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"But you weren't even dating her, Ace. Why did you care?"
"Why? Because you got everything I wanted. Everything," he yelled.
I shook my head. "You're such an entitled son of a bitch."
"You saw how she looked? Man, she was blindingly beautiful. I wanted her. Of course I wanted her—everyone did. She smiled and laughed with me; we were friends. But she made it clear that she wasn't sexually attracted to me. But all you had to do was crook your finger and she was sucking your dick."
I hadn't realized how bitter Ace was, and it was a shock. I'd done everything I could to make his life better. He didn't want to be a rancher, so I let him study whatever he wanted and kept the ranch going on my own. He couldn't keep a job outside of Ledger Ranch, so I gave him a job that he could do and feel good about himself. While his wife was gallivanting around being Mrs. Ledger, I even helped raise his kids. And, yet, he thought I had everything.
"I was a shit," he continued after a moment of silence, like he was collecting his thoughts. "I was jealous and an asshole."
"I believed you and not her," I confessed. "I called her a whore after I took her virginity. Trust me, I was an even bigger asshole."
Ace looked at me with profound sadness.
"Why did you bring her to Montana?" I mused.
"She worked all the time. She'd been nowhere. She was studying or working. I thought I'd give her a free vacation, and I knew Caitlyn would take one look at her and be jealous as fuck. Before I left for London, she dumped me for not being ambitious enough. I wanted her back."
All of this had been right in front of me. I had deliberately ignored the evidence.
I recently read a book by a Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, and I remembered something that he wrote: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is.”
"Ro, how's Isha?"
I poured more whiskey for both of us. "She's good. She's in New York. Her best friend and her husband died, but their baby survived. Isha is that girl's mother. Flora. She's four. Cute as a fucking button."
"Friend?" Ace looked haggard. "Shit! She's raising a friend's kid?"
"They made a deal that they would take care of each other's children if something happened to either of them. They grew up in the orphanage together. Didn't want their kids to go into the system." There was darkness, and then there was this. I'd created my own hell, and now I had to burn in it.
"Her friend Yasmine?"
"Did you meet her?"
"I did. They looked like sisters. I'm sorry to hear she passed. I'm…just sorry, Ro."
"I knew you were lying, but I didn't want to believe you'd do that to me. I couldn't accept trusting an outsider over family," I admitted. "I also didn't know what to do because I didn't know how to handle falling in love."
Ace looked more disgusted with himself. "Is that why there haven't been many women since she left?"
"It never felt right after her." I looked at my glass of whiskey, feeling tremendously old. "I hated how I treated her. I wanted to find her and apologize, but…I was scared she'd ask me to fuck off."
"Did she?"
"No. She listened. Said thank you. Said that she sent a letter with money."
Ace shut his eyes as if in pain. "She did."
"You never told me about that, either."
"She wrote to me and to you. She said she was disappointed in me, but forgave me. She sent six thousand dollars in cash and a traveler's check for a thousand pounds. Said that it was money she owed you."
"Why didn't you tell me? That was six months after she left? You had Caitlyn. You could've told me." If you had, I may have been able to salvage my life.
"I was ashamed."
"You know that was a whole lot of money for her? You should've sent it back." I hated that she'd scrimped and saved to send me money that was less than pocket change for my family.
