He shook his head and pressed on. “Everyone was fine, but the reason they’d even been rushing around, was—” Nope, the legal gag wouldn’t allow him to go there. He grit his teeth at the all-too familiar anger and wrangled it back down, hiding it. The accident had been the final straw. And the reason why he’d finally given up, stopped trying to make a doomed marriage work to someone who didn’t want to be married or be a mother. He blotted out memories of the infuriating paparazzi, flashing, snapping, trying to see who else was in the car through the tinted windows, blessedly without success when the police arrived and pushed them all back, who, instead of helping him, had continued capturing photos of his distress until he’d grabbed the nearest camera and smashed it. “Sh—they called me, and I cut across the highway median to get to them. I was pumping with so much adrenaline I tipped the car back up on its wheels before first responders could so I could get to my boys, but a chunk of rebar from an unfinished portion of road construction broke loose and fell on me.”
Tyler unclenched his hands, not realizing they’d tensed so tightly upon her, letting them once more float upon her skin. Caress her scar. Her stomach rumbled against him, but she didn’t move.
“You could have died protecting them.”
“Yeah, but my boys could have died and I wouldn’t have wanted to go on living.”
“It was your ex, wasn’t it?” Heather finally said. His eyes held hers. Hard. He couldn’t confirm or deny, and it pissed him off so much his jaw clenched and lips thinned. But she seemed to be putting the clues together. “Is that why you’re no longer together? Did you blame her?”
Tyler frowned at the question. “One of many reasons. Her cheating on me with h—the cheating was the big kicker, but I still tried to make it work. When she filed for divorce, I didn’t fight her. Was relieved.”
“How did your family feel about it?”
“My dad was pissed. He was a traditionalist and when he’d found out I’d gotten her pregnant, he—there was a lot of pressure to marry. My bros always called me Perfect Ty, but they didn’t understand the pressure he put on me to achieve all the damn time. I was the captain of everything, award-winning football player, valedictorian, perfect GPA. I still felt like I fell short of his expectations. He was always quick to scold but slow to praise. I took it. Tried harder. Until the day of the divorce and I told him in not so many words, that he could fuck right off with his holier than thou judgement.”
“For once, you think you could have my back? I’ve done almost everything you’ve ever asked of me. She ain’t coming back this time….”He could still remember the anger lashing through his gut, could remember posturing against his dad, encroaching a step into his space, pointing. “She never wanted kids, sure as hell don’t want the farm, and she never wanted me…”
Tyler cleared his throat, letting the contentious memories echo through him. Shit. He’d just dumped a truckload of baggage on Heather that he hadn’t intended.
“My bros had my back, though. So did my momma. And my pops backed off of me. Hardly spoke to me after that, except about legal stuff for the ranch. Not everyone can have a rock of a marriage like my parents’.”
“I’m sorry you were so unhappy and you felt like you had to stay in such a bad relationship,” Heather whispered.
“Sons want their pops’s approval, you know? Oldest one gets the hardest and paves the way for the rest. It was one of the reasons I loved coming here in the summers as a kid. My grandparents let me roam the hills from sunup onward. Granddad gave me old tractor engines to tinker with. Gave me free rein over the material scraps in his shop to build whatever I wanted. He had this quiet way of showing me how to fix something, or helping me repair a mistake without any judgment. The man wasn’t literate a day beyond sixth grade, but he could make anything. He’d just put my hands in position, or show me the right way to crank a tool, then squeeze my shoulder when I did it right and walk away. My bros, cousins, and I used to spend entire days collecting broken bits of fossils, and Grams would give us old coffee cans and milk crates to store ’em in.” His eyes flashed to hers, a smile fleeting upon her lips at the mention of fossils. “My granddad didn’t pressure me for shit.”
“He let you be a kid.” Heather said it like she understood on some deep level. “It’s why you want to protect this land. This place is your freedom.”
“More like a life sentence, these days.”
And he just now realized, she was caressing his hair. He’d gotten way off course in a matter of seconds and ought to shut up. He, a lawyer, knew the consequences of violating an NDA.
“Your turn, sweetheart.”