Page 131 of Chasing the Wild
“Hey, for what it’s worth. Can I just say, you don’t exactly look happy, but at least you look a good deal better than my old man does.” Kayce shakes his head, smirking at me. “I don’t need—orwantto know—any of the details, but whatever happened between you guys, I’m cool with it.”
“Kayce… I…” Fucking hell. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
“Layla, we both know I didn’t treat you well. I’m learning how to not be a selfish shithead. You are much, much better off without me. My dad, while he and I might have our crap we’re working through, he’s a good fucking guy. What I do know is that he’s miserable right now, and has been since the day you took off.”
“We didn’t want to hurt you.” My heart thuds with an erratic rhythm. “Nothing was supposed to happen. Just so you know.” This seems too surreal to fathom.
“Hey, I know that whatever we had together was hella fun at the time, but we were always going to probably be better as friends. Whatever you had going on with my old man obviously meant a lot more.”
“How...?” I look at him, confused. He couldn’t possibly know anything because I know Colt would never have let a single detail slip. That man is a locked vault of emotion at the best of times.
“I might have myself a pretty face, but I’m not blind. Judging by your reaction just now, and how shit he’s looked ever since the day you left.” Kayce shrugs his shoulders and spreads his palms. “Kinda obvious, really.”
All the saliva has dried in my mouth. It’s like the Sahara Desert in the back of my throat.
Shaking my head with confusion, I stare at him. “What happened with Chy?” The wheels are spinning in my mind.
That makes him grimace. “God. What a clusterfuck. Dad was the one who helped me clean myself up at first. He’s been damn amazing, like a rock for me, even though I didn’t deserve any of it. Helped me get sober. Then, about a couple of weeks after you left, he was the one who sat me down and told me I needed to get a paternity test done.”
“You hadn’t had one done right at the start?” Eyes going wide, I whisper screech at him, looking around to make sure we haven’t got a captivated audience for this conversation.
He shudders and scrubs a hand over his mouth. “I know, alright.I fucking know.Don’t worry, Dad tore me a new one about all that, too. But the guy was so fucking solid for me. Was gonna be right there by my side through every step, no matter what, if it turned out to be mine. Helped me get my head on straight and made sure we went through the whole process.”
Fuck. My heart squeezes. My capable goddamn cowboy was probably reliving every single torturous memory of his own experience with unexpectedly becoming a father, yet he was still prepared to be there for Kayce the whole way.
“So imagine my fucking surprise when it came back that I wasn’t the father after all.”
“What a bitch.”
“Yeah. Gets even worse, mind you.” He scrunches his face, wincing in anticipation of how whatever he’s about to say next will go down. “Did I ever mention that she’s related to the Pierson brothers—my cousins.”
“You fucked your cousin?”
“Ew. No. They’re all related through a grandfather or marriage or something, but not Chy and me. Anyway, turns out she had this big plan to claim the ranch by pretending the baby was mine. The three of them had cooked it up together.”
“That’s so fucked.” I grimace.
“Yeah, man. After everything my dad had done to try and help them, too. I’m glad those pieces of shit finally got arrested for possession. It’s nothing compared to the way worse stuff they’ve gotten away with, but at least something could finally be done to get them locked up.”
“Your dad?” Colt had told me there was history there, but this sounds ominous.
“Shows what a decent fucking guy he is. It’s actually a big part of what helped me start seeing him with new eyes once he explained things to me.” Kayce lets out a low whistle. “That man spent years offering those assholes shares and partnership opportunities in the ranch. Spent a really long fucking time trying to make up for what my great-grandfather did. Knowing that the girl was left with a baby and nothing after what that prick did to her while she was just a kid herself. My dad always knew that their family line should have been entitled to somepart of the ranch, even if the bastard hung himself without acknowledging anything in his will.”
Kayce shakes his head.
“Dad went out of his way to give them equal ownership, rights to the land, everything. But they wantedall or nothing, and thank fuck he refused to just hand them the ranch and walk away like they threatened him to.”
Holy shit.
“My old man has carried around all that guilt for so long. But I guess something changed. Now those fucks are in jail at least.”
It’s hard to take it all in. Although, I’m not surprised those two men ended up locked away. Sheriff Hayes alluded to the case against them being pretty much open and shut when he contacted me for a statement not long after I left Crimson Ridge.
I blow out a low breath. “Shit. Kayce. I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry?”
He waves me off. “Don’t be. I’m counting it as one of those weird fucking blessings in life. One that helped give me enough of a scare to realize what a colossal screw-up I’d been and how many terrible life choices I’d made in such a short period of time.”
The announcer’s voice blares over the loudspeaker system, the crowd cheers for whoever has just competed, and the sun bakes down on both of us with that typically fierce late summer intensity.
