I never read or listened to anything that had to do with Ricky Rango, but maybe I should have.

“Cricket doesn’t share much, but Rango’s last message to his fans was that his wife betrayed him and was trying to destroy his career. He said she broke him creatively, and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to write music again. Then he OD’d, and everyone said she pushed him to it. They turned on her. Went completely rabid.”

I remember her black eye, and it makes sense now. “Jesus Christ. What a dumb fuck.” It lines up with everything I thought about Ricky Rango before. “Selfish little prick.”

“You can say that again. And it sounds like she doesn’t know anything different. Might want to take that into consideration when you see her.”

“Hunt, are you trying to give me relationship advice?”

He coughs. “At this point, I think it’s just advice, because you two don’t have a relationship.”

“Yet. I’m working on it. I’m not going to let her run. Not when everyone she needs is right here in Gable.”

“Then maybe you should show her what it’s like when someone actually gives a damn about her and what she wants. I hear the ladies like that.”

I think about how Hunter and Cricket, the perfect example of opposites attract, ended up together. “I can tell you want to say something else, so you might as well just spit it out, Hunt.”

“This is the one time in your life when being Lincoln Riscoff might actually hurt your chances of getting what you want.”

“You think I don’t know that? She made that clear ten years ago.”

“I think you need to consider how the hell to turn it to your advantage. Show her what it’s like to matter to someone. Show her you can put her first the way Rango never did. She must’ve seen something in you before. You’re not that big of a prick that it’s completely gone by now. Show her that again.”

I remember that night in the bar, and how shocked Whitney was to have someone stand up for her. To fight for her.

Hunter’s right. This has to be about her. It’s not about me and my fucked-up family.

“Thanks, man.”

“Good luck.”

I hang up with Hunter and drive toward Whitney’s aunt’s house, relieved that I won’t have to knock on the front door. Thanks to Hunter, I now know she’s living in a shed out back.

She deserves a palace. Not a shed.

Hunter had more than one valid point, but the most important one was that Whitney Gable hasn’t been treated right by any man in her life. Including me. It’s time to change that. And this time, I’m not going to fuck it up.

I’m older. Arguably wiser. I finally understand the value of a good woman in a way I didn’t before. Even more, I realize that I was right to think Whitney was special then. She’s unlike any woman before or since.