That the missing piece might actually be in him.

He didn’t know how the hell he’d gotten here.

He was a successful man. A man who’d gotten everything he’d set out to get. But he was a man who hadn’t set out to get anything he loved.

And that was a strange realization.

And as he sat there in his bedroom, filled with things he bought with his money from the rodeo, memories of that life flashing through his mind, it felt...empty. An empty pursuit. Something that had fed his bank account and nothing more.

Something that had fed a desire for revenge against a man who had hurt him.

And that thought brought about anger. Anger at his mother. For the part that she played in that. For the way that she’d manipulated him.

Who are you really angry at?

He gritted his teeth. He didn’t know what to do with this damn life. This life that had so many wonderful attributes. That didn’t have a damn thing that he could even complain about, really. He hadn’t thought meaningfully about choices. Not really. He thought in terms of the way that his father hadn’t wanted him on one path, and his need to protect his mother had put him on another.

And it all made it sound like some big hand was reaching down from the sky and moving him around. But if that was his concept of God, it was a bad one. Particularly since he’d never thought of it that way before. And he wasn’t a man who had ever given much credence to fate, either.

And that meant that he had to acknowledge, with all honesty, that the choice had been his.

He might have done it for his mother, but he made the choice to go into the rodeo.

He made the choice to stay.

Just like he’d made the choice to tell Jamie that things could never happen between them. Like he made the choice to turn away from that.

Because it would be hard.

Because it was what he wanted.

Yeah, the rodeo had been easy for him. That was the bottom line. Because he hadn’t truly cared whether or not he failed. Because it meant nothing to him. And if he’d fought tooth and nail and stood against his father and told him that he wasn’t going to accept the old man’s edict to not join the ranch and he’d failed, then he would have...

Well, he’d have had no one to blame but himself.

Damn.

He built a life for himself, made entirely out of materials he didn’t give a shit about. And then he wondered why he felt nothing. Nothing in triumph, nothing in failure. He made it that way.

Because he never wanted to...

He’d never wanted to be like his mother. Broken and crying and destroyed over caring so much about something that didn’t love you back.

He was a coward. Jamie was right.

He’d ridden damned bucking broncos, so it had never occurred to him that he might be living life afraid.