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Bennett had experienced loss in his life. He hadn’t grown up with a mother. But he’d had stability. He’d had a father and a home. He’d never wanted for anything, and he had certainly never had to put all of his worldly possessions into a single bag and get carted to a place he’d never been before. Over and over again.
This was his son, and he would do the tests, or whatever they wanted him to do, but he didn’t think there was a scenario in which it would turn out that Dallas didn’t belong to him. In which it would turn out that this kid, this kid that had been abandoned and shuffled around, wasn’t his.
But right then, with that reality crashing it, it hit him that Dallas was also a stranger. A stranger that was going to live in his house.
Bennett could not have picked a more surreal moment off a list. He couldn’t imagine anything more bizarre than staring down a stranger that you were blood-related to. A stranger who was your child.
Bennett didn’t feel like a father. He was thirty-two years old. He didn’t feel old enough to have a fifteen-year-old son. That was for damn sure.
But he didn’t feel nothing. There was something inside of him that burned for this angry boy standing in front of him. Guilt, mostly. Guilt that Dallas had gone through all of that when Bennett had been going on with his life, making something of himself. When he had been living in this big, comfortable house all this time. With a housecleaner, no less, and this kid had been bouncing back and forth between homes.
“I have a bit of a drive to get back to Portland,” Grace said. “So, this is where I leave you. But of course you can have my number. And we will be checking in.”
“So you can just...leave him with me?” Panic made his throat tight, made it hard for him to breathe. He’d stuck his hand up inside animals and faced down wounded, enraged creatures that were bent on killing him before they let him help them. His brother might have ridden bulls for a living, but Bennett had vaccinated them. None of that came close to the kind of fear he felt here.
“You are his father,” she said. “His father with no criminal record or any reason that he shouldn’t have him. That’s simple enough.”
Simple and complicated in ways that Bennett couldn’t work out even within himself.
Grace paused and put her hand on Dallas’s shoulder. “You can use my number too. I hope you know that. Goodbye, Dallas. I’ll be checking in with you.”
Then she left. Left him standing there with this kid who was a stranger. Who was his son.
The clock on the wall ticked, marking the torturous seconds where he couldn’t think of a thing to say. Where he couldn’t even move.
“I have a guest room,” Bennett said slowly.
“Right,” Dallas said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep in a barn?”
“No.”
“You don’t have a wife or anything?” the kid asked.
“No,” Bennett said.
“Girlfriend?”
“Do you?” Bennett asked.
Dallas shrugged. “Hard to hang on to one when you’re moving all the time.”
“Sure.”
More seconds ticked off.
“I bet if you touch any of the girls here their dads run you off the property with a shotgun, right?” he asked.
“I don’t know about them, but I might chase you with a shotgun.”
Dallas snorted. “That’s funny. Especially because I know my mom is from here, and I know that you knocked her up.”
“I did,” Dallas said. “She told me she had a miscarriage.”
Dallas looked shocked at that, and Bennett wondered if he should have said that. But honestly, there was no point letting the kid cast him as any more of a bad guy than he already had. Marnie wasn’t here. Marnie was off mired in drug addiction somewhere. And any sympathy that he had felt for her situation was rapidly disintegrating. He would have helped her. He would have stayed with her. She didn’t need to run away. He had no clue why in hell she had done that. No clue what had possessed her. If she hadn’t wanted the baby, he would have taken the baby. He would never understand this.
“She didn’t tell me that,” Dallas said.
“I don’t know what she told you. But I’ll tell you, honestly, I found out she was pregnant, I was going to propose to her. She told me she had a miscarriage, and then she told me she was leaving town. She broke up with me. We were young and we were stupid.”
“I’m younger than you were,” Dallas pointed out.
“Yes. And you’re young and stupid. Because when you’re fifteen you’re stupid. And when you’re sixteen you’re not much better. We were stupid. But I didn’t know... I didn’t know. You don’t have to believe me right now. I don’t know that I can really believe any of this. I feel like I’m going to blink and you’re going to disappear. I’m going to wake up and it’s gonna be some kind of weird dream. But as long as you’re standing there... I didn’t know about you. I’m going to be honest with you. That’s what I’m going to do.” Bennett made a decision then, and he decided to go with it. “Whatever else, I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m going to be really bad at this. I don’t have any experience with kids.”
“Not really a kid,” Dallas said, shrugging.
“You’re not,” Bennett said, his heart clenching tight. Because the boy in front of him was really more of a young man, and the first fifteen years of his life were lost to Bennett. There was nothing he could do about it. That hurt like a son of gun.
“But you are,” he continued. “And you need somebody. I’m going to be that person. And I’m going to be honest with you. Even if it’s hard. So, that’s my first bit of honesty.”
“That doesn’t mean I believe you,” Dallas said. “Just because you told me to.”
“That’s fine. It’s going to take a while for you to believe that, I know.” He swallowed hard, and the sound of his heartbeat blended into more seconds ticking by.
“Do you have an Xbox or anything?” Dallas asked, breaking the silence.
“No,” Bennett responded.
“Really? What the hell do you do?”
“I have animals,” Bennett responded. “They’re time-consuming.”
Dallas frowned. “What the hell do you do for work?”
“I’m a veterinarian,” Bennett responded. “Big animals. Cows. Horses. Llamas.”
“Llamas?”
“Llamas get sick too.”
“What do you do around here for fun? Did you...go cow tipping?”
Bennett crossed his arms and looked at Dallas. “Well, I got my girlfriend pregnant when we were sixteen, so I think that answers your question about what we do for fun around here.”
Dallas blinked, and then huffed a reluctant laugh. “Great. But you just told me to stay away from the girls.”
“I didn’t say I recommended that kind of behavior,” Bennett said. “I mean, I got my girlfriend pregnant. And now I’m standing here with you.”
“Condoms, dude.”
Bennett shook his head. “Okay. Too much honesty. Way too much honesty. I’ll get you an Xbox.”
Bennett was a terrible parent already. He was making deals and bargains and buying Xboxes. And he hadn’t even told his brothers yet. Or his sister. Or Kaylee.
Dammit. Kaylee.
She was going to be so mad at him.
“Where’s that bedroom at?” Dallas asked, looking around.
For just a moment a crack in the kid’s bravado seemed to break. Right around the moment when Bennett felt his own beginning to crumble.
“I’ll show you.” He walked him down the hall and opened the door to a room that was fully furnished, and definitely not the kind of thing a teenage boy would find interesting at all. Because it was done up for guests he had never had. Hypothetical ones that he thought someday when he and Olivia had married they might have.
There was a plaid bedspread and a full-size bed with headboard. Art with Oregon landscapes framed on the walls.
Dallas looked around and dropped his trash bag next to his feet. “It works.” He turned to Bennett. “Don’t worry. I probably won’t kill you in your sleep.”
Bennett lifted a brow. “Probably?”
“I’ve lived with a lot of families. I only did that once.”
Bennett had to laugh at that, a forced, short chuckle, because of course the thought had crossed his mind. And of course this kid was calling it out. Because he was just that kind of kid. Hard and direct and more than willing to put himself at odds with Bennett in the interest of not showing any vulnerability.
But it was there.
The very fact that the kid was standing here, and not running off in the woods was evidence of that.
“Can I take a shower?”
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “Bathroom is across the hall.”
“Cool.”
He stood there for a moment, and then looked over at Bennett. “Is there any point in me unpacking this?” He gestured down to the plastic bag.
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “Unpack it. Throw it away.”
He’d get him a new bag. But not now. Not when it would just look like he was giving him nicer luggage for a nomadic existence. No. He’d make sure he didn’t need a bag for a good while.
“I’m just checking. Because if you really didn’t know about me, and you’re really as surprised as you say you are, I figure it’s going to take a little while for reality to set in. And when it does, you probably won’t want me here.”
“I’m going to have you here,” Bennett said.
That was the truth. He was giving him the truth. Want was... He didn’t even know what that word meant right now.
But he had been prepared sixteen years ago to upend his life to raise a child. To put everything aside for the baby he had made with Marnie, accident or not. That it was all happening sixteen years later didn’t matter.
The kid was still his responsibility. And Bennett was still going to lay it all down for him.
Because outside of what he felt, Bennett knew what was right. And even if he couldn’t feel it all, he could still do what needed to be done.
“You’re staying,” Bennett said decisively, resolutely. “Unpack the damn bag.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ud9cbd981-cf4a-5971-abd2-905948ff5127)
KAYLEE WAS IN her pajamas when her phone rang. She’d just come inside after riding her horse, Flicka, around the trail behind her house and getting her put away, and was currently sprawled on the couch with her cat, Albus, lying across her chest.
Her heart kicked a little bit when she looked at the screen and saw that it was Bennett.
“Are you having more cow drama?” she asked. “Because I’m getting ready for bed.”
“No, not exactly.”
“What’s going on?”
He sounded...he sounded weird. Not like himself. Bennett was cool and in control, always. He was the kind of guy you wanted to have around in a crisis, and he professionally handled animal crises on an almost daily basis. He was not the kind of guy who ever sounded... Well, whatever it was he sounded now. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Only that it wasn’t him.
“It’s hard to explain. Can you come over?”
Thoughts chased each other around her head like rabid foxes. He was ill. He had some kind of terrible disease. He was quitting the business and leaving her.
“I’ll be right over.”
She hung up and started hunting for something to wear. She put on a pair of ripped jeans and a gray T-shirt that had a logo for the veterinary clinic on it. By the time she had gone to her truck, she had thought of at least three new scenarios, each one more upsetting than the last, for why Bennett had sounded so grave.
Olivia wanted him back. Olivia, who was pregnant with another man’s baby, wanted him back because Luke had abandoned her. Yes, that was it. Luke had abandoned her, and she was asking Bennett to raise another man’s child.
Bennett was a good man. He was a good and faithful man, and he was going to do it.
She was going to tell him not to do it.
Kaylee was completely worked up in a lather by the time she was halfway to Bennett’s place. Ready to fight him over his chivalrous nature. He was not marrying a woman and raising another man’s child as his own. He wasn’t doing it.
She couldn’t imagine anything more terrible.
At least when they had been together at first she had thought Olivia was exactly the kind of woman he should be with. And yes, that had burned. Because Olivia was so different from everything that Kaylee was. And having to acknowledge that Olivia was going to fill a place in his life that he clearly didn’t think Kaylee could fill was painful. Painful all the way through her bones in a way that forced her to clench her teeth to make them stop aching.
But nonetheless, it had been bearable. Bearable because she had thought that Olivia would make him happy.
But this wouldn’t make him happy. This was outrageous.
She pulled her truck up to the front of his house and turned the engine off quickly, hopping down out of the cabin and slamming the door, only to stop once she’d climbed the front steps.
She was just about to raise her hand to knock when the door opened, and she was met by a shell-shocked-looking Bennett.
“It’s Olivia, isn’t it?”
It occurred to her just then that Olivia might have lost the baby. That she wanted to marry him now that she wasn’t tied to Luke. That would be a lot harder to talk him out of. Especially if Olivia was upset and Bennett wanted to fix it.
