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self-destruct button? I’ll hit it now.”
    â€œYou haven’t had any trouble spending my money for the past ten years—I don’t know why you need to stand on principle now.”
    A line of frost bloomed down her spine, leaving a painful prickling sensation on her skin. “I’ve never taken anything from you. And if you’re talking about that payoff from your father—”
    â€œI’m not. When you were eighteen you received settlement money.”
    â€œFrom the insurance company. From your insurance company. That was what the letter from the lawyer said.”
    â€œYeah. That’s because he lied to you. I sent you the check.”
    â€œAnd the adjustments after that?”
    â€œAlso from me.”
    Her knees wobbled, threatening to give out beneath her. She turned sideways, leaning up against the rough-hewn side of her house, trying to keep from collapsing onto the ground. She was such an idiot. But she had no idea how insurance worked. She had no idea how any of this worked. Not beyond the way it had worked for her.
    She had gotten a letter from a lawyer claiming to work for the West family, along with a check for an obscene amount of money that had allowed her to cover the start-up of her store. Those payments had given her the livelihood she had, especially in the beginning. Without it, she would have nothing.
    That meant that Gage West owned her business. He owned her. In every way that mattered.
    Is it any different than if it were insurance money? Isn’t it all money off of your suffering?
    It felt different then. Different when it was an arbitrary sum of money that Gage had decided to bestow upon her. Different when it had seemed like an insurance company had decided it was official damages, or something to do with her hospital bills.
    Why did everything always come back to him? Why was everything so tangled up in the West family so that she couldn’t escape?
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou can say no—it doesn’t make it different.”
    â€œWhy are you telling me all of this? Why are you here? What are you doing? I just... I don’t understand why you thought it would be a fun thing to come in and completely mess up my life again.”
    â€œI’m not trying to mess your life up. I’m trying to give you something.”
    â€œDo I look like somebody that accepts gifts?” She flung her hand backward, indicating her house. “I work for what I have. I always have. My brother and I... It’s a point of pride. When life got hard, my mother just sat down and took it, and Jonathan and I refuse to do that. We always have.”
    Jonathan had always told her they couldn’t depend on other people to help them out. That no one cared what happened to a couple of poor kids, so they had to make their own way.
    So they had. And they’d survived because of it. Not only that, they’d become successful in their own right.
    Needing people...that would only leave you crippled when they walked away. And people always walked away.
    â€œIt doesn’t make any sense to me. What good is pride if you don’t have what you worked for?”
    â€œIt doesn’t have to make sense to you. It makes sense to me. You haven’t been in my life for all of this time, and you don’t have any right to walk in now and pass judgment on the way I’ve been living.”
    â€œI’m going to sell off my father’s assets. It’s something that I have to do to save the ranch. I have to do that for my mother. While I was doing it, I wanted to help you. Instead of leaving you completely screwed in case somebody buys out your building and doesn’t want to give you any kind of fair terms.”
    â€œIt’s a little bit too late to worry about my well-being, don’t you think?”
    He took a step toward her, and she pressed herself even more firmly against the side of the house. “You don’t need to be so