Page 65 of Rancher's Return

Those little rats. That wasn’t what he was saying at all, and it was different, and they ought to know it. He was sort of tongue-tied trying to figure out how to explain that it was different, but it was.

“I... It’sdifferent. Romantic stuff is different.” He decided to go with that very articulate explanation.

“Is it?” Reggie asked.

“You’re a smart-ass, shut up.”

His words didn’t have any heat; they sounded petulant even to him. And Reggie was not deterred.

“Seriously, Buck. You meet a nice woman. A beautiful woman. We all like her daughter—sorry Colton—and you break up with her. We could’ve had amom.”

It was the slight break in Reggie’s voice at the end that got him.

That stabbed him clean through the chest. “That’s not... That’s not fair. You are an emotional terrorist,” he said.

“Maybe you deserve it,” said Marcus. “Maybe you deserved a little bit of emotional terrorism for the shit you put her through.”

“I’m not trying to hurt anybody,” Buck said. “I’m a mess, okay? That is a documented fact. In high school I drank too much, and I was adjacent to that awful accident. I frankly should’ve been in it. Everybody in town blamed me. Then I abandoned my family.”

“So what? That’s all you are? You just do stuff because you feel guilty and you feel like you have to make up for it?”

“Yeah. That’s why I do stuff.”

It was why he had to. To try and be better. To try and atone.

“Ah. So we’re all part of your redemption scheme. You just feel guilty. See, you adopted a bunch of sad foster kids so you could try to right your balance with the universe.” Reggie looked angry now. “Good thing my mom died, I guess, and my sister too. What a big help to you. It made it really easy for you to earn some points on that one. I was an extra sad case.”

This was going all wrong.

“Reggie, that’s not what it is.”

They were all looking at him. All angry.

“I love you,” Buck said. “I didn’t expect it. I can be honest with you about that. I thought... I thought it would be like taking care of you as campers. But it’s not. It hasn’t been. I’m your dad. And I love you, and guilt has nothing the hell to do with it. You knuckleheads. You’re not just mine right now, not just mine because...because I feel like a mess, and I wanted to do something to make myself feel better. You’re mine because you were meant to be. Because the whole fucked-up road I took to get to Hope Ranch led me to you. And I was supposed to be there, even though a whole bunch of stuff around it wasn’t supposed to happen. Adopting you three was one of the few good things I did. I listened to my gut. And then I ended up... You changed my life. If not for you, I wouldn’t have come back here. I never would’ve reconnected with my family. That’s not guilt. It’s love.”

Colton blinked, then looked away, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Sounds to me like you don’t really need the guilt.”

And all Buck could do was sit there, shell-shocked. Because it was true. It wasn’t guilt that kept him with the boys. It was love.

Guilt wasn’t what kept him going.

He thought of his choice to leave his family. There had been misguided love there, even if the choice had been wrong. He had acted from a place of love. Flawed love. But...

Every day with the boys he saw what flawed love could do.

Why wasn’t he willing to try that with Marigold?

Because you’re afraid. Because everything she said is true.

His heart caught hard in his chest. Yeah. That was true. He was afraid. He was afraid of letting go of his guilt. There was a reason he hadn’t gone to see Joey’s and Ryan’s parents. There was a reason he was holding on to those shields.

Because they protected him, not because they protected the people around him.

Because he was afraid he could never be worthy of her love, and if he accepted it and he lost it...

He had never felt weak. He had felt a lot of things, but never weak. Yet in this moment, that was how he felt. Like nothing more than a coward.

And that was unacceptable.

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