Chapter 15 #2
“Sure,” he said. He realized he could only manage to spare her the slightest glance. He felt like an asshole. He really had engineered this whole thing in a pretty foolish manner.
But he had acted without thinking. He had been compelled by … the Perry of it all.
He recalled that night when she had come to visit him, eaten pizza in his kitchen, but not the crust, and told him that they were codependent.
And now when he pictured that scene in his mind, he imagined her holding a grenade.
Pulling the pin out and leaving the explosive in the center of the table.
What she had done had tripped all these internal mechanisms that had been left undetonated for years.
They were disrupted now. Ready to explode.
What are you going to do?
He didn’t have an answer. Yesterday, he hadn’t done a thing.
Except he had. He had. He had touched her face. She had closed her eyes.
It had been something. It hadn’t been nothing. He saw a table with four chairs and began to walk toward it just as Perry and West separated and started to move off the dance floor. “Oh, look,” said Carson, feigning surprise. “It’s my friend Perry.”
“Oh,” said Marissa, smiling. “She contacted me about selling her house.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m renovating it.”
“I could come and look at it,” said Marissa, as she took a seat. “I can tell you which things to focus on.”
“That would be great,” he said. “Do you mind if I ask them to join us?” He smiled, trying to be the sort of charming that he had never been.
“No,” said Marissa, looking a little bit confused, but not upset.
“Great.”
He took two steps toward the dance floor, and Perry caught his gaze.
Her eyes widened, and then a little crease appeared between her eyebrows.
“Hey, what are the chances of meeting you here?” Except, he had been told that she was going to be here.
And even though Perry didn’t know that he had seen her outside, she knew that he knew that she was coming here on her date. He wasn’t subtle. He didn’t care.
“Carson …”
“Would you like to sit with us?”
Perry smiled, but it wasn’t really a smile. It looked more as if she was baring her teeth.
But she was playing with him.
He was sure of it.
So he was going to play right back.
“Of course,” Perry said.
West stuck his hand out, and Carson looked at it. “Haven’t seen you in a minute, Carson,” he said.
“No,” Carson said, extending his hand.
It took him a moment to realize that neither man had said it was good to see each other. Well. A mutual feeling, then. Not anything that needed to be corrected.
They sat at the table. He made introductions between West and Marissa.
“We haven’t eaten,” Perry said. “Do you want French fries?”
“We ate,” said Marissa.
“Oh. So you just decided to come here after?” Perry asked the question pleasantly, but she slid Carson a sideways glance.
“That’s what happened,” said Carson.
“Neat,” said Perry. He had a feeling she did not find it neat at all.
But he hadn’t actually asked her opinion.
West was bad news. And Carson knew it. The guy had a rap sheet longer than his brothers’.
And yeah, technically Austin had never been convicted of anything, and it was all petty stuff.
It was pretty much the same with West. Petty crimes committed before they had become adults.
Still. Still . Not good enough for Perry.
He was here with the real estate agent, for God’s sake. Perry should be here with a real estate agent—it would be more in line with her goals.
Except apparently she hadn’t wanted to find a man that she could have a baby with tonight. She just wanted to …
He held back the onslaught of mental images that came with that thought.
“So Perry,” said Marissa. “What’s prompting you to move?” That kicked off a conversation between the two women, and he and West just sat there. Listening.
“Oh, I love this song,” said Perry when the band started playing a new country hit.
“Let’s get out there,” said West, extending his hand, and Carson nearly bit his tongue off.
“Carson,” Marissa said quietly. “What exactly is going on?”
“Nothing,” said Carson. “I mean, we’re here at a bar.”
“You’re not with me, though. Are you?”
She said it softly, and without malice, but it felt as if she had taken a very small knife and flicked it right under his skin, flaying it delicately from the bone. Cutting right down to the marrow.
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“You wanted to come over here because Perry was here.”
He thought about lying. But what was the point? He wasn’t going to marry Marissa. She wasn’t going to want to go on a date with him again. He had messed up. He didn’t want to sleep with her. He didn’t want …
He wanted Perry .
Gut. Punch .
He couldn’t breathe.
God. He didn’t want that to be true. Because what the fuck was he supposed to do with it?
He had tried to hold all this back for so long. The flood of it. He’d wanted to be her hero.
Right now, with his body strung as taut as a wire, he felt better equipped to be her outlaw fantasy.
Because if she was here with West, she had one, didn’t she?
Well, he was right here.
“I don’t like that she’s out with him,” he said.
“Right. Because?”
“He’s not a good guy,” he growled.
She nodded. “A lot of people say that about the Wilders.”
“I know,” he said.
“I know that you and Perry are friends,” Marissa said slowly. “Everybody does. But … you seem jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” he said, his gut going tight. “I … I’m fucking jealous.”
She let out a sigh. “You’re a nice guy. I didn’t swipe on you thinking you would have no baggage. But I was kind of thinking that … it would be a different kind.”
Caron ground his teeth together. “You figured your competition would be dead?”
She blanched. “Ouch. But yes.”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
“And that’s fair. Because life is weird. But I don’t want to be in the middle of … all that. I like Perry.”
“Yeah. Me too. That’s the problem.” On every level.
He liked Perry. He more than liked her. She was a cornerstone of his existence.
The way he felt tonight was shallow in comparison to every other feeling he had for her.
This was … nothing. But it was eating him alive, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said. “I’ll pay for my drink on the way out.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll take you up on that.” She patted the table. “Thanks again. Dating advice,” she said as she stood up. “Don’t involve your dates in the drama you’re having with the woman you actually want.”
Guilt lanced him. “I didn’t know,” he said. Which sounded so stupid. He was thirty-four years old. Why didn’t he know?
Her expression softened. “That’s okay.” She sighed. “Actually, I can see that you didn’t. I kind of hope it works out for you. But … get it together, Carson. So that it can.”
She turned and left, and Carson just sat there, while Perry danced with West and he felt like the biggest chump on the planet. He got up to go to the bathroom, and on his way back a couple of things happened.
Perry and West left the dance floor, and West backed Perry up against a wall, just as Carson circled into their vicinity.
Then West lowered his head and pressed his mouth to Perry’s.
And Carson didn’t even make a decision. He didn’t even think about it.
He just grabbed West by the shoulder and shoved him away from Perry.
“What the fuck?” He was the one who asked. Him. The guy who was not on the date with Perry.
The guy who didn’t have the right to ask.
“Carson!” Perry said, sounding as if she was scolding a child.
“Back off,” Carson said to West, putting his body between the other man and Perry.
“I didn’t force her to do anything,” said West.
“He didn’t,” said Perry. “I wanted to kiss him. Stop acting like my protective older brother.” She moved away, as if that finished it. As if he had interceded because he thought that West was forcing himself on her, which had never occurred to him at all.
He growled. “I don’t care. He needs to stay away from you.”
West squared up to him. “Are we about to have a bar fight? Because now that I think about it, that might have been the last time I saw you, Wilder. Didn’t I put you through the window in this very bar back when you were here with a fake ID?”
“See how well it works now that I’m not sixteen,” Carson said.
“Oh, knock it off,” she said. “Both of you. And you.” She rounded on Carson and grabbed him by the shirt. “You’re coming out back with me.”
She dragged him through the hallway, and out the exit.
Into the alleyway behind the bar. “What the fuck, Carson?” she asked.
“What the fuck are you doing? I am here on a date. You knew that I was going to be here. Why did you drag your date over here and insert yourself into my business? And then why did you … interrupt me?”
“He’s not good enough for you. I looked out the window and I saw you here with him, and it doesn’t make sense, Perry. I just didn’t fully … grasp it until I saw you with him. If I had, I would have told you that he was bad news and you needed to stay away from him.”
“Are you kidding me? Carson Wilder, your whole family has a reputation for being nothing more than a bunch of outlaws, and you are using all that town-history stuff against somebody else? What is the matter with you?”
“This is the matter with me,” he said. “It’s not right, Perry. You deserve better than him. You said you wanted to get married. You said you wanted to have babies. You’re not going to do that with him. And you know it.”