Feisty Red: Three Chicks Brewery #2

by USA Today Bestselling Author

  “Definitely,” Sullivan admitted. “But it’s a good shock. He’s a cool kid.”

  Elizabeth made another note, and Sullivan would have paid a lot of money to read that paper as Elizabeth asked, “Does your son know you’re his father?”

  “Yes, we told him last week.”

  She looked up from her notepad. “You and your ex told him?”

  “That’s right.”

  Elizabeth set her pen down on the notepad. “So, you and your son’s mother are talking again?”

  He nodded, and seeing that he didn’t feel the need to hide anything, he added, “Among other things.”

  Elizabeth remained stone-faced. She uncrossed her legs then crossed them again, regarding Sullivan intently. “Just so I have all the facts: you’ve reunited with the woman you say you left behind, only to find out you have a son you didn’t know about. This is a lot for anyone, Sullivan. How are you feeling about all this?”

  Good. Amazing. Happy. But considering the tension on Elizabeth’s face, he figured that was the wrong answer. “How should I be feeling about this?” he asked.

  She responded with a soft smile. “That’s not for me to answer, Sullivan.”

  His chest squeezed. He tried to sort through all he felt, but it seemed impossible. He looked to her window, where a tree danced in the wind. “I’m not sure I need to feel anything. It is what it is. We can only move forward now, and everyone seems happy.”

  “Interesting perspective,” Elizabeth said.

  Sullivan’s gaze snapped to her, his chest heating under the firmness in her eyes. “But you think it’s wrong?”

  “No perspective is wrong,” Elizabeth countered gently. “But I would ask you: how is that perspective working for you in your life?”

  His lips parted to say everything was fine and things were good, but he shut his mouth tight. For nearly seven years, he’d been running from his choice to leave River Rock behind. He’d taken women to his bed to forget the one woman who held his heart. Now he was back, and while he felt like he and Clara were healing, he still had a lot to face. “I’d say that perhaps my perspective needs some tweaking.”

  Elizabeth gave a gentle nod. “If I could offer you some advice, I would say this: you need to go back, Sullivan, revisit the pivotal moments that shaped your life up until this point and face them. Not only for yourself, but for your son.” And for the mother of your child, she didn’t say aloud, but he heard anyway. She set her paper down on the table. “You’re with me because something in your life isn’t working and it’s leading you on a path that’s hurting you. But to work on that, you need to face the things that put you on this path in the first place. There are no shortcuts.”

  He glanced away to the window again, swallowing hard. “I can’t face the reason I left River Rock. Both of them are dead.”

  “Here on Earth,” she said so softly, drawing Sullivan’s gaze again. She placed a hand on her chest. “But not here.” She tapped her chest once more. “Here, they are never dead.”

  Sullivan felt the ground shake beneath him. He rose, moved to the window, and stared out, wishing he could get in a big gulp of fresh air. “So, what are you suggesting here? I go and chat it out with my parents in the cemetery?”

  “If that would help, then, yes,” Elizabeth said, matter-of-factly from behind him. “I’m not here to give you the answers, Sullivan. I’m here to help guide you. Your life is yours. The time we’ve had together is all we’ve got. Have you done everything you came here to do?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “And what if I haven’t?”

  Her smile became all too knowing. “Then, you owe it to yourself to find peace. If you feel you’ve got what you needed out of our sessions then great, but—”

  “You think I haven’t?”

  Again, she gave a polite smile. “I think you’ve shown up. But you’re edgy. I can see you’re looking for peace, Sullivan, and to find that, you need to put in the work. You need to face things you don’t want to face. And ask hard questions.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “What questions?”

  “Why did you run from a woman you obviously loved? Why has it taken you seven years to come home?” She hesitated like she knew those questions were like knives to Sullivan’s gut. “Go back to the place where you hit a dead end and your life forked in a new direction. See what you find there.”

  Sullivan looked back out the window, watching the leaves flickering on the branches. He knew exactly where he needed to go to find that fork in his life. The one place he hadn’t been since he was twenty-one years old.

  Home.

  The gloomy, rainy morning had come and gone, and Clara had finished up lunch and put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher when there was a knock at the door. With Amelia busy in the brewery, Clara hurried to answer, expecting a delivery. However, when she opened the door, she found Sullivan, looking…different. There was a stillness about him that she’d never seen before as rain battered the ground. “Is everything okay?” she asked, opening the door wider.

  He gave a small nod. “I know you’re working, but could you take some time away and come with me somewhere?”

  She glanced at her watch. 12:32. “I’ve got an hour or so before I’ve got a meeting scheduled with our lawyer to finalize the contracts.”

  “I’ll get you back before it starts,” he promised.

  Lost in the tense set of his eyes, she recognized that dark pain. “Should I be worried?”

  “No, I’m all right,” he said, twining his warm fingers with hers, holding strong. “Truly. I just want you with me.”

  Her heart flipped, overexposing all the soft spots to him, and she went with him without further thought. Curious, but letting him think through whatever was on his mind, she stayed silent next to him on the drive as the windshield wipers worked to clear the sheet of rain off the windshield. Until she realized he was heading to the one place she thought he’d never go: his childhood home. The light blue two-story house with the simple perennial gardens. “Have you been by here yet?” she asked, wondering why he’d come here.

  He shook his head, put the truck in park, and turned it off, emotion filling his eyes.

  The street was quiet, save for one man walking his dog down the other side of the road with an umbrella and a rain jacket on the dog. For Clara, Good memories lived on this street, and she assumed for Sullivan too, until those memories faded into all the bad ones.

  A beat passed. “Did you talk to your dad after you left?” she asked, breaking the silence, needing to hear his thoughts.

  “No,” he said, with no hint of remorse in his voice. “When I left, I left him behind.” He studied the house, running a hand through his hair. “I’m surprised the house is still standing. I figured someone would have knocked it down and rebuilt it.”

  “Well…it’s still standing because your dad left it to me.” Sullivan’s head whirled so fast toward Clara, she laughed softly. “You never knew?”

  “No. Never,” he stated, shaking his head slowly. “But I also never returned the lawyer’s phone calls or letters when he contacted me. I had my agent, Marco, tell him to donate whatever money my father had to a cancer charity. I signed the necessary documents, and that was that.” He paused, his eyes searching hers. “Why would he leave you—”

  She could see the exact moment when he realized why, and she nodded. “It’s complicated. He knew Mason was yours, but I’m not sure that’s the only reason he left me the house.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  She let out a long breath, leaning her head back against the headrest before answering. “After that day I confronted him, I didn’t see your dad for a while.” She looked out at the house she’d had painted last year by some students looking for work. She’d had a kid down the road cut the grass, and she tended to the gardens when she could. But the house had remained empty because Clara had no idea what to do with it. “But after a while, I heard he’d lost a lot of weight and was doing really b
ad, so I brought him food once a week and left it on the porch.”

  When she looked back at Sullivan, his expression went blank, revealing nothing. “Why would you show him that kindness after what he did?”

  Back then, she’d questioned her sanity too. “It’s hard to explain. It’s not like I liked him. I didn’t. Actually, back then, I hated him for what he did to you. But…” She looked out at the house, and her heart ached, remembering that time. “But I guess a part of me understood him. I knew how it felt to have someone you love ripped from your life.” She felt every bit of the silence and turned back to Sullivan to explain. “I’m not saying I thought he wasn’t a horrible person for doing what he did to you, but I couldn’t leave him to…” She paused again and then shrugged. “I just couldn’t let him rot in this house. I wanted…”

  “To remind him that someone cared.”

  “I guess something like that,” she agreed with a nod. “And he was, and always would be, Mason’s grandfather.”

  Sullivan watched her closely, his expression closed off while a hundred things likely played through his mind. Finally, he glanced down at his hands, head bowed. “He didn’t deserve your kindness, but he was lucky to have it. He never came out when you dropped off the food? Never talked to you?”

  “No.”

  Sullivan’s head lifted, his gaze raw with pain. “Then, how did he know about Mason?”

  Clara recalled that day and inhaled against the swell of emotion squeezing her throat. “I was picking up wine at the store. Mason was only three then. But we were going in, and your father was coming out. I almost didn’t recognize him.”

  “He looked like a drunk?”

  “Worse than drunk,” Clara explained. “He looked dead.” She shut her eyes, wishing she could forget that day. “I’d never seen anyone look like that before. When he saw me, he froze, and I could tell he wanted to say something. Maybe even thank me for the food.”

  Beside her, Sullivan’s voice was soft. “Did he thank you?”

  She swallowed the hard lump in her throat and looked Sullivan’s way again, finding his expression full of longing. “I think he almost did, but he looked down at Mason, and it was like he’d seen a ghost. I didn’t have to say anything. Your dad knew right then who Mason was.”

  Sullivan rubbed the back of his corded neck. “What happened then?”

  Clara remembered this part with a smile. “Mason, being Mason, stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hello, I’m Mason Carter.’ Your father didn’t say anything, but he did shake Mason’s hand. I thought that was it, but right before he walked away, he looked at me and said, ‘You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.’”

  “Jesus,” Sullivan breathed. He thrust his hands into his hair and dropped his head, a slight tremble rolling through him.

  Emotion rippled across Sullivan’s face, and Clara felt each one of those emotions deep in her core too. “I take it that means something to you?”

  Sullivan glanced her way, and his voice shook. “It’s a quote my mom used to always say to me.”

  Tears filled Clara’s eyes as Sullivan became blurry next to her. She reached for him, needing to get closer, squeezing his hand tightly. “My God, Sullivan.”

  Sullivan blew out a long breath, tipping his head back. “Maybe he wasn’t all the way gone.”

  “Not that day,” she said, placing her other hand over the top of his, and repeated, “Not that day.”

  A long moment settled between them. The rain continued its rhythmic taps against the windshield. Sullivan watched her, and she watched him right back. It occurred to her she was there for one important reason—to remind him he wasn’t alone. So, she kept silent, letting his soul recover from the damaging memories that had haunted him for years.

  Until Sullivan broke the silence. “I want to do better. I want to do right by Mason. And by you.”

  Knowing he needed to let all this go to move forward, she cupped his face. “You can’t change the past, Sullivan. What’s done is done, but you can choose a better future, where you forgive what’s happened and find peace.”

  His gaze held hers, a thousand things being said between them without anything being said at all. “I thought moving away would fix everything for everybody.” His eyes skipped past Clara and landed back on the house. “But this house, the damage done here, I was running from it. And I’ve never been able to stop running.” When he looked at Clara again, there was strength and resolve in the depths of his eyes. He leaned closer and took her chin in his grip. “How can I ever repay you? I’d like to say thank you for everything you have done, but I’m not sure that’s enough. Or will ever be enough.”

  “It’s enough, Sullivan.” She threw her arms around him, holding him tight, feeling the last strands of what stood between them break apart. “It will always be enough.”

  11

  That Saturday evening, Sullivan felt a shift in his chest, a connection to life, growing in a way he’d never experienced before or expected. Surrounded by the Colorado mountains, with their snowy peaks, he clicked his tongue, sending the horse beneath him cantering forward. He was at Beckett’s workplace, Blackshaw Cattle Farm and Guest Ranch. He’d learned earlier from Mason that family rides were something Clara and Mason did together often, and the Blackshaw family had some good horses they could rent to ride. Ahead of him, Clara and her sisters rode Quarter Horses while Mason was atop a Pinto pony, a black cowboy hat on his head, and Hayes was next to Maisie on a dapple gray stallion. The sun would set within a half hour, and the Colorado sky was showing off with its warm orange and purple hues. When Sullivan got closer to the group, he called to his horse, “Whoa.” The chestnut gelding slowed to a walk next to Beckett.

  “Was wondering when we were finally going to get you out for a ride,” Beckett said with a smirk, riding atop a stunning roan mare.

  “I’m sure I’ll feel this tomorrow,” Sullivan said, adjusting the reins in his left hand. “It’s been a long time.”

  Beckett smirked then gestured ahead. “Things are going well, I see.”

  “Better than I hoped,” Sullivan admitted, settling into the quietness around him and the swishing of the long grass against his horse’s leg as they ventured farther into the meadow. “Want to tell me what happened there?” he asked, gesturing toward the woman Beckett couldn’t take his eyes off.

  His friend blinked and looked Sullivan’s way. “Amelia is engaged to someone else. Isn’t it pretty clear what happened?”

  Sullivan gave an easy shrug. “Probably to some, but I remember our talks about her.” Beckett had been smitten, and he’d done nothing to hide that fact.

  The corner of Beckett’s eyes tightened as his gaze returned to Amelia again. “She wanted to see what the world had to offer, so she went to the big city, and I let her go, thinking she’d come back to me.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  Beckett snorted. “She came back with an idiot for a fiancé.”

  Sullivan considered what he’d heard as his horse set a steady pace across the meadow. The scent of warm earth and sunlight became all-consuming. Mason kept trotting ahead, and he’d hear Clara yell after him. The kid was a good cowboy, and Sullivan wondered if that was his future path. “So, that’s where you left things, then?” Sullivan asked, turning his focus back onto Beckett.

  Beckett’s gaze slid Sullivan’s way, and he nodded. “She’s happy. Who am I to get in the way of that?”

  “Fair point,” Sullivan hedged. “What happens if she’s ever not happy?”

  Beckett’s grin turned wicked and determined. “Then, she’ll be mine again.” With a click of his tongue, his horse shot forward at a gallop and then slowed as he settled in next to Amelia, who gave him a smile filled with warmth.

  Yeah, maybe they weren’t done just yet.

  “Mason, that’s too far ahead,” Clara yelled. Again.

  Sullivan squeezed his feet, and his horse broke into a floaty lope, reaching Mason quickly. “Where are you off to?” Sul
livan asked.

  Mason kicked the pony’s sides, frowning. “He won’t go faster.” The pony practically snarled and gave a little buck.

  Sullivan laughed as it jolted Mason out of the saddle. “That’s probably a good thing. Go on over with your aunts, buddy. Need to stay close, all right?”

  “Fine,” Mason said, pulling on his rein and giving the pony another kick. The fat animal barely trotted back to the group.

  Sullivan made a kissing noise, and his horse shot forward until he slowed him again, settling in next to Clara.

  “Thank you for that,” she said with a sweet smile from atop her horse. “Sometimes he forgets horseback riding can be dangerous.”

  Sullivan smiled back. “Maybe he needs something that moves faster than a turtle.” When Clara laughed, he added, “He’s a good little cowboy. Is there anything he can’t do?”

  She gave a knowing look. “He’s athletic. I wonder who he gets that from.”

  Sullivan chuckled with her, rested his hand holding the reins on the horn of the saddle, and breathed in the fresh air. Birds sang and chirped in every direction as shafts of the golden sun lit up the meadow in patches. The others were well ahead of him, and after hearing Mason was athletic and taking the private moment, he said, “We haven’t discussed all this yet, but sports and everything else are expensive, and I owe you child support.”

  She shook her head, adamant. “You don’t need—”

  “I do. I need to,” he countered.

  The sun hit her face just right, bringing out the red hues in her hair. She watched him closely then offered, “All right, then let’s do this; we’ll get in contact with a lawyer and see how much you would have paid. Whatever that amount is, let’s put it into a savings account for him for college. Is that fair?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Makes sense.”

  She smiled and exhaled, tipping her head back and soaking up the last couple of hours of daylight. She’d never looked more beautiful as she continued, “We can talk later about financial help going forward once we get everything else figured out.”