Accidental Knight: A Marriage Mistake Romance(80)

“What do you mean?” My heart crawls up my throat, and I reach over, wrapping my fingers around Drake’s hand.

“Her clothes were torn, her hair a mess, and she was sobbing. Turns out, her aunt’s boyfriend just tried to rape her.”

There are plenty of times in this conversation where my heart almost rips in two, but I think it’s right there where I lose it.

Drake squeezes my hand, tight and comforting, as my other hand presses against the pain in my chest. Tries to hold it in. But there’s no stopping the tears that roll down my cheeks.

“Before I say anything else, let me make this clear – your mother doesn’t ever need to know what I’m telling you. She doesn’t want to relive the past,” Dad says firmly. “The girl I married came from a different world. Never knew who her father was. Her mother abandoned her when she was five. She was tossed from relative to relative and wound up living with her aunt most of the time because the state paid her aunt to let her live there. I brought Molly home with me that night, here to the ranch, and...as generous and understanding as my father was to those in need, he refused to let her stay.”

“What? He did?” I ask before I even realize the words came out. “Why?”

“He had a list of reasons, from not trusting her to steal us blind, to saying she was none of our business. He did call the sheriff, had the boyfriend arrested and then run out of town. Said he’d fixed the problem and that would be the end of it. I knew it wouldn’t be. Her aunt would just get another boyfriend, another abuser. Molly had no place to go unless I did something.”

Holy hell.

My heart aches for my mother, probably for the first time in my life, for all she’d been through. I’m starting to see what made her such a human cactus.

And I can’t get over how much Gramps disappoints me. Really, even if it was a long time ago, there’s no excuse.

“I knew Molly wasn’t pregnant when I told my father she was. Her aunt had put her on the pill long before then, but I knew I was her only hope of escaping this town. Dallas isn’t bad, but it’s like any place, it’s got a seedy underbelly. Bad people. I also realized she was my only hope of escaping my father. He was already saying I didn’t need to go to college, between the ranch and the oil company, I didn’t need an education. Didn’t need to leave him alone.”

He takes another big drink of beer. “So we got married and moved away, went to college. Dad finally relented. Maybe part of him felt guilty for how he treated her when he saw I was serious. He paid for everything, which I’m very grateful for...”

I need a minute. Slowly, I release the pent up breath in my lungs and try to inhale again.

Drake doesn’t just hold my hand. He leaps from his chair and drops to my side, wrapping his arms around me tight, holding me up while my entire world falls to pieces.

It’s a harsh minute before I’m ready to hear more. Dad waits patiently, and then starts again when I nod, and so does Drake.

“We moved back here after college, but it didn’t work out. Molly and Dad were like oil and water. There wasn’t a single thing they could agree on. My father never lived a day without working long hours, and your mother never knew anyone who had worked a stable job. Her entire life, when she’d needed something, clothes, food, shelter, she got it by luck or someone begging. Or sometimes she just went without. That’s all she’d ever known. She’d never known love, either. Not the normal kind.”

Dad uncrosses his legs and leans forward, looking at me. “I’m telling you all this, Annabelle, because I’ve been in your shoes. I had to decide if what my father wanted was also what I wanted. Just like you, he held the ranch, the oil company, over my head. He said it was all or nothing. His everything was this. The ranch, the oil company, they were him. And his nothing was Molly.” He sits up. “I chose your mother because she needed me more than your grandfather did.”

I’m shocked by what I’ve just been told. Stunned, amazed, confused.

I shake my head. “But you’ve always worked for North Earhart?” He’s always received a check from them. I know he has.

“No, I haven’t. When we left here, it was with nothing, not even a vehicle because he’d paid for it. Because I’d planned on working for Earhart Oil after college, my degrees were in business and geology, so I got a job with another oil company down south. Jupiter Oil.”

“Holy – no way.” I look at Drake. His expression says he didn’t know either.

“It’s true,” Dad says. “Avery Briar didn’t work there then, but believe me, I know my dad would turn over in his grave if Jupiter ever acquired North Earhart.”

“How long did you work there?” I ask, still processing all I’ve been told.

“A few years. Then Dad and I came to an agreement. It drove him crazy to see his own son working in the industry, but not with him. I told him I wouldn’t work for anybody besides North Earhart, but I wouldn’t work for him, either. Not directly.” He nods, as if thinking something else. “The closest your mother and I ever came to getting a divorce was when you were born.”

I hold my breath again, just looking at him, holding his gaze that’s too soft, too gentle, too real.

“Because no matter what she thought of him, or him of her, I wasn’t going to deny my father the opportunity to know his only granddaughter. The guilt of leaving him alone, all those years ago, still lives inside me. I know how lonely he was. I know how complicated things got. I knew that then, too, and felt damn guilty about it. I hoped you’d help heal the rift.”