Page 66 of Giddy-Up
What is she talking about?
“I raised you right, didn’t I?”Huh?Another heavy exhale escaped her lips.“Okay, son.Let’s try this another way.Let’s pretend one of your brothers was in a similar situation and they came to you for advice...what would you suggest they do?”
“It’s not the same,” Wade immediately denied, knowing full well what his advice would be.His mother stayed quiet, pinning him with a no-nonsense stare as she plopped another chunk of sponge cake in her mouth and chewed.“Ma, it’s not the same.”
It was the same though, and he knew it.And that pissed him off again.If he’d had gone to Matt, Jonah or Zach for advice, they all would have told him the same thing, so he didn’t know why he expected a different answer from his mother.She had raised them all the same.To know what love is.And what to do with it when it comes along.
“You want me to say it?”she caved.“Fine.”
I should have called Matt.
At least then Wade could call him an asshole while his brother laid it all out for him.There was no way he’d call his mom an asshole unless he had a death wish.
“You fight.You claw.You don’t give up,” his mother continued.“You love her harder until she gets it.”
Love her harder.
How the hell was he supposed to do that?Especially when she was all the way over in Silver Valley.
“You need to get creative,” his mother said, already one step ahead.“You don’t have to agree with her choice to do what she’s doing, you just have to support her.That’s what love is.”
He hated the situation her parents had put her in, but his mom was right, he loved her more.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Riley!Can you putyour phone away for one second please?This is important.”
Riley’s trance broke as she shook her head and slipped the phone back into her jean pocket.Her mother was wrong.This wasn’t important.They were choosing a Christmas tree.
“It’s hardly a matter of life or death,” she sulkily muttered under her breath as she followed her parents through a tree-lined path.
A thick blanket of snow crunched under her boots.Any other year and she would have been looking forward to her trip to the Christmas tree farm.She’d be revelling in the crisp air and the waft of fresh pine and wood smoke as she wandered the maze of deep green branches dusted with snowdrops.
Instead, all she wanted to do was pull out her phone again and reread Wade’s messages.It had been one week since she’d run from him.From their argument, from her job, from their relationship.He should be pissed.Livid.Cursing her name to anyone who’d listen.But he wasn’t.
It didn’t make sense.None of it did.Granted, she was in no way a relationship expert, but she had been pretty damn sure the argument they had resulted in them breaking up.And if that hadn’t been the final nail in the coffin, her leaving without so much as a goodbye surely would have done it.
