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That just made her mad. She had spent all this time subsuming her feelings, and there was one moment of mutual electricity and he was making veiled proclamations.
She’d been guarding their friendship for years. She didn’t need him to go talking about the importance of it. She damn well knew.
“Good,” she said, not offering him any indication that she had any clue what he meant. “I’m glad that I can be your friend. Very glad.”
And with that, she turned and stomped her way back to the truck, not quite sure what the hell it said about reality that the earlier scenario where Olivia was pregnant with Luke’s baby and wanted Bennett back was somehow less complicated than the one she found herself in now.
CHAPTER SIX (#ud9cbd981-cf4a-5971-abd2-905948ff5127)
EARLY THE NEXT morning Bennett found himself embroiled in indecision.
His son—that was still the weirdest thought it was possible to have—was still asleep, and Bennett had to get to work in the next hour.
He went out and slowly, methodically began to feed the animals. Pepper and Cheddar, his Australian shepherds yipping excitedly at his heels as he navigated the morning chores with all the conviction of a robot performing work on an assembly line.
He didn’t know if he could leave Dallas alone. He thought of the business card that the social worker had left for him. Should he call her about that?
Logically he knew that a fifteen-year-old could handle himself for a few hours, but Dallas had only just shown up and Bennett didn’t know if it meant the kid would run away if he was left unattended. Of course, it wasn’t like he could prevent him from leaving if he wanted to, short of tying him up and locking him in a bedroom, and that was probably frowned on.
He didn’t feel comfortable about leaving him, though. Whatever was technically acceptable and wasn’t, he knew he didn’t feel right about it.
He had to talk to his family tonight. He had decided that he wouldn’t do it until then. Until they had all gotten through the workday and could see each other face-to-face.
But until then, he had patients to see.
Dallas could hang out at the clinic, or he could ride in Bennett’s truck all day. That would work well enough.
Bennett couldn’t think of what they would talk about if they ended up trapped in a vehicle together for the entirety of the day.
He supposed that was a stupid, selfish thing to concern himself with.
But he was concerned.
He walked back into the house just as the clock rolled over to six, and he knew that he was going to be tempting a lot of rage waking a teenage boy out of a dead sleep but he had to do something.
He knocked on the bedroom door and got no answer. He knocked again, this time more heavily, and nothing.
What if the kid had run off in the middle of the night? He should have like...slept in front of the door. But then, he could have climbed out the window.
Dammit.
He opened up the door, and his heart slammed hard against his breastbone when he saw the boy lying on his stomach, his face smashed against the pillow, a little bit of drool coming out the corner of his mouth. His arm was draped over the side of the mattress, his hand bent at the wrist, his knuckles pressing against the floor. He was so profoundly out that he looked entirely limp.
A flood of emotions butted up against some dam inside of Bennett he hadn’t known had existed. And he felt it crack.
Dallas made a croaking sound and sniffed. And the dam inside Bennett burst completely.
It was like being caught between two points in time. He could imagine then, what it might have been like to walk into a nursery when Dallas was a baby, to see him asleep like this in a crib.
But he hadn’t. He had never gotten to see him then.
Were there pictures? Was there a video of him taking a first step? How old had he been?
Had his first word been dada, like so many other babies, but with no dad around to feel like his baby was talking to him?
He had missed that. All of that. And he hadn’t even had a choice. He pressed a hand against his chest and staggered backward, suddenly so overwhelmed with the enormity of the situation that he couldn’t breathe.
This boy was fifteen. He took up the length of this entire bed. There had been a point when he had been no larger than a loaf of bread, and dammit, Bennett had had the right to know him then. To hold him then. But he hadn’t. And Dallas had spent all these long years with no one. Being bounced around, no safe place.
But he had slept easily here last night. He had slept deeply.
Whatever happened today, Bennett was going to take some solace in that.
And he was not leaving the kid here by himself.
“Wake up,” Bennett said. “Dallas, wake up.”
“What?” Dallas jerked up, rolling over onto his back and blinking hard. “It’s still fucking dark out,” he moaned.
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “But it won’t be for long. And I have to go to work.”
“So?”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“I’m not a baby,” Dallas muttered.
Bennett was well aware of that. It had all been driven home just a second ago.
“Yes. I know. But you are my kid. If you weren’t a kid, they would have turned you loose. But you are. That means I’m the adult. And I make the rules. I’m your dad.” He felt a strange, out-of-body sensation when those words fell from his mouth. “And I think that it would be best if today you weren’t here by yourself all day.”
“Afraid I’m going to steal the silver or whatever rich thing people get wound up about?”
Be∆nnett crossed his arms. “Do I look like I have silver?”
Dallas lay back down, his eyes on the ceiling. “I don’t know what the fuck you have.”
“Well, I don’t fucking have silver.”
He turned his head slightly to look at Bennett. “You shouldn’t use that kind of language in front of me. I’m impressionable.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you are.” Bennett made a jerking motion toward the door with his head. “You’ve got ten minutes. Then be out in the kitchen. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“What do you have to eat?”
“You know what? Nothing good. I’ll take you to Sugar Cup if you can be ready in five minutes.”
Dallas squinted. “What’s that?”
“Coffee shop. Bakery. Food.”
That seemed to get the kid’s attention. Bennett gave him some privacy, and went out and paced the length of the kitchen while he waited. Dallas appeared not four minutes later, clearly motivated by offers of baked goods.
“They better have doughnuts,” he muttered.
“They do,” Bennett responded.
Dallas pulled on a hoodie and zipped it up, throwing the hood over his head and shoving his hands down his pockets. “I never get up this early.”
“I always get up this early,” Bennett said.
Dallas’s lip curled. “Why?”
“I have animals to take care of.”
Bennett pushed the door open. Dallas looked at it for a moment, then at Bennett, then walked out ahead of him.
“What animals do you have?”
“Well, there’s the dogs. I know that you saw them. Pepper, she’s the old lady. And Cheddar, the puppy.”
“Those are stupid names.”
“They’re great names. For great dogs. Anyway, you’ll get used to it. So we’ve got the dogs and then there’s the goats, which are kind of rescue animals. All my ranch animals are. Kind of a hazard of being in this business. When there is an animal that someone can’t take care of, I end up with it a lot of the time. Goats that people were finished with after their property was cleared. Three horses, retired from the rodeo. And a llama.”
“Do they have names?” He was trying not to sound interested, Bennett could tell.
Bennett led the way across the gravel drive over to his mobile veterinary truck and unlocked it. “You would just think they’re stupid,” he said.
“Yeah, maybe I would. But it seems better than saying hey, Llama.”
Bennett shrugged. “Get in the truck.”
Dallas complied. Once they were on the road, Bennett started talking again. “Blanche, Sophia, Rose and Dorothy are the goats.”
“That’s weird.”
“They’re named after The Golden Girls.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Bennett shook his head. “This is what’s wrong with kids today.” In fairness, Kaylee had named the goats. Kaylee was the only reason he’d ever watched that show.
“I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything, because that was right about when they got to Sugar Cup.
“The llama is Candace,” Bennett said. “I didn’t name her.”
He killed the engine and the two of them got out of the truck.
“Okay. At least you didn’t name her. And the horses?”
“Shadrach, Meshach and Lucy. She’s the only girl.”
“Well, at least now I know all their names. But I’m probably not going to remember them. And I’m probably not going to do anything with them.”
“Pepper and Cheddar will force interaction, so good luck with that.”
He and Dallas walked down the sidewalk together, along the quaint little storefronts in the redbrick buildings that lined Gold Valley’s Main Street. None of the shops were open yet—it was too early. Only the coffeehouses and the Mustard Seed diner were open this early. Though, it occurred to him just then that people were going to take one look at Dallas and know they were family of some kind. It was undeniable, Kaylee was right about that. The way that Dallas walked reminded Bennett of Grant and Wyatt, which probably meant that really, he walked like Bennett. It was just that Bennett had never observed himself walking down the street.
It made his heart squeeze tight. Made his whole body feel a little bit numb.
“Right here,” he said as they turned a corner. He pushed the door to the coffee shop open and held it, letting Dallas walk on through.
Sugar Cup was busy, even at this early hour, with tables filled with older people reading the paper and drinking their morning coffee, and the line full of people on their way to work. Ranchers, teachers and guys who worked in the mill out of town.
Teachers. The school year was about over, but eventually, Bennett was going to have to figure out school. In fact, Dallas might need some kind of summer school.
“How are you doing in school?” Bennett asked.
Dallas choked out a laugh. “Um. Not great.”
“Why?”
“Could be the moving around. And also the hating it.”
“Is it hard for you?” Bennett pressed.
Dallas shrugged. “It’s boring. Anyway, there’s no point to it. It’s not like I’m going to college.”
Bennett frowned. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I don’t have any money, dumbass,” Dallas muttered.
“I do,” Bennett pointed out.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’m not smart enough to get a scholarship. I’m not like a piano prodigy or really good at football or anything like that. So, I would have to get perfect grades, and I already don’t do that. So yeah. What’s the point of school?”
“I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t make you go to college. But know that you could.”
Bennett had money, his family had it. And he was more than able to take out loans if necessary.
Dallas looked stricken by the information, and not really pleased or excited, or anything that could be construed as positive. “You don’t mean that,” he said.
“I do,” Bennett said, the two of them moving up in the line. “I told you, I’m your dad. That means that you’re my responsibility.”
“And I told you we’re not going to be speaking in a couple of years. You know how I know that? Because nobody that was in my life a couple of years ago still talks to me. Except for Grace, and that’s because it’s her job. It’s because she’s assigned to me and she has to. But believe me, the minute she doesn’t have to deal with me anymore? She won’t. I’m not telling you a sad story, I’m not fishing for sympathy. That’s just the way it is.”
