THE CORBIN BROTHERS: The Complete 5-Books Series

by Lexie Ray

  “I want to make this better,” I said. “I want you to stay here. Tell me what I can do to convince you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I just have to go. I have to do it to keep my family safe.”

  I didn’t know whether she included me in that family anymore, but I had a feeling she didn’t.

  Zoe bent to kiss me, but our lips lingered over each other.

  Before either of us could understand what was happening, our bodies sought each other out for comfort — comfort in its most carnal form. We practically tore our clothing off of each other, leaving pants around ankles and shirts halfway on in our haste to do something, anything, to forget. I pushed her hands above her head and sheathed myself in her body, kicking at her jeans, pushing that hateful suitcase onto the floor with a loud thump. She moaned as I struck up a brutal pace, wrenching her hands free of mine and clutching at me, squeezing me so hard I thought I was going to pass out. I came first this time, unable to hold back, so desperate to keep her there that I didn’t have my usual stamina, but she joined me a few breaths later as I reached between us, stroking her clit until her face flushed with release and a certain degree of release.

  I pulled out of her and laid down beside her, holding her close, just until our breathing slowed, willing her to change her mind, both of us sinking into slumber we couldn’t escape.

  But when I woke up the next morning — too early — I knew that she had taken Toby and left. I knew it before I rolled over in the bed and felt the cool, flat spot that should have dipped to cradle her small, warm body. There was simply an undeniable absence, silence when there should have been gently breathing.

  I didn’t have to look for the suitcase to confirm it. In spite of everything that we had talked about, my very best efforts to prove to her that everything would be all right, Zoe had gathered up whatever she thought was necessary to take, woken up Toby, and fled.

  Fuck. Fuck me. Fuck all of this. I’d done everything I could to convince her to stay, but she hadn’t. This place just wasn’t safe enough. It wasn’t a home to her.

  There were things to do, things I should’ve been doing, things that always needed to be done, but I left them all behind, saddled up my horse in the barn, and just left. Staying in the house was too painful. It cost me an equal amount of suffering just to pretend that everything was just fine, that Zoe was just on an errand somewhere and not completely out of my life.

  I rode as the sun came up, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I just wanted … something. Anything. A distraction. I couldn’t keep thinking of Zoe. It would tear me apart.

  I hadn’t been sure which pasture the herd had overnighted in, but I saw it soon enough. It was that big. I approached it, seeking to do a visual check, something to get my mind off of the current situation, when I realized that something was wrong.

  Something was really, really wrong.

  A lot of the cattle were dead.

  A fuck ton.

  They littered the ground around one of the water troughs we had set up for them.

  Something terrible had happened here, and it would affect every single person on the ranch.

  Chapter 6

  I fought the urge to vomit as I stared at the lifeless lumps collapsed around the water trough. How many were there? How long had they been there? When had this happened? Why?

  I nearly tripped coming out of the saddle, staggering around, hoping against hope that the animals had simply chosen to sleep completely relaxed, on their sides.

  It was a foolish thought. Of course they were dead.

  If it was a hotter day, they probably would’ve already started to stink. As it was, the flies had already collected, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the buzzards figured out there was a feast to be had at the Corbin-Summers Ranch. What in God’s name had happened here?

  The first possible explanation I could come up with was a lightning strike. I knew it could happen, that bad luck like that was electric and unstoppable. But there hadn’t been any storms in the area. The forecast wasn’t calling for rain until next week. Ranchers tended to be capable weathermen, as favorable weather was so intrinsic in a successful operation. A lightning strike could take out this many at once.

  But it wasn’t a lightning strike, was it?

  My eyes fell on the trough, on the remnants of the herd still approaching it, and as if in slow motion, one of the creatures lifted its head, water still dripping from its mouth, took a few steps, and collapsed.

  It was the water.

  Someone had poisoned the fucking water.

  “Get back!” I shouted, running at the cattle still ambling around the trough. How many had drank from it? How many troughs were poisoned? I ripped my hat from my head and waved it, yelling, trying to drive the animals back away from danger. “Get back! Get back, idiots! You’ll die!”

  Cattle didn’t listen to reason. They didn’t give a shit that the water would kill them. All they cared about was that it was wet and they were thirsty. I had to dash back to the horse and use it to drive them away, circling the trough, peering into it as if I would be able to see the danger inside. It looked innocuous enough. It wasn’t green and slimy, at least. I jerked my horse’s seeking head away from it.

  “No,” I said, like it would make a difference. I was sick with shock and fury. Who in the hell would do something like this? Was it perhaps a chemical that had been released from the trough itself? Had we inadvertently trucked tainted water in here? I wanted desperately to believe that this was some kind of horrible accident, that there was no one to blame in this but bad goddamn luck. Anything could happen on a ranch, and everything often did. But my family had been doing this long enough to understand that this kind of thing didn’t just happen.

  This stank of intention.

  It wasn’t the entire herd. It wasn’t even a majority. But it was so many that it hurt. We’d culled a good portion of the cattle at the beginning of the fall to help us winter. There had been expenses we’d undertaken at that time with the luck of that sale, the way the price of beef had suddenly risen right as we went to market. And we’d wintered well.

  Now, though, I wished that we’d saved the unexpected profits of that transaction to help us absorb this emergency. This was an enormous loss. I knew it without having to count the carcasses littering the field. So many of them.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  I turned to see Tucker and Hunter ride up on their mounts.

  “Keep your horses away from the trough,” I said, feeling suddenly tired. “I think there’s something wrong with the water.”

  Hunter dismounted and examined one of the calves that had fallen. “Something like it’s killing our herd?”

  “Looks that way,” I confirmed, gutted. “We need an official count. Get Avery or Emmett to ride out here with the cattle log. We need to see what kinds of losses we need to absorb.”

  “This isn’t just something we can absorb, Chance,” Tucker said, staring at the dead cattle. “This is a mass die-off.”

  “I know what it is, Tuck.”

  “Somebody did this,” he said. “I’m calling the police.”

  “What are they going to do?” I countered bitterly. “Raise our herd from the dead? Resurrect them? Turn back time? The police are useless to us.”

  “We can make someone pay for this,” Tucker insisted. “That’s what the police will be good for. Justice. Compensation.”

  “Fuck justice,” I spat. “Is justice going to fix any of this? I don’t know that we can come back from this.”

  “We’re going to find out who’s responsible, and then we’re going to sue their ass right off of them,” Tucker reasoned. “Think, Chance. It’s the only thing we can do. That’s how we’re going to survive this.”

  “Maybe I don’t want us to survive this.” I jerked my horse’s head away from the trough again, circling the metal structure, warding off stray animals still looking for an illicit drink — the last drink they’d eve
r have in their lives.

  “What are you talking about?” Hunter asked, looking up from the animal he’d been examining. “Of course we’re going to survive this. We survive everything. We’re fucking Corbins. It’s what we do.”

  “Maybe I’m tired of just surviving all the time,” I said. “What the hell did we do to deserve this? None of us are bad people. Why has the universe taken a giant shit on us?”

  “Not like you to throw yourself a pity party,” Tucker remarked drily.

  “You know what? Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck pity parties.” How could I be so livid and so empty at the same time? It didn’t seem like the two fit inside of me. “First Mom and Dad died and left us this shit hole, then we all had to give up on our real dreams to keep it going for them, like it was some kind of memory of them. Then the drought happened, and the foreclosure, and the thefts. Now this. Somebody poisoned the whole fucking herd. I’m tired of fighting, and I’m allowed to be. This place is bullshit. This place has robbed us of our best years.”

  I’d shocked both of my brothers into silence, which gave me a savage sort of pleasure. I never allowed myself to fully vent my feelings and frustrations, and it felt good to finally uncork that bottle. Now they knew. They knew how I felt about this place and everything it had taken from us. That I was done with it.

  “We never should’ve been asked to take on this place,” I said. “This wasn’t fair to any of us. I know we’ve all felt it, to varying degrees, throughout the years. You went to Afghanistan, Hunter, to escape it. Avery never wanted it. Emmett had different dreams entirely. And you, Tuck —”

  “This place saved me,” he said. “I wish I’d never left. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Then take it,” I said, yanking my horse away, fed up with trying to keep the rest of the cattle away from the tainted trough. If they wanted that water so badly, they could have it. Hell, maybe I’d take a handful and dump it down my own throat. That was how done I was with everything. I couldn’t even manage my own marriage to a woman I thought I loved, let alone keep cattle from killing themselves. What good was I?

  “Drain that tub,” Tucker barked at Hunter as he leapt back astride his horse, intent. “Get away from there, dumbasses!” He was the one between the trough and the herd, now, and I didn’t give a shit. I just didn’t care anymore.

  Hunter jumped back as the water splashed out on the ground. I half-heartedly wondered whether it would kill the grass, too, before turning my horse away. I was done with this. I was done with everything. I wished there was a place I could slink away to, my tail between my legs, but I’d been living and breathing and eating and shitting this ranch for so long that I was afraid I couldn’t survive anywhere else. Where would I go?

  “I need a forensics team down here at the east pasture on the Corbin-Summers Ranch,” Tucker was saying into his cellphone. “No, nobody’s been killed. Just a bunch of cattle. Yeah, really expensive. Any equipment you have to test water would be good. Yeah, poison. Just get someone down here. We’ll figure out the details.”

  I left them to it. They could do whatever they thought they could do. I couldn’t get myself to care about it anymore. I’d cared so much for so long that I’d flat run out of caring. I didn’t even care about what they’d think about me, riding off like this, away from the problem, leaving it for someone else to deal with.

  I was done. I was done with the ranch. I was done with everything.

  Chapter 7

  I sat in the office for a while, staring blindly at papers that had lost their meaning. How had I cared so much about these bills and payroll spreadsheets and invoices? I didn’t give a single shit about any one of them anymore. I pushed myself away from the folding table and slouched off to my room.

  I didn’t understand why my brothers had determined that I should have this room. I didn’t like it. It would always be Mom and Dad’s room, their ghosts and memories communing in here. I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong anywhere. It was too quiet in here, too far away from everything else. And ever since Zoe had left, the bed was too damn big. It got too cold at night, and too lonely.

  I decided on a whim that I should call her. It had only been a couple days, but I was worried. I was her husband, after all, even if it was a sham marriage, and I had a right to call her, didn’t I?

  I paced as the phone rang and rang. Was she out of service? Maybe her phone was dead, or she wasn’t within range of hearing it. Or maybe — and this was the maybe I was really afraid of — she was sitting down wherever she was, staring at my contact on the screen of her phone, dreading answering it.

  “Hello?”

  I expelled the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding with a whoosh. “Zoe. It’s me. Chance.” I almost added “your husband,” but it would’ve been pointless. She knew I was her husband. She’d been there, standing right beside me, as we’d gotten the judge to sign the marriage license at city hall. Adding that wouldn’t serve a single purpose except for telling her what a petty, pathetic shit I was.

  “I know who it is,” she said. “What do you need?”

  She sounded so cold that I was taken aback. “I was just calling to see how you were. To see if everything was all right. Is it? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “I’m just fucking tired,” she said with a sigh, sounding a little more like herself. “Not sleeping well.”

  “Why not?”

  “Goddamn motel bed. Feels off. I don’t know. Everything.”

  “I wish you’d come home,” I said, hating myself for this weakness, this vulnerability. If she wanted to, Zoe could positively crush me right now. It would surprise me, of course, to feel lower than I already did, but I knew it was probably possible.

  “I’m not so sure I know which home you mean,” Zoe said.

  “The one here. With me.”

  “And what kind of home is that, Chance? I’m not safe there. Toby’s not safe there, either.”

  “You are,” I insisted. “Of course you’re safe here. I’ll keep you safe.”

  “Like you kept Amelia safe?”

  I exhaled. “That was different.” But in a way, it was the exact same situation. Amelia had come to the ranch for refuge, for us to save her from a killer who was after her. Time had lulled us into a false sense of security, and he had taken her when both Zoe and Toby were in the house. Things turned out okay for everyone but the killer, but it had been too close. Luck could’ve swung the entire situation in the opposite direction. Amelia could’ve been seriously hurt or worse. Hell, Zoe and Toby could’ve been a little too late in hiding in the house, or could’ve hidden worse. He could’ve hurt them, too.

  “Forrest wants us back with him,” Zoe said, her voice shaking. “And he knows where we are as long as we’re on the ranch. On the move, we’re safer.”

  “None of that matters,” I argued. “You’re my wife, now. I gave my name to you and Toby. He can’t take either of you away. That would be kidnapping, and his ass would go straight to jail.”

  “It’s not just that,” Zoe said after a pause that stretched nearly a full moment.

  “Not just your ex?” I was confused. “What else would it be?”

  “Did you think we’d get married and that would just be it?” she asked. “That all of my problems and your problems, too, would be solved? As if it would be like waving a magic fucking wand over everything?”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “I know it wasn’t romantic. It was to address a problem, yes.”

  “I wish you could hear yourself, Chance Corbin,” she said. “You’re so goddamn oblivious sometimes.”

  “What? Why?” I rewound our conversation in my head, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. It wasn’t like Zoe to be so overly sensitive. Then again, she’d left this house — and our marriage. Everything was wrong right now.

  “You married me to try and get the judge to reconsider the custody agreement with Forrest,” she said. “The problem you’re talking about solving is my son. Toby.”

&
nbsp; “If you’re suggesting that I think Toby’s a problem, you’re wrong,” I said. “That’s not it at all.”

  “Then why don’t you love him?”

  The question made me lose my breath. “What?”

  “If Toby’s not the problem, then why can’t you find it inside of your heart to love him?” she demanded.

  “I don’t understand where this is coming from, Zoe.” My heart hammered inside of my chest.

  “You know good and goddamn well where this is coming from.” Her words were hard and angry, the curse tinged with more heat than usual. “You don’t give Toby the time of day. Everyone else on that ranch will stop whatever they’re doing to make him feel welcome, but you don’t. He notices that, Chance. He knows when someone doesn’t like him.”

  “I like him just fine,” I protested, but Zoe was beyond hearing me.

  “He doesn’t understand what it is to have a good father figure,” she was saying. “Forrest is a piece of shit, and it’s the most heartbreaking thing in the whole entire world to know that your kid knows just what a piece of shit his own father is. Think of what that has to do to Toby. What he must feel.”

  “He’s a little young to be making those kinds of connections, don’t you think?” I asked, confused. That kind of philosophical debate seemed like it would be a little beyond the reach of a first-grader, in my view.

  “That shows me how little interest you take in him,” she half-shouted, exasperated, before abruptly lowering her voice again. “He’s a serious little boy because his father made him that way. He knows exactly what it is to be afraid of a person you’re not supposed to be afraid of. He gets it, Chance, even if you don’t.”

  “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do with that,” I said. “You know how busy I am with the ranch.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  “Bullshit, nothing. We just had a mass cattle poisoning. I’m up to my neck in dead animals, and I’m not sure how we’re going to get through this one.”

  “A poisoning,” Zoe echoed faintly. “You know, once Toby took a liking to a stray dog that hung around the trailer. He’d feed it leftovers, pet it, play with it, things like that. Named it Sparky. Forrest poisoned it one day because he said he didn’t want an extra mouth to feed. Told Toby he was just wasting his time. Toby was all of five years old.”