Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Cody spent the whole rest of the evening steeped in regret.
He’d messed it up because he had no idea what he was doing when it came to…whatever the hell this was. Had been.
He knew women. He knew their bodies. He knew them generally speaking, knew how to make them laugh, make them sigh, make them come.
But this was a whole separate situation altogether.
Because with her, things just seemed to go wrong. An epic sign from the universe, or wherever, that he needed to leave it alone.
That he needed to let it go.
But he found it hard. Damn hard. Especially as he had to watch every yahoo ranch hand in the place talk to her while she stood there laughing like she had never heard anything funnier than whatever they had just said to her.
“What’s wrong with you?” Walker asked, sliding up next to him. “You look like you’re about to grind a crown straight out of your head.”
“What are you talking about?”
Walker thrust a beer bottle into his hand. “It’s obvious you’re pissed. And fair, since she’s flirting with those guys to piss you off, that’s also obvious.”
Why bother to pretend?
“I said something stupid.”
“Shocking. It’s almost as if you have me do your PR for a reason.”
“Shut up, Walker. I’m not in the mood.”
“When are you in the mood? What’s the deal?”
“I told her that nothing could happen between us. Told her that the ranch is important and –”
“More important than her.”
“It has to be,” he said. There was no point lying while he was talking to his brother.
“This ranch is going to be our legacy. It’s the thing that we’re owed.
The thing that our father owes us, from the beyond, because he’s never going to give it to us in life.
The thing that he owes to our mother. I can’t let anything distract me, not right now.
It’s not even so much that she works here. It’s the timing.”
“Oh my God,” Walker said. “Please tell me you didn’t say that. Not like that. For God’s sake. At least you let her know before you slept with her that you’re a giant red flag.”
Cody froze mid-sip with his beer bottle pressed to his lips, then swallowed just a little too slowly.
“Cody,” Walker said. “You slept with her already, and you said that to her?”
Cody scowled. “How do you do that?”
“I possess entry-level people skills. And you’re basic enough, I don’t even need those to read you.”
Cody felt extremely uncomfortable with all of this.
He never had to be smooth. That was Walker’s domain.
Cody was more… hard-edged. It made people underestimate him, usually to his advantage, or it made women want to hop into bed with him to get a taste of something wild, but they didn’t want him to call the next day. They didn’t want anything from him.
He was a good time, not a long time, and he presented exactly like that.
And he had… acted like Marlowe was desperate for more from him, then told her she couldn’t have it. Which, if he paused and really looked at that, he could see was maybe not the best way to have approached her.
“I wasn’t trying to be smooth. I just…”
“You were reacting to yourself,” Walker said. “You’re distracted because you’re that into her. And that’s a new problem, not a problem. I think we are both smart enough to know that.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It should be over. It should just have been… the one time. It should’ve been enough.”
Walker let out a low whistle and shook his head. “I’m almost jealous.”
“What?”
“I’ve never felt that way. Never felt like it had to be another time. Never felt like once wasn’t enough. Must be a hell of a thing.”
“It’s terrible.”
Walker rolled his eyes. “Your steak is too rich, your lobster is too buttery, and the sex was too good. Boohoo, bro.”
“It’s complicated. And I don’t have time for a complication right now. It’s not the right time.”
“Maybe it’s the exact right time for you to have a complication. Did you ever think about that? What have you ever done for yourself?”
“A lot of things. I went and made a name for myself in the rodeo, for myself. I earned a ton of money for myself. I’m building this place partly for myself,” Cody said.
“I don’t believe any of that. You’ve done it for us. And if she’s something that makes you happy…”
He snorted. “Happy isn’t the right word.”
It wasn’t. It was intense. He didn’t have time for intense. All the intensity he could possibly bear already came from inside him.
He couldn’t add anything else. Not now. Not ever.
The reality was, he was deeply aware of all the things he had done for his siblings.
The most selfish thing he had done was go off to the rodeo. Traveling half the year when Lila was still young. Then later, trading off with Walker as best he could.
But the reality was, even while he was being selfish, he had the pressing concerns of a parent. Because that was the position he’d been put in with his siblings.
He had been the one who was responsible for them. The one who was responsible for keeping them… On track. For making sure Lila didn’t become their mother, for making sure Walker didn’t make women like his mother.
For making sure that they didn’t make the kinds of mistakes that would determine the course of their life forever when they were only teenagers.
And it didn’t matter if he went off on his own, it didn’t matter that they got older, nothing could take away those worries. The sense of responsibility.
Nothing.
Everything felt like it carried so much weight, because it always had.
He was the oldest, and he had always felt like it was up to him to determine the course of everything.
Here they were now, on the cusp of everything being fine forever. Okay, that was simplistic. There was no way they could ever trust that a place like this would just run on its own. But they were making progress. He was as sure as he could be that he had set his family up to be taken care of.
Now Walker had said that he couldn’t get rid of the nagging sensation that he needed something for himself.
Not for everyone. Just for him.
He looked up, across the barn, and Marlowe’s eyes caught his and held. His stomach went tight, his body going hard.
Yeah. Not happening. He had royally messed that up.
“I don’t know. You seem obsessed,” Walker said.
“Obsessed isn’t a good thing,” Cody said. “You and I both know that.”
That word obsessed spurred him to look up again, but Marlowe wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t in the barn at all.
That should be a relief. It wasn’t. He was consumed by the thought that she might have left with someone else. And then just with the fact that she wasn’t there anymore.
But he was committed to staying the whole rest of the night.
It wasn’t only the employees who were there. There were people from town, businesses they wanted to partner with.
He had to grit his teeth and smile while people talked to him who had hated him only ten years ago.
He shook hands with Bob Carey, whose daughter Addison was having her wedding here at the ranch in a few months, and who had tormented Walker mercilessly in high school.
Both he and Walker managed to be nice and kind and pretend they didn’t know that if someone in school was mean to them, it was because their parents were the original shit-talkers who had set the stage.
“How is Addison?” Walker asked, tapping his beer bottle.
“She’s about to announce her candidacy for mayor,” Bob said. “The election will be after the wedding, of course, but she’ll be very busy in the run-up to both. She’s marrying Alan March. His family owns the golf course in Sun River.”
Walker and Cody exchanged a quick glance, and he didn’t need to make a face for Cody to know exactly what his brother was thinking.
How nice. The princess found herself a prince.
That was only one of the interactions like that they had over the rest of the evening, until the barn cleared out, and the only remaining stragglers were Lila, Nolan, Zane, Walker, and Cody.
Walker pulled a chair up and sat down, a beer in his hand. “That was good,” he said.
Lila sat down next to him, a bottle in her hand too, and she tapped it against the edge of Walker’s. “Real good.”
Nolan sat in a chair across from the two of them, and Cody dragged one over as well. Zane did not bring a chair over. Instead, he stood, looming just slightly outside the circle, hands in his pockets.
“This is actually happening,” Lila said, walking over to him and lifting his cowboy hat, mussing up his hair. “You did it, Cody.”
“I didn’t do this by myself,” he said, pulling his hat back in place and shooing off his younger sister, who scampered to a seat near Nolan. “Not even close.”
“Just take the compliment,” Nolan said. “No need to be modest.”
“I’m not being modest,” he said. “But we did this together. And with all the people that we hired to help make it happen. Thanks to all of you for following along with me. Because it might’ve been really stupid.
We could’ve hit any number of barriers, with permits and with loans and all kinds of things. But we didn’t.”
“That’s because of you,” Walker said. “I might be good at selling things, and Nolan is good at building things. Zane is good at lifting heavy things, and Lila is such an efficient manager she scares people. But you’re the glue, Cody, you’re the leader, you’re the one who put it all together, you’re the one with the vision. Just like it’s always been. To Cody.”
Cody didn’t like it. He didn’t want to be the center of this, and he didn’t want to get the credit for it. He didn’t want…
He never wanted to trick himself into thinking that maybe he was going to be all right.
That maybe he was good enough.
Because if he did that… He was going to get complacent. And if he got complacent, then who knew?
He had never had the luxury of believing that he might magically be a good person.
Because his father’s blood ran through his veins, because he had seen that arrogance brought about a whole lot of corruption, and if there was one thing Cody had in spades, it was arrogance.