by Lexie Ray
I found an even greater form of escape once I realized that no one was using my trailer. After I was done with working the ranch, I’d have a quick shower and change my clothes in the trailer without ever having to return to the Summers house and then get into town just when the bar was getting good — well, as good as it ever got. I’d slam shots and buy rounds for people I couldn’t afford and run up my tab until I was too bleary to care anymore about Paisley or the ranch or anything else. Even the hangover the next morning was a pleasant distraction, something to pay attention to with Gatorade and aspirin and antacids instead of Paisley.
Paisley was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. I popped into my trailer in a cloud of dust one evening and she was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for me, her hat in her hands.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, shocked so thoroughly that it sent my heart pounding in my chest.
“What are you doing here, Avery?” she asked. “You’ve been spending so much time here that I thought maybe you had another wife hidden away in here.”
“This is my trailer,” I said. “I come here to shower off after a long day on the ranch.”
“You have an entire house,” she said, examining the brim of her hat, picking at some invisible speck on it. “You have three different showers there to pick from. What about this one attracts you?”
I shrugged. “I guess I got used to using it. Like a little bachelor pad.”
“Bachelor pad.” Paisley repeated me like she was testing out the words. She didn’t seem like she liked the way they tasted, even if she’d called it that in the past, before we were married. “What do you want, Avery?”
“To take a shower,” I said, pointing to the bathroom.
“And then what?”
“I’m going to the bar in town.”
She shook her head. “What the hell for?”
“To drink.”
“I keep the refrigerator fully stocked,” she said. “On top of everything else — working the ranch, managing business with Chance, trying to figure you out. I could … I could cook you some dinner, if you want.”
I peered at Paisley. Was this some other hat she was putting on now? Hadn’t she gotten what she’d wanted out of this arrangement? I found it extremely hard to believe that she wanted to be a wife, now, too, in addition to having an equal partnership on one of the biggest ranches in the state.
“Do you have a problem with me going out to the bar?” I asked, leveling a gaze at her.
“I have a problem with what it means.”
“What does it mean to you?” I asked her. “To me, it’s a way to unwind after a long day working the ranch. I like socializing there. It’s a good place. I’m treated well. I have fun.”
“You belly up to a bar all by yourself and you drink until you’re stupid,” she said. “You call this piece of shit trailer a bachelor pad like it was something you actually enjoyed. You drive home drunk or you leave my truck there at the bar, overnight, parked crooked in a gravel lot, in favor of sleeping it off at the home or hovel of whoever takes pity on you when you inevitably pass out at the bar. My only comfort is that you probably can’t get that whiskey dick up for any of the bitches who try to get themselves a little slice of Corbin.”
I stared at her. Her hazel eyes blazed at me, but the rest of her face was placid, as if she hadn’t just insulted my manhood and my coping mechanisms all in one breath. It was a poker face I both admired and feared, because I could never truly understand just how enraged she was until it was much too late.
“Can you blame me?” I asked her. “I didn’t want any of this.”
Paisley sucked in a breath and then let it out with a whoosh. Part of me was a little bit afraid of what she would’ve said if she hadn’t taken a second to breathe.
“I know that this is not an ideal setup for either of us,” she said. “But it isn’t so bad, is it? We came into it clear headed, didn’t we?”
“I was desperate, and so were you,” I said. “That doesn’t mean we have to continue being desperate and miserable.”
“Are you really that miserable?” she asked. “Do I make you miserable?”
“The situation makes me miserable.” Why did I feel so guilty for admitting the truth of what I felt?
“What would help?” Paisley asked. “What can I do to help assuage some of this misery? Could I move your trailer closer to our house, maybe? I could help you retrofit it, make it really nice. A man cave, even. We could redo any of the rooms in the house — the whole second floor, even, or the garage — into a space that would be just for you. Would that help?”
I didn’t know if she was genuinely trying to offer solutions or if she was just insulting me. Did she really think that any of that would make a sham marriage and a lifelong commitment to a ranching life I didn’t love whatsoever any better at all? It was a joke. Or maybe it was a dig at me.
“The only thing that helps is the time I get to be away from you and everyone else at the bar,” I said. “And that’s where I’m going right now, just as soon as I get cleaned up.”
“Who are you getting cleaned up for, Avery?” Paisley demanded, watching me shuck my clothes off, her blond eyebrows drawing closer and closer together.
“Myself.” I’d been astride a horse for ten damn hours. Couldn’t she see that I needed a shower?
“If you’re fucking around on me, Avery Corbin, so help me God …”
“What would I even be fucking around on, Paisley?” I demanded, wheeling around to face her, not caring that I was totally nude, sweaty and angry. “We don’t like each other, let alone love each other. This marriage was to benefit the ranches and nothing else. You stood to gain a whole hell of a lot more than I did —”
“Bullshit,” she said, standing up, her eyes narrowed to hazel slits. “I saved the Corbin Ranch singlehandedly. That was my family’s money that made the bank and Bud Billings go away. You should be kissing my ass each and every day, making me goddamn breakfast, eating my —”
“What makes you think I give a flying fuck about the ranch?” I asked, taking a step closer to her so I could stare down at her, using my height to my advantage. “You think I give one shit whether this place stays afloat or goes under? I don’t. I don’t care if a fire sweeps through here or aliens abduct the entire goddamn herd and all of us are out of fucking jobs. You could not pay me enough money to care about this ranch.”
There it was. The truth I had never particularly wanted to say out loud to anyone, and I’d blurted it all out to my wife, the woman I never wanted to marry.
Paisley’s mouth had dropped open, but she snapped it shut again. “Then why did you marry me? Tell me the goddamn truth. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“What?”
“If the only reason you married me was to save your family’s ranch — which you obviously don’t care about — then why bother?” She looked so fierce there, her hair standing up around her head in a series of fly-aways from her braid, challenging me to tell her why she wasn’t good enough.
“Why bother asking? What’s done is done. Just let me be.”
“Let you do whatever you fucking want even though you’re married to me? I don’t think so.”
Without warning, the full anger my wife was evidently feeling toward me blazed to life on her face, and she seized my cock in one hand. I didn’t have the time or inclination to so much as yelp when she squeezed it, lifting her chin toward my face so that our lips were inches apart.
I didn’t know if it was a good idea to talk at this point, but I couldn’t just stay silent at a time like this.
“Paisley, I don’t know what you think you’re about to do, but I think it’s a better idea if you just let, um, me go and we walk our separate ways.”
She squeezed harder. “Everyone thinks I’m just some dumb bitch,” she whispered harshly, our noses brushing.
“I assure you that no one thinks you’re a dumb bitch.” If anyone did and said it
to her face, their most precious of cargoes would be decimated in her rancher’s grip. She was the strongest woman I knew — a fact I was now intimately acquainted with.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Everyone sees you out and about without a care in the world, flirting with any idiot who thinks they’re marrying into money.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again, not sure what I could say to that. I let out a gasp of relief as she let go of my dick, and backed away, out of her reach.
“They think I’m a cuckold or worse,” she said, her shoulders sagging.
“What’s worse than a cuckold?”
“A woman who doesn’t marry for love.” Paisley’s eyes were red around the rims, I noticed for the first time, and I wondered if she’d been crying while crunching numbers or flying around on her horse or however else she spent her day. It bothered me, momentarily, that I wasn’t sure about how the woman I’d bound the rest of my life to spent her working hours, but I shook it off.
“Both of us knew what we were getting into when we entered into this contract,” I said. “I know you can’t say anything different about that.”
“I didn’t think you’d be fucking around on me, Avery Corbin,” she said. “I thought you were a classier man that that, but I was wrong, apparently.”
“I’m not fucking around on you,” I said, even thought I knew it was falling on deaf and dumb ears. Paisley was dead set on having this fight, and there didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop it.
“Do you think that’s what you need to be doing?” she asked, switching tacks suddenly enough to worry me. “Do you think you need to be fucking around on me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said diplomatically, even though I had an inkling.
“You sure as shit do. Would you be compelled to be faithful — in spirit and commitment — to me if I put you out to pasture?”
“I’m not retiring.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Paisley raked a hand through her messy hair. “I mean in the stud sense. Would you come home to me if I told you that you could fuck anyone you wanted?”
“Why would you tell me to do that?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “You tell me, Avery. I’m sick and tired of trying to climb inside of your head and figure you out. You don’t want to let anyone in, least of all me. What’s going to make you happy?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. Hell, I knew I shouldn’t have said it. But I still said it all the same because I didn’t know what else Paisley wanted me to say.
“I’d be happy if we weren’t married in the first place,” I said.
That was a cruel statement to make, even if it was the truth. I should’ve said anything other than that. Paisley had tried to make it work, and I had fought her on everything every step of the way. She hadn’t been who I’d wanted, and this ranch hadn’t been what I’d wanted, but I hadn’t been able to ignore my family’s dream. Paisley had been a means to an end, and now that the end goal had been achieved, I was left unhappily married.
“Here’s the thing Avery,” she said, lifting her eyes slowly to meet mine. “I’m not going to be made to look like an idiot. I’m not an idiot. I look like an idiot already with you out partying to all hours with anyone who drifts in to the bar. If you want a divorce, it will cost you and your family dearly.”
“I don’t — I didn’t say —” Why was divorce such an ugly word? It spoke of failings, of sadness, and even though I felt like my marriage with Paisley was a disaster, divorce seemed so … final.
“I bet you didn’t even read the contract, did you?” she asked, scowling at me. “If you renege on our deal, the entire Corbin-Summers Ranch will be mine.”
“What?” The world felt like it was falling out from under my feet. “Why the hell would the contract say that?”
“Because I put it in, idiot. As collateral.”
“Does … does Chance know?”
“Yes. Only he’s convinced you’re in love with me. I don’t think he knows a thing about love. He doesn’t even know he’s in love with Zoe.”
Chance and Zoe? My mind puzzled over that one for the briefest of moments before turning to matters closer at hand.
“You really have trapped me in this, haven’t you?” I demanded. “Are you proud of yourself? Is this what you needed to get married? And you wonder why I drink so damn much.”
“I didn’t want you to take advantage of me,” she said, wiping at her eyes angrily — how dare those tears fall. “I needed your help, and you needed mine. That’s why we’re married, and that’s why we’re going to stay married. Go. Go out all you want. Fuck anyone on this goddamn planet if that makes you happy. But at the end of the day, you are stuck with me, fucker.”
I didn’t know what it was that made me kiss her, but I did, long and hard, tripping and sending both of us plummeting to the bed. I was helplessly reminded of our sloppy first night together, but this time, neither of us were drunk. We were fucking angry with each other, tearing at each other’s clothes, buttons flying off of Paisley’s shirt, her fingernails digging into my hips as she ripped my pants down.
“You’re fucking stuck with me,” she said, red-faced and wild-haired, angling her hips upward in an attempt to capture my length and push it into herself.
“That door swings both ways.” I slammed into her without a bit of preparation, and she screamed. It had to have hurt her — it had hurt me, that fucking friction — but when I paused, she slapped me right across the face.
“Don’t you dare fucking stop,” she said. “Finish what you’ve started.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, or who started what, or what we were doing hate fucking each other, but my dick was buried to the hilt in Paisley’s tightness and it had been so long since anything had felt this good — and bad at the same time.
There wasn’t a bit of love in this, raw, the trailer rocking in time to our movements, Paisley screaming in counterpoint, grappling with me, kissing me and biting my lip so hard I was forced to flip her around, on her hands and knees, safely accessible, declawed. I pounded into her, holding on to her hips, brutal and exacting. I didn’t know who had started what anymore, didn’t know anything, just wanted to come and let my orgasm carry me away.
And yet it was Paisley who came first, grabbing at the pillow on the bed and crushing it against her chest, arching her back as it glistened with sweat, gasping, struck wordless at some chord I’d struck deep inside of her. Paisley seized whatever joy she could find in this coupling even though I had been inexcusably rough on her. It took me by surprise, this tightening of her body, and I came with a yelp, the satisfaction I had been building for myself utterly derailed, unraveling until I was out of control, sated and still wanting, not sure what was supposed to happen yet.
I pulled out of her, sat back on the bed, and she trembled for a few moments on all fours before sitting carefully on the opposite end.
“Is that what you needed?” she asked, looking at me with dry, clear eyes, gingerly pulling her clothes back on. “A good, old-fashioned fuck?”
“I …” God, there was never the right words to offer this woman. Anything I could say might be wrong. “That was too rough. I apologize.”
“I like it rough sometimes. You’d know that if you cared to find out.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying okay to everything I fucking say.”
“O — fuck.”
“Exactly.”
I watched her in silence, trying to put together the enigma that was Paisley, until I remembered my own state of undress and tucked everything back in.
“Do you have something to say to me?” she asked. “Because now’s your chance. I have work to do, and you have drinking to do. Both of us are busy people.”
“I just want to know what you want, Paisley.”
She laughed. “What I want? My goodness. The things I want. Most of them are fairy tales, I’m afraid. But here’s something
that’s realistic: I want you to do whatever you think you need to do to stay married to me. I told you that this didn’t have to be bad, but you seem hellbent on it being bad. So do what you want. Do whomever you want. Go where you want. But understand one thing.”
She looked at me hard, close enough to kiss me, but she didn’t.
“That’s the door that swings both ways, Avery.”
I didn’t know what she meant until I saw her that night at the bar, dressed in the tiniest dress I’d ever seen in my life. She was laughing and throwing back shots with a group of men, cheering them on in their stupid drinking games, pumping her arms in the air, her breasts jiggling , the only thing keep her ass above the hem of the dress her constant tugging at it.
An idiot could understand her game, and I was that idiot. If I got to stay out until all hours, come home drunk, and wake up the next morning as if nothing had happened, so did she.
I sat down at my usual barstool and tried to ponder that, tried to figure out how I felt about this new phase of our marriage. This is what I’d been doing to her. What she was doing now was her business.
Then, one of the men she was drinking with turned to look toward the exit and my heart stopped. It was none other than Joe Durham, the boy who’d driven elementary-aged Paisley nearly to tears, bullying her about her mother, her appearance, her hobbies, and just about anything else he could think of. He’d been a big, oversized boy, and he’d transformed into a big, oversized man. Maybe she didn’t realize it was him, that she was actually socializing with her tormentor. But then she turned to him, laughed extra loud and long, and laid her slim, manicured hand on his arm.
I couldn’t hardly explain the feelings that raged inside of me. The first one I recognized was jealousy. Paisley was mine, even if sometimes I wished she wasn’t. She shouldn’t even be here, out at the bar by herself. Beyond that, she shouldn’t have even been talking to other guys.
The next was outrage. Why Joe Durham? What did he have that I didn’t? I’d inherited the Corbin good looks, even if I hadn’t inherited the Corbin love and passion for ranching. Did she favor Joe over me? Did she like her men big and beefy and dumb instead of lean and blond and capable?