AVERY (The Corbin Brothers Book 2) (16 page)

There were flashes of things I recognized: Hadley’s auburn hair brushing my face as she pushed all her weight against my shoulder, Tucker’s heavy brows behind a flashlight shown in my eyes, a backward glance from Chance at the wheel of the car. But there were things I didn’t understand — someone who sounded suspiciously like Paisley weeping from the front seat, though I hadn’t heard her cry like that since that day I saved her from the bully in elementary school. No, that didn’t make sense, either. She hadn’t cried then. She’d picked herself up and promised me the world. She’d cried like that before because she’d lived up to her promise and I hadn’t loved her enough, because after she’d given and given and given, me and life and everyone else had taken everything from her. Poor Paisley. Of course she should be crying.

When I opened my eyes fully again, I wasn’t in my trailer. It could’ve been Paisley’s house, but that didn’t feel right, either. Had they moved me back into my room in our house? That wouldn’t make sense — it was Toby’s room right now, and they wouldn’t have kicked him out of it for me.

“You’re in the hospital, Avery.”

I turned my head to see Paisley, her eyes rimmed in red, curled up in a chair. She was still wearing dust-covered jeans and a T-shirt splattered in what could only be my blood, stiff after drying.

“What a stupid place to be in,” I remarked, coughing a little. My mouth was dry, and Paisley uncrossed her legs and stood to pour me a glass of water from a plastic pitcher.

“A stupid place for stupid people,” she said, handing me the glass. It tasted good to me even though whatever ice that had been in it melted long ago, leaving the liquid lukewarm.

“What happened?” I asked, examining my memories and coming up significantly short.

“You were shot.”
“I mean after that.”

“After that, you fell of my horse and hit your head.” Paisley looked away. “Hadley said it probably wasn’t a good idea to expect you to ride a galloping horse while losing so much blood.”

“Where is everyone else?”

Paisley gave a long sigh. “I stayed here with you because everyone else had to go back to the ranch. Hunter and Emmett stayed behind to continue to watch the herd, but then Hunter had some sort of episode because you’d gotten shot and everything’s gone about to shit, Avery.”

“Because of me.”

“Because of lots of things. But yes, you’re right on up there.”

Hunter having an episode could only be bad. He’d seen a lot in Afghanistan, and he didn’t need to see me all bloody and bullet riddled. I couldn’t do anything right for this family or this ranch. It would be better if I were somewhere else, unable to cause any angst ever again. God only knew what or who Hunter was raging at. It had happened several times before. Hadley had explained to us about post-traumatic stress disorder and everything to expect from that, but I’d been his trigger.

“Everyone was worried about you,” Paisley relented, watching me. “You gave everyone a big scare, but the doctors say you’re going to be okay. If you can believe it, the concussion was worse than the bullet wound.”

“You were crying in the car. I remember.” I studied her. “Why?”

She laughed at me as if that should be obvious. “I was worried about you.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t it? Can’t I be worried about you?”

“You don’t love me,” I said. “You said so in as many words.”

“We want different things, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you,” she said. “Why were you even out there tonight if you don’t give a shit about the ranch?”

“I didn’t know where you went,” I said. “I didn’t want to wait around and be worried for you.”

“Like I used to wait around, worried for you.”

“Pretty much,” I acknowledged.

“We just can’t seem to get on the same page, can we?”

“I hope we can, someday.”

“Is that really what you want?” Paisley shook her head. “Don’t answer that. You’re all doped up on pain medication.”

“I want us to be on the same page, Paisley. I told you I loved you earlier today. I wasn’t on pain medication, then.”

“Were you drinking?”

“No, of course not. I never drink when I’m working.”

“It was a shock to have so many cattle missing. I would understand if you were drunk. It would be understandable, and it would explain why you were stupid enough to leave the gun at home.”

“I wasn’t drunk, goddammit.” She was making me sound like a complete idiot. I pretty much accepted that I was, but it didn’t help she thought the same thing. It dashed whatever confidence I had left.

“But you don’t want to be a rancher.” She looked at me, wringing her hands. “The next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’ve completely changed your mind on that, too, just like you changed your mind about me, right?”

“I know how I feel about you,” I said. “I love you. The ranch is another story.”

She shook her head. “It’s not one or the other, Avery. The ranch and I are a package deal. You know that.”

“That’s just the way it is for me. I’m sorry. I wish I could just tell myself who to love or what to do and be done with it. That’s just not how it works for me.”

“Avery, what is it that you want?” she asked. “Tell me. Tell me what you want to do.”

“I don’t know what I want to do.”

“Sure, you do. I know you don’t want to be here, so there has to be somewhere else you’d rather be.”

I searched myself. I’d wanted so much for myself — a life apart from the ranch, a passion my brothers didn’t share, to be fucking happy. That’s what I wanted above all: to be happy, only I didn’t know how. I’d never known how.

“I just don’t want to be a rancher anymore,” I said. Getting shot had shaken me. Sure, the ranch had always been my home, but was I ready to give my life for it? Everything seemed so precious, now, and I was worried that I’d spent so much time doing what I didn’t actually want to be doing that I’d wasted my life.

I hesitated before making eye contact with Paisley, halfway afraid of what I would see there, but if she was surprised, I couldn’t tell. She mostly looked tired, all cried out and fought out and everything, hair wild and tangled, blood spattered, covered in dirt. Beautiful.

“Be whatever makes you happy, then,” she said, handing me an envelope. “You’re the only one who can do that for yourself.”

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Inside the envelope was a bundle of cash — there had to be at least $5,000 — and a thin sheaf of papers. They were legal documents, already signed by Paisley and another person, and I struggled to understand the gist of them until I caught a word I did recognize: divorce.

“You’re divorcing me?” I asked, dumbfounded, wondering why that realization hurt worse than the bullet hole in my shoulder. “Now?”

“No,” she said. “You’re divorcing me, if that’s what’ll make you happy. No stipulations. No traps.”

“What’s the cash for?”

She shrugged. “We’ve been together a while. I understood you didn’t want to be here anymore. The cash is a going away present. Buy a plane ticket or hop a bus or train to somewhere. Go be whatever you want to be. You don’t have to be tied down to me anymore.”

I shook my head. “We can’t get divorced. What’ll happen to the agreement for the ranch?”

“I like working with you Corbins,” she said. “You’re good people. The agreement stands. You just don’t have to be a part of it anymore.”

Just like that, Paisley was releasing me from a contract she’d devised as a way to be with me — and save her status as the head of her own ranch. I should’ve been grateful. Hell, I should’ve jumped up from my hospital bed and run singing and dancing down the hallways. Why did I feel like a pit had opened up in the very bottom of me, holding these divorce papers?

“All you have to do is sign,” she said. “You don’t have to do it now.”

“Paisley …”

“There’s nothing really to say,” she said. “You don’t have to feel like you have to say anything. We’re two different people, Avery. I get that, now. I was too blind to see it before, maybe, or too naive. But this was never going to work out between the two of us. I was a fool to try and trap you in it, a fool to think this would bring me happiness.”

I thought she was going to cry again, but she set her shoulders and sniffed.

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I want to go home,” she said. “Do you want me to call one of your brothers to come and sit with you?”

“I don’t need anyone to sit with me,” I said. “I’m a grown man.”

“I know.” Paisley walked toward the door — the bloodstains were a lot worse on the back of her T-shirt — and then turned like she was going to say something else, but then she shook her head, seeming to think better of it, and left.

Left, just like that.

Without even saying goodbye.

I couldn’t reconcile in my mind why that was the worst thing that had happened to me today, but there it was, a wound deadlier than the one I had. I was all alone, just like I’d wanted to be, and it was somehow the opposite of what I thought I’d wanted.

For a few papers clipped together, the divorce agreement felt awfully heavy in my lap. Or maybe it was the cash — my wife paying me just to leave her alone. It was enough to buy a plane ticket to practically anywhere in the world, and maybe that was what I wanted. Maybe getting the hell out of Texas would be just the thing to set me right again.

My shirt was a total loss, soaked through and through with blood and cut off of me, but my jeans and boots were still serviceable. There was nothing dramatic about simply walking out of a hospital. Not many people are very interested in stopping a surly, shirtless, wounded man in the middle of the night.

I picked up a souvenir basketball T-shirt at a gas station that was still open, feeling woozy from pain medication and blood loss and just the suddenness of everything that happened tonight. I’d been shot, offered freedom from my marriage, and basically a blank check to go anywhere in the world.

I hailed a taxi stopped outside a fast food restaurant and settled gingerly in the back.

“No puking in the car,” the driver warned as I shut the door.

Did I look that bad? “No worries,” I said. “Take me to the airport, please.”

“If you say so.”

I probably looked suspicious as hell, I realized, sick and dirty and tired and without so much as a piece of luggage. It was a wonder the driver didn’t call the cops or something to get my crazy ass out of here.

But after just thirty minutes or so, the glittering monolith that was the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport appeared, towering, roadways snaking around in every direction, full of possibility for the future.

Would I find what I was looking for here, a destination, a place where I belonged?

I paid the driver and stepped out of the taxi, feeling strangely rejuvenated. The only sleep I’d gotten was after I’d hit my head on the ground falling off Paisley’s horse, but I felt remarkably well for a man with a concussion and a bullet wound.

I was going to get away from all of this. I was going to finally seize control of my life and do things I wanted to do. This was how I should’ve been living my life all this time. It was a shame it took getting shot to make me start now.

Feeling like I was better late than never, I strolled — staggered, really — into the airport. I figured it would’ve been pretty quiet at this time of the morning, but it was slowly waking up, airline employees opening up kiosks and ticket counters, a janitor buffing the floors glossy, early-bird passengers arriving to start snaking through the security lines. Where did I want to go? That was the question now. Where was I going to go when the entire world was at my fingertips?

Maybe I’d just keep traveling until I ran out of money or found someplace that felt like home to me. That notion was surprisingly attractive, bouncing around from one place to another, not knowing a single soul in contrast to the small town that knew all of my family’s business. For the first time, it would be just me. Not the Corbins. Just Avery.

It was terrifying and empowering all in one, but I wasn’t just Avery anymore.

Until I signed those divorce papers, I was a husband, the second half to a marriage. Paisley didn’t depend on me. She didn’t depend on anyone. But she was my wife through a series of unfortunate occurrences. For better or for worse. It had been on the worse end of things for quite a while. What would it take to make things better? What kind of understanding would Paisley and I have to arrive at?

I thought it would be enough to tell her that I loved her, but it hadn’t. She’d rejected me thoroughly, informing me that my love for her wasn’t going to be enough unless I could find it in my heart to love ranching, as well. The ranch was inextricable from Paisley’s existence. That’s the way she felt, the way she needed me to understand what our marriage was. It was her and the ranch or it was neither. That was my decision because she refused to separate herself from it.

That hurt me. I loved Paisley, but I just wasn’t sure about loving the ranch. I’d hated my existence on the ranch for so long that it was no small wonder that the ranch had nearly killed me — well, cattle thieves on the ranch. It was a wakeup call, sure, but I wasn’t sure what I was waking up to. Could I love the ranch enough to satisfy Paisley? Could I love the ranch enough to keep her?

When had I realized that I really did love Paisley?

Had it been when I saw her on a horse, rounding up cattle with the best of them? Or maybe it was witnessing her pore over budgets and ledgers and bills and not tear her hair out like Chance did so often. She was as capable getting her hands dirty with the herd as she was managing affairs, accounts, and paperwork on the ranch.

Maybe it had been when I’d seen just how willing other men were to be seen on her arm, though that was a bit of a cop out. Watching her throw her head back and laugh, enjoying herself in spite of her business deal of a loveless marriage, watching the way people just gravitated to her, made me wonder what it was they all saw and I didn’t. It made me realize that I had been blinded to the true possibility of genuinely loving Paisley because of the expectations that had been placed on me. Consolidating our ranch with her family’s ranch had been a necessity to save our parents’ respective legacies, but the business of the arrangement had made me resent everything — Paisley, in particular.

But I knew it was when I’d seen her at her most vulnerable, there outside her father’s hospital room, waiting for me to get there, for something to happen, for someone to swoop in and save her from her distress. I’d loved her then because I knew I could be the one to save her — even if she wouldn’t be saved. I knew that I could help her in her time of need and be a good husband for once. I loved that I finally had something to offer her that wasn’t purely business, a contract a pair of wayward people signed to try and protect themselves.

I loved her. That was all there was to it. I loved her in the hospital room and I hated to see her go. I just needed to understand if I could have a life away from the ranch, if there really was a place for me that would make me feel like I belonged. Paisley had given me the go ahead, and I was here in the airport, trying hard not to stand out, trying to figure out just where my destination needed to be.

I looked at the monitor listing all of the departure times and cities, trying to find one that would take me away from all of this pain and confusion. Did I want to be a part of my family’s ranch, especially now that it had expanded so dramatically? The fact that it was Paisley’s dream to run her own ranch — along with the sad truth that it would never be possible in the most basic sense — made me want it more. With her partnership with Chance, she did run her own side of the ranch, even if he was just a figurehead to keep all the hands in line.

But running a ranch had never been my dream. I’d wanted to go away to college, to explore the world, to discover what it was that I wanted to do the most in life. All of those possibilities had been taken away from me. Now I had the chance to reclaim it.

Was Tokyo too far away? I didn’t know a lick of Japanese, and didn’t even like sushi. I knew the city had to be more than that, but going across the world like that intimidated me.

What about Cairo? I wasn’t a man who followed the news more often than glancing at the scrolling headlines on the bar television they kept on mute, but I’d heard rumblings of unrest there. Would it be safe? I’d already been shot. How could I put my life and body in even more risk?

Los Angeles seemed too close. New York seemed too typical. For every destination on that monitor, I could think of more than a handful of reasons not to go.

And that’s when I realized that of course I loved the ranch. Of course it was my home. I couldn’t see myself anywhere else because I couldn’t be anywhere else. It was so simple that I was afraid I was truly stupid.

I loved Paisley. That was the bottom line. I loved her so much that if the ranch was so important to her, I loved it, too. I loved everything she loved. The ranch was her deepest passion, and it was watching her work there that had shown me all she was capable of and more.

Maybe I’d never love the ranch as much as Paisley or my brothers loved it. But that didn’t mean it was any less my home. I just had to find my niche within it, and I thought I was beginning to have ideas on that front, ideas that I’d turned my back on for so long that I had all but forgotten them.

I strode out of the airport and toward the taxi stand, feeling stronger than I had been earlier. I had the clearest purpose for myself I’d ever experienced, and I hailed the first driver who made eye contact with me.

“I’ve got a long drive to ask of you,” I said, “but I’ve got a hell of a tip for you waiting at the end.”

The driver sized me up, and I showed him the cash. “Fair enough,” he said, and opened the backseat door for me.

I slept all the way home, trying to conserve my strength, trying to preserve the sense of purity of my plan and not overthink it. The key was to be confident, to dazzle Paisley with the deep things I had planned for myself, for the ranch.

It was nearly noon by the time we arrived at the Summers house, and I halfway expected Paisley to be working the ranch. I shoved the bundle of cash at the driver, not minding his appreciative swear at the “hell of a tip,” and went inside the house.

Paisley was asleep on the couch in the living room, exhausted from all of the drama from last night, driving to and from Dallas, trying to hold everything together even as it fell apart. She had showered and changed into clean clothes, ready to start the day, and apparently collapsed on the couch fully dressed in a rare moment of weakness.

Paisley was right — she was lots of things I didn’t understand yet, but I did understand that weak was never going to be one of them.

I had to smile as I studied her further. She had obviously been aiming to get a little work done from home to give herself a chance to rest. Sheafs of paper logs for the ranch were tucked under hear arm as securely as an infant, her lips just a few centimeters from the edges.

I gently stroked her hair, its color so similar to mine, and her hazel eyes gradually slitted open, then widened in surprise.

“This is the last place I expected to see you,” she said, frozen as if I had a gun on her.

“Why is that?” I asked her. “This is our home, isn’t it?”

“It’s precisely because it’s our home that I’m surprised. I gave you money and served you divorce papers because that was what I thought you wanted.”

I looked at her a long time, at her hazel eyes, wide in the afternoon sun, her deceptively strong fingers spread over the logs she had been poring over, her blond hair loosened and falling over her shoulders and down her back.

“I could’ve gone anywhere,” I said after a too-long pause. “But none of the places on that airport departure monitor felt like places I wanted to be.”

“But you’ve always wanted to travel.”

“I have, but not alone.”

She snorted at me. “For five thousand dollars, I bet you could’ve hired someone to travel with you — bought their ticket and everything.”

“I already have a partner I want to travel with,” I said, “and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone.”

“You’ll have to let me know what her name is,” Paisley said, sarcastic and more than a little embittered. “I’ll have to send her a note of congratulations for nailing you down.”

“Paisley, it’s you. You’re the one.”

This shocked her even more than me showing up at our marital home.

“Why? I’ve never felt a need to be anywhere except running the ranch. It’s what I was born for, what I’m good at.”

“But wouldn’t you ever want to get away just to see something different?” I asked.

“The ranch doesn’t run itself, Avery.”

“I’m not talking about getting away forever. Just for a week or two. A long weekend, even, if you really didn’t want to spend so much time with me.”

“I just don’t understand what you’re asking.”

“I did a lot of thinking. I had moments of clarity.”

“Since I left you at the hospital in Dallas this morning,” she said, dubious. She had every right to be. It seemed to be too convenient to be true, but that’s just what it was. I hadn’t been able to control when I’d come to an understanding about loving Paisley and what my role in the ranch should be. If I had, I would’ve taken care of it a long time ago and saved everyone involved a bunch of angst.

“Paisley, I love you. I want to be with you. I recognize that I haven’t been the best husband in the world, and that I’ve said and done hurtful things to you. If you still want to maintain the separateness of our marriage, if that still makes sense to you, then I accept that. You told me to do whatever I needed to do to stay in this marriage, and that’s how all of this happened.”

“This marriage isn’t something that we have to do anymore,” Paisley said. “I gave you the papers. I had the lawyers remove the stipulations about divorce. It doesn’t matter anymore, Avery. We can both be happy now. We don’t have to force anything.”

“I have no intention of forcing anything,” I said, “but I’m not signing those papers. I don’t want a divorce from you.”

Maybe it was overdramatic, but reaching into my pocket, withdrawing the documents Paisley had drawn up to orchestrate our permanent separation, and tearing them to bits made her snap her mouth shut, made her listen in a way she hadn’t been before.

“Don’t you see?” I asked. “I understand things now that I didn’t understand before. I love the ranch because you love it. I love the ranch because you hold it in your heart, and I love your heart. I would do anything for you.”

“I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do,” she said, looking just as frightened as she did when Joe Durham loomed over her all those years ago at recess. “I’ve always loved you helplessly, loved the way you carried yourself, loved your family. You all support each other, and I’ve never really had that. Maybe I was selfish for loving you so much, for wishing myself into your family.”