Chapter 4
He is matter-of-fact in his letters. There is no warmth there, but no malice either. I refuse to tell Mother I worry about my decision. I will hold fast, and I will see it through.
C arson was feeling pretty damned good after his apology to Perry. So good that he decided to meet his brother and sister down at the Watering Hole, their favorite outlaw bar at the end of Main Street the following evening.
Flynn was a lot. And there were some days Carson struggled to engage fully with the Flynn Wilder Experience, but also, sometimes it was nice.
Cassidy was a spitfire and a half, but he enjoyed her feistiness. Flynn’s friend Dalton Wade had also joined them for the evening, and Carson was beginning to regret not asking Perry.
But he had promised that he was going to give Perry a little bit of space. She was working on getting her house listed, and they’d made a plan to move her belongings on Sunday, when the florist shop was closed.
So here he was, not monopolizing her time. Not being codependent. Hanging out with other people. One of whom he wasn’t even related to.
He ordered a Coke and sipped it slowly.
“I know everybody in here,” Cassidy said, grousing. “I mean, everybody in my age group.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Dalton said.
“It is a bad thing. I’m not interested in any of these goobers. I remember when they used to shout LeBron and try to throw crumpled-up paper in the trash can from across the classroom.” Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “A huge spoiler alert: none of them are LeBron.”
Dalton laughed. “Well, I remember when you loosened my saddle when you were a twelve-year-old asshole—”
“You didn’t really do that, did you, Cassidy?” Flynn asked. Cassidy had the decency to look chagrined, her cheeks turning pink. But then she quickly recovered and shrugged. “I was attention seeking,” she said, looking innocent as could be. “Because of my trauma.”
“Get in line,” Flynn said. “We all have parental abandonment drama. And seek attention accordingly.” Flynn finished that last bit as he scanned the room, obviously looking for women who might want to give him some attention.
“At least Dad was alive when you got abandoned. I had to be raised by you.”
Carson grunted. Everyone looked at him. “Was that a laugh?” Flynn asked.
“I guess so.” The truth was, they’d had their share of losses. Hardships. Some would say more than their fair share, and some would say it was fair play for a family of outlaws.
That was the tricky thing about Rustler Mountain.
Austin was too stubborn to leave it. He always had been. Their family history had been as wild as the West itself, as wild as the name suggested, and Austin had decided that he was too damn stubborn to leave, even though he hadn’t liked the family’s reputation.
Flynn, for his part, embraced it. As did Cassidy. They had their own baggage and their own reasons, different mothers from each other, and different mothers from the one that Austin and Carson shared.
He couldn’t claim to know the exact way their issues had shaped them.
For his part, Flynn had family in town, on his mother’s side. In fact, the property he lived on came from her people. But he never got any credit for being associated with a respectable family, and Carson wondered if that was part of why Flynn embraced the outlaw angle so enthusiastically.
A big fuck you to the family who didn’t really acknowledge him.
Inheritance was one thing, but it wasn’t actually having people who cared about you.
Carson had a different reaction to their outlaw heritage. He didn’t need to stick around, he didn’t need to carve a place out for himself, and he didn’t really relish being tarred with the same brush.
That was why he got out and decided to be a hero.
For all the good it had done.
Still, sometimes he felt like a little bit of a shithead for winning the trauma Olympics.
He had won. That was the truth.
No, he couldn’t speak to exactly how their experiences had affected them, but he had seriously fucked-up stuff in his head from his time in the military, and his wife was dead.
He was the winner of a competition he hadn’t even asked to play.
Lucky him.
“So,” Flynn began as he leaned against the bar top, resting his elbows on it, then grimacing. He lifted them, and Carson heard a distinct sticky sound. “This place is disgusting,” Flynn said, instead of whatever he’d been about to say.
“Fits the clientele.”
They all looked across the way, to see Jessie Jane Hancock, descendent of Butch Hancock, the traitor, the member of their ancestors’ gang who had betrayed the Wilder family.
Jessie Jane had it in for Flynn. Carson wasn’t entirely sure why. If this were the playground, he would assume it was because she liked him. Pulling his pigtails and all that.
But it wasn’t the playground. So he couldn’t rightly figure out why she felt the need to needle his brother all the time.
“You’re here too, Jess,” said Flynn, raising his beer bottle to his lips.
She responded with a raised middle finger.
“Anyway,” said Flynn. “Before the queen of the trailer park over there saw fit to interrupt, you were about to tell me what the fuck is going on with Perry.”
“I was not about to tell you that,” Carson said.
“You were. Because I was going to ask, and you were going to tell me.”
“You’re in a fight with Perry?” Cassidy asked.
“I’m not in a fight with Perry,” he said.
“I thought that was what I overheard at Austin’s last night.”
“Well, we had a little bit of a disagreement. But we are not in a fight. She’s been my best friend since I was nine years old, it’s not like we’re ever going to have a real serious conflict.”
He ignored the strange, hollowed-out feeling in his stomach that made him question whether or not he was lying.
He wondered if what had happened between them was a little bit more serious than he was letting himself realize.
No. They were fine. Yes, she’d said some things. Yes, she was planning to move away in a few months, but he wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to put one foot in front of the other one. That was how he’d survived the last couple of years; it was how he was going to survive the next few.
He wasn’t going to think six months to a year down the road.
Because there was no way she was actually going to leave in two months.
Nobody’s plans came together seamlessly like that.
A big move, figuring everything out with her new storefront, none of that was going to happen instantaneously.
She was going to end up needing his help for quite some time.
“What about?”
“She’s talking about moving. To Medford. Opening up a bigger florist shop.”
“Oh,” Dalton, Flynn, and Cassidy all three reacted at the same time.
“It’s reasonable. This is a very small town. Her shop is cute, but outside of tourist season, and wedding season, I think it’s difficult to drum up enough business to keep the business going.”
“Yeah,” Flynn said, rubbing his chin. “I bet you’re not happy about that, though.”
“What I want or don’t want has nothing to do with what Perry ought to do.”
They were all looking at each other, their expressions almost comical. Like meerkats popping out of a burrow.
“Just say it,” he said.
“She’s like your emotional support critter,” Dalton said.
“I ought to punch you in the mouth for that, Dalton,” he said, even though privately, he had to agree a little bit.
And he didn’t like it. It was an unflattering characterization of their relationship.
And it spoke to exactly what Perry had been talking about.
It made him feel like an ass, and maybe he ought to feel like an ass.
“Hey, I’m not a Wilder. I’m not getting in the middle of all that.” Dalton held his hands up. “But it’ll be a big change for you.”
“I’m not …” Damaged? Was that what he was going to say? He was a goddamned mess and everybody knew it.
“You must’ve gotten pretty mad at her when she said she was leaving,” Cassidy said, looking furious herself.
“A little,” he said. He wasn’t going to get into exactly why she had made him mad. The truth was, when she had talked about codependency, he’d thought it was ridiculous. But when she’d looked at him last night, tried to explain …
She was worried she was holding him back, and that was so profoundly unfair to her he couldn’t even begin to process it. He couldn’t do that to her.
She knew his darkest secret, the darkest part of himself.
She knew that he’d lost hope, that he thought not being here was the only option for him, for his family, for his friends.
And she still felt worried about him, whatever she might say.
Perry had put her life on hold because he was a mess.
He had put her through that hell; now he had to support her going out and finding whatever life she wanted.
He wasn’t going to get into all that with Flynn and Cassidy, though, not here in the bar, maybe not ever.
“I think it’s shitty,” Cassidy said. “You’ve already lost too much. You can’t lose your best friend.”
“That’s not fair, Cass,” he said. “She doesn’t have to live her whole life in service to me.
And that’s what I was having to process last night.
Because apparently, I am a little bit more emotionally stunted than I would like to believe.
She’s my best friend. And that means that I have to want what’s best for her. Otherwise, I’m a terrible friend.”
He was pretty sure he had been a terrible friend. For a while now. He didn’t want to be terrible.
He wanted to be better.
He’d never wanted to be Perry’s burden. Not ever.
“I’m going to have her move onto the property while she gets things in order.”
“I don’t understand,” Flynn said. “She’s got a pretty decent business.”
“I don’t know. She’s talking about starting life over, having a baby …” Even saying the words just about killed him.
“Having a baby?” Cassidy said, looking agog. “Does she even have a boyfriend?”
“No. But you know, there are a lot of ways to have a family.”