MADDOX
When I toldAustin I was gonna sleep on the couch, I knew in my bones it would be the last thing I said to her. Even if she cried, even if she protested a bit at first, I knew she’d walk right out the door I opened for her, and I couldn’t blame her for that.
Still, it hurts when I get home the next night—having purposely worked as late as I could again—to find it empty. The boxes she’d never unpacked don’t line the far wall of my bedroom anymore. Her half-a-million bottles of hair crap and makeup and face stuff aren’t cluttering my bathroom counter. Even the pills she’d turned down so goddamn stubbornly are gone from the kitchen counter.
It’s the same empty house I’d come home to every day since I moved out here from Mama’s, but it now felt like a tomb. Austin had only lived here for a week, but in that time, she’d given me a taste of what coming home to her felt like and I don’t think I’d ever be able to replicate that with anyone else.
I don’t think I’d ever want to try.
I don’t even head to the shower, don’t even change my clothes. I grab a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, shoot off a quick text to Jameson, turn off my phone and crack the seal ofthe bottle, falling into the age-old tradition of drowning out heartbreak.
About two weeks after Austin leaves, I open my door to Chase Cartwright standing on the other side. I raise a brow at him instead of a greeting. He hands me a stack of papers instead of saying anything. So far, I’m a really big fan of this interaction.
When I flip through the papers, my tune changes.
“Cartwright, the last two times I’ve talked to you, you’ve given me the worst news of my life.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he jokes back, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I lowballed her for it. Figured it’d help her get back to you sooner.”
I snort, retreating back into my cabin. Chase takes this as an invitation and lets himself inside, closing the door behind him.
“How do you want the money? Check? Cash?”
“Neither. Buying a bar pissed my old man off and that’s payment enough. I don’t have any use for it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours. What do those city folk call people who own shit but let other people run it? I’ll be one of them.”
“CEOs,” I deadpan. I flip through the papers a bit more. “A hundred thousand?”
Chase nods, looking around the living room. There’s not much to look at, so I’m not sure why he’s snooping, but I’m more focused on my phone than on him. “She started at one-fifty. Tried to get her down to sixty, but she’s a stubborn thing, isn’t she?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
His phone chimes a second later and his face goes through the oddest sequence of expressions—excitement battling with irritation. “You told Bailey to wire me ahundred grand?”
“Did Bailey just text you and tell you I did?” He doesn’t answer, but I don’t need him to. “Then it would appear that I told Bailey to wire you a hundred grand, doesn’t it, Cartwright?”
I grab the same pen I’d left on the counter for Austin to sign these very same papers a few weeks ago and sign the bar back over to myself, crossing out the $1 sell price Chase had included and writing $100K.
“God, the lawyers in this town must fucking hate you. Paperwork isn’t your strong suit is it?”
“Add ‘em to the list at this point. You know where the office is, don’t you?” I ask, ignoring his quip about the paperwork. Sure, tossing a property back and forth and barely penning out bills of sale probably wasn’t the right way to go, but it wasn’t like Chase, Austin, and I were going to be getting into any legal battles over a bar none of us seemed to want.
Chase huffs out a laugh. “Get out of your house, got it.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You know, you Whittakers sure get grumpy when your hearts get broken,” he says as he heads towards the door.
“I’d imagine Bailey’s attitude towards you has a lot more to do with you being a cheating piece of shit than having her heart broken,” I tell him, shoving him the remaining few inches and slamming the door behind him.
I take back everything I said back in February. I hate that guy.
Most nights, when I was feeling lonely, I grabbed my bottle of whiskey and took enough swigs to lull me to sleep. Tonight, I’m out of whiskey and haven’t made the trip off the ranch to buy more. In truth, I haven’t left the ranch at all since Austin left. Another thing about small towns—you don’t get to grieve in private. I don’t feel like answering a million and one questionsfrom the busybodies at the grocery store about if I know where Austin is and what happened between her and her father.
Instead, I drive my pickup back to the old willow tree on the property to celebrate the last day of the season before the guests start piling in and the ranch feels like it’s more of an amusement park than a home for the next several months.
Chase and Bailey used to spend time out here back when they were in high school and we were all pretending we didn’t know what they were up to. In the years since they broke up and Dad died, I took it over as my own spot to retreat to.
Laying back in the bed of the pickup and looking up at the stars, I think about how Chase compared me to Bailey. It wasn’t the first time I’d been compared to her. We had a lot in common, including our dislike of being around groups of people or having to bullshit our way through conversations we didn’t want to be a part of. That’s why Jameson was in charge of the guests and she just dealt with the social media and financial crap.
