Page 27 of Long Hard Road

Nate looked over and caught me staring. The tension in his face was immediately chased away by one of his perfect smiles.

“That,” Lily said. “That’s why I stayed.”

“For Nate?” I gasped.

Lily laughed. “No. I stayed because I found a man who smiled at me like that. You might have come here for an escape from your life just like I did, but you also might find that you had to come to Crestwood to finally start living your life. Just like I did.”

9

NATE

We circled back to the stables after finishing the tour and it was just in time for us to catch a ride on one of the carriages. Lily and Chase had to get back to work, so it was just me and Madison settling onto the cushioned bench. I tucked a thick blanket around our legs as our carriage driver, Caleb, urged the horses forward.

“Is this safe for them?” Madison asked with a frown.

“The horses? Yeah. Perfectly safe. It’s a good chance to give them a little bit of a workout in the winter and we don’t push them hard. They do a couple of rides per day and get plenty of days off.”

“Good.” I felt her shoulders relax. “Thanks for bringing me out here, Nate. I really love the ranch.”

“Me too.” I was relieved that Madison was enjoying her visit. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if she hadn’t, but it was nice to know that she loved the place where I had grown up. “Have you ever done something like this?”

“Ridden in a horse-drawn carriage?” Madison shook her head. “No. Never.”

“Me neither.” I draped my arm along the back of our bench, leaning slightly closer to her. “I’m used to riding on a horse, not being pulled by one.”

“I’ve never been on a horse,” she admitted.

“If the snow clears up, I’d be happy to teach you. We’ve got some great horses over on the working ranch that have been in the family for years. They pretty much ride themselves.”

Madison’s soft smile only made her perfect face even more beautiful. “You had a good childhood, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did.” Up until my mother’s death, my childhood had been damn near perfect. “What about you?”

“Mine was… complicated. I didn’t have good parents.” Her leg shifted closer to mine until our thighs touched beneath the blanket. “My parents got pregnant with me when they were still in high school. They both dropped out. Dad got a job in construction to pay the bills and Mom stayed home with me. When I started preschool, she got a job as a waitress. They both started taking any work they could. We needed the money and neither of them cared much about spending time with me.”

My heart cracked wide open inside my chest. I had known Madison for just a couple of days and I already hated being away from her. How could her parents have not wanted to be with her?

“Mom had been a cheerleader in high school. She had done beauty pageants as a kid and she remembered that you could make some money if you won. So she started putting me into as many as she could. I was a decently cute kid and I won more often than I lost. That only made her even more eager to use me. She found me an agent who got me the modeling and acting jobs. Eventually, I made more money in those gigs than she did in tips so she quit her job to be my manager.”

“But that was your money,” I said.

She shrugged. “That’s not how my parents saw it. At ten, I got a job as a recurring character on a kids’ show. It paid me more than both of my parents had ever made. Dad quit his job too.”

Fuck. I could already see where this was headed.

“At fourteen, the network I’d been working for was casting for a new show. The premise was following three girls who were starting out as a trio in the music business.” Madison laughed. “It was an absolutely ridiculous show, but young girls loved it. I was lucky enough to get the role of the lead singer.”

“Actually, I think I remember Emma watching that show. She was still in diapers, dancing and singing along.” I had never sat down and watched with her, but now I was kicking myself. I would love to know what Madison had been like ten years ago.

“Just please remember that I was acting and that I was an awkward teenager.” Madison’s cheeks were pink and not just from the cold. “Anyway, after two years we were getting to be too old for the target demographic. The show-runners had this great idea that the last season would be about our band breaking up and the lead singer getting her own solo career. That was me.” She sighed.

“Needless to say, the other two girls were not happy. Neither of them has done much since that show, but I had a new career lined up for me. I recorded an album for that last season and that transitioned me into an actual musical career. It all happened so fast that I never had time to think about whether I wanted to do it.” Her eyes dropped to her lap where she was fidgeting with a loose blanket thread. “Honestly, I would’ve done it even if I didn’t want to because I would’ve felt too guilty letting my parents down. They were completely dependent on me for money by that point.”

“They never should’ve put that pressure on you.” I couldn’t imagine a parent deciding to make their teenage child work so they didn’t have to hold down a job of their own.

“It gets worse.” She looked up with unguarded hurt in her eyes. “They had been in control of my finances since I was still a minor. I knew they were taking a cut of my money, but right before I turned seventeen I found out that they had taken all of it. I had less than a hundred dollars to my name. I was paid $20,000 per episode over three years. That was about $1.5 million total. And all of it was gone.”

“Those fuckers,” I growled. I didn’t realize I’d move my arm around her shoulders until I felt her shift beneath me. She was settling closer to me and I took that as encouragement to keep my arm there.