by Lexie Ray
“Is that going to happen all the time?” I wondered as Zoe hopped in the passenger seat with Tucker and we took off.
“I don’t know,” Chance admitted. “I didn’t even know this was happening.”
“Hadley told me something about it a while back,” I said. “I thought it would be better by now … only maybe this is something you don’t really cure.”
We were quiet for nearly the rest of the ride back across the darkened passengers, all of us with our own thoughts. Hunter was still haunted by Afghanistan, even after finding love and experiencing a successful physical rehabilitation. Would Peyton continue to be haunted by what her father had said and done? I couldn’t help but draw a parallel.
“You did really well tonight,” Chance said, putting his hand on my arm before I could jump out of the bed of the truck as we rolled up to the trailer.
“Glad I’m not wearing that knee brace anymore,” I said. “Glad we were able to come together, and that I could do something useful for this place.”
“You’re useful to this place all the time,” he said. “Even when you’re canoodling with Peyton Crow.”
I raised my eyebrow. “Canoodling? Really?”
He shrugged. “Find your happiness wherever you can.”
I took a moment to ponder that. “I have, I think. I think she’s my happiness.”
“She knows guns, and she knows horses,” Chance said, thoughtful. “She’d be an asset around here, too, if she wanted to come and work for us.”
“We’re pretty married to the horse rehab project,” I said. “And I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to stand firm on that. We had a lot of success when we first started out. It’s something we’re both really good at, and something we love.”
“I think the rehab project is a good idea.”
“I’ll tell you another thing. This can tie in with the dude ranch. It would be seamless. People could even help with the horses that were done with the rehab and just needed exercise to further their treatment. Think of how empowering that would be for visitors to take part in, how important.”
“Emmett.” Chance was grinning. “Listen to me. I’m telling you yes. It’s a good idea. We’re going to invest and make this a reality.”
My eyes bugged out. “Really?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. It’s your baby.”
“And Peyton’s,” I said, my mind spinning.
“Well, you’d better go tell her the good news,” Chance said. “We need a business plan by Monday.”
“Monday? It’s freaking Friday, Chance.”
“Welcome to the business world,” he said, the grim look on his face making me wonder if he was joking or serious.
The truck took off, and I turned toward the trailer to see Peyton sitting on the steps outside, her face in her hands.
“Peyton, what’s wrong?” My heart was in my throat as I approached. “Is it Sugar? Is the leg worse than what you thought?”
“Sugar’s going to be fine,” she assured me, smiling briefly. “The vet was so astonished when he got here that he even let me use the X-ray machine. Everything is going to be perfect.”
“That’s good news,” I said, but she looked so crestfallen that I pressed her for answers. “What else is going on?”
“Nothing,” she said breezily. “You know, I think I’m just tired.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, drawing out the second syllable. “It’s just … you look sad.”
She gave a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not.”
I snagged her good wrist as she made a move to walk away. “You can tell me anything. What is it? Did someone say something to you? Is it your father? Your mother?”
Peyton laughed, but it had a brittle edge to it. “I guess you could say that, yeah.”
“Did you run into them? Did you hear anything about them?”
She shook her head. “It’s not like that.”
“Then are you going to tell me what it’s like?”
“What do you want me to say, Emmett?” Her shoulders hunched, defensive, as I struggled to ferret out just what had upset her so terribly. “Why do you even care?”
“How could you say that? I care about you. I care what happens to you, what has happened to make you feel like this.”
“You don’t even know how I feel. That’s a ridiculous statement.”
“You don’t feel happy, that’s for damn sure. I want to know what’s wrong so I can help you, if I can. That’s why, Peyton. People who love each other help each other through whatever they can.”
“You can’t help me with this,” she said. “This is mine.”
“Well, maybe it would help if you talked about it.” I felt so useless around her. She was the gifted one, the one who would always know so much more about horses than me, who could silence even the most high-strung ones with a quiet word. I felt like I was just riding on her coattails.
“I don’t think it would help,” she said. “There isn’t anything to be done about it. It’s stupid for me to even feel bad about it.”
“It’s not stupid to feel bad,” I countered. “You feel bad because something’s wrong. Tell me. I just want to see if there’s anything I can do to help you feel better.”
“Can you make me a time machine?” she asked, lifting her dark eyes to meet mine at long last.
“Peyton, if I could make a time machine, everything would be very different already,” I said.
She laughed, but it sounded more like a sniffle. “Yeah, I bet. You probably never would’ve met me.”
“I didn’t say that.” I had been thinking about my parents. If they’d been here, maybe Hunter would’ve never gone to Afghanistan in the first place to break his body and his mind. Avery would’ve been able to pursue his own interests, I would’ve gotten instant support for the horsing operation, Tucker would’ve probably even stayed in the police force, and Chance … well, Chance would probably be out doing whatever he wanted to do. The next big NFL star, a homegrown Texas boy with a heart of gold and an arm of steel.
And yet … things had happened to us that weren’t so bad. If not for Afghanistan, Hunter never would’ve met Hadley. If not for the dire straits we found the ranch in, Avery never would’ve given a life with Paisley a chance. Zoe wouldn’t have found her way to our house, Toby in tow. And I wouldn’t have wandered into the bar in town, crushed with rejection on all sides, and approached Peyton. Life had a funny way of working out, even if it was in ways that we couldn’t really have imagined before. If I had a time machine, maybe I wouldn’t change anything at all. Life was throwing us all curveballs, sure, but that didn’t mean we weren’t still hitting them out of the park some of the time.
“I just want a time machine so I can go back and keep my parents from ever crossing paths,” Peyton said. “That’s all I’d want it for.”
“But that would mean you’d never have been born,” I said. “That would be sad.”
“Not for me, it wouldn’t be. You don’t understand what it’s been like.”
But I did, however unwillingly. In a bigger city like Dallas or Houston, maybe, Peyton had a chance of finding her own place in the world. She was whip smart, gorgeous, witty, and had a bright future in front of her with our horse rehab venture. But in this small town we seemed to be stuck in, it was impossible. Everyone knew she was the product of an ill-fated tryst between her mother and Dax Malone. Everyone knew what Mary Crow had done upon Peyton’s birth. And everyone knew just what Peyton had to do to ensure her own survival — even if no one respected her for it. In spite of her wish for a time machine to go back an undo everything, Peyton was stunningly resilient, a survivor’s survivor, scratching out a life no matter what it took.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said. “But I’m not sorry I know you. You brighten up a room when you walk into it.”
“You just wait ten or twenty years,” she said, looking down again. “Looks don’t last forever.”
“Your looks aren’t the
only thing you have going for you,” I informed her. “There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, but most people don’t know that.”
“I wish my parents knew that.”
It broke my heart, that simple statement, that desire for validation from the two people who’d had a hand in creating her. I didn’t know that it would ever come. Peyton might grow old and gray waiting on it.
“I know it. And now all of my family knows it, too. Soon the whole town — and beyond — will know it. Once we open our business and the word spreads.”
“I wish that my family was like yours,” she said, almost absentmindedly, then blushed scarlet.
“My family has problems, just like any other family,” I said, thinking of all of the various issues we continued to work through.
“You have people who love you and support you,” she said. “The only reason my father kept me around was because he couldn’t stand the idea of his land going to someone not related to him by blood — and because the law compelled him to do so. I wished I didn’t have his blood running through my veins. I wished I had anyone else’s blood in my veins. You just don’t understand what it’s like, having parents who would rather you were never born. They’ve wished it so hard and so often that I find myself wishing for it, now, too.”
“Peyton,” I said, my heart pounding, “my family is yours, if you want it.”
“You can’t just offer to give me your family, just like that. That’s not the way those kinds of things work.”
“Think about it,” I said. “You’re already living on the ranch.”
“Just until I get better from everything.”
“Why leave? You don’t have to go anywhere else. We can start our horse rehab on the Corbin-Summers Ranch. We can do what we’ve been dreaming to do all along — and I bet we’ll still be able to screw Dax Malone out of his clients. Chance has given the green light. The rehab project is a go.”
This last prospect made the corners of Peyton’s mouth lift briefly.
“I have more family than I know what to do with,” I said, slowly grinning as I realized how true that statement was. “Four damn brothers? I’d love to share that with someone else. It gets to be downright overwhelming, when you get to thinking about it. And I don’t know what it is — if we’re just trying to fill the hole that our parents’ deaths left, or if that absence just makes us more aware of the holes in other people — but our family just keeps on growing. Hadley, Zoe and Toby, Paisley … if you want in, it’s yours, the Corbin family.”
Peyton had held herself taller and taller as I was speaking, but then she shuddered and sagged again.
“You don’t want me in this family,” she said. “I’ll screw it all up. I’m not a good person, Emmett.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You know what I am.” Her eyes darted around, like someone might be hiding out, ready to emerge and confirm what she was saying. “Everyone knows what I am. You don’t want the stain of that on your family. You’ve already done me enough favors. The charity can end already.”
Why couldn’t she see how I felt? I’d thrown the words at her long enough and in so many combinations that they made my own head spin. Why hadn’t one of those definitions fit?
“Peyton, I love you.” I kissed her to add an exclamation point on that declaration. “I want you to stay here. To be my partner in both business and life. I want you to become part of this family because, whether you’ve realized it or not, you are already.”
She swallowed hard, her fingers touching her lips gently. “Emmett, I want to love you. I … I think I even do. But goddammit, I don’t even know how to love myself.”
I cupped her face in my hands. “You listen to me, Peyton Crow. You are the most beautiful woman in the entire state of Texas. You’re a hell of a shot, you bend people to your will, you have more than a way with horses — you possess a singular knowledge that even flummoxes the veterinarian. You are full of potential, and if people can’t recognize that, then they can go fuck right off. Deep down, I know that people living in this town have to at least admire you because of the way you’ve built a life for yourself in spite of terrible odds. And you know what? Fuck them, too. Because you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks of you. Your best days are ahead of you. And if I have to sit you down for hours on end every day and night and worship you, to hope that some of that love finally rubs off on you, that you can find just one kernel of something inside of yourself to love, then I would gladly do that.”
Peyton laughed, but it wasn’t the derisive, harsh sound I’d grown to know all too well. It was small, girlish, bubbling up from inside of her, and I slowly came to realize that she was embarrassed — pleased, but a little shy at my outpouring of praise.
“If you’re not careful, Emmett Corbin, you’re going to give a girl a huge ego. I won’t be easy to get along with then.”
“Yes, by then, you’ll be ready to move on to bigger and better things than little old me.”
She pressed her finger to my lips, then replaced it with her mouth, breathing so much longing into me it was all I could do to hold on to her, to try and preserve the feeling of this moment for all time.
“By then, I’ll know how to love you the right way,” she corrected. “The way you deserve to be loved. The way I want to love you.”
And for right now, that was enough. I knew that we had so much more growing to do, but like a sprout from a seed, our love would keep growing. And when it finally did blossom fully, no matter how much time had passed, it would be the most beautiful flower in the world.
Epilogue
I inhaled sharply, and turned around to try and get my bearings even though I had been here before.
Oh, yes. I had most definitely been here before.
It was just that I didn’t ever think I’d be here again, didn’t want to ever be here again.
I thought this place was so firmly wedged in my past that not even a crowbar could dislodge it.
But here it was anyway, the dark night nearly impenetrable, no help from any moon or stars above. I could only just make out the copse of trees just ahead of me, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, accustomed to the hours and hours I’d been out here searching.
I came out here to search every night, it felt like. Every goddamn night of my life ever since it had happened.
The breeze rattled through the tree branches, and I walked as gently as my combat boots would allow through the dry underbrush, turning my radio off so any careless chatter from my peers wouldn’t frighten my quarry. I’d turn it back on in a few minutes. It wouldn’t do to be wandering around out here in the wilderness while one of my fellow officers was in trouble, calling for help.
But something about those trees, that rattle of the wind, the way the clouds continued to creep closer to the ground, foreshadowing a foggy morning ahead, made my intuition prick and sing.
Trust your gut. It is never wrong.
I swallowed hard and unsnapped the cover of my holster, resting my hand against the gun that lay snug within the leather. It was a comfort, but not a guarantee. Nothing was guaranteed. Not for me, not for anyone.
Not for who I was looking for.
The wind rose again and I stopped short, cocking my head into it, then out of it again. I wasn’t mistaken. There was something more than wind there. There was a voice. A cry for help.
I was torn with indecision. There were too many choices to make right now. Did I turn my radio on to call for backup, and risk discovery? Did I hurry ahead and see if I could make the arrest that the entirety of my department had been focusing on for the last year-and-a-half of my life? Did I call back, tell that voice I was here, that I was coming to help or hurt or avenge or whatever needed to be done?
I did the only thing I could do, the only plan that carried the fewest chances of fucking all of this up. I kept going, quiet as a mouse, stepping sure and true. I’d walked out on the ranch at night with my brothers for both work and play. I knew how to
stay quiet in the great outdoors when it was important.
And this was so important — the culmination of so many hours of work by both myself and my colleagues. This could really be it. We could really get him this time.
The voice reached my ears again as the wind picked up, and I quickened my pace, hoping that the rattling in the trees would mask any twigs I snapped in my haste. I could tell the voice was female. I could tell she was afraid. I could tell that she was weak with either injury or exhaustion, or perhaps some combination of the two.
I could tell I needed to hurry.
It was always the same, that last desperate slog through the long grass and thorny bushes and soft sand beneath my boots. It always took too long, always one second too late, always failing.
I couldn’t help but speed up to a run, discretion be damned, as I could make out a lone figure at work among the trees. I shouldn’t have been able to see him, shouldn’t have known exactly who it was, but I did. It just made me run harder, especially when I realized what he was doing.
He was filling in an open grave.
It could’ve been anyone at work out there — a farmer digging a post, someone working the land just like my family had for generations. But it was too late for that kind of work. And the screams didn’t fit, either.
I couldn’t wait any longer. This had to stop. I was going to have to be the one to stop it.
“Drop the shovel,” I said loudly and as calmly as I could manage. “This is the police. This is over. You are through.”
“You are through, Tucker Corbin.”
There was the jerk of recognition as I heard my name on the lips of a serial killer. It wasn’t shock — it went way beyond that. I knew that he knew my name. He’d been sending me taunts for months on end. It was abject horror, the realization that I was face to face with the man who had been terrorizing the Dallas-Fort Worth area for all this time. There was no relief, at least not in the way I imagined this moment might contain. It was only horror.
Then again, it could’ve been the gun leveled at me.
I tried to draw my own gun, but a shot rang out too quickly, hitting me in the gut so suddenly that it didn’t even hurt. It was just a dull impact, like a sucker punch, and I was looking down at the front of my uniform, halfway expecting to see a slow spread of blood blossoming from my front like a flower. Then another bullet hit me in the chest, making me lose my wind, and another in the arm. That one did bleed, slicking down my arm like thick, red water.