by Selena
“I’m supposed to be dating this lush?” I had asked.
“I don’t give a damn what you do with her,” Nash had said. “Fuck her, don’t fuck her, I don’t care. But for fuck’s sake wear a rubber if you do. You knock her up, and the baby’s coming out pickled in vodka.”
It was hard to forget that image.
My squeaky-clean reputation hadn’t relaunched Amy into stardom as intended. Everyone loved to watch a train-wreck rise from the ashes, Britney Spears style. But they liked the train-wreck better. Amy had been fun, a lot of fun. What had started as a favor to Nash had become something almost real, or as real as any relationship I was allowed to have.
But a train-wreck by any other name was still a train-wreck. Eventually, it became clear that she wasn’t ready for sobriety. Just 5 Guys’ European tour ended, and I’d gone home. Still, she’d been fun for a while. Most of them were. Only Laney lasted longer than that, the notes of her song etched into every broken piece of my soul. A constant reminder of what could have been, what had been, before I’d fucked it all up.
Life could be good, if I could just figure out how to get back to the place where I’d gone wrong. I was determined to do just that. After spending the day writing a song, I called Nash. Of course, he didn’t answer. He liked to do things on his own terms. By evening, I was pacing my room like a caged lion. I set my guitar in its stand and stood staring out the window, my hands buried in my hair. I couldn’t leave now, not if there was a chance. Before I put my career on hold, though, before I risked throwing away everything I’d worked so hard for, I had to make sure.
From across the fields, I could feel Laney’s presence, could almost smell her there, waiting for me. Calling to me. I had to see her. I’d been denying it for weeks, but I couldn’t pretend any longer. I needed her, and if I didn’t try now, it would be too late. This was my only chance, and I’d be damned if I was going to let some lame-ass college boy stand in my way.
That guy didn’t know Laney like I did, didn’t know the taste of her like the ocean, the salty wildness that even she couldn’t tame. He didn’t know the whisper of his skin on hers inside the song of a Kentucky night, with the grasses sighing in the fields that stretched to eternity around us. The siren song of her didn’t call to his blood the way it called to mine, the music of Laney that only I could hear.
It was time I answered.
July
thirteen
Laney
I found Oscar in the stables, cleaning the brushes. “Good evening, senorita,” he said when I walked in. “Nice day for riding, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Now that the heat’s finally broken.”
Though Oscar wasn’t the best groom we’d had, my mother had saved his job more than once when my father tried to fire him. I had a pretty good idea that it was because of his penchant to work shirtless, and to call everyone senorita in his sexy accent. More than once, I’d caught my mother admiring the scenery from the veranda when he was outside spraying down the equipment with his brown skin shining in the sun, water droplets clinging to his shoulders, his tight jeans wet from the spray.
“Saying buenos noches to your horse?” Oscar asked.
“I think I’ll take an evening ride,” I said. “Saddle Pegasus, please. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Si, senorita,” Oscar said, giving me a little mock salute. I returned to the house, wishing I could ride now instead of doing what I was about to do.
To stall, I called Piper first. As usual, she gave me sound advice and encouragement, but eventually, I had to hang up and make the call I did not want to make.
Rationally, I knew I shouldn’t make it at all. I should leave well enough alone. But I had never loved Paul the way he deserved. It had always been a plot, from the beginning, meant to lead me here, to this moment. After all, I’d accepted Paul’s first invitation for two reasons—he was everything Brody was not, and he was infatuated with me. That would show Brody.
And now, I had something else to show Brody—how it felt to fall madly, irrevocably, shamelessly in love, only to have your heart wrenched straight through your ribcage, pinned to a billboard, and used for target practice.
But there were lines I was unwilling to cross, and cheating was one of them. If I was going to give Brody enough hope to fall in love with me, I might have to do things that would cross that line. I’d already done one thing. And though I did feel a little guilty about what I’d done with Brody under the tree the night his grandfather went to the hospital, I felt more guilty about how little guilt I felt.
That was what had sealed the fate of this engagement. Because I should have been wracked with devastating remorse. Our relationship had never been one that could devastate, but I’d thought my love for Paul would grow with time. But that wasn’t fair to him. Once, when I had expressed my concerns about the imbalance of emotion between us, my mother had told me that it was more than fair. I got to marry a man with a good, stable, respectable job, who would never cheat. Paul got to marry a beautiful, intelligent, well-bred woman, the perfect accessory for a lawyer starting out at a new firm. “Honey, that’s the way things have been done since the beginning of time,” Blair had said. “You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”
I did feel bad, though. I’d felt more obligation to make my mother happy by getting engaged than I cared about making Paul happy. My mother had understood my choice to marry Paul, even if she preferred the cheating, lying manwhore next door. I suspected that mostly, Blair just wanted an excuse to throw a ridiculous party.
But I couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer. It was one thing to mutually benefit from our relationship, as my mother had said, and another to cheat. No matter how little I loved Paul, I was never going to do to him what Brody had done to me. No one deserved that. And if I didn’t do this now, I’d be no better than Brody. I needed to focus on Brody’s downfall right now. Maybe, once I’d gotten Brody out of my system for good, I really could fall in love with Paul.
I hit the call button.
After three rings, Paul answered. “Hello?”
“Hey,” I said. And I realized that’s all I had to say to him. Even after a month apart, I didn’t miss him. I wasn’t bursting with things to tell him or dying to know what he was doing.
“What’s up?” he asked. “How are you? Your parents?”
The longer I let the conversation go on without telling him the intent behind it, the worse I would feel. And Paul was not a southerner. He would appreciate my straightforwardness. “So, listen, I was thinking maybe we should take a break.”
The silence stretched on and on. Five seconds, ten.
“Break off the engagement?” he asked after the eternity.
“Well. Yes and no.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Laney. Yes or no?”
This was what I hated about talking to him. How he made me feel stupid and scatterbrained. I knew what I wanted, but before I could articulate it, he jumped in. “So which one is it? You can’t sort of break off an engagement. Once it’s broken, it’s broken. There’s no halfway on this.”
“I didn’t say break up,” I said. “I said maybe we should take a break. Take some time apart.”
“We’ve been apart for over a month,” he said. “I’m coming to stay next weekend. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” I said. “That’s why I’m calling now. I think you should… Not.”
“Is this your mother’s doing?”
I scoffed. “It has nothing to do with my mother.”
“Are you sure? Because I know how you idolize her. Did she tell you I’m not good enough again?”
“She never said you weren’t good enough,” I said, my back stiffening. “I already told you that.”
“I know, I know. It’s my fault, like everything else, because I took it the wrong way.”
“She said we all make compromises in a marriage. Both of us. Not just me,” I said with as much patience as I could muster.
We’d had this fight too many times.
“I’m not blind, Laney, and I’m not stupid. I know what she meant. You know what she meant. Everybody at that engagement party knew what she meant.”
“Well, maybe she had a point.”
“She had a point?” he asked. “So now you think you’re too good for me? I thought we were on the same side here. A wife should always have her husband’s back. I should have known better than to let you go home for the summer.”
I drew myself up even straighter, as if he could see me. “Let me?”
“She’s never appreciated what I can offer you,” he said. “But I thought you had enough sense to make your own decisions.”
“Oh, trust me, Paul. This decision is all mine.”
“Spending the summer with your mother is obviously influencing you in a negative way. Otherwise you’d be smart enough to recognize this for the mistake it is. I hope you’ll really think it through before you make this decision.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said through gritted teeth. “That’s what I called to tell you. I’m not saying never. I’m saying we take a break, and we’ll talk again in… I don’t know, another month. At that time, we can evaluate where we want to go from there.” I was sure that Paul would appreciate my very practical proposal. Which just went to show that maybe I wasn’t as smart I’d thought.
“I don’t think so,” Paul said coldly.
“You don’t think we can talk in a month?”
“No. That doesn’t work for me. I’m half of this relationship, so I make half the decision. And I don’t agree to this separation.”
I took a deep breath. I was shaking a little. I’d been prepared for him to fight it, but not quite so unemotionally. I’d thought he might beg a little, maybe even cry. He’d always held onto me when I was unsure, had always pleaded his case in his lawyerly fashion. But I forged onwards, jumping off the cliff without a parachute in sight. I hadn’t been single for more than a month since I was sixteen. Maybe it was time.
I stood from where I’d been sitting on my bed, almost stepping on Majesty, who yowled a loud reminder at me. “Then I guess this is goodbye.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t accept your terms.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “We’re not married. You can’t refuse to sign breakup papers.”
“No, but I can refuse to accept your proposal for a separation,” he said. “I’ll be there next weekend. We can talk then, without your mother’s interference. Then maybe I can talk some sense into you.”
“Paul, I said no. I don’t want to see you right now.”
“We aren’t going to be like your parents, where your mother has your dad by the balls. You might be just like your mother, but I’m not your father.”
“You better not show up here,” I said, pacing to the window. “Or you’ll learn a thing or two about how fathers react to men who don’t take their daughter’s no for an answer.”
Paul clicked his tongue. “Laney, Laney, Laney,” he said. “I expect more of you. I thought you could stand up for yourself, not hide behind threats of your daddy’s big gun. Such an antiquated tradition, from back when fathers owned their daughters’ chastity.”
“Don’t worry,” I said sweetly. “I know how to shoot Daddy’s gun, too. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I simply thought that maybe, since you didn’t respect my answer when I said not to come, that you might respect another man’s.”
“I respect your answers when they’re yours, not some silly idea your mother put in your head.”
“I never took you for the type who wouldn’t respect my wishes, Paul,” I said. “But now I see that you are. So I guess it’s a good thing we had this conversation. I’d hate to have married you before I figured it out. Then I really would have to accept your refusal of an amicable ending. As it is, you don’t have to agree. I haven’t promised you anything. I don’t owe you anything.”
“The ring on your finger tells a different story.”
“Come on, Paul, you’re in law school. You know that doesn’t count. An engagement isn’t legally binding.”
“You told me you’d save yourself for me.”
I winced, remembering that conversation, how important it had been to Paul that I be a virgin before he gave me a ring. So I’d lied. At the time, I’d found him ridiculously stuffy and old-fashioned. Now I wondered if he wasn’t just a controlling pig. Here I’d thought he was such a nice, logical guy. Our relationship was so different from mine and Brody’s that he must be different from Brody. But he was just a different breed of asshole.
“I said a lot of things,” I said, sinking to the edge of my bed and mindlessly stroking Majesty, who had made himself at home on my pillow. “But I thought it might be nice to reevaluate those promises before we put them in writing. And now I see I made the right choice. So thank you for that.”
With that, I hung up.
Ready to get out of my room, but not for the reasons I’d expected, I jumped up again. Whatever my feelings for Paul, I’d thought I’d be wracked with guilt after the breakup. Instead, I was furious.
I threw on a pair of jeans, knowing I’d need a longer ride tonight. I was in no mood to play games with Brody, so I didn’t bother with makeup or even brushing my hair. I’d had enough of men for the day.
When I entered the stables, Oscar was on his way out. I’d taken longer than expected with my phone call. “Buenos noches, senorita,” he said, giving me an oddly shy smile. Coming from a guy who looked the way he did, I always found that smile unexpected and adorable.
I gave him a polite smile. “Goodnight. Thanks for getting Pegasus ready. I’ll put him up.”
“Of course,” he said, but he looked very confused as I passed him. I was aware of him lingering in the doorway, as if unsure if he could go home now that I was there.
Pegasus’s stall was empty, so I turned to scan the stable to find where Oscar had hitched him. I couldn’t have missed him tied to the hitching post outside, and he usually didn’t put him in the corral when I was about to ride. “Where’s Pegasus?” I asked, turning to Oscar, who looked panicked and guilty at once.
“I thought you must have meant to go riding with your friend,” he said. “He came by just as soon as the horse was ready. I asked if he wanted to wait for you to come down and join him, but he said no.”
“What friend?” I asked, my voice brittle.
“Mr. Villines,” Oscar said. “I’m sorry, senorita. He told me you were expecting him. I can saddle one of the others, if you would like.”
“Yes, please do that,” I said. “I’ll wait.”
“I’m very sorry, Miss Laney.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s not your fault. In the future, please phone up or text me, not my parents, if anyone asks for Pegasus while I’m home.”
“Of course, Miss,” he said, lifting a saddle from its hook. I could see why my mother liked to watch him work. He really was nice to look at.
I had too many other things on my mind to pay much attention, though. I needed to ride, to really go, to clear my mind of the swirl of emotions for a while. Of course, just when it looked possible, Brody Villines had stolen my horse, forced his way into my thoughts once more. I was supposed to be thinking over Paul’s words, not dwelling on the distant past. But as I set out across the pasture on Thunder, my father’s prized black stallion, I couldn’t shake my fury and indignation.
He had some nerve coming by now and messing with my head. I was supposed to be relaxing at home for the summer, deciding where to travel on my year off. Brody had come home and ruined it all, getting back under my skin like he had all those years ago, reigniting a fire in me that I’d thought was dead forever. Maybe I’d never gotten rid of it. All these years, it had lain forgotten under the ashes, a coal waiting to burst into flame the moment Brody breathed life back into it.
Or maybe it was just dormant, like a bad case of herpes. Once you had it, you couldn’t get rid of
it.
Brody had some nerve coming by the house, charming my mother, and God—kissing me again! How had I let that happen? As if I’d forgotten what he’d done. Like he’d never chosen an endless supply of groupie pussy over me. He had some nerve coming along and taking my horse, my only comfort, without even asking, stealing it out from under my nose. It looked like he was ready to play games, too.
It was time for me to take things up a notch.
fourteen
Brody
I was ready for her when she came. When I heard the horse’s hooves from far off, I smiled. I still knew Laney well enough to know she’d come looking for her horse. And she knew me well enough to know that I’d be waiting for her at the gazebo. She came thundering up on a black stallion, her blonde hair whipping behind her, like a warrior queen in a fairytale.
I was ready to battle Laney Tucker if her heart was the spoils of war.
“You stole my horse,” she snarled at me, swinging her leg over and dismounting in two seconds flat.
“I had to get you out here somehow. You haven’t answered my more polite requests to see you.”
“Fuck you, Brody Villines.”
“I hope you will,” I said, smirking at her as she leapt forward, shoving me in the chest. I caught her elbows.
“Never,” she growled. “You’re probably carrying all kinds of diseases.”
“Never say never,” I said, pulling her closer.
“I said never.”
“You know it’s going to happen,” I said. “Why are you fighting it so hard?”
“Because you’re an asshole,” she said, her face losing some of its fury. Her lip trembled, and her voice came out quieter with the next words. “Because you broke my heart.”