“Oh, girl stuff. You know.”
He rolled his eyes and took my hand. “Come on. Let’s talk.”
Swallowing hard, I followed him into the family room. Brock’s house was decorated with a rustic design. I loved every part of the house. It screamed of Brock everywhere you looked. We sat down on the leather sofa, and he took in a slow, steady breath and then winced.
“Do you need a pain pill?”
He shook his head. “No.”
I wondered if he was avoiding the pills because of Ty becoming addicted to painkillers after his accident. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “I’ll take one later this afternoon.”
I turned and faced him, patiently waiting for him to tell me what weighed so heavy on his heart.
“I know I’ve told you a little about Kaci before, but I left one important piece out. How she died.”
“Okay.” My voice sounded shaky.
“Has anyone told you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He furrowed his brows and then closed his eyes only briefly before speaking. “I never really understood why I couldn’t make Kaci happy. For a while, I wondered if it might be because she regretted picking me over Dirk. A part of me wishes we had never forced her hand on it. But over the years, I’ve looked back . . . and there had always been signs of how unhappy she’d been, even before we got married. I guess I just ignored them.”
I reached for his hand.
“Anyway, after we got married, Kaci started to pressure me into giving up bull riding. She wanted me to go to college, get into law. She worried about me riding and said the stress was too much. We fought a lot; Dirk put a lot of pressure on me as well to try harder to make her happy. Sometimes I wonder what her life would have been like, had she loved Dirk more than me.”
He shrugged and got lost in his thoughts for a moment before continuing. “I tried so hard to show her I loved her. I did love her, Lincoln.”
I squeezed his hand gently. “I know you did.”
He slowly let out a breath and tried to hide the pain he was in. “After a while, I started to grow resentful toward her. The constant complaining about me being gone, wanting me to give up what I loved, and she got it in her head I was cheating. I never once cheated on her. Then, one day, she said she thought a baby would bring us closer. It was in the barn, in that tack room we were in. That day you asked me to make love to you in there, that memory came rushing back to me . . . and I felt like I was betraying Kaci. It’s been part of the reason I haven’t allowed myself to fall in love again. The guilt that I couldn’t seem to make her happy, and the fact that I was a selfish asshole for not putting her first.”
“You’re not betraying her by loving me.”
A soft laugh slipped from his lips. “I know that . . . now. Being in that room and wanting to make love to you, knowing we felt such a powerful connection, made me feel guilty. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t tell you I was falling in love with you . . . not in that room.”
The room fell silent as Brock seemed to get his thoughts together.
“About a week before Kaci went into labor, everything in our world seemed great. She was happy; she wasn’t pushing me to go to college; I thought things were going to work out. That the baby was already bringing us closer. The night before she went into labor, though, she called me. She was angry and not really acting like herself. She gave me an ultimatum.”
“An ultimatum?” I asked.
“Yeah. She told me if I wanted to be a part of our child’s life, I had to slow down on the tour, or she would leave me.”
My hand came up to my mouth. “What?”
Brock nodded. “I was so pissed at her. I told her she knew what I did for a living when we got married, and it wasn’t fair that she was asking me to walk away from it. We fought a bit more, she said something, I said something, and she hung up on me.”
“Why would she suddenly demand this from you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she was in a dark place; I just didn’t know it at the time. Kaci suffered from depression. I also didn’t know that until the day of her funeral. Her mama pulled me to the side and told me. I was so angry, but Kaci had made her parents promise not to tell me. Things might have been different, had I known. Dirk didn’t know either. She kept it from both of us.”