Chapter 10 #2
And yes, this moment was weird, and it kind of sucked.
But she was herself. She’d never considered that an asset.
She’d always felt like her past was a liability she carried with her that made her vulnerable to mistakes and to judgment.
A girl from the trailer park with an absentee mother and an alcoholic father.
Suddenly, that past felt like the thing that made her present possible.
The feeling was novel and momentous, but right now she had no idea what to do with it.
“Want to sit outside?” Cara asked, coming out of the kitchen with Marlowe’s roll and coffee on a tray, along with a savory egg pastry and a tea that was likely for Cara.
Marlowe nodded. “Sure.”
“So, how’s it going at the hotel?” Cara slipped her apron off and hung it on a peg behind the counter before coming around to the front and walking outside with Marlowe.
It was trying to warm up. Now that it was nearly April, the sun was doing its best, but winter had a firm grasp on the mountains, most of all.
“It’s going great. Between Laney getting the menu dialed in and me getting to taste test that, and you working on these strawberry rolls, I’m probably having the best time of my life.”
Cara laughed. She sat down in a chair and propped her feet up on a chair across from her. “I’m glad. Now that my cranky handyman is mostly finished with everything here at the bakery, things are going a little bit more…” She trailed off.
“More what?”
“I don’t know. Zane is distracting. He’s just like a big dark cloud.”
Like a whole storm, Marlowe thought. Not a little raincloud. He wasn’t drippy, but he was thunderous.
“I can see that.”
“Three weeks in his company and I don’t feel like I know him any better. Nor do I think he wants to be my friend.”
“Do you want to be his friend?”
Cara’s cheeks turned just slightly pink.
Marlowe’s brows shot upward. “Oh. You’re attracted to him.”
“I’m not… attracted to him. I just think he’s hot. Because I’m not blind. It’s an aesthetic appreciation, not an internal combustion.”
But the color in her cheeks said differently, because what was a good old-fashioned blush beyond an internal combustion? Not that Marlowe could really comment.
“I didn’t expect to move out to the small town and be surrounded by Cowboys that were all over six feet tall and gorgeous.”
“True. It is a problem.”
With Cody dodging her as he had been, she had spent more time with Walker recently.
He was incredibly charming. So beautiful it almost hurt to look at him.
There was a contrast to his beauty that set off alarm bells inside of her.
Because his blonde hair and blue eyes gave him an angelic quality, and yet, there was something wicked underlying it.
The survival instincts inside of her bleated about the uncanny valley of it all.
Then there was Zane, who was a furious, beautiful lumberjack of a man.
And she had a feeling he practically went out of his way to not project that beauty.
He had dark hair, heavy dark brows, a bushy dark beard, but his eyes were a blazing sort of blue that she couldn’t look away from.
He was giving unhinged Henry Cavill Superman, and it was hard not to appreciate that.
Then there was Nolan, who she had been introduced to by Lila. He and Lila didn’t seem to get along very well, but she had the impression that he was a very longtime family friend. He was also aggressively good-looking. Because weren’t they all?
It was definitely an unforeseen circumstance. An embarrassing wealth of cowboy riches.
But still, all she could think about was Cody.
“I’m not dumb enough to hook up with one of them,” Cara said.
She laughed. Oh well, she was that dumb. She was so that dumb. And she wasn’t even actually mad about it. She felt…she couldn’t stop thinking about Cody.
She was a mess, but she was still standing. She was the girl she’d tried to run away from for so many years, but that girl was the one who had gotten her where she was.
She’d forced her to be good. To do the right things, not the selfish things. She’d found security wherever she could get it, she’d taken every opportunity and made the most of it because she’d been so determined to break the cycles of her childhood that had held her down.
But now she’d done something messy because all that trying hadn’t made her life perfect. She wasn’t sorry about the mess, because it had been glorious and hot and freeing. Even if it was over now.
“I am,” Marlowe said. She stared straight ahead, across the top of her coffee cup, at the mountain diagonal to the coffee house. “I am that dumb.”
Cara frowned. “What?”
“Oh… I just… I slept with Cody.”
“WhaaaaAAAaaat?” Cara’s voice spanned eight octaves. She was the Mariah Carey of shock and awe.
Marlowe shrugged. “It just happened.”
“Like recently?”
“I mean… No. It happened three weeks ago. I just mean it just happened without either of us planning it. The day after we went out to La Befana.”
“Oh,” Cara said, “because you wanted to hook up with somebody. And I made you wait because you were drunk. Oh no.”
“It’s not going to ruin anything. I promise. Because it isn’t going to happen again.”
“Well… Why not?”
“No. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.
Because I knew you would want to have it both ways.
I knew that you would be appalled at my behavior, and worried about what it might mean for your future here, and I also knew that you would be weirdly supportive.
And think that it was something it isn’t. ”
“Well, it would be perfect. You and Cody…”
“Absolutely not. I haven’t even divorced your brother.
I am having divorce papers sent to him, and according to the lawyer that I talked to, it should all be able to be done through paperwork because we don’t own property and we don’t have any children.
But I’m not divorced, and even when I am, it’s going to take me a while to recover from all his bullshit.
Then on top of that, Cody isn’t a relationship kind of guy. ”
“You know that for a fact?”
“He’s too good at sex.”
Cara laughed. “Being good at sex means that you can’t be a relationship guy?”
“It just means that he’s very accomplished at casual sex.”
“I’m not…” Cara’s face turned bright red again. “I’m not going to claim to be some kind of sex expert or anything, but I think you’re making some sweeping judgments here.”
“I’m not. I’m genuinely okay with it being what it was. He said… It was good that I got the first one out of the way.”
“That is deeply unromantic.”
“It wasn’t romantic. It was… Hot.” She felt her face get hot. “But that’s it. And now we’re moving on. I shouldn’t have told you.”
Of course, she had felt weird not telling Cara. Disloyal, even, because it was the kind of thing she probably should share with somebody she was that close to. Except also, Cara was her sister-in-law.
“Sorry. The whole thing is weird, isn’t it? Because if I messed this up, I’m messing things up for you, and I was with your brother for a hundred years –”
“Our relationship has nothing to do with my brother. Not at this point. I don’t want you to feel bad about him, or even think about him.”
“Are you talking to him?”
Cara shook her head. “No.” She looked down at her fingernails. “And don’t think it’s because I’m so loyal and wonderful. I’ve had a lot of resentment brewing toward him for a long time. But what he did to you just unmasked things that I always believed were underneath the surface. He’s selfish.”
“I’m really sorry that you got left to deal with everything with your mom.”
“You helped me as often as you could. You were busy. You were there for me so much more than he ever was. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to get over him not coming and saying goodbye. He said he couldn’t handle it. Well, why was I supposed to be able to handle it?”
That cracked something inside of Marlowe’s chest. Because it was the kind of thing that he was always saying.
He was really sensitive, he just cared so much, he was such a good guy, but that meant that he had to avoid all kinds of difficult things that he seemed to think were fine for Cara or for Marlowe to do.
It acted as a kind of weaponized shield against personal responsibility. Against doing difficult things.
He was passive, it was true, but he was also manipulative.
She hadn’t seen it, because she hadn’t spent a lot of time with manipulators. Other than him. And they had started dating when she was so young she hadn’t been able to recognize it.
“He really sucks,” Marlowe said. “I think I wrote a version of him in my head that was just so much better than this, and I didn’t mean to.
I didn’t mean to let him bypass accountability, I didn’t mean to turn him into a mythical figure who was a much better man than the reality.
But I did. I wanted to have a fairytale so badly that I decided he was Prince Charming with very little evidence.
That’s not to say that we weren’t happy.
If we weren’t happy at all, I don’t think… ”
She was about to say she wouldn’t be this sad about the divorce. She was sad about it. But if she really excavated it, uncovered everything, she wondered if she was sadder about the loss of the potential future that she wanted to make with him, with the version of him that she had wanted him to be.
If she were deeply in love with Aiden, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep with Cody.
If she was deeply in love with Aiden, she wondered if Cody’s voice would’ve even felt like a siren song from across the country, husky and low in her ear while she had interviewed for this job.
Maybe it had been a sign that all wasn’t right.
She had known that everything wasn’t perfect, but she had thought it was fixable. And now she wondered if she had slowly, so slowly that she hadn’t noticed it, fallen out of love with her husband, and had been hanging onto an ideal more than a great romantic love.
“I’m fine,” she said. Mainly because she had lost the thread of the conversation. She had no idea what she had been about to say anymore, and no idea how to rescue the moment. “Also, you could sleep with a cowboy if you wanted to.”
Cara looked scandalized. It would’ve been funny if Marlowe didn’t feel quite so shaken.
“I don’t know if I want to tempt any more drama.”
Marlowe laughed. “Well, there hasn’t been any drama. Like I said, Cody seemed to be completely fine with casual sex. A one-afternoon stand was all he wanted, clearly. He hasn’t even come by the hotel since then.”
“Hmmm,” Cara mused.
“Don’t look at me that way.”
“I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Sure.”
She took her phone out of her pocket and opened up her email. Where she saw an all-staff bulletin from Walker Grayson.
“What do you think of Walker?” Marlowe asked.
“Well, he is also hot. But… I’ll be honest with you, all these men are above my pay grade.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re…” Cara lifted her fork and swirled it in the air, “wild mustangs. Like the kind that are somewhere around here. I think I need a kid’s party pony to start with.”
“To start –”
But she was distracted from asking the question by the all-staff bulletin. Because when she opened it, she saw that Walker was inviting everybody to the main venue barn for a grand opening barbecue two days before the hotel officially took its first guest.
“Well, it looks like I’m going to have to see Cody,” she said.
“Of course you are,” Cara said. “That’s what happens when you sleep with your boss. You can’t avoid him forever. And he can’t avoid you. Which, by the way, suggests that he’s not actually neutral about the situation.”
That was the worst thing Cara could’ve said to her. Because as long as Marlowe could pretend that Cody had forgotten about her, she could put all this to one side.
She had been all for accepting the messiness of it. Accepting that perhaps he had been a gift to her younger self, who hadn’t been allowed to make mistakes. Well, she’d made one, and it was all fine, so her younger self could rejoice.
Except…if it wasn’t over, that meant there was still a chance for it to go horribly wrong.
And that should scare Marlowe.
Instead, it made her stomach tighten with anticipation.