by Lexie Ray
But I knew Paisley’s father would be there simply because there was nothing else for any of the doctors to solve. Paisley had said it herself. All they had to do now was wait and hope the old man didn’t suffer.
I walked down the hallway — it was so small that there was only one, and only one floor, too — and slowed when I saw my wife seated outside a door to a room that had to contain her father. She held her face in her hands, and I instantly thought the worst. Even though I’d made every effort to make it here on time, I’d failed. She would be too angry to believe me, and just like that, I’d jettison her dreams and our marriage and my brothers’ ranch for the sole reason that I was too damn stubborn to admit that I loved my wife.
I blinked and skidded to a halt, still eyeing her slumped over form. Did I really just think to myself that I loved Paisley? That couldn’t be right. I’d had to hold off her rabid advances throughout our mutual tenures in the public school system, then had signed a marriage license that came with other legal documents for saving both of our family’s ranches. Love wasn’t something I thought I could feel for that woman, and yet there it had surfaced, right in front of me. I realized that I loved the woman who pressed her face in her hands and was about to feel like she was the loneliest person on the planet. I wanted to do something to comfort her, wanted to at least tell her I knew what she was going through, but she lifted her face and saw me standing in the middle of the hallway, staring like an idiot.
She frowned and sighed at me, half consternated, half relieved, and shrugged.
“He’s in there waiting for you, but I don’t think he’ll be able to wait forever,” she said.
“Paisley …”
“Just … don’t.” She held her hands up to ward off whatever platitudes I had been prepared to offer her. “Go to him. The doctors say he should be in pain, even though he swears up and down that he isn’t, and he wants to stay lucid for you.”
This fact seemed to piss her off, sending her hand to manically smooth the stray hairs away from her face. I wasn’t sure why she was angry, why she was tending to her hair when it looked perfectly fine. But, if I were being honest, I wasn’t sure about a lot of things. These were probably the least of them.
“If you’re implying that I know whatever he might want to talk about, I don’t,” I said weakly. This was roughly a thousand times worse than him vacating the master bedroom for the unhappy newlyweds.
“You’re wasting precious time,” Paisley said. “My father’s precious time that he should be spending comfortably.”
“Jesus, I’m going.”
“Finally.”
I had to count to ten a half dozen times before I could stop being angry with her, reminding myself that she wasn’t in a good place, that her father was dying, that her life as she knew it was being upended and it would never be put to right again. At least, that’s what it had been for me.
When I saw her father, swathed in a cheap hospital gown and sheets, I truly grasped her desperation. Paisley liked being in control, and this was well out of the realm of just what she could muster to follow her will. Sam Summers had been an overly big presence in life, but lying there in that bed, he seemed to have shrunk — everything from his hands and feet to his height and girth. Even his skin had appeared to have somehow simultaneously tightened in some places and loosened in others, giving his appearance the impression that Sam Summers was a man who was falling apart in a most final way.
“Avery, my boy,” he said, his voice so weak I almost asked him to repeat what he said. I approached him and tried not to look as horrified as I felt. I’d known he’d been sick, but I hadn’t thought it was this serious.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, then cringed at my own stupidity. How should he be feeling? This was a dying man in front of me, Paisley had already revealed that he was very likely in pain, and he didn’t look like a man who’d reply anything but “shitty.”
“I don’t have much time, Avery, and you need to listen closely,” he said. “I’m very weak, and I don’t know if I can even speak long enough to tell you what I need to tell you. Don’t interrupt. Just hear me.”
I resisted the urge to ask a question, but only narrowly. All of this seemed so incredibly cryptic I wondered whether Sam was about to reveal some dreaded Summers family secret. Maybe Paisley had a twin locked away in an attic somewhere. Maybe she’d already been married four times with varying degrees of success. Maybe her mother really had left because Paisley was too tomboyish.
“I’ve been sick for a long time,” he continued. “But I’ve hidden just how extensive the illness is from everyone. I didn’t want to look like I could be taken advantage of.”
I knew what he was talking about without having to ask for clarification. Ranchers could be a salty bunch, and some of the time, even though we were in perfectly modern Texas, it was something out of the wild west. At least one ranch in the immediate area would try and swoop in to snap up the Summers Ranch if its rotten owner caught wind of just how sick Sam was. Bud Billings was a nasty snake on the best of days. We’d foiled his big plans for the Corbin Ranch with Summers money. That wasn’t a secret to anyone, Billings included. I still didn’t understand what Sam was so hellbent on telling me.
“My daughter …” He fell to coughing, and I froze in place. What should I do? Pour some water? Call a nurse? Pound him on his fragile back? I fidgeted over him until he waved me away again.
“Paisley’s been running the ranch solo for longer than I’d care to admit,” he said, his voice weaker than ever. “She’s a hell of a ranch hand and an even better ranch boss. She knows the business inside and out, from top to bottom, and if she’d been born a boy, well, the Summers Ranch would’ve lived on.”
It was the same wild west concept as before. Because Paisley was a girl, she wasn’t respected in this world. It had been like this her entire life, from the day I stood up to her bully, to our wedding day. My stomach began to sink as I fully understood the nugget of wisdom Sam was trying to instill in me from his deathbed.
“I didn’t want her to marry you,” he said. “Her dream was to run that ranch alone, but she understood the reality of that dream. You were the way she decided to do what she wanted. You opened that possibility for her.”
I was afraid he’d start coughing again, but he didn’t.
“She’s a smart girl, my daughter,” he said. “But she needs you more than she knows. I know it’s not perfect. But even if the two of you can’t see it, you’re good for each other. Please take care of her even when she doesn’t realize she needs it.”
“I’ll … do my best,” I said.
But I didn’t know what Paisley wanted or needed, not even as I left the room and she pushed past me to go back inside, to be by her father’s side. How could I support her now if she wouldn’t let me in? How could I even think I had a right to be the person she needed when I’d previously been the person who hurt her the most?
There wasn’t much time to fully ponder Sam Summers’ words.
I came home — to the Summers house — one night after work. I was trying to take what he’d said to heart, trying to spend less time in the trailer, or at the bar in town. It was just as well tonight, either way, as an electrical storm licked the sky. My sole goal was to be there for Paisley, to try and support her in whatever capacity she might need me in. Maybe it would make her feel better if I was close at hand, in the same house as her while she struggled with her father’s tentative state of being. But when I arrived, there wasn’t a single light on in the place. Part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have to face her. I could roam the house as I pleased, use the mud room or not use the mud room, ignore the contents of the refrigerator in favor of delivery pizza. I could be myself, wear my own face without Paisley judging it, relax, for once, in the comfort of a house that belonged solely to me, if only for a few minutes or hours.
But the other part of me was worried. She was almost always home by this point. Had something happened?
She hadn’t called me. I entered the house not sure of why I was tiptoeing until I entered the living room of the big house.
Paisley was sitting in the dark, not doing a damn thing but drinking beer as the lightning illuminated the space in flashes. It took seeing her like that, seeing the room like this, lit in purple and pain, for me to appreciate the ache of beauty in the space. Every window looked out toward the land, and sheet lightning brightened the knolls and meadows. There was a savage allure to the way Paisley looked out upon it, queen of it and slave to it, sacrificing every single thing that had been important to her to keep it going. It wasn’t fully hers anymore, and perhaps it never had been. But she had reached a compromise that had seemed acceptable to her, or at least that was what I understood now.
“My father’s dead,” she murmured, but it sounded like a shout, highlighted with the lightning. “Think this’ll bring some rain?”
Her father died and all she could hope for was rain? That showed me just how much of a rancher she really was. Instead of wishing for a time machine or a cure or at least a little more time with the only man who understood her, Paisley was wishing for rain to help save our operation.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked, making a move to switch a lamp on.
“Leave the light off,” she said, toying with her beer bottle. “I want to watch the storm.”
“I don’t know if there’s going to be much rain,” I said, looking out over the ranch with her. “Paisley, look at me.”
She didn’t for the longest time, and that was her right. I hadn’t been fair to her, she’d just suffered a massive loss, and there was no telling just how many beer bottles she’d dumped into herself to try and eke out some comfort.
When she did, my heart broke for her. She was doing her damnedest to stay strong, to keep her poker face in place, but she was devastated. I knew she was.
“Why didn’t you call me when your father died?” I asked her again. “I would’ve come to be with you. I would’ve helped you with the arrangements at the hospital.”
“I didn’t need any help,” she said. “And you didn’t need to be bothered.”
“I would’ve come.”
“It’s fine. You didn’t have to.”
“I didn’t at all because you didn’t tell me about your father.”
“You made such a big damn deal of coming out to the hospital the other day,” she said. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d made it a big deal again today. That’s why I didn’t call.”
Thunder boomed and it distracted both of us — Paisley more than me. She studied the windows while I was busy feeling like a big bag of shit.
“I’d like some rain out of this,” she said. “I’m afraid it’ll be a wildfire.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Better to prepare than ignore.”
“There’s no preparing for a wildfire, Paisley. We’d lose everything.”
“Maybe.” She sounded like it didn’t seem so bad to her anymore, losing everything. Maybe she already lost everything with her father dying and the last of her pull over the Summers side of the ranch evaporated in her eyes.
“You could’ve called me,” I told her. “I would’ve come. I … I understand, what you’re going through. I know what it is to lose someone you love.”
“Poor Corbins.” She stood up abruptly and moved closer to the window. “Everyone knows your family’s story. Biggest tragedy this town has ever seen. Hell of a loss to the ranching community. And yet you still kept it afloat, somehow.”
“Losing our parents was hard …”
“Save it.” She still didn’t turn around, even with the hard edge in her voice. “Your tragedy isn’t mine, Avery. You have no idea what I’ve lost.”
I did, but I didn’t know if the wisdom Sam had given me the other day was meant for sharing or if I was just supposed to keep it to myself. Paisley didn’t seem like she would accept hearing the words of her deceased father right now, but I had to tell her I at least understood a little bit.
“Your father told me —”
“Don’t!” she said, whirling around, glaring at me. “Don’t you even dare.”
“I think it would maybe bring you some comfort,” I said, holding my hands out at my sides like I did when I was trying to approach one of the herd that was spooked away from the rest. It took patience and time, but I could always get the creature back where it belonged. Could I back Paisley away from whatever precipice she was teetering on?
“My father wouldn’t tell me what he told you,” she said, audibly grinding her teeth. “He said it was for your ears only.”
“I can’t imagine that felt very good.”
“Yeah, well, it fucking didn’t. And I don’t want to hear it now.”
“I think it would make you feel better.”
“My father just fucking died. There isn’t any feeling better after this.”
“Except that there is.” I studied her standing there, flashes of lightning making her blond hair shine extra bright, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “You’re going to wake up tomorrow and feel like shit, and the next day’s probably not going to be any good, either. The funeral will be the hardest of all, putting on your brave face for everyone in this town turning out to see a spectacle, and the day after will be the first bit of relief you’ll feel. Then you’ll feel guilty because you felt relieved, and then you’ll feel shitty all over again. But one of these days, maybe weeks or months from now, you’ll wake up, and it won’t cut as deep, losing your father. It’ll hurt, but there’ll be a scab over it. And even when that scab does heal over, and you can talk about him and smile without feeling sad, there’ll always be the scar there.”
“That doesn’t sound anything like better,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like anything I want to do at all.”
“But you will do it. You’ll do it because you have to do it, and because you need everyone to see how strong you are — even now.”
“I hate you so much.”
I didn’t know where it came from, but I accepted it, took that barb right into my heart and contemplated it there.
“If that makes anything any easier for you, then you just go ahead,” I said.
She advanced on me like she was going to slap me, and I forced my arms to my side. She could hit me all she wanted. She could get rid of all that sadness and torment on me. She could beat the hell out of me for ignoring her and screwing around and not giving her the respect she should’ve received from everyone, especially her husband.
But she didn’t slap me. She kissed me — hard — and I found my hands gripping her waist of their own volition, pushing her backward until she was up against that window, bolts of lightning sidewinding across the night sky in blues and violets, slid us over until my hand was on the door and we were out in the long, dry grass just in time to feel the first of the big, fat drops of sweet rain. It had been such a long time in coming. Way too long.
We yanked our clothes off of each other, practically shredding them in the process, letting the drizzle pepper our nude bodies, kissing like we had something to prove, and maybe we did. We all had something to prove. Paisley’s was that she could run a ranch just as capably as her father. Mine was that I could be something or someone beyond this place, that I could figure out just what the hell it was that I wanted. I dragged my hand down her back, cupping her rear and squeezing, hungry for her in a way I simply hadn’t been, refusing to think about what, exactly, that meant for us.
She jumped up and hooked her legs around my waist before jerking her body backward in some kind of crazy, sexual wrestling move to take me down. I landed hard on my knees, thankful I’d missed whatever rocks were hidden by the grass, laying her down and entering her in one smooth motion. She squirmed for a minute, getting used to me, getting used to the idea of me, or maybe even just trying to get away from whatever was digging into her bare back, and dug her heels right into my ass cheeks. I started to thrust as the rain cont
inued to patter down on us, doing little to cool the dry land or parch our thirst.
“Harder, you fucker!” she screamed at the sky, over the rumble of thunder, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to command the rain or me. I thrust harder just in case it was the latter, just in case I was failing her in this along with everything else, and she clawed at my back like an animal, like I was hurting her, like she was trying to take me my entirety inside of her body, as if that would solve all of her various problems. If only she could be a Sam Summers Jr., then she’d never have to become a Corbin just to keep her dream alive. Because wasn’t it all about dreams and making them come true? Everyone I knew had one, every single fucking person in my life, except for me.
She clung to me and I clung to her, the rain never coming down any harder, the lightning sizzling from cloud to cloud. Maybe the whole place would burn down. But as I thought that, I knew I didn’t want that to happen. This place was the dream of so many people, the woman I married included. She needed it, and somehow, I needed her. I belonged to her. She was the place where I belonged.
Paisley arched her back and howled at the storm like a coyote, her body bearing down on my cock, making me come with a shout, rocking against her, cradling her to me even as her fists rained blows on my back and she cried and cried.
Paisley was my home.
I’d finally found where I belonged, and it was with her.
Chapter 8
We put Sam Summers in the ground on a Sunday morning, the entire town turning out after church let out for the graveside services. I sat at Paisley’s side because that was expected of us, not necessarily because that’s what she wanted me to do. She was composed, folding her hands over her lap, probably causing a glut of gossip with her nice black trousers and black button-down shirt. I could imagine the scandalized whispers of some of the old ladies in town — couldn’t that Paisley at least wear a skirt to her own father’s funeral? What good was that husband of hers if he couldn’t even buy her nice things? Why won’t he whip her into shape? Paisley didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. With the contract creating Corbin-Summers Ranch, she had what she wanted. If only I could be better for her, she could’ve had everything — that fairy tale she thought was out of her reach.
