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“You’re that sure?”
“I am. We fell in love, and I figured we’d enjoy that for a while before making any long-term commitments, mostly because our chosen careers are at odds. If Dragonlock makes it big and we end up going on more tours, even headlining, I’ll be traveling a lot. But her heart and soul are there on that ranch with her father. Working those trees. And I don’t want to take her life’s work away from her.”
“But how are you going to make it work?”
He shrugs. “We just will. That brush with death moved me. When I thought my life was over, all I knew was that I wanted her by my side, wherever we were going. It was an epiphany, you know? I didn’t have a ring, but I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. We’ll make it work because I love her more than anything. Brock and Rory are going to have to make it work somehow, too. I suppose they didn’t have this issue when they fell in love, because it was before Rory had even joined the band. She was teaching music in Snow Creek, and she certainly still could have done that while Brock works his ranch. But now they’re going to be in the same situation.”
“So let me get this straight,” I say. “You actually proposed to her?”
Jesse nods. “I did. She says she feels the same way. She’s so young, but I have to take her at her word. Believe that she feels what I do.”
“She does,” I say. “I can see it in her eyes when she looks at you.”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t get all poetic.”
I take a drink of my cognac. “I just call them as I see them, Pike.”
But I’m done talking about this.
Jesse Pike will never understand my life, just as I’ll never understand his.
I was born into incredible privilege, but to someone like Jesse, waking up and finding out your family tree is not the pillar of the community you thought it was and then subsequently looking death in the face? It doesn’t pack a wallop.
Well, maybe the looking death in the face part. We have that in common.
He doesn’t understand that we were always taught that every human being had value. And that we knew how incredibly privileged we were to be born into the Steel family.
But that kind of stuff doesn’t sink into a kid’s head. Doesn’t even sink into a young adult’s head. It sure as hell never really sank into mine. Sure, I knew I was privileged. But I never stopped to think about how others lived.
How others might look at us.
Oh, I heard the rumors. The Steels own this town.
I never thought it was true, until it was.
Of course it wasn’t our family. It was something called the Steel Trust, which was engineered by Wendy Madigan, Uncle Ryan’s birth mother.
But still, people knew. The Steel Trust had liens on almost everybody’s property in town and around the surrounding areas.
But not on the Pike land.
Jesse must wonder why.
I wonder myself.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter. They own their land with no liens other than a mortgage.
Jesse finishes his cognac. “I think I’m going call it a night,” he says.
“Yeah. Me too.” I hold up my glass. “Just got to finish this.”
“You want me to stay?”
“No. I’m fine. Shaken, but aren’t we all?”
He nods. “I’m going to check on the girls. Make sure they’re okay.”
“I appreciate that.”
