I grabbed my keys, deciding to take my truck and not the SUV because it made me think of Sinclair and our family. I headed out to Salvation Station. I hesitated as I entered, not sure I was ready to see Ryder. Luckily, he wasn’t at the bar.
“Hey, handsome,” the female bartender said. She wasn’t someone I remembered from growing up here. She was young and pretty, maybe early twenties.
“Whisky,” I ordered.
“Sure thing.” She grabbed a shot glass and poured.
“Two more with that,” I said, eyeing the little shot of liquid and knowing it wasn’t enough.
She quirked a brow. “Tough day on the ranch?”
“How’d you know I had a ranch?”
“You’re Wyatt Jones, aren’t you? I’m Samantha.” She gave me a smile that I suspected appeared in Salvation’s young single men’s wet dreams.
I held up my glass. “Cheers, Sam.” I downed my whisky.
“You know, I’m off in ten, if you want to go somewhere and talk. You look like you could use a friend.” She crossed her arms across her diaphragm and leaned them on the bar, which pushed her tits up. They were impressive and there was a time and place that I might have taken her up on her offer. But that time and place was long gone.
“I’m married.” I downed the next two glasses and wished the fire in my gut would burn away the pain.
“So?”
I looked at her. Did she really not care that she was hitting on a married man? I wondered how many men took her up on her offer.
“So, he’s married to my sister, Sam. Back off.” Ryder stepped up to the bar beside her.
The booze must have kicked in because I stood, leaned over the bar and grabbed Ryder by the front of his shirt.
“You knew, you fucking bastard, and didn’t tell me,” I roared at him.
“Whoa.” Samantha jumped back.
A few men around the bar stood and came over to me. “You need help, Ry?”
“No. It’s okay.” Ryder put his hand over mine, gripping his shirt. “It wasn’t my news to tell, man.”
I released him with a slight push. “Always with the excuses.” I hated him. I hated them both.
“She messed up, Wyatt. I agree, but so did you.” He straightened his shirt.
I glared at him, tapping my glass for another shot. He poured me another.
“You knocked up my sister and then abandoned her,” he said, putting the bottle away.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant.” Jesus, that was the whole point of all this. I didn’t know she was pregnant. I was being judged for not being there, but how could I be there when I didn’t know?
“You would have if you stuck around or told us where you were. Jesus, she was eighteen, scared shitless, and where were you? Nowhere that we could find you, and we looked, Wyatt. Every weekend she’d come home from school and we’d talk to your mom, or drive to other cities to see if you’d moved there. We even went to a recruiting center, but they hadn’t seen you.”
I couldn’t deny running off the way I did was shitty. I’d live with that regret forever. I’d already apologized to Alyssa for it. Thank fuck she was forgiving.
“I fucked up,” I said. “I know it’s my fault I wasn’t there for Alyssa’s birth or her first steps. Sinclair needed me and I wasn’t there. I get that and regret it.”
“Do you?” Ryder looked at me with disappointment.
“What about the last few months? We’re married for fuck’s sake, and she didn’t tell me. I asked her if I could adopt Alyssa.” God, that burned. “You all probably had a good laugh at that.” I gulped down the next shot.
“No one is laughing, Wyatt.”
“She fucking broke me.” I felt like a pussy admitting that. But I was so tired of feeling like I was in a million pieces.
“The answer is to let her fix it. You’re making a mistake if you let this ruin your relationship with Sinclair. As sure as I’m standing here, you’ll regret it if you do.”
“She betrayed me.”
“You need to forgive her. You’re quite the hypocrite if you want everyone to forgive you for abandoning her, but you won’t forgive her for this.”
I shook my head. “It’s not the same.”
“You’re a fucking bastard, Wyatt. You left her pregnant and alone, and yet she still married you. She helped you with your farm. Jesus, you betrayed me. You fucked my sister. Knocked her up. Do you see me holding a grudge? No. Because she told me she loved you and you loved her. Was that a lie or were you just using her to get your rocks off?”
“No.” Why was I becoming the bad guy in this scenario? “I wanted to marry her.”
“Right, so you left without a word. That doesn’t sound like love to me.” He shook his head dismissively and moved off to take an order from someone at the other end of the bar.
When he came back, he said, “I forgave you for fucking my sister because I cared for you both and that was more important to me than some bro’ code. I forgave you for knocking her up because Alyssa is a great kid. We all forgave you for leaving without a word because we understood about your dad. You fucked up several times, Wyatt, and yet we forgave you. But you can’t find it inside you to forgive Sinclair? Yes, it was wrong, but she was thinking of Alyssa.”
Her betrayal felt too big.
He leaned toward me over the bar. “Consider this: When Mayor Valentine leaves office and is free to pursue Sinclair, are you going to be okay with that? With him touching her? Making more babies with her? Him being Alyssa’s step-father?”
“You’re a
