to hate . . .”
I stared at him and he clamped his lips shut.
“All right, I’ll give you that. But you can still say thank you.”
My filter failed me again. “Why? So Emma can go tell her friends about how my jeans are so old they practically fell off when she cut them? But that the doctor didn’t care because my family owes the hospital so much money, and if he got a little pleasure from ruining my clothing, so be it? But ‘Oh,’ she’d say. ‘Bristol has some manners.’ Is that how it would go?”
Dawson’s brows rose but his gaze stayed glued on the windshield and deteriorating road conditions. Swirling snow masked the pavement underneath. “One, I’m sure Emma has to adhere to some confidentiality rules and all that. And two, you’re really jaded.”
“If your grandparents hadn’t screwed mine, then we would’ve been King’s Creek royalty instead.”
His jaw clenched. He couldn’t argue the facts. “Look, I get that my mom’s parents sold your grandparents some land and then later oil was found on it, but keeping mineral rights when selling land isn’t criminal. It’s common practice. As for ‘King’s Creek royalty,’ I can’t help it’s named after Dad’s great-great-grandparents.”
He’d skipped over a critical detail about the land sale, but I stuck on the royalty argument. “Your mom’s side became filthy rich by wielding those rights like a broadsword cutting across my family’s land. Then when your mom married a wealthy rancher, it was like a redneck fairy tale. One that I’m reminded of every damn day. So excuse me if a lifetime of being treated like shit because of my last name makes me a little jaded.”
“It’s not because of your last name. It’s how you act.”
I twisted in my seat. He couldn’t look me in the eye without going off the road, but I had to make my point. “They judge me on how Pop acted. I never had a chance. I owe them nothing, not a smile, not a goddamn thank-you. And I especially never thought I should have to drop my pants just because Pop couldn’t pay his—”
Dawson’s head whipped toward me, his golden eyes blazing. “Who the fuck tried that?”
His rage pushed me back in my seat. I cringed. He wasn’t angry at me, but I’d been yelled at too many times for my mind to leave my heart rate alone when someone’s voice rose.
“Bristol.” His voice cracked like the cold wind. “Who tried to get you to sleep with them over your dad’s debts?”
“I took care of it,” I mumbled. “But I’m sure it just gave the town another example of how difficult I am to work with.”
His eyes narrowed as he glowered out the window. “It was Buck from the Car Garage, wasn’t it?”
My mouth dropped open. “How’d you know?” Buck wasn’t the only one, but a fist in the nose had made him the last.
“He was spouting off about some night with you. His story was so full of holes I called him on it.” He slid his gaze toward me for a heartbeat. “Said you punched him cuz you were clingy and he wanted to end it. I said that if he looked up clingy in the dictionary, your picture would be under antonyms and then I recommended he look up the definition of antonym.”
I stifled a giggle. “He wouldn’t know how to spell either word.”
He chuckled and we exchanged a grin.
I swallowed hard and turned to the passenger window. My place was coming up. The snow was falling heavier. I hoped Daisy stayed at Dawson’s. He had a nice barn that wasn’t full of old hay and drafts. Bucket likely wouldn’t want to come back home. Dawson wasn’t as smart as I thought he was if he assumed I didn’t know he snuck Bucket corn on the cob every year.
Words clogged my throat as Dawson turned into the long drive that would take him to the trailer house Pop had lived and died in.
I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t.
But the RV didn’t run, therefore I couldn’t take it anywhere to empty the sewage. Its bathroom was little more than a mirror and storage. How would I run the generator and get back and forth to use the trailer’s bathroom?
Panic clawed at my chest the closer he got. There was no way I could stay there. No way I could live there. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to tell Dawson that I lived in the RV during the winter and the