To disappear.
To walk away from the only real thing I’d ever had.
Matty never did go to Denver that summer like he was supposed to. By then, we’d been knee-deep in our affair, and he’d refused to leave me alone. He wanted to spend all the time with me before he went back to university to continue his studies.
His decision sparked a blowout with Gray big enough to send ripples across the entire ranch. I’d figured out pretty quickly that Matty and his father were close—closer than most. They shared a bond rooted in sweat and soil, in early mornings and the kind of quiet understanding that only came from working the land side by side.
But that summer, Matty had drawn a line. Stood his ground not as Gray’s boy, but as his own man. He refused to be packed off like some kid on summer break to a parent who didn’t see him, not really.
His mother didn’t know what to do with a son like him—gritty, sun-browned, rough around the edges. She wanted polish. Compliance. She dragged him to city galas and luncheons like he was some trophy she could shine up.
I wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to go. But I was the reason he finally said it out loud.
Matty hadn’t even been back at the university for a full week when she showed up. Emma Magnuson. My boss’s high-society wife. Matty’s mother.
She found me at the bunkhouse, where I was living likea stray on the Magnuson ranch, doing whatever grunt work I could get. I wasn’t as used to farm work back then, but Gray overlooked my mistakes and was patient in teaching me. With Matty’s guidance, I was finally coming into my own that summer.
Then she came armed in her stilettos and perfectly pedicured nails. Not with kindness. Not with concern. With my past.
My arrest records.
The cheap, degrading porn I’d filmed to eat and keep a roof over my head after jail.
All of it, printed out neat in a manila folder, like a portfolio of shame.
She laid it down in front of me like a final judgment and said, in that perfect, crisp voice of hers, that I wasn’t fit to lick her son’s boots. That if I cared even a little, I’d disappear. She offered me ten thousand dollars to make a clean break with Matty.
And then came Heather’s news a few days later. Pregnant.
Emma had been right.
I didn’t deserve Matty, and he didn’t deserve to be dragged down with me.
I stared at the money like it might combust.
Ivy’s face flashed in my mind. Her laugh. Her trust. Her belief in me, undeserved as it was.
And Matty… God, Matty. The way he’d looked at me in the grocery store. Like he almost still believed in me too.
I shut the box. Not slammed. Not violent. Just a soft, final gesture.
No.
There had to be another way.
I stood, shoved the box back into the closet, kicked the door shut, and leaned my forehead against the wood.
This wasn’t the solution.
It couldn’t be.
Not if I wanted to live with myself tomorrow.
Not if I still wanted to be the kind of man who could look Ivy—or Matty—in the eye.
But fuck, it was tempting.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A quick peek at the screen unsettled my stomach.
