Page 48 of Riding Jamie

“That's enough!” My mom’s voice rings out sharply, and both my dad and I jump as she slaps her palm down on the counter. “This whole thing has been absolutely ridiculous, and I'm done entertaining the charade.”

My dad’s face flushes and he glances off to the side. She waits a beat before sighing and turning to me.

“Your father and Greg used to make bets on the circuit, back when Greg trained a lot of the riders,” she says. “You know Chuckles?”

I blink in confusion, slowly nodding my head. Everyone in town knows Chuckles. He's an old drunk that performs as a clown during rodeo season and drinks his liver half to death for the rest of the year. To be fair, if I had been hit by bulls as many times as he had, I'd probably drink, too.

But what does a rodeo clown have to do with any of this?

“Your father bet Greg that Chuckles would get hit by a bull, like usual. Bet him five grand, even though I told him not to,” she adds, glaring at my dad. “It was the only show that Chuckles managed to get out of the ring in time. He wasn't drunk for once, and he jumped the fence.”

I stare at her in absolute shock, trying to wrap my mind around this.

A clown. My dad has been a dick to Jamie this whole time over a fuckingclown?

“The fucker rigged it,” my dad says with a scoff. “He told Chuckles not to drink that night so he could win the bet.”

“He offered to give you your money back!” my mom argued, throwing her hands in the air. “You're just too damn prideful to admit you lost.”

My dad goes to respond to her, and I can tell they've had this conversation a million times, but I hold a shaking hand up to stop them. My whole world is spinning off center right now. I have to be misunderstanding something.

“Your issues with Jamie’s dad are because of a bet that you lost about Chuckles?” My voice scrapes up my throat, raw and disbelieving. “You spentyearstrying to discourage my relationship with Jamie because of a fucking clown! Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds? IloveJamie! I love him like you love mom, and I’ve been so scared that I’ll have to choose between him and you one day. You have to understand how this affects me, too!”

I'm shouting by the end of it, my hands balled into fists at my sides. I've harbored so many doubts, so many worries about if the relationship between our families can ever be fixed so Jamie and I can be together.

“Now, listen Oakley?—”

“No!” I shout. “You listen! You figure out a way to fix this,now! Apologize to Greg, go have a beer and refuse to talk about your feelings, I don't care! I know you're a prideful man, Daddy, and I know you don't like to lose. But youhaveto fix this, or the next thing you lose will be me.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

OAKLEY

I leavemy dad shell shocked and silent in the kitchen. Everything feels shaky and out of focus, my breathing shallow and fast. I make it out to the tree line at the edge of the property before breaking down entirely.

The snow is deep enough that it trips me up on every other step, but I pay it no attention, crumpling down onto an old stump in an attempt to calm myself down. I need to get my heart rate under control and calm my spinning thoughts. That seems like such an impossible task when everything I know just got thrown on its head.

I just found out that my dad has been fueling the dumbest fight I’ve ever heard of foryears, my boyfriend maybe broke up with me, which was finally the push I needed to actually stand up to my dad about his attitude toward my relationship. And the cherry on top is that one of the only friends I made in New York has apparently just been using me.

I don’t even know what Shane’s goal is. Did he think that I’d never find out? Is his family lying to him about all this, or hashe known all along? Would I ever be able to trust him after this, even if he’s just a pawn in someone else’s game?

Part of me wants to call him and demand answers, but I don’t think I’d believe anything he says right now. I just wanted a friend when I met him. How did it turn out like this?

I pull my phone from my pocket with trembling hands, seeing several texts and a few missed calls from Phoebe. I’ll have to text her soon, but for now I ignore the notifications and search Shane’s name. Nothing much comes up, a few different social media profiles—all private, and none of them have profile pictures that look like him. But when I search for Peter Wallace, a veritable flood of information crosses my screen.

Skyview Falls is a small town. We all know that Peter was suspected of embezzling money and got chased off, but it happened when I was a kid. My mouth drops open in shock as I scroll through the articles detailing the cases that were brought against him. I always thought he’d managed to walk away with a few grand in his pocket, but everything that I’m seeing is implicating that he funneledmillionsinto offshore accounts, relying on his wife to get him off on technicalities.

Our ranch was one of the businesses he hit hardest, skimming almost ten million off our profits before he disappeared. He’s the sole reason that my parents had to work so hard when I was a kid, the sole reason they’restillworking.

I feel sick.

I stumble across one of his social media profiles, scrolling through pictures and posts detailing his life.

My dad was right, all the way through.

Shane is his nephew. Shane’s dad died when he was a kid, and Peter Wallace apparently stepped into the role of a father for him. His mom lives in New York and frequents a bar hardly two blocks from Branson Logistics.

I want to fucking throw up. How could I have trusted Shane? How could I have questioned Jamie and my parents?

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