“You didn’t know?”
“Did Sawyer?”
Rae’s head moved in a quick shake, her shoulders lifting. “Not that he’s ever said. I just figured you would’ve known.”
“No.” The word was a laugh. A breath. A lifetime of hidden secrets and aches. “But there’s a lot no one knew about Cayson,” I said, realizing a second too late what I’d said and that I shouldn’t have.
“Like what?”
“There is nothing to tell, Emberly.”
Cayson’s demanding yet pleading words rang so loud in my head, it was as if he’d just spoken them into my ear instead of all those years ago.
A shiver ripped down my spine at the memory, and I hurried to finish my makeup so I could start on my hair. “Nothing. I don’t know why I said that.”
“He called me a drunken mistake.” The words ghosted past my lips when Rae pulled up outside of Brewed.
To check on the shop.
To grab a bite.
To be seen.
“Ten minutes tops,” she’d said when I’d stood there in nothing but my bra and underwear, hair and makeup done and trying furiously to get in bed. “I’ll buy you strawberry froyo!” The last had been said on a near-desperate plea and had stopped my futile attempts. After a few seconds of consideration, I’d turned and stomped to my closet instead.
Damn Sawyer for telling her my weakness.
“He said that to Sawyer,” Rae reasoned, putting her SUV in park and twisting in her seat to face me. “With how protective Sawyer is, Cayson probably would’ve said anything to get him not to think it’d been you.”
My eyelids slowly slipped shut to hide the flare of pain.
I knew she believed what she was saying. Last night, I might’ve believed her too.
But everything had changed since then.
“I told you the things Cayson said last night—the way he was,” I said softly. “I don’t know how I know, but I just do. I can feel it. What he told Sawyer . . . he said it to hurt me. He knew it would get back to me.”
She placed her hand over mine and waited until I looked at her. “We don’t know that. Not yet.”
“You were so sure he’d changed. So sure he’d been with me today. And you’re still so sure this is going to work out, but that is where you’re wrong. There’s too much going against us.”
“You know me. You know I loved love for other people even though I was guarded with my own heart before Sawyer. I look at people or talk to them and come up with a handful of possibilities of who they are and what path they’re on. You? You stumped me over and over in the beginning until that night on the ranch, and then I’ve never seen anything more clearly.”
“He wasn’t even here,” I argued. “You didn’t even know if he would come back.”
Rae’s sure expression didn’t falter. She just gave me a knowing smile as she reached for her door handle, pausing to say, “I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t believe in the happily ever after, Em. He’s yours, I know he is.”
After a steeling breath, I followed her out of the car and into my shop . . . into a nightmare.
Jennifer gasped so loudly that heads turned and conversations fell silent, her hands fluttering all excitedly around her face as she bounced on her toes.
“Jesus, how long was I gone?” I murmured, but Rae was silent beside me.
I could feel the confusion and unease rolling off of her and slithering onto my skin.
“When’s the big day?” one of the townspeople called out at the same time Jennifer finally gathered herself enough to demand, “Show me, show me, show me!”
A couple seconds passed before I slowly gestured to Rae. “This is Rae?”
Jennifer gave an affectionate yet impatient scoff and rolled her eyes, her expression saying we both knew that wasn’t what she meant.
Except, I really didn’t know what she meant.
“I don’t think I’m something to be excited about anymore,” Rae mumbled under her breath.
A sigh of adoration and want and love eased from her when Sawyer rounded the corner from the bar side of Brewed, face expectant as though he had known we’d arrived.
And then my heart stalled.
Twisted.
Cleaved in two.
Cayson followed slowly behind him, pausing at the partition and leaning against it, arms folded across his chest and nearly devoid of emotion.
But it was his eyes that screamed everything I’d feared.
His pain, his anger, his betrayal.
Oh God, no . . .
“C’mon, girlfriend, don’t hide it,” Jennifer called out, her excitement bursting through my anguish. “We wanna see the ring!”
“What?”
I wasn’t sure whose gasp was louder—Rae’s or mine. Whose was made of shock and whose was made of confusion.
It all sounded like one word.
One denial.
Jennifer was quickly rambling as she came out from behind the counter, saying something about keeping things from her that I couldn’t fully focus on.
There was an older couple at a table behind us that was asking, “When’s the big day?” again.
Others were yelling, “Show us,” like a catcall.
And Cayson was gone.
I felt cold. Sick.
My stomach rolled when Sawyer reached for my left hand, looking at it for only a second before letting it fall.
I hadn’t even realized he’d reached us. Had pulled Rae into his arms and tucked her close the way he always did.
“You engaged?” he asked, partly teasing, partly concerned because he could see the way I was about to break in the middle of Brewed.
I couldn’t respond. I just shook my head in wild denial.
“Town seems to think so,” he explained softly just as Jennifer grabbed my hand, only to drop it into someone else’s waiting hand.
Everyone talking and asking questions and calling out their congratulations and excitement as they formed a circle around me.
Moving in closer and closer.
Crowding me.
My chest pitched with my choppy breaths. My knees shook and—oh my God, I’m gonna throw up.
“How did this happen from her taking half a day off?” Rae asked when I couldn’t, trying to pull me closer to her and away from the people gathering around me.
“Kip came in looking for her earlier—”
“And that means engaged?” I shouted, unable to control my tone or volume.
“Hey,” Rae said, pressing her head close to mine. Trying to let her soothing words calm me as my hand was once again grabbed. “Let’s sit down. Get you some water. Yeah?”
I sat.
Right there.
In the middle of the café.
My legs unable to hold me up a second longer as everyone’s questions and enjoyment over my dismay and horror seemed to pull me back over a decade in time.
“Hey, Duck.”
“Duck.”
“Let me see you quack.”
“I’ll give her something to quack on—I mean choke on.”
A roar of laughter.
High-fives.
Playful shoves.
“Gives a new meaning to D.S.Ls.”
I’d stood there, trembling and trembling as boys from the varsity baseball team crowded closer, laughing and taunting that I had nowhere to go.
Nowhere, because I was in a corner.
Nowhere, because I’d been tricked into going to the deserted gym when someone had said Sawyer was in there and needed help.
Nowhere, because there were six of them.
“You scared, Duck?” the one closest had asked, moving so close it made my knees give for a moment before I was able to lock them. A soft laugh left him at the action, his eyes taking in everything. Reaching out, he touched my hair.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, the words shaky and weak and not at all what I needed them to be.
It only earned excited laughs from the boys.
>
“Just wanna find out why it is that Cayson calls you ‘Duck,’ Duck,” he continued. “I mean, it’s obvious. But I want the first-hand experience.” His thumb rubbed across my lips, a rough laugh bursting from him when I smacked his hand away.
“I said don’t touch me!”
When it looked like he was about to take a step closer, I swung.
Hitting him in the jaw exactly the way Sawyer had taught me.
But then he was pushing up against me with my hands pinned to the wall, the other guys crowding even closer around him and me and looking like they were more excited than before.
“Gonna learn real quick your time in high school can be made or ruined. Pull shit like that, we’ll make sure you hate every day of the rest of your four years.” His hungry eyes fell to my mouth. “Be a good girl, and you’ll have this school wrapped around your finger the way you’re about to have that mouth wrapped around something else.”
My head shook in tight jerks as tears streamed down my face.
His erection pressed into my side and his hot breath fanned across my ear when he said, “Now show me what you can do with those lips.”
I heard the yells and the pounding steps that followed his demand.
The shouting and the unmistakable sound of bone crunching.
But it all sounded distant, so far away, until I was being pulled into arms and lifted from where I’d fallen into a crouch in the corner.
I jerked from the hold and swung, but my fists were encircled and pinned to my sides as a voice I knew like my own sounded in my ear. “Got you, sis. I got you.”
I’d fallen into Sawyer’s embrace, sobbing and shaking so violently I was sure I was shaking him too.
But he’d stood there. Strong and tall as he always was when I needed my rock.
“Got you, sis,” that familiar voice said in my ear, all strength and serenity as he pulled me to my feet. “Can you walk?” I’d barely managed a nod before he said, “Then we’re gonna walk now.”
He didn’t give me a chance to prepare, just swept me through the café after telling Rae where he’d left his stuff.
What felt like seconds later, we were in my office. Rae was rushing in with Sawyer’s jacket and phone and ushering me to my chair before sitting on the desk to study me.
The desk Cayson had laid me on the night before.
“Emberly,” Rae snapped.
I blinked quickly, looking up at her in question when I realized I’d missed her calling me.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“I just—” My head swung as the overwhelming emotions from the day poured over me again. “I don’t—I don’t understand. How did it get to this? How did everyone think that?”
Sawyer looked from me to Rae, holding her stare for a while before returning his focus to me. “What I was telling you—about Kip. That happened and people started wondering because it was soon, you know?”
“Yes, I know. Trust me. That was its own nightmare in a day of fucked-upness.”
He grunted a sort of understanding sound. “His mom came in about an hour ago. Told everyone he’d shown up early today to get his grandma’s ring.”
My stomach plummeted to the floor. “No.”
His brow lifted warily. “It spread fast, Em. People have been coming in already having heard. Wanting to see you and wondering if he’s asked yet.”
I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t.
Because Cayson had walked in at that last part holding water and a bowl of food, expression shuttered and tearing at my soul.
“Thank you,” Rae said, quickly hopping down from the desk to grab the items from him. Once she was setting everything in front of me, she glanced over her shoulder and offered, “Stay.”
Only it sounded more like a plea on my behalf from the way her eyes darted to mine directly after.
Still, he took a step toward the door, head hanging and hand coming up to rough through his hair.
“I’m not engaged,” I said quickly. “He didn’t ask, I didn’t even give him the chance.”
We watched each other. Me, silently pleading with him to understand. Cayson, quietly refusing to.
“Even if he had, my answer would’ve been no. You know that.” A small jolt went through me when I remembered the other two people in the room, intently watching the way I was deliberately speaking with the third. My stare darted between them when I repeated, “You know that.”
Cayson’s head shook, just a slight movement, but it felt huge and ground-shaking.
“Think this isn’t a conversation meant for me,” he murmured, grabbing the doorknob and slipping into the hall before I had a chance to breathe.
I’d still been sitting forward, hand reaching out without permission and lips parted to call out to him, when the door clicked shut behind him.
I met Rae’s regretful stare, the backs of my eyes burning with tears I refused to let build or fall again.
It wasn’t until I folded my legs up on the chair and curled over, resting my head in my hand and my arm on the desk, that Sawyer spoke.
Tone low, soft, but with a hint of warning that rumbled beneath the surface. “Am I missing something?”
He sighed as he eased himself down beside me late that night. Not saying a word. Content to lay there for a while and look up at the stars the way we always had.
Except tonight, there was a heaviness settling between us. It’d been there ever since Cayson had walked out of my office that afternoon with Sawyer following soon after, head shaking in disbelief and frustration.
A little after one this morning, I’d gotten a text from him asking to meet at our spot.
I hadn’t been surprised, I knew Sawyer couldn’t go long without talking to me. I just hadn’t been sure what this talk would consist of.
Not after today.
“Rae know you’re here?” I asked after minutes had come and gone.
“She practically shoved me to the door and threw my keys at me. Told me I had to quit saying it all to her and come tell you.”
I nodded, acknowledging and waiting but not rushing.
Not this.
God knew I liked to push Sawyer into talking and forcing him to unjumble his tangled thoughts, but this was different.
This was so many years of secrets kept from him, and he knew it.
That had to hurt.
“Em?”
“Yeah?”
“You in love with my brother?”
I sighed, wishing I could take that little sting of betrayal from his voice. That instinct to protect me from Cayson at all cost. “Yeah.”
“Recent?”
“No, Saw,” I whispered, the response coated in shame.
Silence fell around us for a while before he stammered, “I don’t—how—I don’t get how. After everything.”
“I don’t either. I didn’t understand then, I didn’t all this time while he was gone, I don’t now. It’s always felt . . .” Wrong—there has to be something wrong with me. “Like, how could I?”
“But you do.”
“With everything,” I admitted. “It’s why I only ever did anything with Kip. Because no one was Cayson. Because no one would ever compare. Because I thought Kip understood.”
Amusement rumbled from him and forced an eye roll from me.
“Yeah, that blew up in my face.”
“I want everything for you,” he said after a while. “You know that. It’s just so goddamn hard not to put a shield between you and Cayson.”
A sad laugh left me.
Another shield . . .
“I don’t think it matters anyway,” I said. “He was looking at me today like he hated me. Like the Kip thing was a betrayal.”
“So, Cayson is in love with you too?”
Butterflies erupted in my stomach at the simple question.
At the thought.
But they turned to ash as reality set in. “No. No, but I was hoping maybe one day he would. He wanted
something with me.”
At least for a night.
“You’ve always been my best friend and sister. Even if you aren’t blood, you’re a part of me. I want everything for you,” he repeated. “But if he hurts you again . . .”
“Understood,” I murmured at the unspoken warning. “Again, I’m not sure that it matters. Not anymore.”
He gripped my hand so much like Rae had earlier and said, “You don’t know that.”
I hadn’t slept.
I couldn’t.
I’d already been pacing the length of the guest room when Sawyer’s truck started up. Considering it was around one in the morning and he left alone, it had me coming to a standstill.
Staring at a spot on the floor.
Hand gripping my neck as I wondered where he was going and why.
As flashes from not even a day before assaulted me.
“Need you,” she’d breathed as I gripped her thighs and pulled her closer.
Emberly laid out before me, wild hair splayed out, eyes heavy-lidded with lust and satisfaction, bare body shifting and needy . . . I was sure I would never forget that kind of perfection.
Everything I’d craved for so long and had been sure I would never touch.
Her hands had raced up my arms and across my chest. Weaving into my hair and curling around the back of my neck, urging me closer to her as I teased her with the head of my cock.
“Cayson, please.”
A whimper had crept up her throat when I inched inside her, her brows drawing close and mouth falling open at the slow torture.
But God, she felt like heaven, and I wanted to make this last.
Draw out all of her pleasure and savor it before falling into my own. Because this was Emberly, and I’d been waiting my entire goddamn life for this.
A moan had built in her chest once I was finally seated to the hilt, her breaths coming soft and shallow when I pulled out and slowly pushed back in.
And then I’d started moving.
Slow, rocking teases at first.
Enough to pull hushed gasps from her as she’d stretched around me until she was leaning up and pressing her mouth to mine.
Light kisses and soft strokes of her tongue that had driven me crazy. Matching the way her nails swept across my neck and shoulders in feather-light trails, leaving chills in their wake.
Whiskey (Brewed Book 2) Page 21