by Lexie Ray
I surprised myself — and everyone around me — by bursting into tears.
“Aw, Tuck,” Hunter complained, wiping roughly at his own eyes. “You’ve set everyone off. There won’t be a dry eye for the entire goddamn wedding.” The judge clucked again, probably regretting giving up his Sunday to be a part of this scandalous wedding party.
But what could I do? She was so beautiful and good and kind, and I belonged to her. I didn’t feel like I deserved her. She was strong — stronger than I ever would be, and I was so lucky that I didn’t really believe it.
She took Toby’s hand and he walked her smartly down the aisle to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said once she got to me, trying to will the tears to stop falling. I kissed her on her cheek. “I can’t stop crying.”
“It better not be because you have cold feet.”
“Hell, no.” I kissed her on her other cheek, worried I’d smudge her makeup with my messiness.
“You have to stop kissing her,” Hadley hissed, using her bouquet to dab at her wet cheeks. “That part doesn’t come until later.”
“You look amazing,” I said, taking her hand and turning toward the judge.
“Still hope it won’t rain?”
“I’m about fifty-fifty on that one,” I admitted, and Amelia’s shoulders shook with laughter as the judge glared at us, disconcerted by all of the hardcore emoting going on.
He said some things, but they were wasted on me. All I could focus on was the fierce but delicate beauty beside me, the feel of her hand as we took turns squeezing one another — me making sure all of this was really happening. I wasn’t nervous to marry Amelia. I wanted nothing more. I was just nervous that this was a really good dream and I would wake up and find myself just plain Tucker Corbin.
“Tucker and Amelia would now like to recite their own vows,” the judge intoned. “Tucker?”
“I, um, okay.” I fumbled for a minute to get the piece of paper I’d scribbled on from my jacket pocket, reluctantly letting go of Amelia’s hand, like letting go of a lifeline, and unfolding it with shaking hands. “Just, uh, okay. Here we go.” It was difficult to read my own handwriting, and I recaptured Amelia’s hand for a confidence boost.
“He should’ve had a pull from that flask,” I heard Peyton muse, Zoe giggling in agreement.
“I’m terrible at this kind of thing,” I admitted, glancing out over the crowd before remembering that the only person who really mattered right now was the woman holding my hand and smiling at me, her gray eyes shining with love and encouragement. I found that I didn’t even need the paper. My heart knew the words.
“The story of how we first met isn’t one we’ll tell to our children, or our children’s children, or any of our casual acquaintances,” I said, kissing her softly on the forehead before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be kissing her anymore. “But I know that it’s in the darkest night when you can see all the stars in the universe, and you’re those stars to me. I would walk through a thousand dark nights if you were there with me. I would do anything for you — now and for always.”
“You saved my life more times than you think, and in more ways than you can imagine,” Amelia said, squeezing my hand. “Now all we have to do is love each other and be happy, and I’m looking forward to doing that. I love you so much that it confuses me, and this right here, right now, makes the best sense to me that I know. I love you, Tucker Corbin, and I know that if we can get through the worst of things, the best things are waiting in front of us.”
I kissed her right on the mouth, and the crowd gasped and tittered.
“Dammit, Tuck!” Hadley scolded again, even as she and the rest of the wedding party laughed.
“He can’t help it,” Amelia said, cracking up as she broke the kiss. “I can’t help it, either.”
“Well, I’d say that you can kiss the bride, but it seems like you already have those bases covered,” the judge said sardonically.
“Hell, I’ll kiss her again,” I said. “I’ll kiss her all I want, now. This is my wife.”
“By the power vested in me by the state of Texas, Amelia Banks and Tucker Corbin are now obviously man and wife,” the judge said. “Go on, then. Kiss her again.”
And so I did, the crowd applauding us, the rest of the wedding party jostling us as they couldn’t resist ducking in for a quick hug.
This was the happiest day of my life.
The reception was even better, the sun peeking in and out of the clouds, the weather staying cool and dry. There was a huge spread of food coordinated by Zoe, who probably could’ve run a highly successful catering business of her own right out of her kitchen. Neither Amelia nor I was very fancy, but Paisley had insisted on booking a band from a couple of towns over to play at the reception to give people something to dance to. Most ranchers weren’t much for dancing, but once you get enough beer and wine into someone, music usually moves them. I danced with everyone, flushed with happiness and the beers my brother kept funneling to me.
“I’m going to have to cut in,” Amelia said sweetly to an old woman I wasn’t even sure I knew at one point. “I didn’t know my husband was such a prolific dancer.”
And then I didn’t want to dance with a single other woman at all, Amelia gliding along with me in the grass, laughing as she placed the flower crown on my head.
“Could you imagine all of this?” she asked me, sweaty with all the dancing she’d done on her end and looking more beautiful than I had ever seen her.
“I’ve been imagining it for a long time,” I said. “Now that it’s here, though, I can’t quite believe it.”
“I keep feeling afraid I’m going to wake up,” she confessed.
“I’ve been thinking the very same thing. If it’s a dream, let’s never wake up from it. It’s too good to leave.”
“Deal.”
I could’ve danced with her all day, but we had very important business to attend to in a house that was only guaranteed to be reserved to us until sunset. And I looked forward to that every time.
The normal that we enjoyed was new and sometimes terrifying, but it was better than anything I could’ve ever hoped for. I had faced down demons and won, and discovered love that Amelia and I both shared with each other.
Most stories like ours didn’t have happy endings. People struggled for a long time after situations that tested them so terribly. But what most people didn’t have was the support Amelia and I had for each other. We had been through the same thing, defeated the same man, and had come out on the other side of it stronger than before. What was even more powerful was the support of the people who surrounded us — my family, and now her family, too.
Our family.
It was imperfect sometimes, full of fights and shouting and frustrations, but when it was good, it was the best family anyone could’ve asked for.
I wouldn’t have traded it for a single thing.
Epilogue
It was hard to focus when the object of my affections was always right in front of my eyes.
At least, that’s what I had discovered.
I didn’t want to be attracted to Zoe. It was unprofessional, first of all, since I was technically her employer. I paid her a salary to keep house and do some semi-regular cooking for us. She always went above and beyond, of course, because that was her way. Breakfast had never been so nourishing, and if any of us found ourselves back at the house around lunchtime, she’d be happy to satisfy our hunger. Dinner was an affair that everyone came for — even my brothers who had made their homes elsewhere. Zoe was that much of an artist. Now that Amelia had joined her considerable skills with Zoe’s, dinner on the Corbin-Summers ranch was a nightly event not to be missed.
The food was great. But for me, the view was even better.
I didn’t want to be attracted to Zoe. It was that simple, but that difficult, as well. I had about a million other things on my plate — as a rough estimate — and she was a distraction I simply didn’t want to have.
But what could I do while watching the rest of my brothers pair off? Marry the ranch? It seemed like it was my destiny. I spent so much time poring over the books and making phone calls and composing letters and emails that rare was the week I found myself astride a horse, rotating in on a normal shift or even picking up a nighttime chaperone gig with the herd.
Our parents wouldn’t recognize this place. It was true.
I tried my best. I hoped they understood that, wherever they were, if they were even watching, if they cared about it anymore. I did everything I could think of to keep the ranch going. I knew how important it had been to my parents. I knew better than the rest of my brothers. Dad had used me as a sounding board for his dreams, and I took them to heart, especially after our parents died.
When my brothers came to me with something that was different from that dream, I had a lot of trouble reconciling myself with it. I wanted to do Dad honor, wanted to keep this place going for generations to come. Now that two of my brothers were married and the other two were paired up into promising relationships, it seemed like we really would have next-generation Corbins to contend with at some point.
And then there was me.
While everyone else had their passion projects or various passions of the flesh — not that I was some kind of Puritan — I had been pretty completely consumed with keeping this place up and running. A ranch didn’t just run itself. You couldn’t just relax and let everything solve itself. There were constant problems and considerations, an overwhelming to-do list and ever-present stream of tasks that needed to be completed. You could be the best-organized person in the world, a real go-getter, and you still would never get a handle on a ranch as big as ours. There were always things you had to think about. Would it be cheaper to irrigate and grow our own grain amid this historic drought, or would it make better sense, monetarily and labor-wise, to truck both grain and water in? Those were the kinds of decisions I was making every day — those, and about a thousand other ones.
I could’ve used a vacation about ten years ago, but vacations weren’t something that ranchers were readily able to take — if ever.
I could never remember our parents taking us to Disneyland or the beach or anything else as a family. It was because of this place, our legacy. This parcel of land had been in our family for more than a century, and they were dedicated to working it and seeing that it remained a source of living for all of us.
Just because they died didn’t mean that this place had to.
I recognized that all of my brothers had, at various points, wanted different things for their own lives. They’d left the ranch to try and pursue other passions inside of them. I’d had other passions, too, before necessity had reared its ugly head and forced me to focus on what mattered to my family the most. But there was something kind of beautiful about all of us coming together and shaping this place to suit what it needed to be. Times were different from when my parents — and their parents — were alive, and we had to adapt to survive.
Otherwise, this place would become just a little blip in the historical record. We could do much better than that.
And I needed to remember that.
It was a distraction to see Zoe all the time, a distraction grave enough to keep me from doing my best work. It wasn’t her fault that she was petite and delicate, sharply beautiful, and with a foul mouth that shocked even the roughest people we did business with who showed up to our front door. Zoe was an enigma, a woman constructed by so many things that I would willingly spend months trying to get her boiled down to her purest essence. She was vexing and comforting at the same time, and I didn’t think we’d be able to get along as well as we did without her.
Well, I would probably get along better than most. I liked her beyond her prowess in the kitchen, supported by Amelia’s recent efforts. I appreciated her for her ability to keep the ranch outside and the cleanliness of the inside of the house perfectly intact. She railed at us for tracking in mud and dirt, cursing a blue streak, but that somehow just added to her charm.
I sat up straighter in the laundry room, in the middle of doing payroll, when I heard that famous stream of cuss words start up in the kitchen. I sometimes wondered how long she could go without repeating herself. If there was a competition for that sort of thing, I think she would’ve taken top prize.
This session was getting up there for first place. I heard a faint hissing just above her litany, and smelled something scorched. I pushed myself away from the worries of money to investigate just what Zoe had done this time.
I cared about her wellbeing, sure, but I also just wanted to lay eyes on her for a bit. The quick trip to the kitchen was mostly selfish.
I had to smile. She was flapping the air frantically while holding a pot that had boiled over aloft. Smoke had filled the kitchen, and she was currently threatening the smoke detector while peering into the pot to see if there was anything she could salvage.
“I see you thinking about shrieking like a little bitch, you bastard, so don’t you dare. I fucking know I burnt it. I’m holding the goddamn thing right now. You don’t have to let everyone know in this damn house what a fuck-up I am. I know it just fine. Son of a bitch. This shit is blackened.”
She tossed whatever she’d been cooking down the sink and sighed heavily, still flapping a towel in the air in a half-hearted attempt to dispel the smoke. The detector blinked menacingly, and she eyed it balefully.
I didn’t think I had a “type.” I dated whoever struck my fancy, but I’d forgone that distraction since high school. It was depressing to admit, but I hadn’t so much as been with a woman since before my parents died. Afterward, it was too difficult. I quit all of my extracurricular activities as I struggled to keep my family together and our family business if not solvent, then surviving. Zoe was the first woman I’d had feelings for in a long time, and I felt guilty to even admit it to myself. Things were too complicated. There was too much at stake with the ranch. I didn’t want anything we might’ve tried to go wrong and alienate one another. I liked her too much to like her like that, or … something. Christ. I couldn’t even think straight when I was around her. That’s how big of a distraction she was.
“Chance?”
I suddenly realized that Zoe was standing right in front of me. Her eyebrows were raised in the question she hadn’t yet asked, lips pursed, her big eyes shining with knowledge or its pursuit. She was so beautiful. It didn’t matter that her dark hair was piled into a fragile knot on the very top of her head, strands showering downward from it. She was beautiful. It didn’t seem like she knew it, but she was. She could have anything she wanted, and yet she was here, on the ranch, helping us. Standing in front of me. Close.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, and right at that moment, I knew exactly what was wrong. We weren’t together. That was what was wrong. We’d been dancing around each other for months, and now, in the dregs of autumn and on the cusp of winter, we were separate but apart. Couldn’t we do something about that? We both felt something, didn’t we?
“I don’t know,” I confessed, mortified that my voice was hoarse, that there was a buildup of something I’d been keeping at arm’s length for far too long, something I was no longer able to resist. Her face got closer and closer — or maybe my face was getting closer and closer to hers.
“Chance…”
Whatever she was about to say, she didn’t.
Because I kissed her. God help me. I kissed her right on the mouth.
CHANCE
Chapter 1
My lips were locked on Zoe’s, and it didn’t feel like I knew up from down.
I’d wanted this for so long that now that it was happening, it didn’t even seem real.
Me.
And Zoe.
Kissing.
Okay, if I was being perfectly honest, I’d been dreaming of a lot more than just kissing her. That desire made itself apparent in the bulge beneath my jeans, and I didn’t care if she noticed it or not. She tasted sw
eet, like she’d been sampling the thing she’d burned to a crisp on the stove. It was unrecognizable, now, whatever she’d been cooking. I’d walked in on her cussing a blue streak, despairing over some lapse of attention in the kitchen, and then my lips had acted of their own volition, seeking out hers, quieting her exhortations, igniting a whole different concept of fire. Zoe was kissing me back, her tongue just as enthusiastic as mine, but it was hard to be sure if she was as into this as I was. I had wanted this, had initiated it, and forcing myself upon her would be the worst thing in the world.
I broke the kiss, giving her a chance to say something, anything, to protest this surprise, to tell me she wanted this as much as I did.
But she didn’t say a word. We rested our foreheads together and breathed as hard as if we’d just taken the path between the barn and the house at a dead sprint.
God help me, but I kissed her again.
Was I wrong to? Should I have waited for a better indication of her feelings, a clearer picture for whether she felt the same things for me as I did for her?
It was difficult to think about these things when all I could focus on was the taste of the nectar that was her mouth, the way I had to stoop so low to reach her, the fact that she was balancing on her tiptoes to compensate. I bent forward even more to wrap my arms around her tiny frame and found myself lifting her, mouths still attached, and placing her on the counter, sending dishes and ingredients and vegetables scattering. If that bothered her, she didn’t mention it, not even when I tangled my fingers in her messy hair and tugged her head to the side, exploring the scent of blossoms, following it down her neck. She gasped and panted, her throat bobbing as I dragged my tongue over the sensitive skin there. Zoe wove her fingers through my hair and lifted my face back up, my lips back to hers.
