Page 34 of Second Chances with my Billionaire Bosses

“No.” Mills shook his head hard and glared at me. “That’s not true.”

“She used to love to tell me you were never coming home. I was scared when you were overseas. I worried about you, Tate, and West. If I missed a spot while sweeping, she would taunt me and tell me she hadn’t heard from you in several weeks and she expected a few Navy officers to show up to announce your deaths any day. She wouldn’t stop until I cried. She recited a list of dead soldiers to me every time I took too long to bring her whatever lost thing she demanded I find instead of sleeping at night. She’d slip your names in while reading and then laugh when I broke down.”

“Maxie…” His face had gone pale.

“I tried to leave. Everyone else was gone, except Vera, and she was always having fun with her friends in town. I wanted to run away like I thought Nellie had. Mom told me she’d kill herself and make sure Vera found her body and the note blaming me for pushing her to it. She would just look at Vera sometimes and I knew she was imagining doing the same thing to Vera that she did to me. I couldn’t leave Vera to that. So I stayed and I took it all. I took it until the day she died. She was weak enough to lose her battle with the devil that day but not too weak to force me to wear loads of makeup and sunglasses to her funeral.

“Her knuckles were so sharp in the end, Mills. They didn’t just bruise.” I sucked in a sharp breath and frowned at the sky when I felt drops of what I thought were rain falling on my face. It wasn’t rain. I was crying. Again. I sucked in a painful lungful of oxygen and let out a shaky laugh while wiping my face.

“I hate her. I hate who she made me. This weak, pathetic shell of a woman who can’t say no without fearing she’ll die alone and unloved. I hatemyselfbecause of her, Mills. I want to be bold like Vera and Nellie. I want to be able to believe I’m worthy of the things they have. Instead, I have our mother’s voice in my head, living there like she never died.”

He took a step closer but I shook my head. I didn’t want to be held. I didn’t want his pity. I just wanted a different reality but no one could do anything to make that happen so I’d rather just be left alone.

“I never meant for this to come up. I was happy to take it all to my grave and let everyone keep believing that our family isn’t just as fucked up as the Mays.” I saw him flinch when I swore and it sent a shiver of something close to power up my spine. “I don’t think I’m going to come back to the ranch for a while, Mills.”

His eyes widened. “What? No, Max. Come home. I’ll make it right. I’ll figure out—”

“No. I’ve barely existed there for so long. I’ll be thirty in two years and I don’t have anything to show for it. No matter how much work I put into the ranch, you never appreciated it. I’m invisible to all of you. Just mousy Maxie fading into the kitchen cabinets. I don’t want to let Mom keep me there anymore. I don’t owe that ranch anything I haven’t already given it. I don’t oweyouanything I haven’t already given you. I don’t want to but I think a part of me hates all of you for leaving me to rot with Mom. I just need a break from the family.”

“You don’t mean that, Maxie. We love you. We’ll make it right. You can’t just stay here. This isn’t your home.” Mills tried to step closer but Arlo was there, blocking him. “Get the fuck out of my way, Arlo.”

“I think it’s been a long time since I’ve had a home, Mills. Maybe it’s time I accept that and figure out where to go fromhere. Thank you for bringing Bob. I’ll have Jolene help me move him back and forth until I get a space set up for him here. Or wherever it is we land.”

“Here.” Rhett came forward and gripped the back of my neck. “He’ll stay here. So will you.”

I was all out of fight. I shrugged and looked down at my feet.

“I think you should go, Mills.”

For the first time, the numbness I always tried to exude wasn’t just an act. I felt cold to the bone as I went back to the fence and started working. I didn’t know when Mills left or when the guys started working beside me. I just knew that I’d been wrong. A part of me had believed if I ever had a chance to tell someone what happened to me that I’d be free of it. I wasn’t free of anything, though. I was as much a prisoner to my mother as I’d been before she died. Her cold grip just got a little tighter, if anything.

CHAPTER 24

Shep

I walked Mills to his truck, feeling genuinely sorry for the man after the brutal reality check he’d just gotten from Maxie. I knew he wasn’t a bad guy, just an oblivious one. Even when he pissed me off, I still knew he was a good man deep down and I hated the haunted look on his face as he relived his life with the new angle that his mother was a monster. There was nothing I could do for Maxie right then. I’d seen the mask settle over her face. I figured if I couldn’t do anything for her, I’d try to help Mills as much as I could.

His face still hadn’t gotten its color back, despite the sun beating down on us. He stopped next to his truck door and stared out at nothing, his eyes blank.

“Did you know?”

I sighed. “No. I mean, I had an idea of something but nothing like all that.”

“How? How did I not know? How did I not see her?” He turned around and slammed his fist into the side of the truck. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

I gave him his privacy and kept my eyes towards the pasture where I could just barely see my family. I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t beat him while he was already so low but inside, I was furious at him. I wanted to demand to know what the fuck was wrong with him, too.

“Y’all planning on keeping her?” He finally turned to face me.

“And if we are?”

He shook his head.

“Who the fuck am I to judge? You’re doing a better job than me at taking care of her. Maybe it’s best if she stays far away from that ranch and the poison she suffered there.”

I didn’t know what else to say, I was so shocked by his willingness to accept our intentions towards Maxie. I watchedhim get in his truck and drive away without another word. My chest ached for him, no matter how angry I was. I couldn’t imagine the shit going through his brain. I was struggling enough as it was and Maxie hadn’t just eviscerated me like she had him.

I took my time walking back to where she was, confused about how to help the woman I truly believed belonged with us. I wanted to make it better for her but I didn’t know where to start, especially when it only took one look at her face to know she’d retreated somewhere deep, deep inside herself.

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