#ft. olivia

“Excuse me! Excuse me, miss!”

A wrinkle of a creamy brow, and the mystery girl turns, one hand on her car door as she had been preparing to leave. He makes a bit of a sight, scuffed up button down with a kerchief around his neck, cowboy hat being murdered as he crumples it in his hands, dirty blonde hair with a slight cowlick and a smudge of dirt on his cheek. He's handsome, sure, but not traditionally so, and it's not the smile lines by his eyes that makes her keep pausing. It's the slow draw of a crooked smile, and the words he lets drop his country boy accent as casual as you please. “I'm sorry for stopping you, but…” he shakes his head, and the wattage in that smile slides up just a tick. “I couldn't let the prettiest thing I'd ever laid my eyes on just up ‘n walk away.”

Months of courtship and a pearl and diamond engagement ring later, and twenty year old former secretary from Virginia has become a wife. Not only a wife, but Olivia Kingston, steadily adjusting to a new world wherein walking out the front door of her home normally greeted her with sweaty men and plentiful horses. Fast forward four years, and she's cradling a baby given to her by the man who'd stopped her, a boy who carried his same name. Crystalline blues blink up at her, downy blond hair on his small head, and Olivia coos at the person who already held her whole heart, rocking him in the same chair his grandmother had rocked his father. “I'm going to love you always, sweet boy.” She whispers to him, thinking there could be nothing more beautiful than he, this child she had made and would try to fill his life with joy. “You can always, always count on me.”

Cut to now, Cass and his mother taking a walk on one of the trails in the woods that framed his house on three sides. There was no snow today, but a cold rain had fallen the night before, the thin layers of ice crunching underneath their boots. Olivia, Hudson's leash in her gloved hands, having been talking to her son for ten minutes or so so far, discussing the plans she has for a new menu once the seasons change once more. That's one area of the business Cass tends to stay out of, leaving it to his very competent and qualified head chef and his only a bit less skilled in the kitchen Momma, especially after her strawberry lemonade recipe was a smash hit and helped put the as then fledgling B & B on the map. Today, however, Cass isn't much interested in what successes they've had in the past adding a specific amount of cinnamon to their French toast recipe. What he wants to do is ask his mother is something he's wanted to know since the time his father grilled him mercilessly at the table because he'd started on his chores late after going to football tryouts. What he'd wanted to know since he'd stopped depending on his mom having his back when it was against his father. It was an uncomfortable conversation to have with a loved one, especially so close on the heels of the catastrophic one he’d had with Amy barely three days before, but it was one he’d already been avoiding for years.

Pushing the past the feelings of dread that wrapped their uncomfortable fingers around his throat every time he'd imagined this semi confrontation, Cass clears his throat, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of the vest atop his fleece lined jean jacket. “Momma, I need to talk to you about something.”

The furrow in Olivia's brow that her son inherited makes an appearance at what he says, pulling a wayward strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear. Smile lines crinkle as she frowns, touching his arm. “Cassidy, honey, what's wrong.”

“What's wrong,” her son begins, subtly moving his arm, forcing his steps to keep going and not lose his nerve. “Is Dad. And how I need to distance myself from him. And why...why you weren't there for me. Then. Now.” Cass's hands curl into themselves, hidden by the puffy fabric of the vest he wore, and he isn't sure his lips are cold because of the temperature or because of the words he's trying to push out of them.

“What do you mean? There's nothing you can't ask me for Cassidy; you're my son. I would do anything -”

“Yeah. Anything. Anything but protect me from Dad.”

Olivia falls silent for a moment, Hudson's overly loud sniffing as he inspects a place to pee stopping their progress, causing them to halt. “I know your Dad is hard on you. But he really does love you and want the best.”

“Does he, Momma?” The thirty two year old man's voice is rusty and short, hard on his throat. “Does he though? Did he want what was best for me when he made sure Greer and Bailey knew how much they were loved and cared for and couldn’t do anything wrong? And if I looked in the wrong direction when he was talking to me, I’d get a lecture that lasted for hours and made me feel like a piece of shit. No fourteen year old should feel like a piece of shit, Momma.”

On some level, Olivia had known that the relationship between her husband and her son wasn’t exactly the best. For the few years, maybe there had been the kind of relationship she always dreamed of for them, but when the girls rolled around she noticed a difference. Showering attention on the other two, C.K. treating Cass more seriously and differently. When he got older, and C.K.’s attention shifted to the next generation leading the ranch, Olivia had mostly left it up to the two of them. Bonding time, she thought. Sure, she noticed over the years that Cass hated being alone with C.K. Spent as much time out of the house as he could if he wasn’t working, thin lips and blue eyes that forcibly cleared of pain when they locked on her own. Their moments had been private, private and devastating in a way she wasn’t aware of. Devastating in a way that she was only hearing now.

“In the beginning, it wasn’t too bad. He’d praise me for getting a full day of work done, for making the football team. And then it seemed to be few and between, the kind words. The spaces between them were killed with nasty ones that made me feel like the lowest of the low. I couldn’t do anything to please him, Momma. Couldn’t then, absolutely can’t now. Not when I committed the gross sin of leaving. I wasn’t going to come back, Momma. Not at all. Not when he was what I was coming back to.”

“Cassidy, sweetie - “

“Actually, can you wait until I’m done?” Cass interrupts, shooting blue eyes sidelong to her. He might not be walking to a noose but every moment spent talking about this seemed to tighten around his neck, a suffocating hand of years of hurt and frustration bubbling up and anxious to escape. This isn’t a safe space the same way that Ashley’s office is, and Cass isn’t sure how to operate in it. To reveal the dark truths hiding in his Momma’s house, but then again - hadn’t she been the one to turn a blind eye? Hadn’t she been only a passive ally? It was only after the accident that she started helping him keep distance between he and his father, that dark spectre that had tainted so many things in Cass’s life. Including, it seemed, his relationship with his mother.

“On my sixteenth birthday, he gave me shit for not showing up to work that night. My friends threw me a surprise party at one of their houses, and I thought he’d be fine. He liked that I was popular, after all. A good face for the family.” The bearded man laughs, but it’s not the full and golden one he usually lets out. This one is scratchy and raw from past pains and incredulity of the sheer lack of humanity C.K. had shown him for much of his life. Something Cass would never, ever do to a loved one, much less a kid. Another pang, a reminder of the fight he was struggling through with Amy, and the thirty two year old fights the urge to grab at his heart. It wasn’t going to ease the hurt. “When I got home, you made me a cake. He didn’t sing me Happy Birthday with you and Greer and Bailey - and when everyone else went to sleep, he came to my room and told me how ashamed he was to have a son who rang in such an ‘important’ age with irresponsibility.”

They’ve given up on walking at this point. Hudson, let off the leash, eats snow and bounds around about them until the stress radiating from his owner reaches the point that even the dog feels it and tries to make his owner feel better. Stories spill from Cass, ugly ones with poisonous words and memories that still whip his spirit. The lectures of the way he wasn’t, couldn’t ever measure up. References to him in front of others designed to tear him down piece by piece. At every turn, Cass was a disappointment. A blight to his father and his name. How no matter how long he worked at the ranch, he was still the traitor who’d left the business behind. How C.K. refused to acknowledge any good that Cass did, anything that went wrong automatically was his fault. How scared he would be when bringing home a C, how many nights he stayed up wondering if his father was right. The incidents that he only recognized now, mostly on the other side of it, as anxiety attacks when C.K. was on the warpath. As he continued to talk, Olivia’s hands slowly seem to rise, covering her mouth. Horror is reflected back at him from his mother, horror and a deep seated sense of inadequacy; for all that C.K. had been a bad parent with all the bells and whistles, even if Olivia couldn’t quite believe all of it, she had failed in her protection of him. “I’m sorry.” Is all she manages to get out, whispered at intervals, soft with regret.

“Momma, he’s literally told me the only things he has to be proud of are Greer, Bailey, and the ranch. When Amy came over for dinner, he couldn’t stop talking about how I’d tricked her into being there. How I had to be holding something over her, or she wouldn’t be there. Because who would want to date his failure of a son, huh Momma?” Winter still has its grips on the landscape, inhabiting the seat sized rocks they’d managed to find on the trails, seeping through Cass’s jeans and yet not the cause of the shake in the broad mans voice. Cass was 220 lbs, almost 80% completely muscle, and six three, carrying an imposing figure that few wanted to mess with. Talking about his father, he seemed frailer, weaker, genuine belief in what had been drilled into his head for over thirty years almost making him try and fit into the descriptive terms C.K. assigned to him so many times. “All I’ve ever heard from Dad for years has been that I’m weak. Stupid. Useless. Incapable of doing easy things the right way, and always a step away from disaster. He’s always right. I’m always wrong. I’m not an iota of the man he is, to hear him say it. And do you know what’s the worst thing? It’s that I know I’m not. At the very least. I don’t use my words to hurt people. To make them feel like horse shit on someones shoe is probably of more use than you. But he’s poisoned me, Momma, and I hate it. He’s targeted me so many times that sometimes, my thoughts turn to aiming at others the same way. I just had a fight with Amy - and no, I don’t want to talk about it - and I said horrible things to her. I knew what to say, how it was going to hurt, where she was vulnerable. I don’t want to know where my girlfriend is vulnerable, Momma. If I do, I should only learn so I can figure out how to protect it. Not use it against her.”

A touch, Olivia’s hand on his knee, and Cass looks up at her with eyes that he’d deny to his grave were stinging, shaking his head, not done. “When he discovered that the other ranch hands actually liked me, that working wasn’t as bad with them, he made it a point to give me solitary assignments if I’d pissed him off. He reminds me every moment that the ranch is not mine, that it was his name first that goes on it and all its successes are his, all its failures are mine. If I lost a football game, he’d give me the silent treatment for a week. He’d only talk when at the dinner table, because you and the girls were there. He made jokes about erectile dysfunction when my friends were over. I learned how to stop bringing people that weren’t my forewarned girlfriends over the house so my dad would stop trying to sabotage my friendships. Do you know how long it took me to realize that other kids dads weren’t like that? Too long. I doubted everything. Dad made me believe I was just being overly sensitive, that he was just trying to push me to accomplish more. To reach my full potential. I should’ve known I’d never be enough. I won’t ever be, not for him.” A harsh truth, but one that Cass had come far enough to be able to say. Even if in his core, the root of him, longs for one sign of his father being proud of everything. Despite of everything. Because of everything. Hope, that hardest bastard to kill. His eyes give up the ghost, let tears slip down ruddy cheeks and disappear into a full beard, sparkes of shine in the gold. Hudson’s head is heavy in his lap, big brown eyes concerned whilst Cass’s shaking hands stroke his dogs forehead, gaze dropped as it had been for most of his unloading. Olivia, having long since started crying, just keeps rubbing his leg and nodding her head.

“For years I thought I was selfish for wanting his love, when he only seemed to have enough for my sisters and not for me. This ranch - this damned ranch, this thing that I love, this place that I call home and work and that I pour my existence into to make it work, the B & B that was my brainchild and my greatest pride - it’s a miracle that I’ve gotten to this place. Crazy that I feel about it the way I do. Because for years, I know it’s meant more to my father than my own life. I’m so angry about it, Momma. I’m angry, and I’m hurt, and I hate being around him, and you have to let me cut him off. You have to.” Olivia’s arm curls around his shoulders, shushes falling from lips that kissed him on the forehead more times that he could count, and Cass holds on, even as he chokes out the last words,  a show of stark vulnerability he could only show with his mom. “You didn’t protect me then. But dammit, Momma. You’ve gotta do it now. You’ve got to…”