Page 92 of Never the Bride
“Nah, they’ll be fine.” But he steers Cactus Jack away from me, easing my nerves. “So, I liked your mom.”
“I bet. She’s exhausting, loud, and full of opinions I never asked for.”
“Sounds familiar already.” He grins, but it’s rounded out by playfulness. “At least the part about opinions nobody asks for.”
“I’m sure Selena would say that’s true.” I sniff out a laugh. “But my mom did the best she could raising us. And I was probably too critical.”
“What were you critical of?”
“Oh, geez,” I heave. “Where do I start?”
“How about with the men she married? How many were there?”
I rest my wrists on the horn thing on my saddle—I have no idea what it’s called—and loosen the reins, letting Daisy Duke lead me. “Actual marriages? Four. But none of them stayed around long enough to make a lasting impression on my life.”
“I think they stayed with you.”
My brows drop, questioning him.
“You don’t need Abby or anyone else to tell you that your aversion to marriage probably comes from your experience with your mom—and the men who let all three of you down.”
I don’t respond. I don’t need to.
“Is that why you specialize in divorce? Or did that happen by accident?”
Daisy steps on a boulder, and for a split second, I worry I’m doomed, but she easily recovers, like it’s typical horse stuff, so I focus on Hess’s question. “At first, I wanted to be a lawyer to help women like my mom. She was young and naive when everything went down between her and Glen Lucas. There was no one in her corner, helping her make good child support decisions. So I wanted to be that for some other woman like my mom, but as I got going in this field, divorce was the perfect place for a person who didn’t believe in fairy tales. The sadness and negativity didn’t affect me because I was already a little jaded.”
“I think negativity always affects us, even if we convince ourselves it doesn’t. I’m sure it’s keeping you jaded more than you think.”
“True, but that’s easy for someone like you to say. Your parents have the fairy tale.”
“Yes and no. I saw a lot of fights growing up. They certainly weren’t perfect, but I also saw a lot that makes me think marriage and family is the most selfless thing a person could do with their life.”
“For those of us who didn’t have that, tell me what you saw. What’s so selfless about it?”
“Just little things. My mom got up early every morning to make my dad breakfast, not because she had to but because she knew he was working hard on the ranch, and she didn’t want him to have to stop and make something for himself.”
I scrunch my nose, unsure if I like that answer. It challenges all of my modern beliefs.
“There’s more.” Hess laughs, sensing my concerns. “When I was a teenager, my mom was diagnosed with a chronic illness. She’s fine, but I’ve seen the way my dad takes special care of her when she has flare-ups. He rubs her feet or her aching hands, pitches in with the cooking and cleaning so she can rest.”
“That’s nice,” I muse, already thinking about my own diabetes diagnosis and how incredible it would be to have someone I could depend on when things are hard with that. I’ve been to every doctor's appointment alone, faced every new health challenge by myself…until Hess swept in on the airplane and took care of me when I needed it most.
It’s hard for me to admit how nice it was to have someone’s hand to hold onto when I was scared.
“My parents’ marriage has always been an equal partnership, whether it comes to decisions on the ranch, raising the kids, or the household. They discuss everything together. That’s the kind of marriage I want. The kind of partnership that works together whenever life gets hard.”
For a stretch, it’s only the creak of leather and the snort of the horses as I think about Hess’s words. Maybe marriage isn’t what’s hard. Maybe life is hard, and navigating hard things with the wrong partner is what the real problem is.
“I know you say you love your job,” Hess says, breaking into my thoughts, “but if you could do anything else, be anything else, what would you do?”
“Okay, this is going to seem like it comes out of nowhere, but just stay with me for a second.”
“Alright.”
A dreamy smile drifts across my lips. “If I could be anything else, I’d be a florist.”
“Really?” He’s clearly shocked by that answer.
