I blinked quickly against the intrusive glow before dropping my head and squeezing my eyes shut.
“The fuck?” he mumbled, full of confusion and a little alarm.
This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.
Did I masturbate-conjure him?
“Light,” I bit out and slowly lifted my head when the room went dark behind my eyelids.
“Emberly?” he asked once I was staring at where he was still standing in the doorway, hand on the light switch.
“Are you real?”
A sharp laugh left him. “Last time I checked.”
Oh my God, I have a magic vagina when I’m drunk.
“But you left,” Emberly said firmly. “Left, left. I watched you leave. So, you’re gone and not actually here.”
Another laugh rumbled in my chest when she nodded as if that was that.
My eyes had mostly adjusted to the dark, so I could see her pretty clearly from where she was sitting up in bed.
Hair wild and eyes bouncing back and forth from the bed to me.
“Uh, yeah . . .” I set down my bags and rubbed at the back of my head. “Yeah, I did, but I didn’t get far.”
Something between a laugh and a snort left her, her head moving sharply with the sound. “Gone all night. I’d say that’s far.” She gestured to the window like she was throwing something. “Way far.”
Jesus, she’s so drunk.
I bit back a smile. “About the edge of town,” I said indifferently.
Hadn’t even made it that far.
I’d gotten to the spot where I’d first seen Sawyer walking into Brewed and hadn’t been able to go any farther.
“Went to Brewed for a few hours instead. Sat at the bar.”
“I think I told you that you weren’t allowed,” she said unevenly, her words and lilt all kinds of messed up from her inebriated state. But the harshness from our other conversations was gone.
“Yeah, figured I was safe if you weren’t there . . . but then your mom saw me.”
“Hope she kicked you out.”
“No, but I definitely got an earful and more than a few warnings,” I assured her.
I’d gone into Brewed to grab dinner and wait until I could come back here, but I’d lost my appetite after she told me how she’d had to watch Emberly’s spirit break over and over again because of me. How miserable I’d made her.
Not that I’d had any doubts what Emberly and Sawyer were telling me was true, but for every person I came in contact with to remember it that way? It sucked.
Felt like a critical blow to the chest.
“Well, this is my room.” She pressed the comforter down around her and then quickly shoved her hands under it, pulling it around her like she was trying to hide everything but her head. “Tonight, it’s mine. So, bye. You can go. You know . . . don’t go, but go. There are couches and stuff. Blankets.”
One of her arms popped out and waved around before darting under the cover again, maybe pointing at me somewhere in there, but I couldn’t be sure.
“I know it smells like you in here, but you can’t go claiming places with your scent. I was here long before you. So, go.”
“Smells like me?” I asked dully.
“Yeah, and you smell annoyingly good.” She huffed, and I could see her eyes roll in the darkened room. “Like, ugh.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “You think I smell good?”
She straightened under the mountain of comforter she’d made around herself. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, you said annoyingly good.”
Emberly sat there for a few moments just staring, eyes wide.
I could feel her confusion and embarrassment spreading across the room, making it harder to keep my laughter silent.
“I think you made that up,” she said under her breath.
Lifting a shoulder, I pushed from the doorframe. “Yeah, maybe. Goodnight, Emberly.”
“Did I conjure you?” she asked when I grabbed the doorknob.
A surprised laugh fled from me. “Tonight?” When she nodded vigorously, I had to swallow back another laugh. “No.”
“Why else would you be here?”
I felt the amusement slip from my face.
Felt the way my heart took off at an unforgiving pace.
Because Emberly drunk was probably the only time I would talk to her without reservations, without that scorn-formed wall surrounding her, and she just let me know she’d wanted me here.
My tongue darted out to wet my lips. My voice was a gruff rumble when I said, “Because I knew I couldn’t leave.”
“But you’re here. In this room. With me.”
Jesus Christ.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and forced back a groan.
One part of me was yelling that I needed to leave the room before she could say anything else. Anything that might embarrass her and make her hate me even more in the morning.
The other part was craving this.
Craving these open words I knew I might never get again.
“Saw said he’d let me know when everyone had gone home,” I answered. “That he’d leave the door unlocked. Didn’t know you would be in here.”
The way her full lips fell into a defeated frown pulled at me. Made my thundering heart race so wildly, I was sure it would escape my chest with each unforgiving beat.
Made me want things I was sure I didn’t deserve.
“Cayson?” she began when I reached for the handle again. “Why do you seem so surprised that I’m still mad at you for the things you did? That I have a hard time trusting you?”
“Because I tried to forget this place and the things that happened. Everything,” I added meaningfully, knowing only Emberly knew the depth of what had happened. “But when I’m forced to remember, I don’t remember it the way you do.”
“You’re being serious,” she said after a while.
My head moved in a slow nod. “The way you remember it, I would hate me too. The way I remember it?” My shoulders lifted and throat constricted as a life I’d sworn to leave behind floated to the surface. “All I remember is wanting someone else to hurt. Wanting to hurt people before they could hurt me.”
Emberly’s head bounced in acknowledgment, the unsteady movement reminding me that this girl was still so damn intoxicated. “He was like that other times . . . wasn’t he.” She didn’t phrase it like a question, it was as if she’d already known. Her head continued bouncing as she looked to the side. “It wasn’t just that last night.”
Still, I agreed, “Long damn time.”
“Do you hate me?”
The question was so immediate and vulnerable and filled with pain that it forced the air from my lungs. “Hate—what? Emberly, why would I hate you?”
“For not saying anything,” she said softly. “For not telling them what I heard that night.”
I glanced behind me, making sure no one had come into the hall, before focusing on her again. “I expected you to,” I admitted, letting my truths pour free. “I was afraid you would.”
“Afraid? What did you have to be afraid of?”
Of them finding out what Dad knew.
Of their judgments—viewing me the same way he did.
Of their only wanting me to come home because they’d learned the truth.
“Everything.”
A soft hum sounded from her, accepting the vague answer. “I saw you . . . before. Just you. That’s how I knew it wasn’t the first time.” She settled deeper into the bed, resting against the headboard and letting her head loll back. “That’s how I knew you.”
The last words were hushed and lazy, so I grabbed the door and took a step into the hall, stopping when her voice reached me.
“If I close my eyes, will you disappear?”
I turned to find her sitting up again and leaning forward.
Looking into those eyes, all wide and vulnerable in this state, I tried to force out a simple ans
wer.
The only one that mattered.
No.
No.
No.
“Do you want me to?” left my lips instead.
“I’ve never wanted you to.” It was soft. Sad.
So goddamn sad that it forced a strained breath from my lungs as I wondered what else I didn’t know about this girl and how I could’ve deserved pain so raw when I’d apparently hurt her the way I had.
“Close your eyes,” I ordered gently.
Her chin lifted a little, face pinching like she wasn’t sure why I was asking and didn’t know if she should do anything I told her. But another second later, her eyelids slipped shut.
I let myself study her for a moment.
Wondering if it was the last time I’d be able to so freely.
Wondering if this would continue in the morning, or if we would go back to the hostile, snapping comments.
“Open.”
A low giggle sounded from her side of the room when she did and saw me there.
“Goodnight, Emberly Olsen.”
Just before I shut the door behind me, I heard her soft sigh and whispered, “Night, Cayson Dixon.”
I lay on one of the couches that night, unable to fall asleep for hours as our jumbled conversation played out in my mind. Over and over and interwoven with bits from my past that had resurfaced.
Things I’d done to her.
Things I’d said.
Everything he had said and the times I’d turned around, only for her to be right there with a look like she was the only one in the world who understood me.
“Motherfuckingshit,” I wheezed, my arms raising and hands clenching into fists as I prepared for the next blow, blinking rapidly against the brightness of the room.
“So, now you leave and come right back?” Sawyer snapped, arm cocked back and ready to swing again. “That’s your new game?”
“You telling me I should’ve stayed away was a massive hint you wanted me to go,” I ground out.
“Fuck your rollercoaster bullshit. How’d you even get in here?”
I blocked his next hit and sat up, wide awake and more confused than ever. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Jesus, would you two stop?” Rae yelled as she rounded into the room, wearing nothing more than a shirt that looked like it belonged to Sawyer.
I looked away as Sawyer straightened and said, “Babe. Seriously? In front of my brother?”
“Well, you were hitting him and yelling at him when—”
“He can’t keep doing this,” Sawyer began, but Rae continued over him.
“I let him in. I told him to come back.”
My attention shot to her before going back to Sawyer when I remembered why I was avoiding looking at her, my head shaking.
His eyes were narrowed, so I hurried to hold up a hand. “No. I called you, man. Not five minutes after I left here. You—” Realization pulsed through me, my head nodding as I reached for where my phone was on the table. “Texted me right after I’d left a message saying I wanted to stay.”
Stay for him. For everyone . . .
I showed him the messages I’d received.
Where he’d said he needed time to cool off from what had gone down between us. That he would let me know when their friends left and would leave the door unlocked if it was late.
“You were in the shower, cleaning up from the fight,” Rae said softly, but there wasn’t a hint of remorse in her explanation. “He wanted to make this right, and I knew you were too mad. Someone needed to be your voice of reason.”
I let my phone fall to the couch after Sawyer handed it back. Studying the bruises under his eyes and the way he kept working his jaw as if remembering the hit I’d gotten in there.
“Sorry, man,” I said softly.
His head bobbed. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.” He shifted like he was going to go in Rae’s direction, but paused. “I’m struggling, Cays.”
“I am too.” A breath of a laugh left me. “You think it isn’t hard being here? That it isn’t hard taking the shit y’all repeatedly lay on me for things I did years ago? You think I want this suffocating feeling like I trapped myself by coming here? Because y’all make it seem like if I ever leave again for any reason, even to go back to work, I’ll be crucified for it.”
“You plan to go back?”
“For my job?” I asked slowly, letting that be an answer in itself.
His head jerked back, but his voice was soft, accusing and hurt. “You said you were staying.”
An exasperated laugh left me. “That . . . that right there is what I’m talking about. I said I wasn’t going to randomly up and leave. That I wouldn’t disappear. But I have a job, Saw. I’ll have to go back to that eventually.”
His head shook as he moved a few feet away from me. “I wanna know why you came back. The real reason.” He slashed a hand through the air. “No more of that vague shit or half-truths. I wanna know.”
My shoulders sagged.
Explaining why I came back was nothing compared to telling him why I’d left.
But why I’d come back was still so raw, I wasn’t sure I was ready . . . and not like this. Not when things were tense and it wouldn’t matter to him what I said anyway.
“Saw—”
“Oh my God.”
My attention darted to the side, toward the sound of that confused and horrified voice.
Emberly.
She was standing in the entrance to the hall, hand pressed to her temple and eyes wide as she stared at me. Makeup smeared around her eyes and hair a wreck, but the sight of her still made my heart race.
Had pieces of our conversation rushing through my mind.
“What are you doing here?” It was all said under her breath and hit like a sledgehammer. From the way she quickly jerked her head and looked away, she hadn’t meant to say it. “Um, I have to get home and then to work—I should’ve been there already. Has anyone seen my phone?”
“I have it.” I swallowed down the disappointment building in my throat and nodded toward the end table when she looked my way, suspicion flowing from her. “It was digging into my back when I laid down. Should be charged now.”
Sawyer released a heavy sigh and rubbed his hands over his face. “I still wanna know: If your plan was to go back all along, why’d you even come?”
If I hadn’t been watching Emberly from the corner of my eye as she stole across the room, I wouldn’t have noticed the way she stumbled and then paused on her way back to the hall at his question.
If I hadn’t let my stare drift that way, I might not have seen the way she slowly glanced over her shoulder. Brows drawn together in a flash of devastation and pain, before hurrying away.
I wouldn’t have a spark of hope burning in my chest that I would see the girl I’d spoken to last night again . . . sober.
“Well, you look chipper!”
“Ugh,” I groaned, holding a hand up and turning away from my mom to head for the freshly brewed coffee.
I knew it wasn’t just the hangover and fierce pounding in my head that made her sound twenty times louder than usual.
She was doing it on purpose.
“Fun night?” she nearly yelled from directly behind me.
“Mom,” I whined and let my fingers lightly rest against my throbbing temple. “Shh. I really can’t handle yelling this morning.”
Or men. Man. Cayson.
Cayson Dixon because he was back and, oh my God, what did that mean?
I stopped walking and gently massaged my head when the thinking caused the pain to increase. “Ow.”
The way he looked at me when I’d walked into the living room, all eager anticipation that was quickly eclipsed by disappointment . . . what did it mean?
“Are you going to tell me why you’re in our livelihood, our baby . . . our blood, sweat, and tears . . . hungover? Or should I guess?” Mom asked, irritation coating every clipped word.
“I’m here every day. I w
ork every day,” I answered lamely.
Duh.
“Not hungover,” she hissed. “The town is probably already talking about it. By noon, the stories are going to have shifted to you having a severe drinking problem and needing rehab.”
“One night,” I snapped and immediately regretted it.
“You own a bar,” she reminded me. “You’re in here hungover. You know how this town talks.”
Could be worse. At least I’d taken the time to shower and change before coming here.
“Ugh. Yeah, okay, fine,” I grumbled as I brought the mug of black coffee to my lips and followed my mom to our office.
“Talk,” she said once I was in there, slamming the door behind me, no doubt to punish me a little more.
“I’m about to be twenty-seven, not seventeen, you don’t need to punish me and make this worse.”
“You’re making childish decisions if you’re here and in this state.” She sank into her chair once I was in mine, hardened stare on me. “What have I always said, Emberly?”
“Alcohol doesn’t fix problems,” I muttered, stare trained on the dark liquid in my mug. “It masks them for a while and, in the end, makes them worse.”
Funny how Mom had found a home in this bar considering she avoided alcohol like the plague.
I understood why, of course. Her husband had been a severely abusive alcoholic, and she’d barely managed to escape him when she was pregnant with me.
Despite her reservations, she never tried to keep me from drinking, but her stories of my father and growing up in Brewed had kept me from getting out of control. You know, except for that one—or, well, I guess now two—nights in my life.
“Talk to me,” she said softly, pleadingly.
The slight waver in her words had the backs of my eyes burning, and before I could attempt to stop them, tears were freely flowing.
“Oh, sweet girl.”
“Don’t,” I begged when I heard her get up from her seat. “Please don’t.”
I clumsily set my mug on my desk and wiped at my cheeks, hating that I was crying at all over this boy and not knowing how to stop.
Knowing I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
“Mom, Cayson Dixon’s back,” I choked out through my tears.
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 11