“Well, I’m probably not going to,” he said, looking at the computer screen and not at his dad, very much on purpose.

“What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for a career-ending injury? The right woman?”

“No. But you’re right. The rodeo is what I do. I made my choices, and I might as well see them through.”

He’d done it to hurt Hank back then. To prove to him that he couldn’t control his life, and to prove to himself that he could do something valuable.

His mother had wanted him in the rodeo. Hank hadn’t.

The choice had seemed clear to him.

But along the way he’d lost that clarity. The reason he’d gone into the rodeo in the first place.

He’d become a rodeo star, and he’d found ways to revel in it.

“Trust me,” Hank said, “you hang in there too long and all you end up doing is being a shadow of your own glory days. It’s not the most exciting way to burn out.”

“I think I’ll skip the lecture, thanks. I’m not sure you’re the best person to go telling people when to quit.”

“Do you have something to say to me?”

His father seemed put off by Gabe’s hostility, and Gabe supposed that was fair enough. It wasn’t like they had ever had the most contentious relationship. The protectiveness Gabe felt toward his mom had always made it thorny with his dad. But more or less, Gabe kept it civil when the two of them were together.

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“I saw your new hire out there working today. She’s a pretty thing.”

Immediately, the blood in Gabe’s veins turned to ice. “That’s not something you should be noticing.”

“I’m sorry. You noticed her first, I take it?”

“No, Dad. Because unlike you, I don’t fuck around with women that I hire. I don’t fuck around with women when it isn’t appropriate, and whether or not I want to doesn’t come into it. I hired her because she’s qualified to work with the horses. No other reason.”

Hank raised his hands in a defensive gesture. Like somehow Gabe was the asshole. “I’ve been faithful to your mother for the past fifteen years. I wasn’t stating intent.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I was supposed to trust you had indeed kept your vows after so many years of not doing it.”

“Is this about McKenna?” Hank asked. “I’m doing the best I can to do the right thing. I can’t change the past. But it was a mistake that I made twenty-seven years ago, Gabe. And I never claimed to be a saint before then. It’s not like you didn’t know.”

If only it were just McKenna.

If only his dad’s inability to control his damn self weren’t such a formative part of Gabe’s life. But it was.

And of course Hank would never realize that. Because he never really seemed to understand how deep his harmless little oopses cut the people who loved him.