by KB Jacobs
She nodded. “Which means you haven’t been sleeping with Walsh, so you haven’t had sex in years.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. I keep tabs.” Her triumphant, all-knowing expression drove me over the edge.
“That’s it. I’m done. You’ve tried for years to micromanage my life. Hell, I joined the military to escape you, because you railroad everyone around you. Your favorite pet project has always been me. I love you, but I’m not someone you can or should control. I have my own life, and you have to stop interfering. I don’t know who on my staff is under your thumb. Probably all of them, so everyone is fired. I expect you to provide severance or employment for them, because your controlling nature isn’t their fault.” Although their lack of loyalty to me was, and I couldn’t forgive that.
I walked over to the dining room table and scooped up her laptop, closing it and shoving it into her briefcase. “There’s a charter plane out at the airport, waiting. You need to go home.”
“Damian!”
“No,” I roared, finally losing my temper. “What will it take to get through to you? I’m done! I can’t make it any clearer. You keep pushing it—pushing me—and you’ll never see me, ever again. Your days of micromanaging my life are over. I’ve tried to be nice about this, but you don’t seem to get the message.”
She looked like she was on the verge of tears. My strong, tough mother did not cry.
I blew out a frustrated breath. “Mom, don’t you see how messed up this is? I joined the military to escape you. I spent three years pretending I was gay so you would give me some space. I understand you like to control things, but you can’t control me. You won’t. Not any more. Either you accept that, or our relationship is over. I will cut you out of my life permanently if I have to. Think about that on your flight to New York.”
I opened the front door to usher her out, but then stopped and met my mother’s heartbroken gaze.
“There’s one more thing you should know. I’m pretty sure things are over between Alex and me, but you’re wrong about her being wrong for me. For the first time in a very long time, I’ve felt alive, human again. That’s because of her. She’s shown me that life can be worth the risk. Yes, I have gotten my heart broken, but you know what? After the last three years, I can positively say I’d rather have a broken heart than a non-functioning one...and that’s what I had before I met her. So regardless of anything else, she’s given me the most amazing gift in the world.”
I gently pushed my mom through the door. “Goodbye, Mom.” Then I shut the door behind her.
I leaned against it and slowly slid to the floor. If I weren’t so damn angry with her, I would probably have joined her on the drive to the airport. I had hit my limit with my mom, with all of this bullshit in general. But just like she had to face the ugly truth about what she was doing to our relationship, I needed to face some ugly truths of my own.
I had one single person left in my life...Walsh. I’d made him a promise. He’d be home in three days. I’d stay and fulfill my promise to him. I owed him that and so much more.
And then I’d figure out how to pick up the pieces of my shattered life. Again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alex
Three days. It had been three days, and I still felt like my heart was being scooped out of my chest with a dull knife. Shouldn’t this sick, shattered feeling be abating?
“So, what’s the verdict?” Melissa bounced on the balls of her feet and looked over at me like a kid on Christmas morning. I gave her a weak thumbs up.
We stood to the side of the bottling room and watched Warner and Joe settle into a new rhythm with the upgraded bottling system. It had finally arrived yesterday, and the crew had spent the whole day getting it installed and ready.
Warner hit a red button on the side of the machine to halt all the moving belts. “This thing is frickin’ amazing.”
Joe wiped his hands on his jeans and came over with a big, goofy grin on his face. “I’m with Warner on this one. We’ve got triple our old capacity, not to mention we won’t have to shut down every couple of hours to unjam the whole thing. You’re going to need to get us some more sales venues.”
I glanced down at my clipboard. Three candidates were still in the running to take over the sales manager position, but I hadn’t been able to settle on any of them. Who could I trust to launch Naked Brews into a new tier? Not that I was the best judge of character these days. I’d really missed the mark with Damian.
Melissa grabbed my shoulders and guided me back toward the break room. “We’ll leave you guys to it. For now, we need to get caught back up on the orders we do have.”
She marched me back into the Brew Pub before spinning me around to face her. “What is going on with you? You’ve been moping around for the past three days, but you need to snap out of it. Lake and Walsh will be here any minute.” She set her hands on her hips. “Does this have anything to do with why Damian hasn’t been here all week? I know I’ve been preoccupied with the grand opening coming up, but don’t think I haven’t noticed your personal pity party.”
“It’s not a pity party.” I tapped my clipboard with my nails. “I’ve been busy, too.”
“Fine, liar, don’t tell me. Just...try to fake it for Lake. She’s going to be stressed enough as it is with the opening happening in four days. Let’s not insert more drama.”
“Trust me. The drama is over. Completely, one hundred percent done.”
“What the hell, Alex?” Lake stood in the doorway, framed by sunlight streaming in from outside the bar.
“Lake.” Melissa and I ran over to hug her.
She stopped us with her infamous, death-star glare. “Don’t Lake me,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest. “What the hell is going on around here?”
I gave her shoulder a light punch. “Aren’t honeymoons supposed to be relaxing?”
“My honeymoon was amazing.” She uncrossed her arms and wrapped Melissa in a huge hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. Everything was perfect, and there’s no way I could have planned a trip like that on my own. You’re the best.”
I opened my arms. “Me next.”
“I ought to slap you instead.” Lake turned to me and gave me a good squeeze before stepping back and narrowing her eyes. “What did you do to Damian?”
I held my hands to my chest. Even hearing his name hurt. “What makes you think I did anything to him?”
Lake pulled out her phone and flashed the screen at us. “We weren’t even off the plane when Walsh and I got a text from him. He’s leaving tomorrow and won’t be here for the grand opening. He said he needs to take care of some business in Denver, but that’s a crock of shit.”
Leaving. Tomorrow. I should be glad he wouldn’t be here to distract me, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think straight. In fact, I was pretty sure I might actually be dying. Was it possible to die from heartache?
“Yeah.” Lake pointed at my face. “That look right there. That tells me you know exactly why Damian is bailing early. I thought you were going to help him out around here.”
“I did.” I fell into one of the pub chairs and let my head flop back. “I showed him the ropes, introduced him to everyone, and even got him to go out in public with me.”
Lake sat down next to me, her eyes wide with shock. “You got Damian to go out on a date?”
“Yeah.” My voice came out in a whisper as I remembered the night we held hands, watching a cheesy cheerleading movie. The night a little girl with one eye told him not to hide his sparkle. My eyes filled with tears, and my breath hitched on a little sob that I couldn’t hold in.
“Oh dear.” Melissa sat on the other side of me and laid a soft hand on mine. “How did I miss this?”
“Miss what?” I asked the ceiling, trying and failing to hide my misery.
“You falling in love.”
I sat up and narrowed my eyes at Melissa, whipping
my hand out from under hers. “No. Damian is a selfish, egotistical, opportunistic, class-A jackass.”
“No way.” Lake leaned against the arm of her chair. “I haven’t known Damian very long, but Walsh talks about the guy like he’s Superman and Captain America wrapped up in an Ironman suit.”
“Oh,” Melissa said, her eyes glazing over. “He’s got a total Robert Downey, Jr. vibe going on.”
“Hello.” I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Focus. Damian the soldier might be a hero, but Damian the person is a jerk. He threatened to make up a juicy gossip story about me and send it to the tabloids.” It still felt like he’d physically punched me in the stomach when I thought about that.
“What!” Lake jumped out of her chair and whipped her phone out of her pocket. “No one threatens my girls like that, American hero or not. Wait until I talk to Walsh.”
“No, don’t call Walsh.” I pulled her phone away and set it on the table, my head suddenly heavy from exhaustion. “I don’t think he’s actually going to call the tabloids.”
Though he could. My head collapsed against my arms on the table.
“Alex.” Lake’s voice was soft and gentle, the opposite of when she first walked in. “What is going on with you two?”
I sniffled into my arm, failing to hold back the tears that made it impossible to hide everything going on in my chest. “I fucked up. I don’t do relationships, you know that. I don’t even know how, and Damian...well, he does, even if he is rusty. And now he thinks I’m some kind of serial whore, and I said some pretty awful things to him, namely that he’s dead inside, and I never wanted to see him again.”
Two sets of warm arms wrapped around my back as Lake and Melissa cocooned me in a group hug.
Lake leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “Maybe if you just went and talked to him...”
I sat up and wiped at my leaking eyes. “No. We’re past that. Besides, it’s better this way.” The one thing I could be thankful for was that no one knew how deep I’d gotten, how close I’d been to handing him my heart. No one knew but his mom and me, and I knew she wouldn’t say anything. “I don’t do love and marriage and long-term anything. It was never going to work, so it’s better that we end everything now.”
“Okay,” Lake said, pulling her arms tighter. “Okay.”
Except nothing about this was okay. This was exactly why I didn’t do the whole love and marriage part.
Because heartbreak sucked.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Damian
I opened the front door of my cabin to let Walsh inside.
His grin was tired but wide.
“How’s married life, man?” I asked.
“It’s good, but,” he said as he shook his head, “this international travel thing is not for the weak. Damn jetlag.”
I tilted my head to examine him. “Jetlag, doing an Irish pub crawl for ten days, or the fact that you had almost two weeks to sex up your bride anywhere and everywhere your heart desired? I’m assuming you’re a member of the mile-high club now.” I gave him a knowing look.
His eyes sparkled...that was so wrong. A guy’s eyes should not sparkle. But Walsh’s most definitely did. He might be exhausted, but the happy, satisfied, totally-in-love air about him said that every bit of lost sleep had been worth it.
And I was totally jealous. But I couldn’t think about her. I had to do my job here, and then I could get away from the memories and the heartbreak to go back to my lonely existence in Denver.
Walsh pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened his photo gallery, handing it to me. “Check it out. Ireland was amazing. Lake is buzzing with ideas for new brews.”
Three pictures in, I found an X-rated pic of Lake on Walsh’s lap. “Dude!” I closed the app and threw his phone at him. “I’ll suffer through your vacation pictures, but you need to have Lake clean that shit up first. I don’t need to see that. How the hell am I supposed to look her in the eye after that?”
Walsh flushed scarlet. “Sorry. Geez, I don’t want you seeing that, either.” He grimaced as if in pain. “Sorry, man. Did I mention I’m jetlagged?” He thumbed over his screen. “Lake is going to completely freak out. You can’t tell her you saw that. She’s going to kill me.”
“No worries. I have your back.” That was the way it had been for the last three years between the two of us, but now I needed to relinquish that job to Lake, his wife. While I was so fucking happy for him, it left me more than a little unsettled. This situation with Alex certainly hadn’t helped that, either. For a moment, I’d allowed myself to hope that there would be someone like that to have my back, too.
But...I shook my head. No good came from building up an impossible fantasy like that in my head and heart.
I looked over at Walsh and found him studying me.
“So, what’s been going on here?” he asked. “Why are you going home before the grand opening?”
Gathering up the files that were spread across the table, I placed them in a neat pile and tapped the top one. I hadn’t had anything else to do the last three days but concentrate all my efforts on the problem at the brewery. “I don’t know who is causing trouble at the brewery. I’ve compiled files on all the staff, looked at possible motives, and had a guy do some cursory background checks, but...”
“Damian.” Walsh’s voice was exasperated.
“What?”
He gestured to the files. “We’ll get to that in a minute, but right now, I’m more concerned with you. Talk to me. What’s happened? Why are you going home early? I know we didn’t talk a whole lot while I was gone, but it had sounded like things were going better.”
That damn elephant was sitting on my chest again. “It was.” My voice cracked. “Overall, I’ve had a good time. I see why you got here and fell in love...both with the brewery and the girl.” No matter how awful I felt right now, my time here had been great, and I wouldn’t forget that. Ever.
“So, what’s changed?” He squinted at me like he could see inside my head.
I didn’t want to get into everything that had happened between Alex and me. Walsh was protective of me, although that needed to end. I’d been coddled enough over the last three years. It was time to stand on my own two feet again.
But he knew me. Too well. His eyes widened. “You fell in love. Holy shit. Oh my god. How did I not see that before? Fucking jetlag. Who is it?” Then he completely stilled in surprise. I could almost see his brain smoking with the thoughts running through there. “Alex,” he whispered in discovery. “Am I right?”
I wouldn’t lie to him. He was my best friend and had been there through every awful moment of the last three years. He’d more than earned my honesty. “Yeah, but it’s not going to work out, so don’t go getting any ideas. We don’t want the same things.”
“Same things? Like what?”
“I don’t know, Walsh. What you have with Lake sounds about perfect.”
His mouth dropped open. “What the fuck, man? It’s been less than two weeks. Are you saying you want to marry her?”
I stood up to pace. “I don’t know. Maybe. But what I want doesn’t matter. She has all these other guys she’s dating. Guys who aren’t messed up like I am, who don’t wake up, screaming in the middle of the night. Even if we could get past our problems, that doesn’t change the fact that she’d be better off with someone else. Even if she wanted me—which she doesn’t—I’m not the right guy for her.”
“Does she agree with that?”
I gave a bitter chuckle. “Oh, hell yeah. She’s made her stance on the matter perfectly clear.”
She might not have been talking to me, but her views on our relationship had been pretty damn straight when she spoke to my mom. We didn’t have a future, and I couldn’t stay here, torturing myself with tiny shreds of hope. It was time for me to go home.
I just had one thing to finish first. I picked up the pile of files again. “Let’s drop it, okay?”
Walsh started to speak
, but I shook my head. “No, the subject is closed on Alex and me. Let’s talk Naked Brews.”
Walsh blew out a harsh breath but then sat down at the table and waved a hand at the files. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“There’s a file here on everyone who’s worked in the brewery. They’re color-coded.” I flipped through the files, pulling out all the ones that had a red X in the corner. “All of these with the X belong to someone who couldn’t be your guilty party for various reasons. For most of them, it’s as simple as they were out of town when one of the attacks happened. You probably should still read through those files, because any one of them could have been working with someone else, but I just don’t think so.”
There were less than twenty people who worked at the brewery. Taking away the folders with the red Xs left only seven files. I separated those into three piles. “Because several of the incidences have happened in the packaging room, all three of those guys who work in there are still in this pile.”
“Wait a minute.” Walsh stopped me. “Instances? Plural? What else has happened besides the mess up with the bottle tops?”
I grimaced. “Don’t worry. It’s taken care of already, but the bottling machine imploded. The detective couldn’t find any evidence of tampering, but combined with everything else... We’re counting it as another attack.” I flipped through one of the files mindlessly as I thought. “The bottling system’s already been replaced, and the new system is up and running.” I didn’t volunteer that I’d replaced the system myself. No reason to add more stress to this discussion.
Walsh frowned down at the files. “There’ve been several things that have gone wrong in the brewing room, too...spoiled batches from faulty temps, incorrect grains ordered. Why aren’t you looking at those guys more closely?”
“Mainly because most of them are in this pile with fairly ironclad alibis, but also because everyone has access to the brewing room, and those are pretty easy things to fuck up. I’ve only been working there for two weeks, and even I could manage it. The bottling machine is more complex, though. I’m thinking it had to be someone who knows exactly how it all works to mess with that and not leave any evidence.”