was all about me.” The weight of guilt settled on her chest. “The funeral was...was my fault...”
“What?” Jax pulled off the side of the deserted roadway and put the vehicle in Park. “Cleo, you aren’t making any sense.”
His face started to blur behind a wall of unshed tears. She blinked repeatedly. “It’s my fault that my father died.”
“How? Weren’t you living here in Las Vegas at the time?”
“I’d just moved here.” She inhaled a steadying breath. “I was on the phone with him and we were arguing. I didn’t know at the time that he was in the pickup, transporting a mare he’d bought in hopes of luring me home. I might not like working around the ranch, but I still have a big soft spot for horses and he knew it.”
Jax didn’t say anything. He just reached out and squeezed her hand, allowing her to proceed at her own pace. This was something she’d never shared with anyone...ever.
Somehow it seemed fitting that she turned to Jax. He wasn’t as close to the situation as her family and yet he wasn’t so distant, either.
Cleo inhaled a steadying breath. “He kept telling me to come home. He was always going on about how much my mother missed me, but I didn’t want to hear it. I was so stubborn. So determined that everything had to be my way. I was finally away from that suppressive atmosphere and making decisions for myself. I didn’t want to go back and marry one of the locals. It might be the right life for some people...but not me.”
The backs of her eyes smarted as a tear spilled onto her cheek. She dashed it away. This wasn’t the time to fall apart. She needed to get through this. After all, Jax deserved to know what sort of woman he was putting his neck on the line to protect.
“No one can blame you—”
“But they do. And they should. If only I hadn’t fought with him...he wouldn’t have died.”
“You don’t know that.” He placed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze. “And you can’t live your life according to someone else’s wishes. At some point you have to stand your ground.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes the price is just too steep.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. She drew strength from his touch.
“I—I told him—” her throat grew thick as she pushed through “—that there wasn’t anything that he could say or do to get me to come home.”
Another tear splashed onto her cheek. She sniffled and ran the back of her hand over her cheeks. Why had she been so stubborn? So determined that she was right?
She pulled her hand from Jax’s, no longer feeling worthy of his understanding. And he’d have no choice but to agree once she told him the price of her independence.
Her voice cracked with emotion. “Those were the last words I spoke to him.”
She stared straight ahead at the desert, not wanting to see the look of disgust in Jax’s eyes. She wouldn’t be able to finish if she looked at him.
“The line... It went dead. I thought he’d hung up on me. I thought... Oh, it doesn’t matter.” She sniffled, trying to maintain a bit of composure. “I found out later...that he’d blown through a stop sign. He...he was broadsided.”
Jax leaned forward, squeezing her shoulder. “It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But it didn’t.” She turned to Jax. “If I hadn’t been arguing with him, he wouldn’t have been distracted. He always obeyed stop signs. This is all on me.”
“How do you know that he wasn’t tired? Or he hadn’t been distracted by something falling off the dashboard or the seat. Maybe he reached over to pick it up.”
She shook her head, taking a second to collect herself. “I know what happened because there was an investigation. The police determined he was talking to me at the time of the accident.”
“I’m sorry, Cleo. But this isn’t your fault.”
“My mother would disagree. She totally flipped out on me. She ordered me out of the funeral home. She said as far as she was concerned, she...she had no daughter.”
“She didn’t mean it—”
By now the tears were running unleashed. “Yes, she did. I was banished from Hope Springs. I tried to call a couple of times after that, but she hung up.”
“She was in shock and mourning the loss of your father. I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”
“Even my brothers have changed. They speak to me, but it’s not the same. Nothing is the same. Everyone blames me and they’re right. This is my punishment.”
Jax placed a finger beneath her chin and turned her head until she was facing him. “None of them had any right to lay this at your feet. You didn’t know he was on the phone while driving. Not to speak ill of the dead, but the decision to talk on the phone while driving is all on him. And second, he didn’t have a right to demand you come home.”
Had she heard Jax correctly? Wait. This wasn’t the way she thought this conversation would go.
“You don’t blame me?”
“Of course not. And if your mother had been thinking clearly, she wouldn’t have blamed you, either. It was an accident. And no one person was to blame. It was a culmination of events.”
She wanted to believe him—wanted to shed the weight of guilt that had kept her isolated in Las Vegas through the lonely holidays, missing how her brothers would gather around the tree on Christmas Eve passing out gifts. And later how they’d argue over who got to carve the turkey.
Cleo blinked repeatedly. She might not have wanted to be a rancher, but that didn’t mean she wanted to walk away from her family. She just wanted them to respect that she was grown-up now and fully capable of making her own choices on where she lived and how she lived her life. In her worst nightmare, she never dreamed she’d be labeled a black sheep and banished from her home.
“Remember when you were a kid, you always had your head in the clouds.” Jax looked her in the eye. “You dreamed about those fancy fashion shows and how you wanted to travel to Milan and Paris. I never saw anyone who liked clothes as much as you.”
She lifted her head to look him in the eye. “You remember that?”
“Those days that you’d sit and talk about places you’d learned about in one of your magazines taught me something important. You made me realize I could dream bigger than Hope Springs.”
“I thought you were bored stiff listening to me.”
“Not at all. You were like a breath of fresh air after hearing my father rant on and on about all of the injustices in this world.” Jax leaned toward her. “You don’t know how much I enjoyed our talks down by the creek.”
“You mean when you were supposed to be fishing. And I was supposed to be quiet so as not to scare off the fish.” They shared a smile.
“But
