Page 36 of The Rancher's Second-Choice Wife

The sudden hollowness of his voice made Poppy dig her nails deeper into her palms.

“I do it because they’re what keeps me sane.”

And before she could ask what he meant by this, Valerian began to paint a horrific picture of his last memory with his mother.

Oh God, help him.

This was why Heather had taken pains to assure Poppy that her bi-monthly appointments with Valerian were not what it seemed. And now it made so much heartbreaking sense, with how Valerian had seemed to shove her away as if she had suddenly turned into the Devil.

“Social Services eventually contacted my grandfather, and he took me in right after my mother’s funeral. I had never seen him before that day. Never knew about Heather until that day. Or that my father, his son, had died in a car crash a few years back.”

Poppy could only nod, with all of her effort focused on keeping her tears back. Valerian was an exceptionally proud man, and she didn’t want him to risk thinking she was crying because she pitied him.

“The old man did his best to raise me right, but he could never reach the part of my mind where I kept hearing that fucking buzz. We’d have these shouting matches almost every day because he couldn’t understand why I kept getting in trouble. I couldn’t make myself tell him I was fucked up. The final straw was when I asked him for a loan to start my own company, and he didn’t just say...no. Instead he called me a lunatic just like my dead mother, and...that was it. I walked out of our family home in San Antonio, and I haven’t spoken to him since.”

“I’m so, so sorry.” Poppy didn’t know what else to say.

“You don’t have to be. Heather loaned me the money I needed, and I earned my first hundred mil that year. Heather always stayed in touch, and she was even upfront with Gramps when she accepted my offer to join Rossfield Inc.”

“And your grandfather?”

“We’re still not on speaking terms.”

“But does he at least know about...”

“Heather’s the only one who knows about my condition. No one else knows, not even Camelia. And if I have to be honest, I had no plans of telling you either. But after what happened today...”

“It was an accident, Valerian. And after what you’ve told me, I don’t even want you to apologize for it.”

“I almost killed you.”

The ache in her heart intensified at the way self-contempt laced Valerian’s every word. She could too easily picture in her mind a seven-year-old Valerian waking up to see his mother dead...and then finding out later on that she had killed herself for reasons he would’ve been too young to understand.

Valerian jerked in his seat when Poppy suddenly jumped out of her bed. “Poppy—”

And then she was suddenly kneeling between her knees and looking up at him with tear-stained eyes.

“I didn’t die, Valerian. I don’t even have a single scratch on me. But y-you? You’ve been hurting all these years, and I hurt, too, when I see you in pain like this. So please...please tell me honestly. Is there something I can do to make you feel better?”

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