Having that ruined in any way wasn’t easy. The one thing I always had to hold onto in my life and depend on felt like it was teetering on the brink of falling apart. Maybe another person wouldn’t be so determined to know the truth no holding onto the love and security I had would be simpler, but I needed to face the past. I had to ask daddy why he’d loved me anyway, raised me as his own, how he could even stand to look at me when I was a constant reminder of his wife’s betrayal.
As a kid, whenever I thought there was a monster under my bed, I would grab a baseball bat and immediately search for it, instead of hiding under the covers. I never backed down and hid. I faced my fears. This was no different. It was the biggest fear I’d ever faced but I was ready.
“Hey, buttercup,” Daddy called, stepping from the stables. He’d seen me headed his way.
“Hey,” I replied, my voice cracking, tears quickly filling my eyes. Apparently, this wasn’t like fighting the monsters under my bed. This was scarier. I loved this man, trusted him with my life. I knew he’d be there no matter what. But I knew my questions would hurt him.
His smile sagged. “Who the hell do I need to beat up? Why’re there tears in my girl’s eyes?” He took three long strides, grabbed both my arms, and looked down at me with sad eyes. “Is this another Sutton boy’s doing? Cause if it is, I’m gonna go burn that place down. I swear to God, I’m sick of those boys hurting you. What else have they done?”
The fact that he didn’t know the truth was even more apparent as he spoke. I had to tell him. I was going to destroy the love this man always had for me. Could I do that? I felt my knees go weak. I couldn’t lose my daddy.
“Alright, buttercup, you’re scaring me. Is your momma okay?” he asked, glancing back at the house.
I nodded. “It’s not about her,” I managed to say without sobbing.
“Talk, darling, I can’t fix this if I don’t know what I need to fix.”
My daddy always tried to fix my problems. But he hadn’t been able to mend my broken heart when Asher had turned away from me. And now, he would not be able to fix what I had to tell him, either. The problem was standing right before him. I was the unfixable mistake.
“I heard Asher Sutton was home. Is this about him?” Daddy asked, his voice laced with anger. “He’s a man now and I don’t have a problem beating the hell outta him.”
“Daddy,” I said, interrupting his angry tirade about Asher. “Did you know . . . did you . . . I . . .” How did I ask my father whether he knew his wife was unfaithful? I couldn’t do this. Could I do this? God, this was too much.
“Did I know what, baby? What’s bothering you?” he replied. His words were gentler as he pulled me closer to his chest like he was protecting me. And he didn’t even know from what.
“My . . . mother . . . did she . . .” I stopped, swallowed hard, because I felt sick. Hearing this was one thing, but repeating it was another thing altogether.
“You said this wasn’t about Mom,” he whispered with concern, gazing again at the house. He didn’t understand.
I shook my head. “No, the woman . . . my real mother,” I replied, his body immediately tensing. We never talked about her, ever, not once. I didn’t know why she had left. Had she left because of an affair? Did he not know that I was the product of that affair?
“Has someone contacted you?” he asked, his voice strained and quavering.
I shook my head. I’d once planned on finding her. Now, I never wanted to see her. She’d ruined my life, leaving lies behind that destroyed everything. “Did you know she had an affair with Vance Sutton?” I asked before I could stop myself. Closing my eyes tightly, I immediately wanted to take those words back. I did not want him to know this. I loved him. He was my daddy. I couldn’t lose that. Ever.
“Honey, mentally, she wasn’t well. But yes, I knew. How did you find out about this?” His words surprised me. I hadn’t expected him to know that much, if anything. “Do the Sutton boys know?”
I nodded. “Yes, Asher found letters that Millie wrote to Vance. They said some things . . .” tears were now spilling free down my face. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I’d faced this fear and now I had to wait, see what happened next.
Daddy stared down at me frowning with worry on his face and then slowly understanding lit his eyes. He closed them tightly, muttering a curse, before pulling me against him and squeezing. “Oh, no, baby, I know what Asher must have read. It’s not what you think, buttercup. You’re my princess. You hear me? You’re mine. I got proof of that. Those letters were from a mentally unstable woman. A woman who hurt others as if life was a game. Millie’s beauty was something she used as a weapon against people.”
I pulled away from him to search his face. “I’m not Vance Sutton’s daughter?” I repeated it, said it again, making sure I wasn’t hearing him wrong.
“No!” Daddy yelled angrily. “Hell no! You’re all mine! Although Millie tried to destroy me and Vance Sutton with her lie. I had a paternity test done when you were born because Vance demanded it. He wanted proof you weren’t his. But understand this, from the moment they handed you to me, minutes after you were born, you became mine, right then and there. You stole my heart, a heart I didn’t think could heal, but you healed it the moment I looked into your eyes and no piece of paper could have taken that away from me. I wouldn’t have cared what that paper said, you were my baby girl. I was willing to fight for you. I wanted you. Yes, Millie had broken me, but you, Dixie Monroe, you saved me from the darkness. You were my miracle. You lit my life.”
I let my Daddy hold me and cried.
My biggest fear was that, one day, Asher would grow to resent me. Years from now, when we were married with children, when I had to drive them to ballet, football practice or soccer, and sex was something we’d have to find time for, when the washing machine was broken, and the car needed new brakes, that Asher’s decision not to play football for Florida and have a chance to go pro one day would haunt him for the rest of his life. That being a husband and dad wouldn’t be enough for him. That he would wonder every day what his life could have been like and I would be the one he’d blame for taking his dream away from him. I’d only dreamed of one thing in my life and that was to have Asher Sutton’s love. I had that. My dream had come true. I was living it, but Asher was giving up his, for me, and that was scaring me. As much as I begged him not to withdraw from Florida, he swore he couldn’t be happ, without me close and in his life.
Momma said that it was his choice and I had to stop worrying about it. But I did. It kept me up at night. Asher was the reason the football team won state two years in a row. They even talked about him on the news—where he’d sign, whether he’d lead an undefeated college football team, just like he’d done in high school. He was important. And I would be the girl who kept him from achieving all this.
Selfishly, I wanted him close. I couldn’t imagine not seeing him daily. Distance wouldn’t make me love him less. I’d loved him since I was thirteen and that wasn’t going to change. We’d stopped going to Jack’s and now we did things without his brothers and friends. We went to the lake or sat out on the football field at night, instead, talking about high school. How it was almost over for him and how my time here seemed endless. Some nights he’d take me to dinner and a movie, normally on the days he got his paycheck. He gave half to his momma to pay the bills, all the boys did and the other half he spent on us. That made me feel guilty because I wanted to help out, but Asher never let me.
When his old blue truck pulled into the drive and his brothers weren’t in the back, I knew tonight we’d be discussing this again. We’d talked about it repeatedly, but now that his final decision needed be made next week, I had one last chance to convince him to go to Florida and play football.
The days were warmer now, but the nights were still cool, the heat of summer still two months off. My arms were bare, so I pulled the white sweater I was carrying over my shoulders and went out to his truck. He was grinning. ??
?I got paid early. Want to see a movie?”
What I wanted was for him to save his money. “I’d rather do something where we can talk.”
He frowned. “That sounds like something serious.”
It was, so I replied, “I want to spend time with you. No movie. Just us. Alone.”
He gave me a crooked grin. “Okay. I can live with that. Then tell me what you’d like to do.”
“Can we ride out to Hillview Peak?” I asked.
Asher’s eyebrows shot up and I knew why. That was where people went to park. It was known for its dark, secluded location. On any given night, you could find sweaty couples having sex in cramped back seats. No one ever talked about it, but everyone knew what happened on Hillview Peak.
I watched as a million different thoughts flashed through his expressive eyes. “Dix, uh, baby, if you’re ready for that . . . I mean, if you want it . . . trust me, I want the very same thing. But I’m not having your first time be at Hillview Peak. Give me some notice and I can come up with a better place than my truck.”
His truck. He’d lost his virginity in his truck. There’d been a lot of girls in there. Now, there was just me. I knew that. I trusted him completely. I was ready and although I’d always imagined losing my virginity in Asher Sutton’s truck, I didn’t really want it to happen there. I wanted “us” to be different. I didn’t hold all the girls he’d been with, the ones that came before me, against him, because I wasn’t jealous. I just didn’t want our first time to be the same, or even similar, to anyone else he’d been with in the past.
I’d intended to talk him into going to Florida and now we were somehow talking about sex. This wasn’t exactly how I meant for it to happen. I wanted to convince him to live his dream. We could still be together, though it would be hard on both of us. Part of me, a part I wasn’t very proud of, thought that sex would bind him to me, keep him from going off and realizing that I wasn’t the one for him. Then there was that other small voice in my head that said I wanted him to be my first and there was no reason to keep waiting. But the biggest part of me wanted Asher inside of me, to have that kind of connection with him.
“I just wanted to talk at Hillview. It seemed secluded and the stars there are beautiful.”
“When have you seen the stars at Hillview Peak?” he asked with a scowl that made me laugh.
“I snuck up there with Scarlet when we were thirteen to see if we could spy anyone having sex . . . mostly it was curiosity.”
Asher seemed relieved. “What? Scarlet wasn’t having sex at thirteen?”
“Not yet,” I replied, laughing. There was no reason to defend my best friend. She’d been boy crazy since ten. And it was exactly one month after she turned fourteen that she happily lost her virginity.
“I don’t want anyone seeing us going there. They’ll talk,” Asher said.
“You’ve been there many times. It won’t be a big deal.”
He reached down and laced his fingers through mine. “You’re a big deal. My big deal. And I don’t want anyone thinking I’m screwing you in my damn pickup truck. Especially at Hillview Peak.”
Asher rarely cursed around me. The fact he did it now only made his words sweeter. He was protecting me. Asher cherished what he had. All the things my momma said I was supposed to expect from a guy and should never settle for any less. Asher would always be more. More than any guy could ever be.
Asher Sutton
“YOU BETTER EAT them biscuits. I didn’t get up and fix them for you to just look at them,” Momma said, as she stared at my plate and the food I’d barely touched. My appetite was gone. Vanished.
“Yes, Momma,” I replied before I forced a bite into my mouth and chewed.
Steel had hurried up, finished his breakfast, then left. Didn’t even look me in the eye, not once. That was good. He needed to keep his distance until I was able to calm down.
“Can I have another?” Dallas asked like a damn five-year-old.
“Go get it yourself! She’s not your waitress!” I snapped at him angrily.
His eyes got big as he stood up with his plate and headed to the stove.
“Okay, what’s got you all tied up in knots? You weren’t here this morning and Bray was out looking for you while the rest of them tried to distract me. I raised every one of you. I know when you don’t come home at night and I know when Dallas is trying to charm me so that someone else can get away with something.”
Dallas smirked as he sat down with another plate of biscuits smothered in tomato gravy. “Figures,” he laughed.
I refused to tell Momma what was wrong. There was no reason for her to suffer that kind of pain right now. She had good memories of my dad and it needed to stay that way. Telling her wouldn’t make it any better. Hurting her for no reason was unnecessary.
“I’m adjusting to being home again. Steel broke it off with Dixie and I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad. Dixie needs to move on and not with one of my brothers.”
I hoped my voice didn’t betray me. Damn, it sounded like it did.
Momma cocked an eyebrow and sat down across from me with a cup of coffee in her hand. “I call BS,” she just said. She sipped her coffee and studied me. “BS, you hear me. I don’t buy it,” making her point now more aggressively.
“Momma, let’s just leave him alone,” Bray said. He was the only one brave enough to say something like that to Momma. Except for me, and I wasn’t speaking.
Momma turned to glare down the table at Bray who was now looking like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. I would’ve laughed, if I wasn’t so fucked up. Dallas and Brent both snickered. They knew what was coming next.
“I don’t recall asking you what to do. I carried him for nine months and through ten hours of labor. Then I cleaned his nasty butt, nursed him when he was sick, held his hand while he got stitches, and let him puke all over me whenever he got food poisoning. So do not tell me what I can and can’t do. If and when I want to know about one of my boys, I will ask and get an answer. And you might be next, so shut your mouth and eat your breakfast. You’re in my house.”
Bray dropped his head and replied meekly, “Yes, ma’am.”
Momma swung her attention back to me. “Now, last time I checked, you kicked that sweet Dixie Monroe to the curb, without even a backwards glance. Wouldn’t say a word or look at her. I was worried about you getting too serious. You were young, so I didn’t push it. But three years have passed and when you should be attached to some girl you’ve met at college by now, you’re back here still looking heartbroken. Ain’t right. Don’t make sense to me. When a man looks like you, he has women beating down his door. But you’re alone. Explain that to me! It has to be you pushing them away. Steel loves that girl. He’s bought her a ring God knows he can’t afford, and now he’s broken up with her two days after you get home. I smell shit. S.H.I.T.”
I glanced down the table at Bray, but he was eating and not looking our way. Momma had put him in his place. Brent was watching us with worry in his eyes. He knew I couldn’t tell Momma the truth. They all did, but not one of them was trying to help me out. Suddenly, they were all mute.
“Maybe, he didn’t love her enough. Enough to fight for her and make sure she was protected from everything that could hurt her. Maybe, he wouldn’t sacrifice his happiness for hers. Maybe . . .” I stopped and stood up. “Momma, I love you, but I can’t talk about this. Not right now,” I said, leaving my plate on the table and heading for the door. If Steel could run out, so could I. Facing Momma right now wasn’t the best idea.
“You found them letters . . . now, didn’t you?” Momma’s words stopped me as my hand touched the screen. I froze. The letters. If she knew about the letters, then she knew . . .
What the fuck?
Turning around, I looked at her and saw the sadness in her eyes. “What letters?” I needed her to spell it out. If she was referring to the letters I found, then she shouldn’t have allowed Steel or me anywhere near Dixie Monroe in the first pl
ace.
“The letters from that woman to your daddy. I didn’t know where he hid them. But three years ago, you found them, didn’t you?” She nodded as if I’d confirmed this. “I wondered once back then when you looked so miserable, but then I thought, no, surely not. If you found something like that, you’d ask me about it, but you never did, so I figured it was something else. Now I see I made a grave mistake.”
I stared at my mother. She knew. But she . . .”Why would you let us, let me be with Dixie that way if you knew?” I was trying to grasp the fact that my mother knowingly had allowed Steel and myself to commit incest. The fucking world that I knew was warping before me.
Momma stood up and shook her head. “I’d have never let such a thing happen. That girl ain’t your daddy’s child. Luke Monroe has a paternity test that proves Dixie is his. Millie Monroe was the most beautiful woman in the county and probably the state, too. She could seduce a man like nothing I’d ever seen, but that woman, she was insane. Mentally screwed up, I tell you. She set her sight on your daddy and that meant she eventually got him. Your daddy was a man, that’s the only excuse I got for him back then and now. I forgave him a long time ago. Understand this, he never stopped trying to make it up to me. He did love me, he just let temptation get the best of him. Not the first and definitely not the last man to do that.”
If my daddy were still alive, I’d go kill him right now. Listening to my momma talk about him being seduced by another woman pissed the hell out of me.
“When I was gone to the doctor one day, Millie came to the barn and, well . . . she did some things any man would have a hard time refusing. Your daddy made a mistake. Then,” she sighed and added, “Millie came back and did it again a few more times after that. Your daddy was weak, so when Millie got pregnant, we didn’t know if it could be your daddy’s child. He admitted it to me right then. Everything he’d done. I was pregnant with Steel at the time. I had three babies I was taking care of and money was tight, you see. Your daddy used Millie as an escape from the troubles we were going through. I thought I’d leave him for a while, but he was so pitiful, and I loved him very much. It took a couple of years, but I finally forgave him. Anyway, when that little girl was born, I wanted a paternity test. So did your daddy. If that baby was his, we needed to know, but it wasn’t. Dixie was Luke’s. Period.”
“Holy fuck,” Bray swore, reminding me we weren’t alone, my brothers were still sitting there and listening to every word.
“Can’t believe I was even born. You shoulda killed him,” Dallas muttered.
Momma turned around and faced them all. “I loved that man. He loved and adored all of you. He was a good man who had weak moments. He made a mistake and I forgave him. It don’t change the fact you were his whole world. He loved each of you.” Her tone was determined and it showed she meant what she was saying. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive the man, but he was gone and being mad at him was pointless. In the end, he’d left us all anyway.
Momma looked back to me. “Where were those letters?” she asked.
“Loose floorboard in the attic,” I told her.
She nodded. “I should have checked that place out before I let you move up there. I knew you were sweet on that girl. She looks just like her momma, but she ain’t a thing like her. She’s got her daddy’s heart and Luke Monroe is as good a man as you’ll find. He tried to make it work with Millie, even when he knew she was crazy. Millie ran off and left him with that little girl, and it was the best thing that could’ve happened, both for Dixie and Luke. She didn’t need that woman in her life. She turned out to be a fine young woman. The day I heard Millie had dropped dead out in California, I didn’t even feel pity. I felt nothing but some