by Lexie Ray
“I know you can ride a horse,” I offered.
“And that I know my way around the ranch,” she added. “What else do you want to know?”
Was this a trick or something? Or did Paisley genuinely want to chat with me? It wasn’t like I wasn’t busy. The cattle logs required my full attention. What was she trying to do?
“What, are you lonely?” I asked her. “Is that why you decided to have a little jaunt out on the ranch?”
“I just thought it would be nice to see each other,” she said. “That’s becoming a rarer and rarer occurrence, you know. Just seeing each other.”
“Well, we’re seeing each other now,” I said. “What is it you want to tell me?”
“What is it you want to know?” she fired back, holding her ground even as she twisted one hand in the other. Was she nervous? Paisley wasn’t a nervous person, in my experience.
“I want to know what you’re doing here,” I said. “What you’re hoping to accomplish.” I didn’t have any patience for whatever game she thought she was playing with me.
“I want us to be closer,” she said. “We’re married, for God’s sake, but you don’t know a thing about me.”
“And you know everything about me?”
“Plenty,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, probably to stop twisting her hands together. “You’re the second-youngest of the Corbins. You’re in charge of the cattle logs. You were a football standout. You didn’t go to college.”
“Those are facts everyone knows who cares enough to find out,” I criticized.
“Okay. Why didn’t you go to college?”
I shrugged even if it was a touchy subject. “That’s not a secret, either. I didn’t go because I was needed on the ranch.”
“What would you have done if you had gone to college?” she asked. “Name a course of study that interests you.”
“I never really got that far.”
“But you’ve thought about it, haven’t you?”
“Not really.” Because every time I thought about it, it made me so angry it was hard to focus on doing what I needed to do to keep going on the ranch. It was hard to deflect resentment toward my brothers like I usually did. And it was particularly difficult to not hate my parents for saddling us with this entire operation.
“You were always really good at social studies, from what I remember,” Paisley said. “Geography, that kind of thing. International studies is a thing. Do you think that would’ve been interesting to study?”
“There’s no point whether I think that or not,” I said. “I didn’t study, and I’m never going to.”
“All right, no need to be sensitive,” she said. “I was just asking questions.”
“I don’t know why you’re wasting your time.”
“I don’t think it’s a waste of time. I’m interested in what you think. Your dreams.”
I really didn’t think she would be interested in my latest dream: how to escape all of this and start over again far, far away.
“What do you want to know about me?” she asked, almost shyly, dipping her chin to her chest. “You can ask anything. Nothing’s taboo.”
I wanted to know what she was trying to do. I wanted to know what, exactly, it was about herself that she was dying to share. What it would take for her to leave me alone so I could continue pretending she didn’t exist.
“Tell me about your mother,” I said, casting around, tossing the first thing I could think of at her. I was thinking of the bullying incident, the catalyst to Paisley’s obsession with me. I’d only stepped in because the bully had used her mother’s absence against her, and I was still feeling my own parents’ absence keenly in my life.
Paisley raised her eyebrows at me. “Really? That’s what you want to know about?”
“What were you expecting me to ask about?”
“I don’t know, honestly. Just not that, really.”
“You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable,” I said, but my interest was piqued. Was there something Paisley was hiding? Something she was ashamed about? Something that would make that too-perfect veneer she was so proud of show some of its cracks?
“I told you that you could ask about anything,” she said. “I don’t have anything to hide. My mother divorced Daddy when I was too young to really understand what was going on. I guess she was where I get a lot of my … preferences from. She was very fancy, apparently. Daddy talks about her sometimes like she was a unicorn that pranced into and out of his life and left him with a little magic.” Her face colored. “Sorry. That’s stupid.”
“Why did she leave your father?”
I was afraid that question was even more invasive than the first, but if it offended her, Paisley gave me no indication one way or another.
“She didn’t want to ranch,” she said. “She wanted to live in Dallas proper and have luxurious things. She’d come from rich people and Daddy was always a rancher, like your folks. She lost half of what she’d inherited from her parents in the divorce, and that was a big enough cash influx for the ranch to be successful.”
“Did you choose to stay with your father, out here on the ranch?” I asked her. I couldn’t help a thrill of excitement that worked its way up my spine at the fact that 50 percent of Paisley — the part of her that her mother had created — didn’t want to ranch for a living. Was that the way things like that worked? Was that something Paisley could have inherited?
“I was too young,” she said, shaking her head. “But my mother didn’t want to deal with me. I was a difficult child — nothing like what she thought I was going to be. I guess she saw more of Daddy inside me than her. He won full custody, and I haven’t seen her since she left.”
I blinked at her. “That means that Joe Durham …”
“Had it right on the money,” Paisley said with a small smile. “That’s why it hurt me so bad. My mother literally didn’t want me. I was too much of a tomboy. She was the one who wanted a princess. That just wasn’t me.”
But it was her, now, whether she realized it or not. That was the persona she’d cultivated following that incident with the bully. She’d swung her identity all the way around because of that, and now she seemed even more confused with herself than ever.
“Would you ever leave this place?” I asked her. “Would you ever want to leave ranching behind you and become someone else.”
“Never.” Her response was immediate, confident, perhaps the only part of herself she was sure about. “I want to ranch until the day I die or someone pries the operation from my fingers. What about you? Would you ever walk away.”
I swallowed hard. “In a heartbeat, if I could.”
“And that’s the biggest, most fundamental difference between us,” Paisley said sadly. “I would do anything for this place, and you would do anything to get away from it.”
The way she put it sounded so simple, and yet it was a gap that might never be able to be crossed. She uncrossed her arms and stared down at her hands as if she were trying to decide what to do with them.
“I guess I’m trying to figure out why you would’ve agreed to marry me if you didn’t want to be a rancher,” she said finally, after a too-long pause that stretched on and on.
“There are four other Corbins who want desperately to be ranchers,” I said. “Any one of them would’ve made you a much better husband — one who loved ranching just as much as you do.”
“That’s funny,” she said, even as her shoulders drooped. “I didn’t just want any Corbin. I wanted you.”
I’d said too much. That much I knew. There wasn’t a way to take any of that back. I needed to just keep my mouth shut, try and hold this marriage together, and have Paisley at arm’s length. She didn’t understand where I was coming from. None of my family did, and she certainly wasn’t family.
“I really need to finish what I’m doing here,” I told her. “Don’t you have something you can be doing somewhere else?”
“Yo
u can’t dismiss me, Avery Corbin,” she said as lightly as she could manage after the truth I’d just crushed her with. “I’m your boss, technically. Well, we’re co-CEOs, really. Because we’re married.”
“Sure.” I would’ve agreed with just about anything just to get her away from me. “Whatever.”
“Do you want to maybe have dinner together tonight?” she asked. “I could cook something good. Or if you don’t want me to try my hand at cooking, we could go in town somewhere. You know. Like a little date. Something different.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to make that happen,” I lied. “Lots of work to do. You know how it goes.”
“Yes,” Paisley said, nodding soberly. “Yes, I’m beginning to see how it goes.”
That didn’t make me feel very good, but it was the truth of the matter. I wasn’t going to be able to make dinner with my wife happen because I didn’t want to have dinner with my wife. I didn’t even want to have a wife, but that was something I didn’t have a solution for, yet.
I watched Paisley ride off across the pasture and I dreamt it were me galloping away, jumping the horse high over the fence and never looking back.
Chapter 6
The bottle became my best friend.
That was a sad statement if I’d ever heard one, but it was true. I was never particularly close with any of my brothers, never had time to develop friendships because I was working on the ranch, and certainly didn’t consider Paisley a friend and confidant.
I prowled the Summers house until I felt like I was going to start climbing the walls, and then I realized there was no escape except for the escape I made for myself.
I was well aware that, upon emerging from the other side of a bender, my problems were still there. But I took solace in the fact that I could push them away again as I cracked open another bottle of whiskey, taking nips from time to time in the flask I still retained from my wedding. Emmett would never know it, but he’d inadvertently given me the best wedding present of all: a way out.
I found an even greater form of escape once I realized that no one was using my trailer. After I was done with working the ranch, I’d have a quick shower and change my clothes in the trailer without ever having to return to the Summers house and then get into town just when the bar was getting good — well, as good as it ever got. I’d slam shots and buy rounds for people I couldn’t afford and run up my tab until I was too bleary to care anymore about Paisley or the ranch or anything else. Even the hangover the next morning was a pleasant distraction, something to pay attention to with Gatorade and aspirin and antacids instead of Paisley.
Paisley was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. I popped into my trailer in a cloud of dust one evening and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for me, her hat in her hands.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, shocked so thoroughly that it sent my heart pounding in my chest.
“What are you doing here, Avery?” she asked. “You’ve been spending so much time here that I thought maybe you had another wife hidden away in here.”
“This is my trailer,” I said. “I come here to shower off after a long day on the ranch.”
“You have an entire house,” she said, examining the brim of her hat, picking at some invisible speck on it. “You have three different showers there to pick from. What about this one attracts you?”
I shrugged. “I guess I got used to using it. Like a little bachelor pad.”
“Bachelor pad.” Paisley repeated me like she was testing out the words. She didn’t seem like she liked the way they tasted, even if she’d called it that in the past, before we were married. “What do you want, Avery?”
“To take a shower,” I said, pointing to the bathroom.
“And then what?”
“I’m going to the bar in town.”
She shook her head. “What the hell for?”
“To drink.”
“I keep the refrigerator fully stocked,” she said. “On top of everything else — working the ranch, managing business with Chance, trying to figure you out. I could … I could cook you some dinner, if you want.”
I peered at Paisley. Was this some other hat she was putting on now? Hadn’t she gotten what she’d wanted out of this arrangement? I found it extremely hard to believe that she wanted to be a wife, now, too, in addition to having an equal partnership on one of the biggest ranches in the state.
“Do you have a problem with me going out to the bar?” I asked, leveling a gaze at her.
“I have a problem with what it means.”
“What does it mean to you?” I asked her. “To me, it’s a way to unwind after a long day working the ranch. I like socializing there. It’s a good place. I’m treated well. I have fun.”
“You belly up to a bar all by yourself and you drink until you’re stupid,” she said. “You call this piece of shit trailer a bachelor pad like it was something you actually enjoyed. You drive home drunk or you leave my truck there at the bar, overnight, parked crooked in a gravel lot, in favor of sleeping it off at the home or hovel of whoever takes pity on you when you inevitably pass out at the bar. My only comfort is that you probably can’t get that whiskey dick up for any of the bitches who try to get themselves a little slice of Corbin.”
I stared at her. Her hazel eyes blazed at me, but the rest of her face was placid, as if she hadn’t just insulted my manhood and my coping mechanisms all in one breath. It was a poker face I both admired and feared, because I could never truly understand just how enraged she was until it was much too late.
“Can you blame me?” I asked her. “I didn’t want any of this.”
Paisley sucked in a breath and then let it out with a whoosh. Part of me was a little bit afraid of what she would’ve said if she hadn’t taken a second to breathe.
“I know that this is not an ideal setup for either of us,” she said. “But it isn’t so bad, is it? We came into it clear headed, didn’t we?”
“I was desperate, and so were you,” I said. “That doesn’t mean we have to continue being desperate and miserable.”
“Are you really that miserable?” she asked. “Do I make you miserable?”
“The situation makes me miserable.” Why did I feel so guilty for admitting the truth of what I felt?
“What would help?” Paisley asked. “What can I do to help assuage some of this misery? Could I move your trailer closer to our house, maybe? I could help you retrofit it, make it really nice. A man cave, even. We could redo any of the rooms in the house — the whole second floor, even, or the garage — into a space that would be just for you. Would that help?”
I didn’t know if she was genuinely trying to offer solutions or if she was just insulting me. Did she really think that any of that would make a sham marriage and a lifelong commitment to a ranching life I didn’t love whatsoever any better at all? It was a joke. Or maybe it was a dig at me.
“The only thing that helps is the time I get to be away from you and everyone else at the bar,” I said. “And that’s where I’m going right now, just as soon as I get cleaned up.”
“Who are you getting cleaned up for, Avery?” Paisley demanded, watching me shuck my clothes off, her blond eyebrows drawing closer and closer together.
“Myself.” I’d been astride a horse for ten damn hours. Couldn’t she see that I needed a shower?
“If you’re fucking around on me, Avery Corbin, so help me God …”
“What would I even be fucking around on, Paisley?” I demanded, wheeling around to face her, not caring that I was totally nude, sweaty and angry. “We don’t like each other, let alone love each other. This marriage was to benefit the ranches and nothing else. You stood to gain a whole hell of a lot more than I did —”
“Bullshit,” she said, standing up, her eyes narrowed to hazel slits. “I saved the Corbin Ranch singlehandedly. That was my family’s money that made the bank and Bud Billings go away. You should be kissing my ass each and e
very day, making me goddamn breakfast, eating my —”
“What makes you think I give a flying fuck about the ranch?” I asked, taking a step closer to her so I could stare down at her, using my height to my advantage. “You think I give one shit whether this place stays afloat or goes under? I don’t. I don’t care if a fire sweeps through here or aliens abduct the entire goddamn herd and all of us are out of fucking jobs. You could not pay me enough money to care about this ranch.”
There it was. The truth I had never particularly wanted to say out loud to anyone, and I’d blurted it all out to my wife, the woman I never wanted to marry.
Paisley’s mouth had dropped open, but she snapped it shut again. “Then why did you marry me? Tell me the goddamn truth. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“What?”
“If the only reason you married me was to save your family’s ranch — which you obviously don’t care about — then why bother?” She looked so fierce there, her hair standing up around her head in a series of fly-aways from her braid, challenging me to tell her why she wasn’t good enough.
“Why bother asking? What’s done is done. Just let me be.”
“Let you do whatever you fucking want even though you’re married to me? I don’t think so.”
Without warning, the full anger my wife was evidently feeling toward me blazed to life on her face, and she seized my cock in one hand. I didn’t have the time or inclination to so much as yelp when she squeezed it, lifting her chin toward my face so that our lips were inches apart.
I didn’t know if it was a good idea to talk at this point, but I couldn’t just stay silent at a time like this.
“Paisley, I don’t know what you think you’re about to do, but I think it’s a better idea if you just let, um, me go and we walk our separate ways.”
She squeezed harder. “Everyone thinks I’m just some dumb bitch,” she whispered harshly, our noses brushing.
