When he continued, Roman tried to tamp down that anger in his voice. “I don’t want you here messing with Tate’s head again. Every time you pull one of your stunts, he’s the one who gets hurt.”
“I know. Vita made me see that. She’s crazy, but sometimes she makes sense.”
The anger returned. “And sometimes she sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong. She shouldn’t have gone to you and talked you into coming here. And there’s no way she should have talked you into trying to get back together with me.”
Valerie’s eyes widened, causing that bruise to look even bigger. “I’m not here for that. I’m here for Tate.” She shook her head and cursed. “You think Vita’s matchmaking?”
Maybe.
But there was a more obvious reason that occurred to Roman. This could be Vita’s way of making sure he didn’t end up with Mila. Vita could be just trying to protect her daughter from getting involved with a guy like him. He wasn’t a turd like Lick, but he wasn’t exactly husband material, either.
“Honestly, I only came here for Tate,” Valerie went on. “I want to go to that therapy session with him and try to fix things. Not with you. I think we both know we’re not good together.”
He did know that, and he was glad Valerie did, too, but that didn’t mean everything was hunky-dory here. “I don’t want you doing something to make this worse for Tate,” he spelled out for her.
Roman expected her to get defensive. She didn’t. Valerie nodded. “I’ll try very hard to help him.”
It was the right thing to say, but none of this felt right. Not only because he was worried about how this would affect Tate but also because of what Vita had said to Mila and him in the sunroom.
Valerie’s here to try to make a go of it with Roman and Tate.
Mila might think that was what should happen. Vita might even be able to convince her that it was the time to back off so that Tate, Valerie and he could have a shot at being a family. Vita was wrong. There was no shot at it. But Mila might not know that.
“Mila?” Valerie said.
Roman shook his head. “What about her?”
“Uh, you just said her name.”
Hell, now the thoughts were leaking out of his mind and finding their way to his mouth. “She’s in the sunroom,” he explained. Which, of course, didn’t explain much. “I need to see her for just a minute.”
He didn’t wait for Valerie’s approval. Didn’t need or want it. But he wouldn’t stay with Mila for long since he didn’t want Valerie spending too much time with Tate unless he was there.
Roman hurried back to the sunroom, and when he saw the empty love seat, his stomach twisted a little. Vita, however, was still there.
“She went home,” Vita said, looking over her shoulder at him. She stood, faced him. “Now, you’ve got to decide if you’ve hurt my daughter enough or if you’re man enough to let her go.”
* * *
HOW DID THAT make you feel?
Dr. Woodliff had said that so many times that it just came to Tate’s mind whether the doctor said the actual words or not. Usually Tate hated the question because it made him think of things he didn’t like thinking about. But today, the doctor was asking that just as much of his mom as he was Tate.
And his mom was answering, too.
Just as his dad had done in the sessions the doctor had had with Tate and him. His dad hadn’t liked the question much, Tate could tell, and it seemed to make his mom jittery or something. That probably wouldn’t get better if they did what the doctor wanted and had a session with all three of them. Tate figured there’d be some yelling during that therapy.
“It made me feel like shit,” she said. “Like crap,” she corrected, maybe because the doctor had already told her it wasn’t a good idea to cuss in front of her son. “I knew it was wrong to leave town when Tate was a baby, but my head wasn’t in a good place then.”
She probably didn’t know it, but it wasn’t hard for Tate to see that. Because the couple of times he’d seen her, she’d been kind of messed up. Not like the potheads but more like it was her usual way of thinking and acting. Tate figured it was much easier to fix a pothead because all they had to do was quit smoking. But it was harder for his mom because it was going to take more than just not lighting up.
Sometimes, he was afraid she might never find a way to fix it.
Even with the doctor’s help.
“I felt crappy for a long time,” Valerie went on, “but I always loved my son. Always.” She patted Tate’s hand and smiled.
He liked having her smile at him, even though the smile never quite made it to her eyes. She was like one of those nurses who was looking at a really sick person in a hospital bed and wanted him to feel good even when he couldn’t. Tate figured he must be pretty bad for her to look at him that way.
“I want to be a good mother,” she continued, “but I don’t think like most moms. I mean, I get bored. Not that Tate’s boring,” she quickly added. “He’s not. It’s just it gets boring here. It’s hard for me to be in one place because my mind is always racing. I feel if I don’t move or go somewhere that I’ll explode.”
“And how do you feel about that?” the doctor repeated, but this time he said it to Tate.
Tate thought he could understand that. There had been times when he’d felt like exploding, too, but it hadn’t come from staying in one place too long. It had been when he thought about how much his mom must hate him. He didn’t say that, though, because it really wouldn’t make her eyes smile. He couldn’t say it to his dad, either, because it would piss him off.
So, Tate just shrugged.
The doctor’s mouth tightened a little because he wanted Tate to answer with words, but sometimes a shrug said it all. It made him feel shitty, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“I don’t want Tate punished because I’m a crappy mom,” she went on. She looked at him. “And I don’t want you taking any more pills.”
This time a shrug wasn’t going to be enough. “I won’t.” It was true. Even those times when he was feeling lower than the grass beneath cow shit, he wouldn’t try to off himself.
Arwen had helped him see that.
She’d told him that doing stuff like that only hurt the people you didn’t want hurt. Like his dad, Mila, his grandma, aunt and uncle. And him, of course. It didn’t hurt his mother. Not really. It just made her feel bad that she couldn’t be the mom he wanted her to be. The only thing it changed was that people were looking at him with those nonsmiling eyes.
“Tate is working through his feelings,” the doctor told his mom. “Of course, part of those feelings is his anger at you.”
Tate nearly shook his head and corrected Dr. Woodliff. It wasn’t anger. Anger was what his dad felt. It made him grouchy, and that’s when he cursed a lot.
“Anger can be expressed in many ways,” the doctor explained. Maybe because he was a head doctor—as Grandma Belle had called him—he could see that Tate hadn’t agreed with the anger stuff.
“He took those pills because he was angry at me?” his mom asked. Shit. Now, she was looking all sad, as if she might cry.
“Were you angry?” the doctor came out and asked him.
This was one of those times when Dr. Woodliff wasn’t going to let him get away with a shrug. “Yeah,” Tate said.
It was the truth, too. The anger had kept growing and growing inside him until it hadn’t felt like anger anymore. It’d felt like the shot the dentist gave him one time when he needed a filling. All numb and funny. Not funny-funny, either, but wrong.
His mom did start to cry, causing Tate to feel all numb and wrong again. He looked at the doctor, hoping he could fix it.
“We’ve covered a lot of ground today,” Dr. Woodliff said. “Our time is up, but I’d like for both of you to come ba
ck tomorrow—with your dad. How does that sound?”
“Great,” his mother said without hesitation.
Tate shrugged.
When the doctor stood, Tate and his mom did, too, and she smiled again as if they’d just covered all that ground that Dr. Woodliff had said they did. Tate thought the only ground they needed to cover was something they hadn’t even touched on. It might take weeks for them to get to the single question that Tate wanted to ask. He figured he didn’t have that kind of time with his mom.
They went out the side door of the hospital. A door probably put there so that people wouldn’t see crazy people, or people like him, coming out of a head-doctor’s office. He immediately spotted his dad, sitting in his truck. He didn’t get out. Probably because he didn’t want to talk to Valerie. Even though she was staying at the inn and not the ranch, the air got thick whenever they were around each other.
Tate didn’t think that was a good thing.
“I’m so glad I got to do this with you,” his mom gushed. He didn’t think it was a good thing, either, that she was starting to look all around. She reminded him of a steer that was trying to get away from one of the hands with a lasso. “I’ve got a painting I want to work on, and I know you need to get back to school, but maybe we can have dinner together at the inn.”
He nodded, figuring there was about a fifty-fifty chance that she would change her mind and want to keep working on the painting.
“Do you hate me?” he came right out and asked.
She gasped, put her hand over her heart. “No. Of course not.” She looked at him. Really looked at him. And she repeated it as she shook her head. “I just hated the person I became after I had you.”
The doctor had talked to him about people changing, and maybe she had. But from what he’d heard people say, she had always been that way. The other thing the doctor had said was something about stupidity being when you kept doing the same thing and expected it to be different. Or something like that. Tate wasn’t saying his mom was stupid, but maybe she couldn’t see what everyone else could.
“You heard what I told Dr. Woodliff,” she added. “When I’m here, I feel like I’m about to explode, and I knew you were going to be all right even if you had a crappy mother. Because you know how much your dad loves taking care of you.”
She made that sound as if there was no doubt about it. Tate had doubts, though. “Sometimes, he likes it,” Tate semiagreed.
His mom took hold of his arm and turned him to face her. “No, he loves it. He loved you from the first moment he held you. I could see it. He changed right before my eyes. More than anything, he wanted to be a good father to you. That’s why I knew it was okay for me to leave.”
“It wasn’t okay.”
But right off he regretted saying that. Because maybe it was all right. If she’d stayed, she might have exploded. She might have taken some pills or shit. And even if she hadn’t, she might have spent the last thirteen years shrugging and feeling numb and wrong.
He didn’t want that for himself, and he didn’t want it for her, either.
“It’s okay for you to go,” he told her.
She looked at him, blinked, and he saw she was blinking back tears. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. Sometimes, that happened with his grandma Belle when he surprised her too much like with a bad word that had slipped out.
“I’m not a little kid,” he added. “I know you can’t be here, and I’m all right with that.” It was mostly true, anyway.
She kept staring at him, the way people did when they thought you were lying. Maybe she saw what she wanted to see or at least saw that it wasn’t an out-and-out lie.
“You should go back to New Mexico.” He kissed her cheek. “Maybe you can come back on my birthday or something.”
“Of course. Absolutely.” Now, the smile made it to her eyes, and that meant Tate had finally figured out how to make someone happy.
He could let her go and not whine about it.
Except maybe it was okay to whine about it a little.
She hugged him, kissed his cheek, and still smiling, she said, “I love you, baby.”
He wasn’t a baby, but he didn’t want to correct her and risk her smile going away. That’s why he waved at her as she headed in the direction of the inn.
His dad opened his truck door and stepped out. Maybe because he thought there was something here he needed to fix. There wasn’t. Tate made his way to the truck and got inside.
“Is everything okay?” his dad immediately asked.
He wasn’t ready to tell him just yet that it would be a long time before Valerie came back. That she’d still forget his birthdays. And send those stupid cards with the names scratched out. He wasn’t ready to tell his dad that nothing had changed.
Nothing except him.
He wasn’t the one who was broken. His mom was. And she wasn’t someone that he or his dad could fix.
“Are you okay?” his dad pressed.
Tate just settled for a shrug.
But yeah, he was okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IF ONE MORE person asked her if she was okay, Mila was going to scream. It had been going on for nearly two weeks now, and she was tired of it. Nearly every customer who’d come into the store had asked in some way or another. Her mother, too. And even Roman had texted her a couple of times to ask.
She’d sent Roman a Sure with a smiley face.
Mila had told her customers, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” And then she’d looked at them as if daring them to bring up the fact that Valerie had left town again and now Roman was preparing to do the same. He wouldn’t be going to Valerie, but then he wouldn’t be staying in Wrangler’s Creek, either.
Roman hadn’t brought up their fantasy date in those texts, and she was sort of glad that he hadn’t. While she would have enjoyed one last night with him—even a nonsexual one—it was obvious he needed to focus on Tate. There was no telling what the boy was going through now that his mother had abandoned him again.
Mila had refrained from texting Tate to ask if he was okay. She knew just how irritating that could be. But she had sent him an email to let him know she’d gotten in the graphic novels he had wanted her to order. That way, she opened the door to communication if he wanted it.
He apparently hadn’t.
Tate had messaged back to say he was busy with finals and that he would be in soon. Soon hadn’t happened, though, since it’d been two weeks.
The bookstore door opened, and Mila immediately saw Sophie struggling to get it. That’s because she was trying to squeeze a double stroller through the narrow opening. Mila hurried to her and lifted the front so they could shift and wiggle the stroller inside. Despite all the shifting and wiggling, the twins stayed sound asleep.
“Did you know that boy babies pee in your face?” Sophie asked.
Well, at least Sophie hadn’t asked if Mila was okay. Mila shook her head.
“They do,” Sophie assured her. “You have to keep your mouth closed when you diaper them. When you burp them, too, because they’ll throw up in your mouth. But girl babies also do that.”
Sophie wasn’t making motherhood sound particularly fun, or sanitary, but Mila knew her friend was the happiest she’d ever been. The most exhausted, too, because Sophie immediately sprawled out on the reading sofa. Didn’t sit, but sprawled as if ready for a nap.
“I took the babies by the police station to see Clay,” Sophie explained. “I figured since I was out, that I’d stop by and say hello. Did you know it takes nearly an hour to get everything ready just to get the twins in the car? And then I had to stop along the road and nurse one of them.”
Mila had guessed the nursing part because from beneath Sophie’s shirt, she could tell that the cup to her nursing bra was undone, and h
er nipple was pressing against the fabric. Mila motioned for her to fix it, and Sophie mumbled some profanity.
“No wonder the Busby boys whistled at me when I walked by them. Apparently, they were noticing a different kind of twins than the ones in the stroller.”
“How are you, anyway?” Sophie asked, fixing her bra.
Mila frowned. Apparently, she hadn’t dodged that bullet, after all. So, she decided to tell Sophie everything she probably didn’t want to know. “Business is good. My mom and I have made peace with each other. I haven’t made peace with Waylon, though. And I’ve found a few interesting matches on a couple of the dating sites. I’m considering going out with one of them.”
Sophie sat up, stared at her. “Roman,” she spelled out. “Are you okay with what he’s doing?”
“You mean leaving? Yes, I heard Tate and he were moving back to San Antonio in a day or two.”
“Bet you didn’t hear it from him because he’s not talking about it. In fact, he’s back to his cranky self. Tate’s better, though. Roman said he would get him bronco riding lessons from some guy who works for him in the rodeo business.”
Mila wanted to blow out a breath of relief. That was good about Tate. Not so good about Roman. “Why is Roman cranky?”
Sophie flopped back down on the sofa. “He won’t say, of course, but I think it’s this whole fantasy date thing he’s planning. He knows this will probably be the last time he’ll get to play lover boy with you. Without any actual loving, that is.”
Mila heard every word Sophie said, but it was as if her mind was on some kind of time delay because it took several seconds to sink in. “Fantasy date?”
“Yes, you know the one you asked him to do with you. FYI, he sucks at planning, and you can thank me for nixing the first few ideas he came up with. The Godfather,” Sophie quickly supplied. “And Braveheart. But I think the only reason he wanted that one was so he could paint his face blue.”
Mila was still hearing every word, still having trouble absorbing it. “Roman’s planning a fantasy date?”
Sophie sat up again. Stared at her. “You didn’t ask him to do that?”
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