Chapter 2 #3
“Kind of,” said Cassidy, leaning in the doorway holding a bag of corn chips and crunching on them noisily.
“ Plain corn chips?” Flynn asked her, looking appalled. “They’re good,” Cassidy said, talking with her mouth full like an outright heathen.
Flynn frowned. “Corn chips are a vehicle for salsa and refried beans. That’s it. A necessary evil, one might say.”
“They can also be nachos,” Millie pointed out.
“Then they aren’t corn chips anymore,” Flynn said. “They’ve been transformed.”
“You’re insane,” Cassidy said, shoving three more chips into her mouth.
“You’re all in my house without warning,” Austin said. He looked over at Flynn. “Did you strike out?”
Flynn smiled. “No, I didn’t, big brother. I’m just done for the evening.”
“Damn,” said Cassidy. “Where can I send the lady my condolences?”
Flynn crossed the room and yanked the bag of chips out of Cassidy’s hand. “Hey!” she shouted, walking after him into the kitchen, where they continued to bicker.
Millie looked at Carson, the softness and concern on his sister-in-law’s face warming him for a second, until he realized he was also the only person Austin was being nice to.
Which meant they knew he was here because he was on edge, and they pitied him.
That they were right made it worse somehow.
That he maybe needed their pity. Or support, as someone more evolved might call it.
Carson had evolved a lot in his life. Mostly without his consent.
But he was uncomfortable with certain things still. Needing support, or rather admitting it, was one of those things. But maybe that was part of what Perry had been getting at.
He took a lot of support from her while pretending that wasn’t what it was. While pretending they were just hanging out, when especially in the aftermath of rock bottom, was not the case at all.
“What’s up?” Austin asked.
“Oh, I … had a fight with Perry.”
Both Austin and Millie looked shocked. Millie sat down next to Austin and looked up at him with concern. “About what?” she asked.
“She’s … she wants to move away. Something about her business.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell Austin and Millie that she’d also said it was because of him.
“Where is she going?” Austin asked.
“Medford.”
“It’s only an hour away,” Austin pointed out.
Carson had to stop himself from pointing out that except when he’d been in the military, he currently lived the farthest from Perry that he ever had in his life, at a whopping ten minutes’ distance.
“Well, I got mad about it. And I yelled at her, and now I feel bad.”
“You should go apologize to her,” Millie said.
He wasn’t sorry, though. He was sorry she was angry, he supposed, but he’d needed to say something about the bomb she’d lobbed into the middle of his dining table. And he was pissed, so didn’t he have the right to say that?
“What’s her plan?” Austin asked.
“I don’t know,” Carson said. “I didn’t really ask.”
“You didn’t ask? You just got mad?”
“She said some things … she said some things I didn’t really think were fair.”
“Like?”
“It’s private,” he said.
Austin and Millie exchanged a glance.
“What?” Carson asked. “What does that mean?”
Austin shrugged and Carson almost punched him, he really did. “She said she needs to get some distance from me and our relationship, okay?” His words throbbed in the air, with all his rage and all his hurt and all his everything.
Then Austin and Millie exchanged another glance. “Your … relationship?”
“What the hell is that expression about? Our friendship. Yes. She’s … I don’t know, she thinks we’re too dependent on each other and it’s keeping us from advancing in our lives.” Indignation grew in his chest again, and he felt an extreme jolt of anger.
It just wasn’t true. They supported each other. They …
She supported him .
Yes, there had been a time in their lives when the balance was different. Better. It had shifted though, after Alyssa died. He’d lost his perspective on everything, and Perry had been there the whole time to dig him out, to help him up.
She’d been his confidante, his cheerleader, his therapist.
Right then he realized the real issue was that she was right. About their relationship, mostly as it pertained to her.
He hadn’t seen it because he was the one getting the most out of their friendship, and that was a really shitty revelation.
He was holding her back. She could have been out on a date with Stephen Lee, and God knew he was a fucking drain on her. She’d supported him, propped him up, cooked him dinner. Quite literally saved his goddamned life.
He’d left Rustler Mountain once upon a time, determined to make something of himself. If Perry wanted to do that, he needed to try to be supportive of her, but it felt as if somebody had kicked his crutch out from under his arm.
And that proved her point in ways that left him outraged. “She’s right,” he said.
“Oh?” Austin asked.
“Yes, she …” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I haven’t been a great friend to her.”
“You’ve been her best friend for her entire life,” Austin pointed out. “She’s been dragging me along for a couple of years now, Austin, and you know that.”
“It’s not dragging someone along when they’ve legitimately been through shit and have some healing to do. We all worry about you; we all care. No one else in our group has been through what you have. Yes, we’ve all been through stuff. But you’re the only one who lost a wife.”
He was the only one—until Austin—who’d ever been married. The only one who’d had enough hubris to fly too close to that particular sun.
He believed Austin and Millie would be happy. They’d worked through a significant amount of angst to get there, but Austin was …
In Carson’s opinion, his older brother was an astonishing person.
They’d been raised by their asshole father to be unconcerned with anyone’s opinion, and to think as little as possible.
They’d been raised by the town to see themselves as the bad guys, and Carson had responded in an extremely literal way.
He’d decided to go be a hero. What better way to do that than by joining the military? Everyone knew soldiers were a bunch of heroes, after all.
That wasn’t Austin’s way. He was a deep thinker. A cowboy and a philosopher. And a writer—his novel about their ancestor was still sitting on the New York Times bestseller list, which was a hell of a thing.
He wasn’t competitive with his brother, and it was a good thing. No one was ever going to compete with Austin’s success.
Though for all his deep thinking, Austin hadn’t been immune to believing in the family curse. That the Wilder men lived fast and died young, and there was no kind of good living that would ever get the stain of outlaw off them.
Part of what he’d done with his book, which uncovered the true history of their family and the notorious outlaw Austin Wilder, their six-times-over great-grandfather, was to change the association of the family name.
In Carson’s mind, Austin had redeemed himself.
The sad truth was, Carson had a problem that was a lot different from a belief in curses as old as the Wild West.
His problem was he’d been a hero. He’d been a husband.
It hadn’t been enough.
Nothing he did was ever enough. The world was the same, his life was the same. Alyssa was dead and Perry was his last stand, really.
He was a man who genuinely prized action and hard work. When all his efforts turned into … nothing? That was some shit he didn’t know what to do with. He’d settled in. He’d kept on working his land. Apparently, he’d leaned on his best friend a little bit too hard.
Apparently, he had failed her. Instead, he needed to keep being what he’d set out to be on that day at the lake, when he’d vowed he’d never ever frighten her again.
When he’d vowed to be her hero.
He had to change something.
It had to start with Perry. And not being an asshole. Supporting her instead of being angry.
He had an idea.
“You’re right, Millie. I do need to go apologize to her.”
“That would probably—”
“I’m going over right now.”