Gibson Boys Box Set

by Locke, Adriana

  This is when I tell her I never loved her, that I knew she was sleeping around, and that I didn’t even care enough to go after her. This is the moment I tell her what a bitch she was to leave me when I was dealing with the loss of my parents, that I throw in her face that the shop is still doing well despite her insistence it wasn’t a way to make a living.

  But now that we’re standing here, none of that matters. I don’t give enough of a fuck to inflict any pain on the woman, to tell her how I feel, to give a shit where she’s been or that she knows my life is better without her in it. All of the things I’ve waited patiently for don’t. Fucking. Matter.

  Whipping out my phone, I check the home screen for what does matter. The glow shows no missed calls or texts.

  “Why didn’t you come for me?” she asks, her voice drifting through the night.

  “Why didn’t you come back?”

  She slumps forward, weighed by the history she and I don’t share. “Maybe we were too young to have gotten married.”

  I glare at her. “You asked why I didn’t come for you. You sure as hell knew the way back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Checking my phone again, there’s still no new messages. Bouncing my hand off the railing, I turn and lean against it.

  “Who is she?” she whispers.

  “None of your concern.”

  “Being that she’s sleeping with my husband, I think—”

  “I’m not your husband any more than you’re my wife,” I warn. “If you think you can trot your sorry ass back in here and act like you have some kind of say in anything I have going on, you have another thing coming. And,” I say, my voice rising over her start of an objection, “if you say a word about Sienna …”

  She blanches, not expecting this reaction, and blows out a breath.

  “This conversation would’ve been very different if I could’ve explained things to her before you came in,” I sigh. “But that was probably your plan, huh?”

  “She didn’t know you’re married?”

  I just glare at her from the corner of my eye.

  “Wow.” She twists her earring, looking at anything but me. “I didn’t know she didn’t know.”

  “Guess you got a freebie.”

  “I … Damn it, Walker.”

  “No, damn you, Tabby,” I say, spinning around. “Why the fuck did you do this? You don’t give a shit about me. You never did. What is it? Do you need something? Were you bored? Just trying to piss me off for old time’s sake? Because all of that I can handle. You can ride my ass about still being the poor mechanic at Crank—”

  “Walker—”

  “You can tell me how I can do so much better than this shitty little farmhouse—”

  “Walker—”

  “You can tell the entire fucking town I lost my shit when my parents died and almost lost us the house because I drowned myself in alcohol and couldn’t get out of bed. You can do all of that and I don’t even give a fuck, Tab. But what you just did tonight to Sienna is something even I didn’t think you’d do,” I growl, stopping to take a much needed breath.

  “You think I should give a shit about her?”

  I look at the woman I once thought I loved. “Peck warned me. He kept saying I should tell Sienna or go find you and end this sham fucking marriage before she found out, but I didn’t. Despite all of their warnings, I didn’t think you’d stoop this low. I figured I could wait a while. No sense in finding you if I didn’t have to.”

  Folding my hands together, I press them into my forehead. My temper is creeping through the numbness and I’m not sure how to handle it.

  I want to scream, tell her exactly what I think of her, dress her down in ways she’s never imagined. But all I can see is Sienna’s face and hear her laugh and that takes the fight right out of me. How do you fight with a broken heart?

  “You love her, don’t you?” Tabby’s voice is soft, so soft, in fact, I almost don’t hear it despite the peace of the night.

  “What does it matter?”

  She walks the length of the porch, her arms wrapped around her stomach like it’s not eighty degrees outside. I check my phone once more. When I look up, Tabby is looking at me.

  “Is she ignoring you?” she asks.

  “Wouldn’t you?” I huff.

  “What are you going to do?”

  I hate the way she asks, like there’s a simple answer to fix this. Like I can make a quick try to get Sienna back and if that doesn’t work, move on.

  Fuck her.

  “I’m going to get you to sign the divorce papers and then go find her,” I say through gritted teeth.

  Her features wash, becoming neutral, any sense of kindness or sadness wiping away. “You’re going to try to find her?”

  “No. I’m not going to try. I’m going to find her,” I shrug, clutching my phone like it will prompt her to call me.

  “But you didn’t try to find me.”

  “Nope.”

  She looks out across the night. “Do you think we could’ve fixed things if one of us had come for the other?”

  “If I would’ve found you, it would’ve been to get you to sign the papers,” I tell her. “I just didn’t care enough to even try. Our marriage was over long before you left. We both know that.”

  “Why didn’t you fight for it?” she asks, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “Why didn’t you fight for us?”

  It’s a fair question, even though I could turn it around on her. As I look at her across the porch, the gentle summer breeze playing with the ends of her hair, my heart squeezes with the answer to her question.

  “I didn’t fight for us then because of pride. I didn’t fight for us through the years because of anger. I’m not fighting for us now because my heart is so tied up in Sienna that nothing else exists.”

  “Maybe we could fix things? Maybe we could fall in love again?” she asks, the words squeezed around the emotion filling the spaces between the words. “I miss you so much.”

  I hold her gaze for a split second before raising a finger. I go inside, flip on the light, and head to the old secretary’s desk that used to be my mother’s. There’s a file at the bottom of the cavity, the little flags indicating spots for signature. I take it and a black ballpoint pen and head back to the porch.

  Tabby is standing in the same spot, black trails streaming down her cheeks.

  “I need you to sign here and here,” I say, placing the file on a little table and showing her the spots with flags with “TG” tagged on them by Blaire.

  She doesn’t move. “You’re so handsome, Walker. You remind me so much of your dad.”

  “Tabby …”

  “I wondered if I’d come out here and you’d start throwing cans of pop out the door at my car the way you and Lance did that night of the bonfire at Tommy Jones’. Remember that?” she grins through the tears. “My God, you guys were horrible.”

  “He deserved everything he got,” I say, remembering that night.

  “Yeah, he did.” She pulls her hair into a small ponytail at the back of her neck before wiping her face with the back of her hands. “You’ve really turned into a good man.” Her lip quivers, the tip of her nose turning red. “Sienna is a lucky woman.”

  Without another word, just a sniffle as she tries not to dot the divorce papers with her tears, she takes the pen and signs her name to both spots.

  “Tell Sienna I’m sorry,” she says, climbing down the stairs. “And Walker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry to you too.”

  She gets into her car and backs down the driveway, honking the horn once before speeding away. I pull out my phone again, this time opening the texting app.

  There are lines and lines of green text bubbles from the course of the night, all filled with me apologizing, begging her to call, begging her to text, me trying to explain. I don’t know what else to even say. Still, I can’t help but punching out another one.

  Me: If you need
someone to talk to and don’t want to talk to me, call Peck. Please. Just let someone know you’re okay.

  Thirty

  Sienna

  Rain pelts the window, a summer storm rolling in just as I got home. Sitting on the sofa, gazing out the window, I wonder if it’s a reflection of the weather outside or if I’m just imagining what my heart looks like.

  Battered. Gloomy. Branches snapping off as they’re flung back and forth.

  My coffee went cold a long time ago, but I still grip the mug in my hands. It’s like a life raft at this point. Something to root me in the present so I don’t get lost in the past.

  Climbing into bed earlier, his scent was all over the sheets and pillows. It would’ve been smart to get right back out. I think logical thinking was lost somewhere around two am. Curling up in the sheets, my face buried in the pillow he used, I whipped back and forth from crying to being so angry my fist hit the mattress again and again. I laid there long enough to get out of it with his cologne on my shirt.

  My feet are cold against the hardwood, but I can’t bring myself to find socks. If I can just stay in this half-muted state, I’ll be better off.

  There are so many decisions to be made and I ignore them all. What to do about the upcoming lease? Do I take Graham’s offer after all? Do I bother talking to Walker or do I just skip town and forget this place ever existed at all?

  Coffee sloshes in the mug as a score of emotions wave over me. The smell of Carlson’s bakery, the sweet smile of the librarian, making pies with the little old ladies, and the feel of Crank in the morning all roll by, taunting me that I wasn’t part of this place as I once thought.

  My phone buzzes next to me and I look down, expecting it to be Walker for the eighteenth time since I woke up and turned it on. There were too many calls and texts last night to even process and I haven’t read any of the messages or listened to the voice messages either. I reach for it and see it’s Cam.

  “Hey,” I croak, putting the coffee down.

  “Are you all right? Mallory called me this morning and said Graham told her you called last night.”

  “Yeah.” I think back on the phone call with my brothers and squeeze my eyes shut.

  “He’s married, Sienna?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I … I don’t really know what to say,” she breathes.

  “Me either.”

  I grab an Arrows throw blanket and press it against my cheek. The softness of the fabric just reminds me of the way Walker’s shirts feel against my skin. I toss it back on the floor.

  “I wish I were there with you,” Camilla says. “I hate being so far away when things like this happen. Do you want me to come? I will.”

  “I know you will,” I tell her, expecting tears but they don’t come. “But I think I’m going to come home.”

  She starts to say something, but stops before she gets it out.

  “I don’t know what to do, Cam,” I say, my voice shaky. “Everything I thought was wrong. Everyone here must’ve been laughing at me. Heck, I’m laughing at myself. Do you know I was thinking maybe I could fit in here? Me,” I laugh in a self-deprecating kind of way. “I was drinking the Kool-Aid with a straw.”

  “Sienna, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with hoping for something.”

  “Yeah, well, I think this proves you wrong.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she scoffs. “Have you talked to him?”

  “Why does everyone want me to talk to him?” I say, getting to my feet. I pace the room, trying to stop my toes from freezing. “For the first time in my life, Lincoln is the only one out of you that makes sense.”

  “Oh, God. You’re to the point of listening to Linc?”

  “I’m not kidding,” I fire back, annoyed at the laugh in her tone. “He’s the only one who thinks Walker needs junk-punched.”

  “Well, junk punch him then. No one is stopping you.” She sighs, getting her thoughts together on the other end of the line. “People aren’t perfect. Sometimes they mess up. Sometimes they make a plan for things and then things happen that skew that and they don’t know what to do. You know, maybe he was going to tell you. Maybe there’s a reason he didn’t.”

  I storm down the hallway and rifle through my closet until I come up with a pair of pink slippers. Shoving my feet in them, I sit on the edge of the bed. Looking over my shoulder, I see the messy sheets and moved alarm clock and remember Walker playfully asking me to dinner just a few days ago.

  Choking down the bile that’s creeping up my throat, I switch the phone in between my hands. “I do think he was going to tell me.”

  “You do?”

  “He was going to go out of town,” I say slowly. “I wonder if it had something to do with her.”

  “You’ll never know if you don’t ask.”

  “But does it matter?” I ask. “Can I even look his family in the eye again and know that they let him play me and didn’t say a word?”

  Her irritation sweeps through the line. “Think about this, okay? And it might not be apples-to-apples, so don’t start arguing that it’s not the same. I don’t know the facts. I’m just making a point.”

  “Fine.”

  “Let’s say Ford had gotten married when he was young, before he went into the Marines. Let’s say the Marines sent him overseas and she left him and he came home preoccupied or something and never got around to finding her. Then let’s say he met Ellie and brought her around and we all know he’s still married to mystery woman, all right? Do we tell Ellie?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “It’s not our place.”

  “Exactly. And we love Ellie. We don’t want to push her away. She’s great for Ford, right?”

  Flopping back onto the bed, the stress of this whole thing too much to take, the lack of sleep and throbbing temples too much to work through, I close my eyes. “I need to go, Camilla.”

  “Are you going to go find him?” she asks, a hint of hope in her voice.

  “Nope,” I say, barely able to get the words by the dryness in my throat. “Going to sleep. Turning my phone off, so don’t panic when I don’t answer,” I yawn. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Call me if you need anything at all.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  “Bye, Sienna.”

  ***

  WALKER

  The rain hammers the metal roof of Crank. It’s been a consistent downpour since I pulled up around five this morning. I drove around town and over to Merom and couldn’t find her. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t stand the house for another damn minute, so I came here. Peck showed up around six. On his day off. Fucker.

  He’s kept busy all morning in the shop, tying up a few loose ends and getting shit organized. He’s not supposed to be here today and none of the stuff he’s doing is urgent. I want to send him home, but I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’m gonna lash out, and I’m smart enough to recognize that and that Peck doesn’t deserve it. I just can’t find out how to kick my own ass.

  Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s the feeling of helplessness that’s shoved me into a hole. Whatever it is, Crank feels remarkably quiet.

  I try to work on a few things, but I can’t focus on anything unless the phone rings. That’s the only thing that spurs me in to action. As I type in a part number, the ringer goes off and my hopes rise and then fall when I see it’s Blaire.

  “Hey,” I say, bracing myself.

  “Good morning. Imagine my surprise when my secretary brings me in signed divorce papers from you at seven this morning.”

  “Why are you in the office on a Saturday morning?”

  “When you have plans to take over the world, Walker, there are things to be done. Now, let’s get back to my original point. I’m assuming you saw Tabby.”

  “She strolled into Crave last night,” I report, flipping an ink pen between two fingers. “Nice of her, huh?”

  “I’m not hearing much in your voice that leads me to believe that went over well.”

  “Y
ou’re talking to your brother,” I remind her, tossing the pen on the desk. “No need to pretend you ever felt neutral about Tabby.”

  “You’re right. There’s never been a neutral bone in my body about that useless excuse for a woman. I loathe her. Seeing her signature on those papers this morning ultimately made my month.”

  “So glad I could help ya out.”

  “Do I get details? Because I’ve waited on this since you said, ‘I do.’”

  Watching Peck push a broom across the floor of the shop, I roll my eyes. It feels like a fucking funeral in here today and I just want to snap everyone out of it and go back to the way it was. Peck’s stupid dancing. Sienna’s reorganizing shit. Tractors that piss me off and muffins on the counter.

  “Well, in typical Tabby fashion,” I say, feeling my teeth grit, “she managed to do it at the absolute worst time.”

  “She came back for a divorce. Let’s not get picky on timing.”

  “She came back because someone told her I’ve been with another woman more than a night or two. I’m figuring someone was at the restaurant I took her to.”

  “You did? You’ve been really seeing this girl? Why did no one tell me?”

  “Lance probably couldn’t work it in between all the dating texts you sent him.”

  She laughs, her chair squeaking in the background. “I always figured it would be Machlan who would need my legal defense first. I’m beginning to think it’s Lance.”

  “It might be me if I don’t figure out how to stop wanting to smash something this morning.”

  I pick up a stack of papers Sienna stuck on the corner and bounce them on the desk. My skin crawls with the need to move, to do, to fix this shit that I can’t sit still.

  “I’m less interested in Tabby, more interested in the new woman.”

  “Well, since Tabby ruined that last night, I’m pretty sure she’s the old woman now.”

  “You didn’t tell her you were married?”

  “Blaire …”