How Cassie Got Her Grind Back(Divine Creek Ranch 23)(57)

She’d always had visions of getting her degree at Berklee and then moving to Nashville or Los Angeles and pursuing a career as a songwriter and musician. And he knew she could sing as well.

He and Samson had supported her dream wholeheartedly because, even though it would’ve meant losing her, it would’ve enabled her to get away from the controlling men in her family. In the end, Cassie’s dream was the one thing allowing Samson to walk away on graduation day—that she would be free…finally.

Eyeing him as she wiped her lips on the napkin, she said, “You don’t really want me to rehash all that old history. I’d rather hear more about you and Samson.”

Determined, he shook his head. “I’ve spent the last hour talking about myself and what life has been like for us. I want to know about you. I need to,” he added as she pursed her lips and shrugged.

“It’s not very interesting,” she said as she took the last sip of her sangria and then got up from the sofa and took the plate and utensils they’d shared from him.

He followed her into the kitchen, where she rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. “Maybe it’s not interesting to you, but I don’t want you to gloss over the last thirty years. I want to understand how you arrived at a place where you feel satisfied with having not pursued what I know was your vision for life.”

She frowned, but any aggravation she felt at his pointed words she kept to herself, which said quite a bit. He waited patiently while she worked, noticing the firm set of her mouth. To give her time, he got out the bottle of wine and refilled their glasses.

“You know my father held the promise of helping me to go to college over my head. When I graduated, he told me the restaurant had taken some losses after what happened with my mom and I would need to work a semester or two to earn money for living expenses since he couldn’t help me as much.”

“I thought you’d been saving all your tips and your earnings from the restaurant for all four years of high school. You had quite a chunk saved.”

She shrugged. “My mother…”

“No,” he said, the syllable turning into a groan.

“There was nothing by the time we discovered her gambling addiction, after she was arrested. All of our savings went into paying her court fines and paying back the volunteer fire department. And before you ask, no, I’m not mad at her. I was angry at the time but realized, with age and experience, that an addiction can alter a person’s perception of reality. She’d inherited a piece of land, which she’d put on the market, and intended to replace every cent she took plus interest once it’d sold. She believed she could make it possible for both of us to get out from under my father’s thumb for good. But the realtors had no luck in selling the land, the thugs representing the man she owed a large sum of money to came calling, and she got desperate, embezzled the funds to pay them off, and got caught.”

And that was the point his father had gotten involved. He’d discovered the deficit in the volunteer fire department’s building account, and when he’d confronted Mrs. Villalobos, she’d confessed all and showed him the contract that had been signed on the land, which had fallen through when the potential buyers had pulled out of the area at the last minute, and then the fire department’s secretary had discovered the loss and reported it, implicating them both. Her for taking the money and him for covering it up. The court had seized the land she’d tried to sell and sold it for a fraction of what it was worth.

He squeezed her hand and tugged her back into the living room, having no difficulty imagining her quiet and affectionate mother’s remorse when everything imploded.

“Dad told me I could still go to Berklee, if I was determined to leave Divine and all the family who cared about me, but it would just be delayed for a bit. If I still wanted to go, I had no choice but to do as he asked. You know how he was with the family members who worked for him. None of that changed, but I kept my dream in front of me and tried to write on my own. Two years turned into three. I needed to help out financially at home, too, and soon very little money was going into my school account. Mom was released from the correctional facility, and with her at home, my father was difficult to live with.”

“But you say you wrote during that time?” he said, handing her the glass of wine as he took a seat beside her.

Her smile warmed his heart. “I did. It was a hard season in my life, and I poured all my feelings into my music. I never heard from either of you and figured you’d either married your careers or had fallen in love and were off building families. So yeah, I wrote a bunch. Kind of struggled with the music since there was only so much I could learn in high school and Dad said there was no money for private tutors. That was the age before the Internet and YouTube tutorials,” she added with a grin. “It was a good outlet for a while, but dreams deferred have a way of faltering. Dad’s haranguing only got worse after he filed for divorce. He didn’t want to see her face every day anymore, he said.”