Page 74 of Road to a Cowboy

He’d wondered recently if she’d felt guilty for sending him to his dad’s when he’d been a teenager. Cal suspected she hadn’t. Suspected all she’d felt was relief.

Well, Cal felt guilty and relieved, but his walking away wasn’t the same as what she’d done to him. She’d tossed him away and sent him to live with a man he hardly knew because she hadn’t wanted to deal with him. Cal was cutting her out of his life because she was abusive and mean and petty, and he needed to walk away from that, for his mental health at the very least.

This past week, with no way to retrieve his text messages while he was abroad... it had been so fucking peaceful. He hadn’t realized that for years he’d been living in a state of heightened awareness, constantly on alert waiting for his mom to summon him.

He couldn’t go on like that.

More than that? He couldn’t have someone in his life who was this toxic.

Austin had once told him his mom was poison, and although Cal hadn’t wanted to hear it at the time, Austin was right. Their relationship was unhealthy as hell, and it wasn’t all Barbara’s fault—Cal had enabled her by catering to her every demand.

It was time to let go. She would never give him what he wanted—love, acceptance, appreciation.

But he didn’t need that from her. Not anymore. He’d had it all along from people who mattered.

Barbara dropped her arms, then quickly wrapped them around herself with a little laugh that sounded half-desperate and half-disbelieving. “This is ridiculous.” She walked into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping gently against the floor. “Go to the diner and get the food. I’ll call the ladies back. I’m sure we can reheat it.”

“No.”

She stared at him, a sneer turning her face ugly. “No?”

“No.” Sadness swept over him, along with relief and a sense of inevitability. “I love you, Mom. I don’t like you much, but I do love you. But I don’t think you love me. I don’t think you ever did.” His voice had gone scratchy and he had to swallow hard past the lump in his throat. “I don’t have time in my life for people who just want to use me. So like I said—we’re done.” He took one last look at her, trying to find a shred of the mother he wished she’d been and finding nothing but the reality instead. It was a cold reality, a hard one. There was no changing it, only doing what he had to do to take care of himself. “Bye, Mom,” he whispered.

And walked out of her house for perhaps the last time.

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Thanks for your help today, Marco.” Austin held his hand out for a fist bump as they exited the community center at the end of day one of Austin’s week-long photography camp.

Marco looked so tired even his long hair was wilted, but he shot Austin a smile anyway. “Kids are a fuckton of work.”

“You won’t hear any argument from me. And we do it all again tomorrow.”

“Whoo,” Marco deadpanned.

Austin chuckled and headed for his car. “Have a good night.”

Marco hadn’t just been instrumental in helping Austin run the camp—he’d organized all the equipment for those without any of their own, printed out the materials for the campers, and made sure the room they’d been allotted in the community center was ready to go for the start of camp. And he’d done all of that while Austin had been in Norway.

Austin owed him a beer, a homemade meal, and maybe even his next workshop for free.

They’d left everything locked inside their classroom in the center since they’d be back to do it all over again tomorrow, so Austin only had his own camera bag with him when he got into his car. No way would he leave that behind, even in a locked classroom.

Whereas Marco was tired and looked it, Austin could go for another few hours. Some of the kids were rambunctious, sure, and a lot of them didn’t listen, and even more of them needed instructions repeated two, three, four times. But they were fun to work with, and seeing their faces light up when they captured something wonderful on their cameras was the reason he loved teaching in the first place.

Austin parked in his parents’ driveway a few minutes later and headed inside, where it smelled like tomatoes and spices.

“Smells good in here,” he said, giving the air a sniff as he walked into the kitchen.

“It’s just a simple pasta bake.” Dad straightened from where he’d been peering through the oven door. “Hey, kiddo.”

Austin slipped onto a barstool. “Hey. Mom not here?”

Dad jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out back. Picking up pinecones from that dang tree. It sheds them all summer. Makes it difficult to mow the lawn.”

“I can do that for you,” Austin said with a frown. “I can come by on Saturdays after the market.”

The kitchen door slid open before Dad could respond, and Mom walked in, blowing a strand of dark blond hair out of her face. “Almost five hundred cones. Can you believe that? Usually it’s only about a hundred per day, but we had that windstorm a couple of days ago— Oh, hi, honey.”

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