I let out a mumbled curse as I imagined what I must’ve looked like. “Yeah, well, it’s already been a horrifically shitty day, and I’ve only been awake for about twenty minutes,” I said as I walked away. “I’ll tell you all about it after I put pants on.”
Rae listened intently, holding my hand on the couch as I recounted the entire thing.
Cayson showing up at Brewed the night before, helping with inventory, coming back here.
The best night of my life and waking up to the worst day.
Only to be slammed down again by Kip and his revelations.
Throughout it all, she stayed there. Squeezing my hand at shocking and painful times and whispering that it was going to be okay when I struggled to get the words out.
“What?” I asked after minutes had come and gone in silence.
Her head shook, slowly at first and then more resolutely. “I just . . . I don’t know. Part of me can’t believe it because it just doesn’t make sense with the things Cayson has said and the way he’s been. The other is screaming that I need to shut up because I really don’t know him at all. And I keep thinking if I’d never tried to get in the middle of it, if I’d never tried to get him to stay, this wouldn’t have happened to you.”
“Yeah, well . . .” A deep sigh fell from my lips as I stood and headed for the kitchen. “I just wish I wouldn’t have let myself fall for it.”
Who was I kidding?
Cayson could show up at Brewed a week from now and somehow make me fall for him and his bullshit all over again.
That was the problem with love.
You believed the best in people even when they only showed their worst.
“Found my phone,” I announced loud enough for Rae to hear since I’d told her about the purse incident. I stopped walking, my heart taking off at that stupid, unforgiving pace when I noticed it was plugged in. “It’s charging.”
“See?” she said from so close behind me that it made me jump. “It doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t do these things.”
I rolled my eyes as I forced myself to continue into the kitchen for some coffee or food or alcohol, and reached for my phone as I neared it.
But just as I had when I’d first seen my phone, I stilled.
Feet.
Heart.
Mind.
Everything shorted before racing chaotically as I hurried to grab the paper that was partially beneath my phone.
I looked at it, studied it, devoured it before glancing at Rae.
From the hope on her face that was quickly morphing to sympathetic pain, her mind was going down the same path as mine.
My voice trembled when I said, “He didn’t come back. Rae, why isn’t he here?”
But her head was just moving in slow, regretful shakes. As though she was sure I already knew the answer.
I clumsily grabbed at the counter to slow my fall when my legs gave out, my soul crying out in denial as the room spun.
Because this? It was worse than Cayson playing a cruel joke. Worse than the thought of him leaving me after finally baring myself to him.
I’d expected those things . . . I’d never expected my heart to be ripped from my chest because of this.
On the paper was a detailed sketch of a to-go coffee cup.
On the sleeve were the words be back soon.
Except Cayson wasn’t here. And between realizing he was gone, talking with Kip, and rehashing it all with Rae, I had been awake for over an hour.
Plenty of time to get coffee and walk back twice.
But Kip was in town and had also been at Brewed, looking for me before coming here. Sweeping me into his arms and walking me inside as though my world hadn’t turned on its side in the handful of days since I’d seen him.
As though my heart hadn’t shattered in the few minutes before he’d arrived.
As though it wouldn’t be laying helplessly on the floor long after he’d left because my past had collided into my present in the worst of ways.
I’d just made it out of Emberly’s neighborhood and to the outer edges of Amber’s main square when Sawyer’s truck screeched to a stop in front of me.
Passenger window down.
His fingers tapping impatiently on his steering wheel as he stared straight ahead.
“Get in.”
My brows raised at the short demand, but I didn’t move otherwise.
I really didn’t have time for this bullshit.
“Get the fuck in, Cays,” he snapped as his head turned to me.
“Yeah, see, we already talked.” I gestured down the cobblestone road with one of the coffees. “You come at me like this? I’m gonna keep walking.”
“And now we have more to talk about. Get in.”
A heavy breath fled from me as irritation bubbled under the surface. With a hard look at him, I transferred the cups to one hand again and opened the door. Before I got in, I said, “Swear to God, if you bring up my leaving one more time—”
His sharp laugh had me biting back the rest of my warning.
“Yeah, that isn’t what this is about.” His gaze dropped to the coffees, and my stomach fell along with it.
Shit.
Last thing I wanted to do was talk to Sawyer. Period.
But I knew this would come. There was no way for it not to. Might as well get it over with when my head was already so messed up from a damn night.
“Get on with it,” I said once I was in the truck.
“No, we’re gonna go somewhere with people before we start talking,” he ground out as he flipped the truck around to drive the opposite way. “Otherwise, I might just hit you now.”
Jesus.
I sank lower in the seat, pressing my fingers to my head and resting my arm on the door. “Ever notice how violent our family is?”
“No.” An exasperated breath left him. “You like to provoke shit. Beau? Yeah, okay, there’s no denying him. But Hunter’s normal. Dad was normal.”
My chest pitched. Wasn’t sure if it was from a laugh or a wounded breath . . . at some point in my life, the two had started to go hand in hand when it came to our dad.
Sawyer slanted a savage smile at me. “And I’m just fine when you aren’t pissing me off.”
“Well, I feel special,” I drawled dryly.
He didn’t respond or say anything for the next few minutes until we were in Brewed and at a table.
I tried not to think about how different everything felt from just an hour before.
How possibilities and lifelong wants had been crushed. I felt like an idiot for ever thinking they were there to reach out and grab in the first place.
“You had two coffees when I found you.” At my confirming grunt, Sawyer said, “When we talked, you said you’d hooked up with a mistake. Trying to figure out why you were on your way back to a mistake.”
“Wasn’t,” I said in the same cold tone. “Hungover and exhausted. They’re both for me.”
The fierce look that stole across his face let me know he didn’t believe a word. “See, I was headed here to meet up with Rae when we talked. Then I got here.” He sat back and let his eyes dart around the café side of Brewed. “Do you notice anyone missing?”
I watched him for a while before glancing around, head shaking slowly as I did. “Rae?”
Irritation bled from him as his eyes rolled. “Wanna tell me exactly who you went home with? Because no one has seen or heard from Emberly today, and you were on your way back to wherever the hell you stayed last night.”
“Already told you,” I mumbled, glancing out the massive storefront windows. “Mistake.”
“From this bar,” he said, tone sounding like he was struggling to stay calm. “Know Em was here last night because Sunday’s inventory.”
“You know, the way you involve yourself in her personal life has always confused me. The two of y’all have always been right there, side by side, too close. Now this? And you want me to believe you haven’t been fucking her this whole time?”
He’d been about to talk, to shut me down, but his reaction to my question was immediate.
The way his face seemed to fall and twist. The shudder that moved through him and ended with his chest lurching.
For nearly a minute, he just sat there. Staring. Breathing.
Just before he spoke, his head began moving in faint, quick shakes. “That’s disgusting, man.”
A scoff crept up my throat.
He leaned forward, voice a gravelly whisper. “I got why Rae didn’t understand when she first showed up in Amber, I did. She didn’t grow up here, she didn’t know us. But you? How do you not get it?”
“Because I watched the two of you for most of my life. Even when you and Leighton started dating, it was still you and Emberly . . . always. Inseparable. When she stayed the night, she always ended up in your room until God knows when—and that’s if she didn’t fall asleep in there.” I bent toward him, matching his position. “And for some goddamn reason, everyone was okay with it. Mom and Dad. Leighton. Now Rae. I don’t get it. I’ve never gotten it.”
“Because they all knew—Rae knows—Em . . . she’s always been more than my best friend. She’s family, same as you.”
“I don’t know if you forgot, but you and I didn’t spend that much time together,” I said, doubt weaving through my words.
He pushed back when he responded, shoulders lifting and a smirk playing on his lips. “Yeah, well, she was my best friend.”
“Man, fuck you.” The words were light, a soft laugh slipping free.
Sawyer joined in, his laugh louder and seeming to ease the tension we’d been sitting in. “How the hell did we even get onto that?”
Because your friendship was why I kept my distance for so long.
I think it was part of the reason I lashed out at her when I was young . . . because she was always there, tormenting me by being so close and everything I wanted when I was sure she only wanted you.
“I have no idea,” I lied.
“Hey, boyfriend. Hey, other boyfriend. Did you hear?”
I glanced to the side when Jennifer dropped to a crouch next to our table, her eyes excitedly darting between us but lingering on Sawyer as though the question had been for him.
But the way she kept looking at me as if she were about to burst from whatever gossip she was holding in had me worrying over what she might reveal.
Worrying that she might confirm what Sawyer was already pissed over.
“Depends,” Sawyer said, his untrusting stare on me before darting her way.
After a glance over her shoulder to see who was watching, listening, she whispered, “Kip’s back.”
I sat back and folded my arms over my chest, my jaw clenching in response to the person I’d tried like hell to forget.
“No,” Sawyer said with a careless shrug. “He was here a week ago. Not even that.”
“Right . . . and he’s back.”
At that, Sawyer paused. Amusement danced across his face as he tried to hold back a laugh, but then his expression fell when he looked at me.
He mouthed a curse and then nodded. “Yeah, I, uh, hadn’t heard yet. Can’t wait to find out why.”
“Mmhm,” she hummed as she stood to leave, winking at me as she went.
“What’s so exciting about Kip Hedrin being back, and where’s he been?”
Sawyer just sat there for a moment, head bobbing, and ran a hand through his hair. “Shit, Cays. I’m sorry.”
“I feel like you’ve said that a lot since I got here, but that doesn’t explain what’s going on.”
After a while, he met my stare and blew out a steadying breath. “With everything that went down growing up, the way Em was always so emotionally wrecked because of the shit you did to her, I woulda lost my damn mind if you’d hooked up with her.” He lifted a hand as if to stop me from talking, but I hadn’t been about to speak.
Anything I might’ve said had gotten jumbled in my throat the second he said ‘emotionally wrecked.’
“Not for any of the fucked-up reasons you were thinking earlier. It’s that I can’t trust you with her. I can’t trust you not to hurt her. Of every guy in the world, she can’t handle being hurt by you again. And you plan to go back to Beaumont. That alone would hurt her if anything ever happened between y’all.”
My fists were pressed tight to my sides as I sat there listening.
Waiting for him to say where this was going.
Wanting this to be over.
Struggling not to see Emberly wrapped around another guy just hours after I’d been inside her. And worrying that Kip Hedrin of all fucking people had everything to do with that.
“And?” I said through clenched teeth.
“And I was wrong. I’m sorry.” He gestured in the direction Jennifer had gone. “Kip—that would be why Emberly isn’t surfacing.”
I forced my stare to the table and then outside again, straining to calm my breathing. “She hide from him too?” I asked snidely even though I already knew the answer.
Had already seen it.
“No,” Sawyer said with a short laugh. “No, they’re getting married or some shit. I’m gonna be Em’s best man.”
Sawyer was still talking, switching up the conversation, and leaning back like nothing was wrong in his world.
But I wasn’t hearing him.
I’d gone utterly still.
Heart wrenching so painfully it felt impossible to breathe.
That familiar pain that belonged solely to Emberly Olsen swept through me and mixed with lingering betrayals, filling the hollow in my chest.
Tried to contain it all so my brother wouldn’t see it bursting from me.
Funny how a handful of days in this town had tossed me right back to the person I’d been a lifetime ago.
Someone who locked up their emotions and masked them with anger and taunts and jokes.
Someone who hid everything about their life.
Someone I wanted to escape.
“Lee,” I called out to the newest hire as I opened the hood of the car that was next in line at the shop. Dropping my voice to a low taunt when he rounded the corner wiping his hands, I nodded toward the patrol car that was rolling up to the shop. “Someone’s daddy is checkin’ up on him.”
But no sooner had I finished speaking than the lights on top of the car turned on, bouncing reds and blues inside the garage.
My brows pulled together as I tried to think if I’d done anything arrest-worthy lately.
Well, what some Amber residents deemed arrest-worthy.
But then Lee’s hushed panic reached me, breaking through my thoughts. “Shit, shit, shit. How did—fucking shit. Oh God, oh God, oh God—damn it.”
I looked to him, my stare snapping back and forth between the deputy’s car and the kid who was about to graduate with Sawyer.
The sheriff’s son.
“Something you worried about there?” I asked calmly, noting how his panic seemed to rise with each passing second.
“I don’t know how they found out,” he hissed. “They can’t know—how do they know? I just started, like, a week ago.”
Considering he’d been working at the shop for a little over a month, I had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the job.
I looked to the car that had just come to a stop and moved toward Lee, keeping my voice low and eyes on the opening of the garage. “Started what?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coveralls, searching wildly before producing a vial filled with white powder.
Holding it in the air for everyone to see.
As soon as I realized what I was seeing, I snatched the vial from him and held it tight in my grasp.
Slanting my eyes in the direction of the cruiser, I felt only the slightest bit of relief when the deputy headed toward the front office. Didn’t matter if he was there for what was in my hand or something else entirely, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to take a breath until he was gone.
Looking bac
k at Lee, I asked, “The fuck is wrong with you?”
But he just kept repeating, “I don’t know how they found out,” over and over.
“You’re a kid,” I hissed, smacking him upside the head. “You haven’t even graduated and you’re getting involved with this shit?”
“One of the guys from the team brought it to a party last week. It was the first time I’d done it. Swear to God.”
I grabbed his shoulder, my voice seething. “Fucking think, Lee. You don’t want to go down this road.”
“My dad can’t find out,” he said suddenly, looking up at me with wide, bloodshot eyes.
It was then I noticed his pupils.
They were massive.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “You’re high right now.”
“He can’t—he can’t.”
I nodded, not knowing why I was agreeing or what I was really agreeing to. “Sawyer doing this shit?”
“No. Golden boy?” His head jerked in quick shakes. “Fuck no.”
My lungs ached at the breath I released, only for them to seize when I glanced up and saw the deputy and our boss walking through the office, headed this way.
“Need you to take a breath and calm down,” I said slowly, putting the vial into one of my coveralls’ pockets. “When all this is over, you’re never gonna touch this shit or any other drug again. Got it?”
“After this?” He looked at me like he was gonna start sobbing right there in the middle of the garage. “Hell no, man. Hell no. I can’t—God, my dad. He’s gonna kill me.”
I tried to swallow but my throat was too tight.
Too dry.
“No one’s gonna kill you, Lee. You’re gonna be fine as long as you promise you’re gonna stay clean.”
“Promise. Man, I promise.”
“Then take a breath and calm the fuck down,” I mumbled just as the door leading from the office to the garage opened.
“All right, ladies,” the deputy called out to the four of us in there. “We can do this one of two ways. Either I can search all of y’all to figure out which one of ya left this little present for me in the bathroom.” He lifted a vial identical to the one in my pocket.
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 19