“He gave me everything I asked for,” Jamie continued.

“You never asked him to take care of you,” Gabe said.

“Nope,” Jamie responded, setting her hot chocolate down and trading it for the toast again.

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this, Jamie, but my mom didn’t need to be asked.”

A sheen of tears welled up in Jamie’s eyes again, and guilt lanced Gabe. He shouldn’t have said any of that. He was just feeling sharp because she’d reminded him of the differences in their fathers.

Fathers were a weird thing. Hank wasn’t taciturn or distant. He was gregarious and laughed loudly. He hugged his sons often.

He’d cheated on his wife for years, and often went on the road for weeks at a time.

He was willing to take pretty drastic action to get his way when he had to.

Then tell a boy holding back humiliating tears he wouldn’t let himself cry, his fifteen-year-old shoulders shaking, that he’d be better off without the thing he loved most.

And he’d said it all with a smile. Because ultimately, Hank had thought he was right. And nothing could shake his certainty in himself. He’d been certain Gabe would see it his way.

But Gabe never had.

“Maybe you don’t have to ask moms to do that kind of thing. But my mom was dead, Gabe. I didn’t have one. I don’t have one. And everyone else in my family had to make do with that. So did I. I don’t waste time crying about it. I didn’t even know her. You can’t mourn what you never had.”

Gabe shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true, Jamie. I think you can mourn things you never had.”

“What’s the point?”

“No more point, I guess, than mourning anything.”

None of his tears, his curses or his anger had brought the horses back from where his dad had sold them off to.

And horses weren’t even people. There wasn’t reason to cry for them.

The event had changed the landscape of his life. His goals. Him.

He hadn’t had work to do on the ranch anymore, but he hadn’t worked any harder in school. He’d gotten involved with Trisha and discovered sex, and he’d been happy to take that as a distraction for a while.

It had given him a chance to really see what was happening in his parents’ marriage.

And at that point Hank was the villain in his world. Simple as that.

Once his mom had been sure she’d seen it his way, she’d leaned on him. Confided in him.

Every dark family secret, and Gabe had set out to shoulder them.

It had all come to a head after Trisha’s pregnancy scare. Gabe’s whole life had felt fractured. His view of himself.

And his mom had given him one last Hank Dalton secret.

Gabe had felt like he was staring into his own future. So when his mom had suggested he get out of town and get revenge on his dad, all at the same time...