Page 73 of A Montana Rodeo Star

“Knew what?” Tate demanded.

Brent ignored him. “How?”

She cleared her throat. “Hallie told me.”

The man she loved muttered a curse and shot to his feet. He ran both hands through his hair before lacing them behind his neck and looking up at the ceiling. Her brothers tensed and moved closer but nothing more.

“I can’t believe this. How long?”

Faith watched him pace back and forth, growing increasingly on edge. She swallowed hard and shifted in her seat. “I don’t know. A couple weeks?”

His eyes cut to hers, slicing her straight through her heart. “Weeks?” His eyes darted away and took on a far-off quality. “The research.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“How could you,” he ground out.

“Brent—”

“No. You don’t have any excuses. You kept this from me for weeks. Weeks, Faith!”

Tate moved forward, his voice dark. “Brent…” there was a warning in that one syllable. Brent needed to take a breath. While Tate probably thought Brent was directing his anger at the wrong person, he couldn’t be more wrong.

She’d been the one to hold this secret to herself when he deserved to know. She’d nearly told him. She’d wanted to. Keeping this information to herself was the ultimate betrayal. Brent had only ever been honest with her. And she’d thanked him with this.

Faith pressed her lips together. She waited, expected him to blow up again.

“Why, Faith?”

She stared at him blankly. Why what? Why did she keep the secret? Why did she try to manipulate him from following his dream? Why didn’t she just cut ties with him before any of this had happened? She didn’t have the answers to any of it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Brent said under his breath, taking a step toward her. But one look at her brothers and he stopped.

“Anything I could say to you wouldn’t be enough.”

“Humor me,” he muttered.

She squeezed her eyes shut and wrung her hands together. “I told Hallie I wouldn’t.”

He snorted. “Not good enough.”

“You’re right.” She forced herself to look at him. “You’re completely right. I don’t owe Hallie anything. But you know what? I do owe you everything. I didn’t want to be the one who shattered your world. It wasn’t my secret to keep. Your parents⁠—”

“Don’t bring them into this. I’m talking to you about why you refused to give me anything. All you had to do was tell me.” His voice cracked and with it, her heart fissured.

Faith wanted to burst into tears at this very moment. She wanted to tell him she was sorry. That this wasn’t how she wanted everything to come out. But at this point it wouldn’t help. There was no cleaning up this oil spill. It had spread far too much, and they were all covered in it. So she nodded to herself again and kept her mouth shut.

“That’s it? That’s your excuse? You thought my parents who had kept this from me for over two decades would come clean? What proof is there that they would?” He barked out a laugh that almost sounded manic. “You know what’s ironic? Hallie was the one to spill the beans. For all her manipulation, she was the one to shatter my world as you so quaintly put it. And right in front of Tripp, too.”

Her eyes widened. Tripp’s wedding was tomorrow. He didn’t need this on his plate. He had bigger things to think about.

“Yeah, pretty cruddy thing to do, right?” Brent shook his head derisively. “And the best part of all of this? It actually makes sense. The reasons my parents have for me to stay away from the rodeo. I want to say that if they’d come clean to me when I first started showing an interest in the rodeo, that it would have made a difference…” His voice went quiet and she had to strain to hear it. “Did you know they changed his name? Tripp. He was supposed to be Tripp Brent. I wasn’t even born yet when Louis—my dad died. So they gave me his name. At least I have that. But my brother?” His voice cracked, laced with broken emotion. “They took everything from him. He was supposed to be Tripp Brent. He doesn’t remember anything about our dad. He was so little.”

Faith became all too aware that her own brothers had grown deathly still behind her. What did they think of this? Their last name was everything. It was what they got to pass on to keep the family line going. She wanted to jump over the coffee table and pull him into her arms. She wanted to let him cry into her neck while she told him that he was still his father’s son even though Louis hadn’t raised him.

Heck, his natural talent on the back of a horse proved that.

But she couldn’t.