by K. A. Linde
Finally, the door cracked open, and Piper stepped out. My jaw nearly hit the floor as I took in her short black dress and flats. I’d told her we were going somewhere casual when she asked on the phone, but somehow, she made even a casual dress look incredible. It hugged her curves in all the right places. Her thick, dark hair was down in voluminous waves, and her makeup was subtle but smoky. Her lips were a cherry red that made me wonder exactly what they would look like, wrapped around my dick. I was still male after all.
I cleared my throat. “Wow. You look great.”
She smiled almost shyly. “Thanks.”
“I brought you flowers.” I gestured to Blaire, who foisted the bouquet toward her.
“Oh, tulips.” She smelled the blooms that I’d gotten in every color, and her eyes met mine again. “I love them.”
“All right, you crazy kids,” Blaire joked, “I’ll hold down the fort. Have a good time.”
Piper shot her a look. “Thanks, Mom.”
Jennifer pulled Blaire back, and they both stifled laughs. They were enjoying this. All those times Piper and I had argued, had they known that it would lead here? I certainly hadn’t. I’d enjoyed watching her squirm. And now, I wanted her to squirm in all sorts of other ways.
“Ready?”
Piper nodded, and we left her house. She stopped when she got to the bottom of the stairs. “What is that?”
I arched an eyebrow. “That is a motorcycle.”
“You…drove your Harley here for our date?”
“Yeah. It’s perfect weather for it.”
“I’m wearing a dress,” she protested.
“You’ll be fine,” I said with a smirk. “The dress is pretty long anyway, and you’ll have your legs around me.”
She met my gaze with a stubborn glint in her eyes. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure would.”
“We could take my Jeep,” she offered. “It has sides and four wheels, and if you want your hair to blow in the wind, I can make it topless.”
I snorted. “Get on the bike, Medina. I even brought you an extra helmet.”
I held it out for her, and she eyed it skeptically.
“Um, you know, maybe…maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
She was nervous. This wasn’t me. This was the bike. “You said you’ve never been on a motorcycle. Are you…scared?”
“No,” she blurted so fast and then cringed. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Hey, look,” I said, moving to her side. I tilted her chin up to look at me. “Would I do something that would endanger you?”
“No.”
“Haven’t I taken care of you and made sure you felt safe?”
“Well, yes.”
I nodded. “That’s right. So, this is going to be fine. Better than fine. It’s fun. You’re going to like it. And if you don’t, we can come back and take your Jeep.”
She swallowed hard, as if debating, and then nodded. “All right. Yeah. I’m being silly.”
“It’s not silly to express your feelings,” I said automatically. “If you don’t feel safe with me, then I don’t want to do it.”
“Okay,” she said with a little more enthusiasm.
I handed her the helmet, and she fitted it onto her head. I buckled it for her and dropped my leg over the side of the bike. She took a fortifying breath. I heard her mutter under her breath, “I can’t believe I’m doing this.” And she hopped on behind me.
Having her weight against me on my bike felt fucking incredible. I had to shut down half of my brain as she settled in firmly against my back, wrapping her arms around my waist and drawing her thighs up to the sides of my legs.
“Ready?”
“Sure.”
I turned on my baby, and the deep, vibrating rumble of her engine reverberated through my bones. This was the sound of fucking joy. Pure freedom. Just me and my Harley out on the road with nothing to do but drive. A smile came to my face, even as Piper gripped tighter. Then, we were off.
Riding my Harley through Lubbock was a specific sort of bliss. Having Piper with me to enjoy it was next level. I was almost sad when we arrived at our destination ten minutes later.
Piper clung to me for dear life even after I brought the bike to a stop in a parking spot and killed the engine.
“You okay, babe?”
Her limbs went to jelly. She jumped off and passed me the helmet. Her face was flushed and she had a wide smile.
“I thought it was…great,” she admitted.
“Yeah?”
She bit her lip and ran her hands down her dress. “Mildly terrifying but exhilarating.”
“You’d do it again?”
“Yes. Can we do it again?”
Her eagerness made me want to take her right then and there over my bike.
“After dinner.”
She stuck out her bottom lip, and it took everything in me not to drag my teeth along it and suck it into my mouth. Ever since that kiss after Easter lunch, I’d wanted nothing more than to be physical with her. But if I was doing this right, then I was doing this right. We’d proven that sex was no issue. We were fucking excellent at that part. I’d never been great at more. So, here we were.
“Come on,” I said with a laugh and dropped an arm over her shoulders.
“Where are we anyway?”
I pointed at the sign for Hill Barbecue. They were a local barbeque joint that had started as a downtown food truck. I’d loved their food and been happy for them when they opened their own restaurant. It meant business was good.
“Oh, Dad loved their food truck. He was sad when they closed. I had no idea they’d opened a restaurant.”
“It’s recent.”
“My dad is going to be so happy. This is right down the street. I have a feeling we’ll be eating here a lot for lunch.”
I grinned. Good. Now, every time she showed up here, she’d think about our date.
We bypassed the large fence with Hill Barbecue scrawled in white paint on the side. The venue was entirely outdoors with picnic tables spread out around the area and their food truck relocated to a permanent locale. I’d checked the weather a dozen times before deciding on it. In a Lubbock spring, it was as likely to rain as for a dust storm to crop up, and we wouldn’t have wanted to be caught outside with nothing but my motorcycle in either.
We crossed to the food truck and put in our orders. I got the brisket, and Piper went for ribs. I was impressed. They were the messiest thing on the menu. Not something I’d think most girls—any girl—would go for. She winked at me when I mentioned it and brought her Coke over to a picnic table.
I settled in across from her with my Topo Chico. “Bold choice, Medina.”
“You’ve been inside of me. I don’t think you’re going to care if I have barbeque sauce on my face.”
I nearly choked on my drink. “Point made.”
“Tell me about those,” she said, pointing to my sleeve. “What do they mean?”
“Ah, well, some have meaning, and some I think are cool as shit.” I pushed up the sleeve of my shirt so that she could see the swirling shape of the dragon scales that traveled through the clouds and up into wings. Interspersed within the elaborate pattern were images for all of my family.
“This one is for Campbell.” I showed her the music notes that scrawled up a row of clouds. “It’s the chords for ‘I See the Real You.’ And this one is Nora.” A rose in full bloom with deep, piercing thorns. “My dad. I got this one first and built the sleeve around it.” It was an old-fashioned clock, almost steampunk, with the time set to the time I’d been born. I pointed out the cigarette smoke for Vail and the ribbon that twined with it to represent Lori. The cancer bow hidden in the clouds on my elbow was for Helene.
“And your mom?” she prompted, marveling at the stories I’d hidden inside the sleeve.
I froze at the words. I should have known they were coming. I rarely talked about her.
Her eyes swept up to mine at my
silence. She must have read my unease. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”
I pulled my shirtsleeve back down and flipped my wrist over. A dove in flight was inked into my skin. “This is for her.”
She traced her fingers over it. “It’s beautiful.”
“One of my last pieces. I don’t talk much about her.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Twenty-two. Campbell was about to turn eighteen and Nora had just had her fifteenth birthday.”
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”
I glanced down at the dove. It said so little about the person my mother actually was. “We had a…conflicted relationship.”
“How so?”
“Well, Campbell and mom were really close. He was her favorite, even if she never explicitly said that. Dad and I always got along better. When I was around twelve, I guess, something happened. I’m still not sure what, but after that, my parents argued non-stop. I tried to shield the others from the constant bickering, but it never worked.”
Piper listened but didn’t make a face or anything. She waited patiently as I told the story.
“The fighting got worse and mom moved out. Campbell wanted to go live with her. He cried for a month straight because he couldn’t see her. He’d called and begged her to let him go with her. So, she showed up one day to do just that. I’d never seen my dad so mad as when she tried to break us all up. He told her it was all or nothing. She couldn’t show up, unannounced, and break us up for no reason. Mom went away empty-handed.
“Then one day, six months later, she came home, picked Campbell up, and took him away with her.”
“Oh wow. Even after your dad said she couldn’t do that?”
My jaw clenched. “Yep. Dad was furious. They fought more. He threatened to take her to the police for kidnapping.” I shrugged. “Campbell was gone for two weeks, and then he was home. And Mom came with him, but the fighting never stopped. I thought they’d get a divorce. But they were trying to stay together for the kids.”
“That doesn’t sound like it worked.”
My face was solemn. “It didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“They stayed together all that time. Just fighting and miserable. Until one night, she stormed out in the middle of the night after a fight and was killed in a hit and run. Campbell blamed Dad for the fighting. It was all fucked up.”
Luckily, our food arrived, breaking the tense conversation. She let the heavy topic lapse, for which I was grateful.
Instead, we laughed about her latest raunchy book obsession; my interest in early 2000s emo rock, which she found hysterical; and the large amount of sauce that had ended up all over her mouth, cheeks, and hands.
“Come on,” I said, holding my hand out after she used a dozen wet wipes to clean herself up. “We have one more place to go.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You’ll like this.”
23
Piper
“You brought me to my own winery on our date?” I asked skeptically.
Hollin grinned. “Hey, it’s your favorite place.”
That was true. Sinclair Cellars was and always had been my favorite place on the entire planet. And maybe, finally, I could show Hollin what was so great about it.
“All right, it is.”
“I thought you could show me around. Tell me all the ways it’s better than Wright Vineyard.”
I snorted. “That’s not going to be hard.”
His smile was magnetic, and I wanted to lean into him. Nothing about this date was going as I’d expected. Though, technically, our first date had been with my entire family present and he’d passed that interaction with flying colors, I’d still been worried. I almost talked myself out of going a dozen times the last week. We talked on the phone, and he texted me all week. My friends were ecstatic. They said I looked happier than ever.
But trepidation had still almost won out.
Now, I had no idea why I’d been so worried. It was easy to be with Hollin if I stopped trying to fight him. If I didn’t take everything he said as if it were an insult specifically designed for me.
The last thing I’d expected when I agreed to do this was that I’d feel bad for Hollin Abbey. I had known that his mom had died. I hadn’t known about everything else that led to that moment. No wonder he had issues with dating. He clearly didn’t trust women after his mom. Not that it justified how he’d treated people in the past, but I could see the invisible scars that had created that behavior.
“So, what do you want to see first?” I asked.
“Well, I did bring one thing with me.”
“And what is that?”
He removed a bottle of wine from his bike.
I arched an eyebrow. “You brought Wright wine to my vineyard?”
He laughed. “I knew it’d get your hackles raised.” He passed it to me, and I read the vintage on the front—Abbey. “It’s the competition wine.”
My cheeks heated. I remembered how he’d refused to let me drink any of it when he found out I’d also applied for the competition. I’d been embarrassed. He’d called me the enemy. That whole night was a blur of anger.
“You were such a jerk.”
He nodded and slipped his hand into mine. “Yep. Kind of my MO, babe.”
“And now, you think I want to drink that shit?”
“Was hoping you’d see it as an olive branch.”
“Fine,” I said, taking the bottle out of his hand. “I guess we’ll do a little taste test then.”
His smile only widened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I directed him into the barn. Sinclair Cellars wasn’t a Friday night hot spot. The barn was mostly used for weddings, fall hay rides, and Christmas tours. That sort of thing. It was dark as I showed Hollin around to the back of the building and unlocked the door to the office space. I flipped the lights.
“Ah, this is where the magic happens,” he said.
I grabbed a bottle of our wine and held it out to him. “Here we go.”
“Where should we do this?”
I toed open the door that led into the barn and flicked on the twinkle lights overhead, which made it seem like we were really under the stars. I filched a pair of glasses from the bar and set them out. I tossed him the corkscrew. He caught it one-handed and pried open the cork on my wine and then his.
“You sure you want to do this? Sure you don’t want to wait for the official tasting?” he joked.
“Pour the damn wine, Hollin,” I said with a laugh.
Once the wine was poured, we each took a glass. I started with my wine. I knew exactly what it would taste like, but I wanted a baseline. He seemed to have the same thought, going for the Abbey vintage first.
“Why’d you name it that?” I asked.
Sinclair Cellars didn’t have original, catchy names. We told you what the fuck you were drinking. And this was a beautiful, full-bodied merlot that was my go-to.
“I said that Wright could go on the sign, but Abbey was the blood of the vineyard. It was going on the wine.”
I nodded, understanding. I’d always wanted Medina on the wine. I wanted to claim it for what it was. Mine. It had always been mine. And yet it had someone else’s name on it. The Sinclairs had owned it before we did, and there was no reason to fix what wasn’t broken.
“Cheers,” I said.
I tipped back the glass and took a sip of my wine. Perfect. Exactly what I’d wanted. Hollin grinned and took another full drink of it. As if he couldn’t get enough of the Abbey.
“Next?” he suggested.
I eyed him as I took the Wright wine in my hand. He cracked a smirk as he reached for my wine. We stood there for a matter of seconds. Each waiting for the other to make the move. It wouldn’t change anything about the competition in a few weeks. But it felt momentous nonetheless.
“All right, Abbey,” I said, and I took a drink.
Hollin mirrored me.
His throat bobbed around the merlot as I took in the richness of his wine. Fuck. It was good. It was really good.
We looked at each other and then spoke at the same time.
“Yours is better,” he said as I said, “Damn, that’s amazing.”
We both laughed.
“Well, fuck,” he said. “I guess that doesn’t prove anything.”
“I guess it doesn’t,” I admitted. I took another sip of his wine. “But it is good.”
“Yours is…perfection, Piper. You should be proud.”
“This is your first official year, Hollin. How are y’all making this?”
He winked at me. “Can’t tell you trade secrets.”
“Course not. Now, pour me more.” I held out my glass, and he added more Abbey vintage into the glass.
I didn’t know what was going to happen to us at the competition. We were opponents. But maybe not quite enemies anymore.
“Want to walk the fields?” I asked.
His eyes landed on my lips. “Yes.”
He slipped his arm around my shoulders, and we headed out through the vineyard. I knew the way like the back of my hand. The little circle of benches that we kept up all year even though they were only used during the fall and winter for our tours. But I breathed in the air and the darkening sky and being here, alone with Hollin.
“I’m glad we did this,” I admitted when he took a seat on the bench.
He’d finished off his glass already and set it aside. “Yeah? Me too.”
“I’m actually having a good time,” I teased, setting my glass next to his and bending down to kiss him. Our lips were tinged slightly red, and he tasted like wine. I could have drowned in that taste.
He tugged me onto his lap. “You say that like you weren’t expecting to.”
“Well, no. It’s not that.”
“You going to tell me why you really didn’t want to go on a date with me?”
I jolted slightly. “What do you mean?”