said, grabbing the reins and passing them to her.

I had no idea if that was actually true, but hopefully, this would be a solid step two.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REECE

Ihad no idea if what I was doing was right. All I’d really learned from this experience was that having a distractingly hot cowboy walking next to you while trying to concentrate on balancing on the back of a horse was a terrible idea.

And damn, if Booker wasn’t the most distracting man I’d ever laid eyes on.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone had gone out of their way to get me something I needed.

It didn’t matter that he’d needed help. I wouldn’t have a clue what size boots he needed, let alone if hats even came in different sizes.

He’d seen something I needed, and he’d just done it because it was a nice thing to do. It shouldn’t have made me want to cry as much as it did.

“I can see why you like this,” I said, even if it was just because I wanted something to say.

Booker hummed in agreement. “I always knew this was where I was supposed to be.”

I watched how Booker walked by Doc’s head, his hand resting lightly on his neck, more out of companionship than toguide him. But I could see the way his shoulders seemed less tense. The way that he walked had less of a grumpy storming from one point to another kind of attitude to it.

“What was your grandfather like?”

Booker glanced over his shoulder at the question, but he had a soft smile on his face as he did. “He was everything my parents weren’t. He came from money, but he didn’t particularly like it. He loved this place, working the ranch, being outside. Gramps wasn’t afraid of an honest day’s work. Even though we only lived on the other side of town, we spent nearly the entire summer here. I’d have stayed forever if my parents would have let me. He taught me how to ride, to fish. We went camping, hunting. He was a busy man, but he always had time for his grandsons.”

I could hear the hint of sadness in his voice for the grandfather he’d lost. Life was cruel that way. No matter how hard you loved someone, you always lost them in the end. And the more you loved them, the worse it hurt.

“I never really had anything like that. My dad passed when I was young, and I don’t really remember what it was like when he was around. My mom did her best. She worked hard to pay the bills, but she wasn’t really all that interested in me. At a certain point she decided she wanted to find someone else, have a second chance at love, and then it was like she forgot about me altogether.”

“She still around?” Booker asked.

“No. She passed about five years ago. I didn’t find out until about six months later. Her new family didn’t invite me to the funeral. It didn’t really matter, though. I think, in some ways, I lost her the day I lost my father.”

Booker fell back a step, so he was walking beside me. His hand rubbed against my calf as we did another lap in silence, both of us lost in thoughts of the past.

“My parents always had this vision of what life was supposed to be like. They wanted the money, the status, and their sons were a way to build even more of it. My father went into property development, and he was good at it. Hell, he owns half the town now. And my mother lives for that shit. She loves walking around, thinking that everything and everyone belongs to her. I hated it all. The parties, the boasting, the expectations. All I wanted was to be outside, riding a horse, and working the land. As you can imagine, that didn’t go down well in the museum they called a home.”

“They wanted you to work with your dad?” I asked.

“Yeah. What’s the point of having millions if you can’t turn it into billions, right? It probably sounds like such rich kid problems. The funny thing is, for all their pushing, all their lectures, none of us have ended up where they wanted us. Trace worked with Dad for a while, but then when everything came out about what our mother did to Delaney, he left and never looked back. They were so caught up in everyone thinking we were the perfect family that they destroyed the whole thing.”

“People are allowed to have problems, Booker. It doesn’t matter how much money they have.” I could see how much he hated complaining, how much he thought he didn’t deserve to say that he was in pain.

“It’s strange now, looking back at it. They wanted us to be so much like them, but they were never around. We barely ever saw them. Once a week, we’d have family dinner, and our mother would make us report our progress. If it wasn’t good enough, then she’d sit there and lay out every single flaw she saw in us. And there were a lot.”

“That’s…so cruel.” I couldn’t believe someone would treat a child like that.

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