Chapter 7 #3
The door opened, and the cowboy himself was out there on the sidewalk with her. “What was that about?”
“I’m sorry, I was not feeling that guy.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just wasn’t. Like there was nothing actually wrong with him, but it just …”
“Yeah. It’s fine. I was ready to go anyway.”
“Really? You seemed to like her.”
“You thought that I liked her, and you still made up a dying grandma excuse?”
“Yes.” She looked at him cautiously. “I thought I was getting to be the selfish one for a little bit.”
“You are.” He sighed. “She was nice, but I think she was more into it than I was.”
Perry wrinkled her nose. “She was definitely into it.”
“I’m sorry that was weird.”
“It was weird.”
She sighed heavily and started to walk back toward the spot where she’d parked the car.
“What exactly are you looking for in a guy, Perry?”
Perry was immobilized by his question. “I … I don’t know. Because I grew up in a dysfunctional home surrounded by dysfunctional people. I want something different.”
“I can understand that.”
“What were you looking for? I mean, when you met Alyssa.”
She had never asked him this. It hurt to do it.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said as she unlocked the car, and he sank into the passenger seat.
“You know, I was living on base at the time, and Rustler Mountain felt so far away. The person I’d always been felt so far away.
I’d already been on deployment, what … three times?
And hell, I don’t know. I was getting close to thirty, and I thought …
this is the missing piece. I thought I didn’t want to be like all the men in my family before me.
Austin Wilder loved his wife by all accounts.
He was a good father and a good husband.
He was bad at everything else. He got himself killed because he didn’t know how to stay on the right side of the law.
I never wanted that to be me. Then there was my father, who managed to keep his ass out of jail more often than not, but he was just shit with women.
He really was. He made my mother’s life hell—he chased her off with his infidelity.
But he was charming. You know, Flynn reminds me a lot of our dad. ”
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know that I would have said that.”
“No?”
“Well, I barely ever saw your dad. He was around, but not around.”
“Yeah. That describes him pretty well. Around but not fucking around.”
“But Alyssa …”
“I was hanging out in town and met her at a bar. We started talking. She wanted the same things that I did. She was ready to get married. Start a family. She said that would probably scare me away. I said I was looking for the same. It just felt possible then.”
He wasn’t talking about fireworks or love at first sight or any of the kinds of things she would’ve expected. But it was still a statement of some kind of connection. They had met at the exact right place, at the exact right time, wanting exactly the right things.
“So, you’re saying if I meet a guy, I should just tell him …”
“Say you want to get married and have a baby. If he runs, he’s not the guy. You don’t want to be in a relationship just to be in one.”
She scowled, mainly because she was mad that he was acting as if he had any idea what she thought or felt. “I don’t know. Maybe I do for a little bit.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“Maybe you don’t know everything about me.”
“I know that you used to love popsicles. What flavor were they? It was like pineapple and cherry or something. Bright red and yellow swirled together. I know that you pretend to be brave, but whenever you see so much as a garter snake, you want to run for the hills, even though you keep your feet planted because you’ll never show anybody that you’re afraid.
I know that you hate spiders, but like mice, which I find contradictory.
I know that when you smile, you get just the smallest dimple on the left side of your face. ”
Perry felt as if each and every word was baptizing her in warmth. Cleansing her of some kind of pain that she’d been carrying around for such a long time.
“Hell, Perry. I’d say that I know you pretty well.”
She cleared her throat and started the car, pulling out into the street. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“That guy was boring,” said Carson.
“I don’t know that he was boring. He just wasn’t special.” Perry let silence lapse between them. “Honestly, Vanessa seemed pretty special.” She was being so fair and so good and so damned giving right now.
“Maybe the problem is me,” he said.
“Well, when you met Alyssa, you didn’t have to think about it.”
“I’m not looking for marriage again. I think that’s the problem. I don’t know how to fundamentally change …” He shook his head. “The man I was when I wanted that future, he’s gone. I can’t see my way into the future anymore.”
“You just loved her so much.”
The only sound was the tires on the asphalt.
“Perry, I … I don’t know that I did.”
Perry felt all the blood drain from her face. “What?”
“I did love her. I would never have … married her if I didn’t. But it’s not … I had this idea of what was going to work. Had an idea of who I would be happy with. She fit the mold. She ticked the boxes. I don’t know that I was the right husband for her.”
“But she loved you,” Perry said. “I hung out with her sometimes. She only had nice things to say about you.”
“I’m your friend. What was she ever going to say to you?” That had never occurred to Perry. That Alyssa would have known she was Team Carson, no matter what. She was still trying to untangle what he had just said.
“I thought … I thought the pain you’re dealing with right now is because she was the love of your life and …”
“It’s not that simple. That’s all.”
Perry couldn’t process his admission. Because she had assumed that when Carson had come home with another woman and introduced her as his fiancée, she was the absolute unequivocal love of his life.
She had never once imagined that their marriage was based on anything less.
In fact she’d been … lanced with jealousy, nearly killed, honestly. When he’d come home to Rustler Mountain with Alyssa and that ring on her hand, Perry had been forced to reckon with the fact that he had fallen deeply in love with someone else.
That the love, the connection, the trust she shared with him wasn’t special because he could give it to someone else plus sex and romance.
She’d felt sidelined, she’d felt maimed .
He hadn’t loved Alyssa?
“I don’t know what to say to that,” she said.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” he said, his voice raw now. “The truth rattles around my head all day every day.” He paused. “I think you might have grieved her, her presence, more than I did, and I can’t shake my guilt.”
Perry thought she might be sick. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Maybe not. I cared for Alyssa but … it’s the guilt that makes going on feel impossible. I just thought I would become something different, something better when I got married, and I didn’t. I wasn’t what she wanted or needed. I’m not the man I thought I was.”
Silence settled between them.
“This is hindsight stuff,” he said. “It’s not like I thought …
it’s not like I thought I didn’t have strong enough feelings for her when I married her, Perry.
And I feel … awful about it. The whole thing.
I feel like I brought this woman into my sphere, and I did nothing but mess her life up. I did nothing but ruin things for her.”
“She wasn’t ruined,” Perry choked out.
“She’s dead, Perry.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that,” she said.
Except she had a feeling that he did. It was the most Carson thing she could imagine.
To think that somehow he was responsible for the health issue of another person.
As if associating with him, the legacy of his family, had caused this poor woman to die.
“There is no curse on your name,” she said.
“It feels like it,” he said, his voice rough. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But Austin felt like he was destined to die before he turned thirty-five, and I have that feeling too. The feeling that everything I touch turns to poison.”
“It’s not true, though,” Perry said.
They could excavate his feelings later, or maybe they didn’t need to. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Though there was a burning feeling right at the center of her chest that suggested it did.
“Remember when you restored that wagon?” He didn’t say anything.
“It’s beautiful. The work you did is beautiful.
And work that you do on the ranch—you create life.
You plant seeds, you tend herds of cattle.
You restored that cabin and built your house.
Your hands have life in them, not poison.
Alyssa died, and it was a terrible, awful tragedy.
But she would have had a brain aneurysm if she was living in New York City in an apartment by herself, or on an island somewhere with a different man. You don’t control the world.”
“But I want to,” he said.
“Worse,” she said. “You think you do. But only the bad parts.” They arrived at the storage unit, and she entered the code to open up the gate. She drove in silence up to the side of his truck.
“I’m just going to head straight home,” he said.
“Right,” she said.
They had stepped neck deep into a very emotional conversation, and of course he wanted to avoid it. That was par for the course.
Not just with him. With anybody.
She could understand it, but she wanted to keep … keep digging.
“Good night, Perry,” he said, getting out of the car. She wrapped her fingers more tightly around the steering wheel and waited until he started his truck. Then she turned around and drove out of the facility.
His words echoed in her mind, and she tried to turn them over, decode them. Get to the bottom of what they meant and why they felt so significant to her.
It was going to take her time to process this.
Alternatively, you could just not. Because it doesn’t matter. Who and how Carson loves doesn’t matter to you.
That was true. It was why she was changing her life.
But his name echoed in her mind. The sound of his voice, the angles of his face.
Everything he had said about popsicles and garter snakes and knowing her.
A tear slid down her face, and for one, heartrending second, all her plans felt like the world’s most hopeless endeavor.
What she really needed was to figure out how to fall out of love with Carson Wilder.
She wasn’t sure it was possible.
But failing that, she could establish distance. She could find somebody better than Ryan. Maybe she did need to do something fun. Before she jumped into serious. Maybe you couldn’t go from a lifetime of being in love with your best friend to finding a man you could marry and have babies with.
Maybe she needed to just have a fling.
She didn’t find the thought particularly comforting. She didn’t feel an instant sense of resolve.
She didn’t feel hopeless either.
Right now, Perry would take that.