They left before the dinner hour with only Rebecca on hand to say good-bye. Dad was who knew where and Mom was furious with Robin for leaving. Rebecca’s expression was grim; she hugged Robin tightly to her, said she would call her later. “He’s a pain in the ass, I know, Robbie. But he doesn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Huh—that’s strange, because he’s an expert at it.”
“Just get some space and think about it,” Rebecca said, then turned a kind smile to Jake. “It was really nice to get to meet you.” Robin had the distinct impression Rebecca did not think she would ever see him again. She leaned over, waved at Cole in the back seat. “Take care of yourself, Cole!”
“Say bye to Frannie for me!” he called, his young mind still on horses.
As they drove away—Jake insisted on driving, which left Robin to stare morosely out the window at the ranch house—Robin half expected, half hoped Dad would come out on the veranda and wave.
He did not.
She tried to grapple with the myriad emotions that besieged her as they sped down I-10. Anger, frustration—a hurt so deep that she felt like she was drowning in it. A sharply real, palpable fear that she would never see her father again, that he would die despising her. With her forehead against the cool glass of the window, and Jake’s comforting hand on her knee, Robin tried to make sense of it all. Not that there was any hope of that, how could there be? Her father’s constant criticism was so unfair—she had never, in a long and prominent line of boyfriends, had a serious, heartfelt relationship with anyone. Never. And now that she did (she did, didn’t she?), it was with the wrong man? Jake’s life was so far beneath the lofty Lears’ as to make him untrustworthy? And why hadn’t she ever noticed how harshly her father judged everyone?
Maybe because she did the same thing? God, was she like him? Robin stole a glance at Jake from the corner of her eye and had a startling, sickening thought—maybe she was just like her father. Maybe she couldn’t separate a man’s essence from his circumstance. It wasn’t like she had given Jake the benefit of the doubt when she first met him. Had it not been for his good looks, she probably never would have spoken to him. She probably would not have looked at him at all until she wrote him a check, and only then to see if he was scamming her. The rest of the time she would have looked right past him, just like Mia looked right past him and Lucy and everyone else she met that did not travel in their elite social circles.
But maybe, just maybe, Robin thought hopefully, she was selling herself short. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone so far as to disrespect him like Dad did. Maybe she would at least have respected him. Funny, wasn’t it, that now she adored him? Yes, but . . . did she adore him enough to walk away from the Lears? Did she love him? Really, even the word sounded fragile. Okay, so what if she admitted that she did love him—not that she was ready to admit such a huge thing—but what if? What would happen in two, three, even ten years’ time? Would she grow bored of him? Would he still love her? Or would he, like her own father, grow to despise her? And if he did, where would that leave her? Completely alone?
Like she wasn’t already completely alone. Like she had some rich, full life to be envied. What a fucking joke.
Robin was really beginning to despise herself and what she had become, was really beginning to believe that what she had been searching for all this time was not a thing, but maybe something as simple as herself. It almost felt like there was a person, the real Robin, a better Robin, lying beneath a shroud of privilege and the Lear name. Still very much alive, but buried by the weight of her name.
“Hey, baby,” Jake said, interrupting her thoughts with a gentle squeeze of her knee. Robin glanced up, realized they were almost to Houston. She pushed herself out of her slump, stole a glimpse over her shoulder. Cole was stretched across the backseat, asleep.
“You haven’t said a word the last hundred miles,” Jake said.
“Sorry,” she mumbled.
Jake smiled thinly; his hand slid from her knee. “Listen. I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“About . . . us. And this . . . this thing between us. There’s something really special between us, I think, but I’m starting to worry that the whole goddam world is conspiring against us.”
“Are you talking about my dad? Because if you are, believe me, I am—”
“No, not just your dad,” he said, and reached up, rubbed his eyes. “I don’t even know how to talk about all the things going around in my head right now. I just know that when I look at you, I think to myself, God, is this woman for me? Am I that lucky? I have fallen in love with you, Robin. I can’t think of anything else, there is no other place I want to be, and honestly, the more I am with you, the harder it is to be apart from you.”