Whiskey Reveals

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  Fox gave her a strange look but waved back before walking out of the building. Her shoulders immediately relaxed as soon as he wasn’t in her line of vision, and she forced herself to move a little faster. About ten minutes in, however, her stomach revolted, and she had to practically jump off the elliptical and search for the restroom sign. Thankfully, the door was close to her, This time, she ran.

  She emptied the contents of her stomach into the bowl, her body shaking. She didn’t think it was from working out. It was probably just stress. Moving to a new town, opening up her own business, and meeting her formally one-night stand all in the space of a few days would set anyone’s nerves on edge.

  And as she sat on the cool tile, her back resting against the stall wall as she tried to figure out if she were going to dry heave again, she really hoped that was the only reason.

  Chapter 7

  Fox laughed as his butt hit the ground when his nephew Nathan tackled him. Dare and Loch cracked up laughing, their bellows echoing throughout the neighborhood as Fox winced from the impact of the fall. At four years old, Nate had grown into an amazing kid who was going through a growth spurt. He was all legs and long arms at this point, but somehow, the kid had wrangled that into a driving force into Fox’s side. Of all his family, Fox had been the late bloomer, and now, watching his nephew grow up, Fox had a feeling he would be the smallest one again before too long. Nate might only be four, but the kid was going to be a big dude, just like his dad.

  “Did he hurt you?” his mom asked from the back porch as she shook her head. He could see her fighting a smile, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes as Nate stood up and held out a hand to him. Soon, Fox was on his feet and mock glaring at his mother for daring to smile or even laugh at her son’s fate.

  “Are you talking to me or Nate?” Fox asked, rubbing his hip.

  Nate wrapped his arms around Fox’s waist and grinned, a gap in his smile since he’d recently lost a tooth. How on earth had his nephew grown up so quickly? It felt like only yesterday that Nate was a little, wrapped bundle of crying and poop.

  “I didn’t hurt you, right?”

  Fox shook his head and roughed up the kid’s hair a bit. “Nope. I’m just acting like an old man since you surprised me. You’re getting good at tackling.”

  “Uncle Loch is teaching me because of peewee. And you’re not old.” A wicked gleam shone in the kid’s eyes, and Fox grinned. “Dad’s old.”

  “I heard that!” Dare called out from the porch.

  Fox nodded, forcing his smile back. “You know, your dad is old. And Uncle Loch’s even older.”

  “Uncle Loch can kick Uncle Fox’s ass, so he better watch what he’s saying,” Loch drawled from the porch with the rest of them.

  “Language,” their mother and Kenzie said at the same time, and Fox laughed out loud right along with Nate.

  The two women looked at one another and starting giggling, sending the rest of the family into fits, as well. Kenzie was new to their family but had already fit in perfectly. Nate had a great mom that he lived with half the time, and Dare got Nate the other half now, but Kenzie was filling the role of stepmother with an odd ease that Fox thought perhaps surprised her. It was never easy stepping into a situation where the kid already had two loving parents who were part of his life, but Kenzie was finding her way around it and was, thankfully, friendly with Nate’s mom.

  Fox leaned down to tickle Nate, who ran out of his grasp so, of course, he had to try to follow the kid. Loch and Dare joined in and, soon, there were four of them rolling in the dirt and grass and trying to outdo one another.

  When Fox got a kick to the ribs from Nate’s foot as Loch held the kid upside down, he bent over, trying to catch his breath while the others stood back, sweaty and covered in dust and dirt.

  “I think I’m too old to play like this,” Fox said, winded, his voice strained from the kick.

  Dare ran a hand over his jaw, wincing. “Uh, yeah, I think Loch punched something that’s not going to bounce back anytime soon.”

  “Serves you right for playing like you’re all Nate’s age,” their dad said from the porch before going inside. He’d grinned as he said it, so Fox had a feeling the old man wanted to join in but was smart enough not to.

  “Come here, baby, let me take care of you,” Kenzie said as she rushed to Dare’s side before ducking under his arm and wrapping her arms around Nate in a tight hug. “How’s my best boy?”

  Fox and Loch cracked up. Kenzie totally fit in with their family. If their sister were living there, he had a feeling the two of them would be best friends.

  “I won.” Nate beamed.

  “Of course, you did.” She winked at Dare and wrapped her free arm around his waist, and the three of them made their way back to the house. Fox and Loch stood there, watching the new family for a bit before Loch punched him in the shoulder as brothers do.

  “She’s good for him,” Loch said after a moment. His brother didn’t speak as often as the rest of them, but when he did, it was important. If the man ever rambled, Fox always knew something was wrong—or Loch’s best friend Ainsley was annoying him to no end as the two of them tended to do.

  Fox agreed with his brother on how Kenzie fit in, though. She was absolutely perfect for Dare, and the two of them worked as if they had always been in each other’s lives. They’d been through hell and back in order to stay together, however, and Fox was just glad they had found the happiness that had seemed to elude both of them for so long. And on the heels of that thought, for some reason, images of Melody entered his mind. He didn’t know why, and it worried him now that he thought about it a little too long.

  Melody was just his friend, or at least she was well on the way to becoming his friend. He hadn’t texted her or called her in the past couple of days, even though he had her number now thanks to her grandmother. But after the awkward encounter at the gym, she’d been on his mind more than he cared to admit. He’d gone back over to the home she shared with her grandmother two more times to interview the famous woman who made him smile with her stories of the long-ago past, and had seen Melody both times. But he still hadn’t had a full conversation with her without both of them bumbling around, trying to figure out exactly how to act around one another. It was hard to be friends when you started off by getting into each other’s pants.

  But even though it seemed as if it would be difficult to try and figure out how the two of them fit into each other’s life, however platonic, Fox knew he was going to keep trying. Because Melody truly needed a friend, at least that’s what he thought from the look in her eyes. What he should do, is introduce her to Kenzie and Ainsley because he had a feeling the three of them together could take over the entire town, but for some reason, he was being truly selfish and wanted Melody all to himself. That was probably another mistake, but he was good about making mistakes.

  He and Loch walked into the home his parents had raised them in, and he couldn’t help but smile at how familiar everything felt. Life might have moved along, and everyone might’ve grown up to start their own lives, but the feeling of home had never changed. His mother might have removed the wallpaper to paint, and his father might have built a new table for them to fit around over the years, but the sense of who they were as a family could never be redecorated out of this home.

  Over the years, he had shared a room with both Dare and Loch since he was the youngest boy and his parents hadn’t been sure who should get their own room since their younger sister Tabby always had her own space. So was the right of any little sister who had been forced to live with three older brothers who treated her as if she were one of their own: a girl with cooties and a baby sister to be protected all at the same time. It was no wonder she had gone to college out of state and never came back. Each of them might talk to her more than once a week on the phone, but it wasn’t the same. He had a feeling he would be making another trip out to Denver soon to see her and her husband Alex before the baby came. Since they were
the closest in age, he’d always felt a deep connection to his little sister.

  Fox let out a sigh and shook his head as everyone started to talk around him, taking their seats at the big table where his parents had set out their family dinner. Every single time he walked into the house he had grown up in, he let his mind wander to what connections and family meant in general. Maybe it was the writer in him, but he couldn’t quite get the idea of who they were as a family out of his head. According to his mother, he might be late in starting a family of his own it, but it was hard to want to start one at all when he had such a solid one to lean back on with his parents and siblings. But now, Dare and Kenzie were a unit with Nate, and Tabby and Alex were forming a family of their own all the way across the country. Somehow, he and Loch had been left behind, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. And he really wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that Melody’s face once again entered his mind along with that train of thought. He had slept with her once—well, three times actually—in the span of a night before she had walked out of his life for what he had thought was forever. They were just friends, or on their way to becoming friends—nothing more, nothing less. He needed to get the thought of her sweet curves and the way she had molded to him when they were pressed into one another at the gym out of his mind.

  Clearing his throat, Fox strategically placed his napkin over his growing erection because every time he thought of Melody, his dick did what it wanted to. He really needed to get that reaction under control.

  “Fox, did you hear me?”

  He looked up at the sound of his mother’s voice and blinked. “No, apparently, I didn’t. Sorry, I was woolgathering. What was it that you wanted?”

  His mother gave him a weird look, then smiled. “Well, Dare asked you to pass the potatoes, but Loch took care of that for you. I wanted to know what you were working on now. I know you take care of every aspect of the paper, but do you have an editorial coming up?”

  This subject he could tackle easily, even if it once again reminded him of Melody. “I’m working on that article on Ms. Pearl.” He shook his head and then corrected himself. “I should say I was working on that article. The first part is on the site as we speak since I put it up right before I came over. The rest of the article is going in tomorrow’s newspaper. If it goes well, as I hope it will, I’ll be able to write more pieces on her. Her history is worth so much more than a single article.”

  His mom beamed. “I absolutely adore that woman. Why didn’t you tell us earlier that your article had already been published? And why is it on the website before it’s in print? I know I’m not a doting great-grandmother or from the Stone Age, but I still don’t understand how media can work the way it does on the internet.”

  “Nobody really does,” Fox said dryly. “And we only put up a little teaser to get people to actually read the rest tomorrow in print or on the site. They say print is dying, but in small towns like this, that’s not always the case. And the paper still makes money even from the website. So don’t worry that you’re going to have to deal with me moving back into your basement and eating all your food.”

  “No, that would be Misty and me,” Loch said, causing the rest of the table to laugh. Fox joined in but he couldn’t help but watch his brother’s face as he did so. Misty was noticeably absent at dinner, even though Loch was a single dad who never had time off from his daughter. Things had been harder when Misty was a baby and Loch had been forced to carry the infant around at all points of his job, but between school and a very understanding best friend in Ainsley—who was practically helping his brother raise the little girl, and another subject they didn’t talk about—Loch was actually able to catch up on some sleep these days.

  But Misty wasn’t with Ainsley or any of her friends today. Instead, she was with her maternal grandparents for one of the meals that Loch had agreed to. It was awkward as hell, and Fox truly didn’t know how his niece or his brother felt about the get-togethers once they were done, but it wasn’t his place to question it unless someone asked for help. He knew his brother didn’t like Misty not being with the Collins family, and he knew calling the relationship with Misty’s maternal grandparents strained was an understatement, but there was nothing Fox could do except be there for his family if they needed him. And because he had a feeling he wasn’t the only one with his mind running along those thoughts, he went back to talking about the famous Ms. Pearl.

  “I don’t want to tell you everything that will be in the article, but did you know the stories about how Ms. Pearl actually danced for the Rat Pack are true?”

  The rest of them caught onto the conversation and asked more questions that he was deliberately coy about. He wanted his family to read his work, even if he was a little self-conscious about it. He was a writer, he had levels.

  “What about her granddaughter? I know she’s opening up that dance studio in town, so dancing must run in the blood.”

  At his mother’s words, he did his best not to react. The last thing he needed was questions from his mother—or any of his family members for that matter—about why he reacted the way he did at just the mere mention of Melody.

  “We didn’t go into Ms. Pearl’s family for this article, but if I get to do more with her, I know that’s an angle we’ll want to get into.” That was as detailed as he could get without mentioning the fact that he had the hots for the granddaughter. Plus, he didn’t know what had happened to Melody’s parents, and he had a feeling that wasn’t going to be an easy story.

  “I’m so glad that she’s opening that dance studio,” Kenzie added. “I took ballet for years as a little girl but fell off the wagon. I already signed up for her barre exercises.”

  “And I’m excited to see you in a tutu.” Dare winked, and Fox rolled his eyes.

  “And Mom and Dad and Kenzie signed me up, too.” Nate talked through his food before setting down his fork when his dad gave him a look. “My friend said dancing is just for girls, but Dad said those kids can go—”

  Dare quickly placed his hand over his son’s mouth as the rest of the table fought not to laugh. Nate had a tendency, just like his cousin Misty, to repeat every single thing the adults said.

  “Dancing isn’t just for girls,” Kenzie put in. “There were plenty of boys in my class when I was younger. And there are even more boys now. And I know that you really love playing football, and being quick on your feet will be helpful if you want to keep being the amazing wide receiver you are.”

  “Misty wants to sign up too, but we haven’t done it yet.” Loch frowned as he said it. “She has swim team, and I know as she gets older, there will be even more teams and activities, but if she wants to try dancing, I guess I should just bite the bullet and sign her up.”

  Fox lifted his chin at his brother. “We’ll make sure she gets to dance class on time. Between all of us, we’ll make sure the kids get picked up, too. I guess that means I’ll have to get better at my videography skills so I can record my best niece and nephew dancing their hearts out. And I realize that’s usually the parents’ job, but since I am in the media business, and the only uncle without a child of my own, I might as well give myself a role.” That put a smile on his brother’s face, and he knew he had said the right thing.

  Until recently, Dare hadn’t had the type of custody agreement with his ex that he did now. It’d been a long time coming, but Nate now lived with Dare half of the time, and that meant that Dare—and now Kenzie—could be there for things like dance practice, rather than just the performances. Loch, on the other hand, had been forced to do everything on his own, even though the rest of them had been there to try and help where they could. But his brother was proud and didn’t always let others help. That had changed over time, as the reality of having a young girl to care for all on his own had settled in, but it still wasn’t easy to let go of control and let his family in.

  And, once again, Fox found himself the odd man out. The others started talking about what the c
lasses would mean and how they hoped Melody would help their babies shine. He listened with half an ear, wondering how he’d gotten to the point where he was jealous that his family was starting to settle down. He was the only one without a child, but that had been true for ten years now. Well, not exactly, since Tabby didn’t have children either. But now, she was pregnant, and soon, he really would be the only one without a kid. Dare and Tabby were both married, and while Loch might not be, he still had Misty in his life. All Fox had was his work and the family dinners. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that, but he knew sitting at his family’s table was probably not the best place to think about it.

  Once again, he pushed those thoughts directly from his mind and sat back to relish his family. After dessert had been served, he waved off a second piece of pie since he knew he wasn’t getting any younger and he didn’t quite like the gym as much as his brothers did. Of course, if he could watch Melody in her very tight yoga pants and top, he might enjoy the gym a little bit more. Not that he was thinking about Melody. At all. Or ever again. Those were total lies, but he was just going to head home now and try not to think about her before he went to bed. Dreams of her had already kept him up late more than once, and jerking off to thoughts of her almost felt rude at this point.

  When he found himself sitting alone on his couch holding his phone, he frowned. He wanted to text her, but he had no reason to other than to just say hi. That’s what friends did, right? Friends could text out of the blue just to see how each other were doing. It wasn’t as if he’d never had a friend before. But he’d never had a friend where their only connection was the fact that they had slept together. He was making things so complicated, so he growled at himself and flipped through his contacts until he found her name.