Chapter 18 #3
“I was thinking, what if I hadn’t stopped myself from wanting this? Think of all the trouble we would’ve gotten into.”
That was terrifying.
“God. We would’ve had a baby when I was sixteen.”
He laughed, low and throaty. “Probably.”
“We would’ve been a disaster,” she pointed out.
“We definitely would’ve been sneaking around this house.” He kissed her again.
“Carson,” she said as he slid his hand down to her ass and nuzzled her neck. “I want you. I want you so bad.”
Then he moved away from her and walked ahead of her back toward the kitchen. She blinked, going after him.
He was being feral, and she couldn’t say she disliked it.
It was the pirate in him. And perhaps the pirate in her responded.
That was how the rest of the evening went.
She slid her hand beneath the table and grazed his arousal.
He caught her alone in the living room for a second and wrapped his arm around her, squeezing her breasts.
When everyone came in, he moved away as if nothing had happened.
Flynn and Dalton set a card table up in the center of the living room and decided to play poker.
“One second,” said Carson. “I have to grab change out of my truck.”
“Oh,” said Perry. “Me too.”
As soon as they were outside, Perry found herself pressed against the side of the house, with Carson kissing her deep and fierce.
“I think I need to fuck you against a wall,” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
“I’d do it against this one right now if we had even a couple more minutes.”
“I bet I could make you finish very, very quickly,” she said. “Don’t tempt me,” he whispered against her mouth.
“Oh God!” They turned and saw Cassidy standing on the porch, her mouth dropped open. “Why is this my life?”
He and Perry moved away from each other. Perry straightened her dress, even though it wasn’t really askew.
“Cassidy,” said Carson. “Don’t say anything.”
She clamped her mouth shut and turned on her heel, going back into the house.
Carson rested his forehead against Perry’s. “Okay. That was very careless. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “In the sense that I wasn’t being any more careful than you.”
“Fair,” he said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“It’s fine. I’m not ashamed of this.”
“I never thought that you were,” he said. “I never thought that was why you wanted to keep it between us.”
She nodded. “Good. It’s just … we don’t have any answers yet … and we don’t want to be rushed into giving them to anyone, or to ourselves.”
“Exactly,” he said.
She sighed. “I suppose we should go back.”
“I really do have to get money out of my truck.”
He did, and they went back inside, where the poker game was being dealt; there were two empty seats for them. Cassidy was sitting at the table with scarlet cheeks, but she hadn’t said anything. They could tell, because no one else was reacting.
When they finished the game and it was time to finally go back to her place, she could breathe again. Because then he kissed her. And they went to bed.
She had demanded that they not play house. But they were doing this again. Carson had made good on his word to buy condoms.
Right now, everything felt pretty amazing.
Perry was going to cling to amazing for as long as they could have it.
The next day, Carson decided to work on the ranch a bit before heading over to Perry’s place, and he wasn’t terribly surprised when his sister rode up to him out in the north pasture.
“Well,” she said. “Since I am now the keeper of the world’s most insane secret, maybe you could actually give me some details.”
“Why do you want details?”
“Because,” she said. “You are … I don’t know.
You’ve never been the same since Alyssa died.
Perry is your best friend, but you were making out with her hot and heavy.
That is totally in opposition to what you were telling Flynn about dating again.
And sex and all of that. And much as I don’t want to know about that part of your life, I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. ”
“Well. Join the club.”
“Oh,” said Cassidy. “You’re really too old to not have a handle on your life.”
Carson couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, bad news, kid. Uncertainty is the name of the game. That’s just how it is. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Maybe you will when you’re thirty-four. I kind of doubt it.”
“Don’t tell me that. I’m going to be in a great place when I’m thirty-four.”
“Tell me all about it, Cass.”
“I’m going to have my own ranch. I’m going to have bees, and I’m going to meet a nice guy who’s not from here. Maybe he’ll even take me different places.”
“Yeah. Let’s circle back on that in ten years and see how it went.”
“That’s not nice.”
“You’re going to be okay in ten years,” he said, feeling guilty now. “But you might not have done all the things you thought. That’s all.”
She frowned. “I know that …”
“No. You don’t really know. About me, or anything. Me either, to tell you the truth. Not all the time. I’m not grieving Alyssa in the way that you think. I’m just messed up.”
“Oh.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘messed up.’”
“I’m just still dealing with our childhood. Mine was different from yours, I grant. But we had the same dad.”
“I just thought that your problem was …”
“My wife dying. I get it. I kind of wish it were. Because then maybe I would have given her something better. But it’s not. My problem is me. And the fact that no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get to the bottom of the bullshit of having Dad as my dad. Or of having Mom leave.”
“I thought I would be over that by your age.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ve been really upset about Perry leaving.
Last night when I talked to her, I realized it’s because whenever someone does something like that, it feels like abandonment.
And that’s not normal. But it’s … I’m having a really hard time not making everything about my mom leaving me forever on Christmas, you know? ”
“Oh yeah. I absolutely know. The problem with life is that it keeps going. And because it keeps going, it keeps flinging new shit at you.”
“That’s not encouraging,” she said.
“Well, it’s something to look out for. Because the thing is, it’s just layer upon layer. Until you can’t figure out how you ended up where you are. Until you end up really far away from what you used to want. And then you have to figure out how to get back to it.”
“Is Perry what you want?”
The words were stark, simple. The question he had been avoiding asking for a very long time.
“I can’t imagine life without her,” he said.
“Because it’s always seemed to me that she was really special to you. But I just accepted that you didn’t have a physical relationship with her. I’m not going to lie.” Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “That was a little bit like walking in on my siblings kissing each other.”
He laughed. “Well. There you go. Another layer of trauma for you, Cass. Sorry about that. Perry isn’t my sister. Never has been.”
Cassidy looked profoundly bummed out. “Yeah. Well. I get that.”
“We just didn’t want to tell anybody about this because we don’t know what’s happening. Because she might still leave. Because … I’m unpacking some things.”
“You could just marry her. You know, Flynn said it back at the bar, and now that I know you like making out with her, it doesn’t make sense to me why you don’t. You could give her a baby. You could just be happy.”
The words were so tantalizing. So sweet.
“I wish I could be sure of that. But it isn’t about me. It’s about her.” Because he already knew what happened when he wanted something to work out badly enough that he didn’t actually think it through.
And he wasn’t sure he had learned that lesson yet.
“Why can’t this damned family just be happy?” Cassidy said, shaking her head.
“God help you when you end up in love, Cassidy.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to make a drama out of it. I’ll find someone who fits in with my life and makes … sense.” Her cheeks went pink. “It will be easy.”
“You’re tempting fate.”
“Good thing I don’t believe in fate.”
“You don’t?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. It’s nobody’s fate to be left on Christmas by their mother.”
Great point, honestly. “Yeah. Well. That makes sense.”
“The good news is,” said Cassidy, “if nothing is up to fate, you get to decide.”
His younger sister decided to ride off then, her brown hair tangling in the wind as she did.
She was young. Her perspective on the situation reflected that. There was anger underneath her words, and a certainty that she could control the outcomes of things he knew you couldn’t always control. Carson did believe in fate. Because he’d tried to take control of his life, and it hadn’t worked.
But there was also some truth in what she said. There were things a man got to decide. He just had to figure out what those things were.