Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Something had shifted after that time together, and Cody couldn’t quite say what it was.
Maybe it was something in him.
He wasn’t sure why he had felt so driven to take her to his childhood apartment.
But it had felt important.
So, he had done it.
But it had opened up a lot of uncomfortable avenues of conversation around his mother, and he found he wanted to put a wall back up afterward.
There were things that she wanted from him that mystified him. Things that he had a deep resistance toward giving.
She wanted him to be proud of himself, is what it felt like. Every time she said he’d done good things for his siblings.
She wanted him to admit that he had anger at his mother. She hadn’t said that, but he could feel it.
And every time it came up, he just told her that he wasn’t angry at her.
He wasn’t.
But she had brought up that memory of being home from school, sick, and her making him the beanie weenies, and it was such a strange, uncomfortable memory.
Because he could remember lying in bed, completely congested, eating a meal he couldn’t even taste, and wondering why – if she could do this now – she couldn’t do it all the time. Or even two days a week. If she was capable of caring for him like this, then why didn’t she?
It was such a weird, angry thing, and he just didn’t want to contend with it.
Didn’t want to acknowledge it.
Didn’t want to give it strength or power in his life.
But today, Marlowe, Cara, Zane, Nolan, Walker, and Lila were coming to his place for a barbecue. Marlowe was fussing about like she was one of the hosts, talking about drinks and ice and all manner of things, and it made him feel happy and on edge all at once.
They stayed with each other most nights of the week, so he could see how it felt like something she was somewhat responsible for.
Except it also made him feel some other, uncomfortable things. That was the Marlowe Davis experience, he supposed.
As good as things were with them in bed, as much as he enjoyed her company, there was always a degree of discomfort.
Always a degree of her pushing when he wanted her to stop.
He wasn’t a man who was afraid of hard things.
He never had been.
He had always pushed forward, pushed ahead in life, like when he had decided to become a cowboy. Because he wasn’t going to allow his father to have the final say.
But Marlowe pushed at sore spots that he liked to leave alone.
And he found himself reluctant to tell her to leave them alone.
Even if he couldn’t say why.
“My real worry is that we’re not going to have enough beer,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem like we drink that much,” he said.
“I didn’t mean it as a negative.”
“I know,” he said.
She smiled up at him, and he couldn’t resist the urge to lean in and kiss her on the mouth. They were still kissing right as Lila pulled up, and he realized how complacent they were getting.
Of course, they knew, but that didn’t mean that he and Marlowe made a practice of performing their relationship in front of anyone.
Relationship.
He supposed he couldn’t really deny that’s what it was at this point.
But that didn’t mean that it was…
It didn’t mean…
He couldn’t grab hold of the thought, and he didn’t want to.
“Get a room,” Lila said. “I know where you can get several.”
She jumped out of the truck, holding a case of beer and a box of cookies.
“Thin Mints,” she said. “I couldn’t resist the pack of Girl Scouts that I ran into in town.”
“Well, good for us,” Cody said.
“What are you cooking?” she asked.
“I smoked some London broil. So, you’re in for a treat.”
Lila’s pure joy at the food on offer sparked something inside of him.
And somehow, it brought him back to the beanie weenies.
It gave him a lot of joy to provide things for his family. To make his sister happy. To give things to Marlowe.
Hadn’t it made his mother happy at all to make something for her kid? Even when he was sick?
It was such a funny thing that her taking care of him was actually a bigger source of angst than all the times when she hadn’t.
But maybe because when she didn’t, it was easier to believe that it was a limitation. That she simply couldn’t.
That no matter how hard she tried, she could not do better than that.
But the evidence that she could have done better than that, that she had the capability, just not the will, that was what had broken him then, and it was what crept past his defenses now.
Cara pulled up a little bit later, and so did the rest, and Cody went to check on the meat.
He sort of hoped that Lila would end up talking to Cara, because he felt like there was a shortage of anyone in her age group around for her to chat with that wasn’t a horny, ridiculous ranch hand, who he would like for his sister to have nothing to do with.
“How is everything going with the hotel?” Nolan asked, leaning up against a support beam for the porch, next to his smoker.
“Everything is going good,” he said. “Almost shockingly so.”
“Everything has been good on our end. All the hikes I’ve led have had positive feedback, all the trail rides. Well, except for Lila.”
“You got feedback from Lila?”
“She handed me a comment card the other day,” Nolan grumbled.
“What was on it?”
“A picture of her hand with her middle finger up.”
Cody chuckled. “You two are a mess.”
“Well, thankfully, I don’t have to contend with her more often than I already do. She’s a feral monster.”
“No argument here. But you know why she’s feral.”
“Yeah, I do. Same reason we all are. But you would’ve thought age or something would’ve toned her down.”
“Did age tone you down?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve learned how to keep it locked down.”
Cody resonated with that. A little bit too much.
Walker grabbed a beer out of the cooler and handed it over, and he could see Zane wrestling with whether or not he wanted to do the same.
Zane wasn’t comfortable in a group, yet he put himself in the group. Cody felt like his friend was often in tension because of those things.
“Things seem well on the home front,” Walker said, gesturing toward Marlowe.
“And that is off-limits,” Cody said.
“Don’t make him mad,” Nolan said. “I want to eat, so I don’t want him to intentionally light this food on fire.”
“I would never do that to good beef. I might light Walker on fire.”
“I’d pay to see that,” Zane said, treating them all to a rare flash of a smile before he took a sip of his beer.
Cara approached the group and walked up to Zane, who looked like a horse that had been spooked. “Hi,” she said. “I just wanted to ask… You were one of the first people to try the pecan rolls. I was wondering if you had a review.”
“No review,” Zane said.
Cara tapped her fingers together, her brow creased. “You don’t have any feedback?”
“It was good,” he responded.
“Thanks. Better than the strawberry rolls or…”
Zane shrugged. And Cody looked between the two of them, trying to get a read on whatever the hell this was.
He had never seen Zane look comfortable, that was true, but he was used to how Zane projected his discomfort. The particular way that he dealt with people, and it wasn’t this. Zane looked like he saw Cara as a bomb that might need defusing.
Cara, for her part, was five foot nothing, and slender on top of it, wearing a sweet, floral dress, looking like about the least threatening creature on the planet.
Clearly not to Zane.
“I like the strawberry one,” Zane said finally.
“Why?”
“I don’t like pecans.”
“Oh. Well, you should’ve said something.”
“Why?”
Cara only stared at him blankly. Cody decided it was time to rescue everyone from this.
“Business is booming,” Cody said, taking over the conversation. “You must be very proud.”
“I am,” Cara said, “but also very thankful. I know that everyone is so impressed with the Grayson family in Mustang River. What you’ve done with Painted Ridge is just extraordinary, and everyone has been so complimentary of you whenever we talk.”
Cody frowned, feeling strangely stung. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“It’s true,” Cara insisted. “Whenever I go into town, I always talk about how I run the bakery at Painted Ridge, and then everybody tells me how proud they are of you. A hometown boy who’s made so much of himself.
And Walker, too. You guys are like… symbols of grit and determination. It’s all very wild west.”
“Interesting,” Cody said, feeling a strange, frozen sensation at the center of his chest.
So now that he had some money, now that he had done all these good things, people talked like they had always been rooting for him.
He knew that things had shifted, but he had no idea if people were so full of shit as to talk to a stranger about him like that.
People whose kids had bullied him in high school, women who had probably sucked his dick in the back of his pickup truck and then not spoken to him in public.
And had sure as hell never told their husbands that once upon a time, she’d taken the town bad boy for a ride.
No, now apparently, they spoke about him like he was some kind of folk hero.
“Glad it’s helping out the bakery,” he said.
“Your reputation precedes you,” Cara said brightly, clearly unaware of just how angry her words had made him.
His reputation preceded him. Never in all his life had that ever been a positive thing.
Never in all his life had anyone ever said that to him with a smile on their face that wasn’t actually quite nasty.
“I hear that the trail ride I had Marlowe on was her first horse ride,” Nolan said.
“Yeah. She’d never been before.”
Nolan looked at Cara. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
“No,” Cara said. “I’m a small-town girl, but I’m not one for the wilderness. Or wilderness activities. Or large animals. I’m outsidey. Not outdoorsy.”
“Horses are better than most people,” Zane said, his words full of gravitas.
“Seems like you haven’t known very many of the right people,” Cara said, smiling, and then turning away from the group.
“Or you just haven’t known the right horses,” Zane said.
Cody glanced at Zane and saw that he wasn’t the only one, but no one said anything.
So he chose not to, either.
They chatted about business, but Cody’s mind kept wandering back to the memory of his mother and what Cara had just said.
The town saw him as some kind of a hero. A bad boy made good.
And it made him want to set the whole goddamn place on fire.