say good-bye and know that we did everything we could to try and make it work, and that it just wasn’t meant to be.”
He stared at her, aware of the lightening sky behind the shades and the promise of dawn.
“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?” Ben said quietly. “I’m supposed to be older than you, and yet you outthink and outshine me at every turn.”
“I had to grow up fast.” She shrugged. “In an industry that doesn’t like failure and where you’re completely expendable.”
“And I grew up on a ranch where my dad ran my mom off the property when I was eleven, and nothing was the same after that.” He sighed. “Maybe that’s why I’m always looking for the problems.” Every time he stepped out of his comfort zone and tried to be more spontaneous, he messed up.
“Can I ask you something?” Silver looked at him expectantly.
Ben nodded.
“You said your mom left, but when I was at the ranch you were talking to her on the phone.”
“She came back into our lives a year or so ago. She lives in New York and has another daughter.”
“Seven kids?” Silver shuddered. “What a hero. So, is she nice?”
“Yeah, and she’s a lot happier, and she doesn’t take any shit from my dad anymore.”
“Was it weird for you—her coming back like that?”
Ben considered what to say. “I thought I’d be okay about it, but when she actually turned up? It kind of churned things up for me a bit.”
“Like old memories and resentments and fear?”
“How did you know?” Ben asked.
She shrugged. “Because childhood trauma is a big deal according to every therapist I’ve ever visited, and your mom walking out? That’s a doozy.”
“She didn’t really want to leave. She wanted to teach my dad a lesson—except he didn’t get it, and made no effort to apologize, or ask her to come back, so she really left him and went to live in New York with her brother.” Ben grimaced. “Dad basically refused to speak her name, so for years we all thought she was dead, except—” He abruptly stopped talking.
“Except what?”
Ben just stared at her until she jabbed him in the chest with her fingernail.
“Ouch.” He glared at her. “What was that for?”
“Honesty, remember? You can tell me anything, and I promise I will never tell another soul.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but when I walked out of college, I decided I’d take a trip to the East Coast to see my mom. I accidentally saw a letter she’d written to Dad once, and I... copied the address, and kept it. I was angry with her and I had this stupid idea in my head that I was going to confront her and tell her how I felt.”
“And?”
“Things kind of went wrong on the road trip. I ended up having to give my mom’s address to the cops in Pennsylvania, and thank God, she came to get me.” He grimaced. “She also called my dad. You can imagine how that went down.”
“But she did come and get you,” Silver said softly.
“Yeah.” He met her gaze as he thought about that for the first time. “She did.”
His phone buzzed and he rolled over to turn it off. “Forgot to cancel my alarm.” He noticed a text from Adam and paused to read it. “Excuse me.”
He set the phone down and turned to Silver who was watching him intently.
“Adam says I should give it another day just to be sure, and then I can head back.”
Silver’s smile was glorious. “Then if you are willing to get rid of your cowboy hat and blend in with the crowd, you and I can spend the day together.”
* * *
Silver had learned long ago how to dress down and not draw attention to herself. Despite some celebrities saying they could never get out without being spotted, Silver tended to think those people just couldn’t bear not to be noticed. Ben had only been in Southern California once on a school trip, and, as Silver had lived there her whole life, she was eager to show him her city. She’d also found that a lot of the places she liked to go were perfectly happy to let her be, and not get in her face.
It was even more fun showing Ben the small restaurants, the ice cream place she loved, the stretch of beach not overwhelmed by tourists and flashy locals. They picked up lunch and went