Page 55 of One Night Bride
I loved Esme.
“Fuck.” I sat down on the dirt, hay poking through my clothes. The mare came over and nuzzled my arm. I stroked her nose and considered how fucking dumb I was.
“So what are you doing sitting down?” Ruger looked like he’d sucked on a lemon.
“What?”
Killam stepped forward, the legs and arms he hadn’t quite grown into flailing all around. “If you love her, go get her. Tell her that.”
I shook my head. “I did, buddy. I told her I loved her and I even proposed. For real this time.”
Ruger frowned. “She said no?”
I huffed. “She said yes and then the next day told the world I was a mistake. Is it so wrong to want your wife to acknowledge your existence?” I got agitated just thinking about it and the mare smartly moved away. “I just got out of running the ranch and doing what I wanted for the first time and then I found myself in a marriage with a woman who was trying to control me too. I had to conform myself to her narrative. Fuck that.” I picked up a small pebble and threw it between the wood slats of the stall.
“Did you talk about it? Tell her you didn’t like what she was asking you to do?” Killam sounded wiser than his seventeen years. Then again, the first half of his childhood was in a household where arguing and yelling was the only way to communicate.
I swallowed. “Yeah, kind of.”
Ruger snorted. “You yelled at her and stormed off, didn’t you?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Fucker knew me too well.
Killam stepped between us. Not that I had any intention of hitting Ruger from down here on the ground, but that was what he always did. Killam was all about keeping the peace around here.
“Not that you asked, but here’s what I would do. Go back to Auburn Hill and put everything on the line for her.”
I opened my mouth to interrupt, and he shushed me. The little shit I’d helped raise for almost ten years actually shushed me.
“Put everything on the line for her instead of expecting her to do that for you.”
My mouth opened to argue, but his comment spun my brain in a thousand directions. Is that what I’d done? Expected her to change her whole life for me when I didn’t do the same? By staying married, I’d gain the business I wanted so badly. If we didn’t stay married, I’d still have the ranch. Really, there was nothing to lose.
But she stood to lose the one thing she valued most in life: her business.
“Fuck,” I muttered. I’d asked her to put everything on the line for me while not doing the same for her. I’d been playing it cool while she stood to lose it all.
Ruger clapped Killam on the back. “This kid is a fucking genius.”
Killam smiled, and even though I’d gone numb at the realization hitting me upside the head, I found peace in that smile. He didn’t do it often, so when he did, I considered myself grateful to see him happy.
Ruger cracked up, snorting like an asshole, but successfully cutting the tension. “You called your marriage a fucking oopsie-daisy.”
Killam barked out a laugh too. The two of them hunched over, howling over my speech at dinner last night. The edges of my mouth began to tip up despite myself. Despite the ache in my chest that was still there, it held a note of possibility too.
Maybe Esme and I were done. Maybe we weren’t.
I wouldn’t know until I talked to her like a rational adult and told her how much I loved her. Until I gave her an actual choice on how we could handle things instead of barreling in with all my own stipulations. If she still wanted the divorce, I’d give it to her. But not until I’d pleaded my case.
24
Esme
“Cut and run!”
I threw a soggy tissue at the television, giving Emma Thompson my opinion on what she should do now that she knew her fictional husband was cheating on her. Was there anything better for getting the tears out than a rerun of Love Actually?
Izzy walked into the living room and sighed, seeing the mountain of tissues next to me, the movie currently playing, and the state of my hygiene. I’d cancelled all my client meetings for the week, choosing to stay in gray sweats that matched my outlook on life. If wallowing was a sport, I’d take home the first place trophy.
