Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
She nods, looking back down at my phone. “Maybe this is the push I needed. I mean…Cash, this could work.” Her eyes light up as the pieces come together. “I’m pretty sure Wheeler would come out to the ranch if I told her you have four single brothers who live there. There’s plenty of space for her in the New House. Now that I have access to my trust, I can hire some people to help out at Bellamy Brooks, which would free me up to help out on the ranch a couple of days a week. What do you think, Mom?”
Aubrey is quiet as she continues to sip her wine. “I’m not sure what I think. It’s a lovely idea—”
“But it could work.” Mollie blinks. “Holy shit, it could really work.”
I swallow the thickness in my throat. “Why do you look so surprised?” I ask softly. “Did you not think we would figure this out?”
She’s quiet for a beat. Mollie’s eyes fill all over again. “Maybe I didn’t think I deserved it. Being able to keep my life here and keep you. Feels like I’m getting away with something. Like I’m going to be punished for not doing things the way I’ve been taught they should be done.”
“Making your dreams happen?” I ask. “That feels like a crime?”
Mollie’s crying again. I don’t miss how Aubrey reaches over and grabs her daughter’s other hand.
“That’s all I ever wanted for you, you know. For you to make your dreams come true.” Aubrey sniffles. “I just don’t want you to give up on the dreams you have here. You’ve worked so hard. Your boots are beautiful. I guess I assumed that if you ran off with a cowboy”—Aubrey cocks a brow in my direction—“you’d abandon all that. But now I’m starting to see I was wrong.”
“I’m not abandoning my dreams, Mom. I’m just changing them. Making them bigger. My heart belongs to Bellamy Brooks and to Dallas, but it also belongs to Cash and the ranch and Hartsville. I hope you don’t view that as some kind of betrayal, because it’s not. It’s just me, following my truth as I figure it out.”
Aubrey closes her eyes. Her chin trembles.
A tear slips out of my own eye. Goddamn, being around all this emotion is really getting me in my own feels.
“I won’t lie to you, sweetheart. It hurts to hear you say that you might be leaving,” she says at last. “But if you feel like this is the right move, then you have to make it. I knew in my gut life on a cattle ranch wasn’t for me, but I tried to fight it because I loved your father so damn much. Don’t fight what you know to be true.”
Mollie stares at her mother. “You mean that? Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Aubrey’s eyes cut to me. “Don’t waste time like I did trying to be someone you’re not. What’s all this money for if not to make you happy? Go be happy.”
CHAPTER 32
Mollie
GOOD-LUCK CHARMS
I’m scrolling through nineties country playlists on Spotify the next morning in the front seat of my car when Cash calls out from behind me.
“Hey, Mollie. I think your mom is here.” He grunts as he lifts my largest suitcase into the trunk. “That her in the white Mercedes?”
I immediately whip around in the passenger seat to look out the windows. Yep, that’s my mother. She’s pulling into one of the parallel parking spots outside my building.
“That’s her.”
“You want me to run interference?” He meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“We’ll be okay. I think. I hope.”
Cash and I are on the opposite side of the street, just outside the building’s front door. He’s loading up the trunk while I figure out entertainment for our drive. Cash, being Cash, didn’t so much as let me touch my luggage, much less load it into the trunk.
Having a boyfriend who’s a filthy-mouthed cowboy in the sheets but an absolute gentleman in the streets sure as hell has its perks.
Watching Mom climb out of her sedan, my stomach dips. We left lunch on good enough terms yesterday. I feel like we had a breakthrough. At the very least, Mom understands where I’m coming from and why I’m making the choice to go back to the ranch today.
Still, when I called her this morning to tell her we were leaving after breakfast, I didn’t expect her to offer to swing by.
I certainly didn’t expect for her to actually show up. It’s a Sunday morning. While most people in her circle are at church or having brunch, Mom is usually working. Weekends are a real estate agent’s bread and butter.
She’s here, though. And I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.
Looking both ways before crossing the street, she hurries over to us. I notice she has a white paper bag tucked underneath her arm.