Chapter 8 #3
“Flynn might skin you alive,” Perry said.
“If Austin doesn’t cook me over an open flame.”
“Actually, those two things feel compatible.”
“Yes. I am aware that doing anything with the Hancock family is liable to create drama in my family. But I wanted the opportunity to restore the wagon.”
“Right.”
“It won’t take away from what I’m doing at your house.”
Perry blinked. “I wasn’t worried about that.”
“Oh. I thought you might be.”
“No. You’d better follow her.”
He nodded. “Right. Well. I’ll be back up to see how you’re doing. I’ll bring some dinner.”
“Okay,” said Perry.
And he left her standing there, even though it felt wrong. He wasn’t sure what was shifting underneath their feet right now. But he could feel it all the same.
Carson Wilder didn’t like the ground to move.
He couldn’t seem to get it to hold still at the moment, though. A damned fine reminder of the fact he didn’t control the world. At least he could fix things with his hands, even if he couldn’t fix the more indefinable, internal things.
That would have to do.
Perry was rattled by several thoughts, and she wasn’t sure how to prioritize them. So they were just sliding around in her brain while she unpacked her things.
She hadn’t come to the cabin when Alyssa and Carson had lived in it, because she had been upset and jealous. By the time the main house was finished, she had gotten it together. Carson didn’t know that. And apparently hadn’t really noticed until today.
He was helping Jessie Jane fix that wagon, and Jessie Jane was beautiful. She would probably be happy to give Carson sex, whether pity or otherwise.
This place was the site of so many of their childhood adventures. Then it had become the place he had lived with his wife. Now it was her last stop before she left town.
Jealousy. Goodbyes.
The same themes seemed to play out in her life over and over again.
She did not assemble her own bed. She waited for Carson to return.
When he did, he came with a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, and a green salad.
They ate at the small, square dinner table in the cozy little kitchen on blue-and-white-speckled camping plates, and she tried not to think about the last time they’d sat down to dinner together, when she had imploded the familiarity of their lives.
“I’d better put the bedframe together for you,” he said when they finished eating.
They hadn’t really talked about anything substantial since his return.
“You’re going to fix that wagon?” she asked, leaning against her bedroom doorframe as Carson knelt down, screwdriver in hand. “I mean, you came to an agreement about that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Oh good. I mean, I think it will probably be a great thing for you to do.”
“Yeah. She also said we ought to come by the Wild West show and see what it’s about instead of being so against it for no earthly reason.”
“Mm.” The single syllable sound said a lot with a little.
“You annoyed by that, Perry?”
“She might be flirting with you,” she pointed out.
He paused, then looked up at her. “I wondered about that.”
Perry sniffed. “I see. And how do you feel about it?”
“I don’t know.”
She sort of liked his answer. Because if he didn’t really know what he thought about beautiful, busty Jessie Jane flirting with him, then it couldn’t be all that serious, could it?
How much interest could he possibly have if he felt so uncertain?
“I mean, it would create a huge scandal,” she said.
“Well, I wouldn’t have to tell anybody.”
Except her. She would know, because they’d talked about it. She wasn’t sure how she felt about being classified as nobody in this context.
She knew what he meant. But still.
“You’re twitching, Perry,” he commented, before turning his focus back to the bedframe.
“I am not,” she said.
“Yes, you are.”
“Well, you said you wouldn’t tell anybody, like I’m not anybody.”
“You know what I mean. You know … if somebody says don’t tell anybody, I say okay, but I never mean you. You don’t count, because you’re like part of me. I wouldn’t know how to keep something from you if I tried.”
That wasn’t true, though, because he had just dropped that strange bomb on her last night about Alyssa, and how he wasn’t entirely certain that he had been desperately in love with her.
“I don’t keep things from you,” he said.
He could read her mind sometimes. But never when she wanted him to.
“I know I told you some stuff last night that made it seem like I have. I know that I went to a really dark place a year ago, and you didn’t know what I was thinking.
But neither did I. There is this stuff inside me.
This kind of pain. But it doesn’t have a name, and it doesn’t have words.
I didn’t know it was going to take the shape that it did a year ago.
Since then, I’ve been able to put some words to it.
Hopelessness. And doubt. The doubt is part of what I told you last night.
About Alyssa and how I feel. I’m not keeping it from you.
I’m sharing as soon as I figure it out myself. ”
She had just been wishing that her own internal monologue wasn’t quite so clear. Looking at Carson, she realized confusion wasn’t ideal either.
She also felt terrible, because he was claiming a kind of transparency with her that she couldn’t actually claim with him. He didn’t know everything that was going on inside her. She had hidden certain truths out of a sense of protection. Both for herself and for him. For their relationship.
But that was the status quo. And had been for a very long time. There was no point feeling bad about it now.
He stood up, and her breath froze in her chest. He stopped about a foot in front of her, his eyes intent on hers. “I don’t know what my life looks like without you in it,” he said.
She took one step forward, and before she could think it through, she reached out toward him, and pressed her palm to his, then curved her fingers around the back of his hand and squeezed. “Neither do I.”
They didn’t move. He just let her hold him, his skin like sandpaper beneath her fingertips, rough from all the hard work he did.
Restoring wagons and building houses. Renovating old cabins.
Taking apart her bedframe and putting it back together.
She hadn’t just been making him feel better when she’d said his hands weren’t poison.
They had built so much. It broke her heart that he couldn’t see that.
He took a deep breath, and it changed the air around them. Everything went silent, still. As if the room drew closer around the two of them. As if the space between them shrank with it. Her heart gave one great thump. Then another.
She tried to breathe.
She found she couldn’t. As if that great gust of a breath he had taken had used up the last of the air.
The place where she was connected to him began to burn, her skin like fire pressed to his.
Like touching a hot stove. Except she didn’t draw her hand back instantly. She let it stay. Let it catch fire.
Their eyes met, the blue of his suddenly like the center of a flame. It was all just burning now.
And that was when she dropped his hand. Took a step back. Her throat was dry, her heart beating so hard she was dizzy with it.
She turned around and walked out of the room, wrapping her arms around her midsection. Then pressing her hands to the top of the counter as she tried to normalize her breathing.
Carson didn’t follow her. She began to put the dishes in the sink, filling it up with water, soap. Slowly cleaning while she waited to see what would happen next.
He emerged just as she was drying the plates.
“Bed is assembled,” he said.
He looked like himself. The air felt normal. Had that moment been all in her head? Had it been one breath, one second? It had felt like a shift. Like something significant. And now he was acting as if it hadn’t happened at all.
“Thank you,” she said.”
He nodded. “Yeah. No problem.”
“I’m tired,” she said.
“I bet.”
“I’m going to … I might just go to bed.”
“Sure. Hey, Austin texted me and said that Millie wants to have a little get-together tomorrow night. Something to welcome you to the homestead.”
“Oh. Well.” She gripped her upper arms as if she was giving herself a hug. “They don’t have to do that. It’s not like I’ve never been here before. It isn’t like I am not here all the time.”
“I know. But you’ve never lived here.”
It was true. She hadn’t.
“Great. Well. That will be nice. Can I bring anything?”
“No. Millie wants to put together a big feast for you. But I assume that Austin will be doing most of the cooking.”
“Usually, I do a lot of the cooking,” Perry said.
“I know. But we are throwing a party for you. So you’re not lifting a finger.”
“Okay,” she said.
He took a step back and gave her a half wave. “See you tomorrow.”
She watched him walk out the door. And kept on watching the door even after it had closed, and she couldn’t see him anymore.
She had nearly lost her mind for a second there.
She was only glad that Carson hadn’t seemed to notice it at all. Her inclination was to avoid dinner tomorrow. But she wasn’t going to. This was her last bender. Before she cut herself off.
She should just immerse and enjoy it.
Though as she touched her fingertips where they had just been burned, she thought enjoyment might not be the right word.