Whiskey (Brewed Book 2)

by Molly McAdams

  By the time I finished, Cayson had folded his arms tightly over his chest, his body vibrating below mine.

  “The fuck?” he said with a low rumble.

  I lifted a hand before letting it fall softly to his stomach. There wasn’t much more to say other than what I had.

  “Does Saw know about that?”

  “Not the details,” I answered. “He thinks this whole thing with Kip is funny because he knows it’s so disturbing to me.”

  He gave a firm nod before scrubbing a hand over his face. “Not surprised. Kip’s always been this way.”

  “What do you—” I glanced to the side when Cayson’s phone went off, catching the time on his phone and hissing a curse a split second before I realized who was calling.

  Gabriela.

  “You need to go,” he said in pure understanding as he silenced the call.

  I tried to shake the worry and years’ worth of jealousy when it came to that name as I absently mumbled, “I do. I have so much to finalize before Amber Fest.”

  His chest shifted with a muted laugh. “There’re Oktoberfests in Beaumont . . .” One of his shoulders lifted. “There’s nothing wrong with them, just hard for something to compare with the events Amber puts on.”

  Amusement tugged at my mouth even as one of the worst nights of my life tried to bleed through the bliss of this morning.

  Sent a shiver as cold as death down my spine.

  Had those recurring questions skating along the edges of my thoughts: How can I love him? What is wrong with me?

  “Um . . .” I shook my head, trying to force the nightmares away. “What did you mean by what you said? About Kip.”

  He studied me for a moment as if trying to figure out where my mind had gone, hands back on my thighs and leaving gentle trails. “When Sawyer told me about y’all, I was pissed for obvious reasons. But I was more shocked it was him of all people. Guy was an asshole—worse than I ever was. Different.”

  Confusion and surprise pulsed through me at the sure way Cayson spoke. I couldn’t remember anything from growing up that would make anyone say something negative about Kip.

  “But high school was a long time ago, and I know more than anyone that people can change. So, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Cayson gave a little shrug. “Some people don’t change.”

  All thoughts of what Kip could’ve done to make Cayson say what he had abruptly transformed into worry in the form of a churning stomach and cold hands gripping my spine.

  Because he’d just said what I feared most.

  I just prayed his words didn’t include him.

  The large wooden farmhouse stood before me like an adversary and a beacon.

  Hunter had changed it since I left—since he’d bought it from Mom and taken over the ranch and peach orchard. The outside was painted white, the porch and shutters stained dark walnut.

  But that didn’t stop the haunting memories from surging forward.

  I turned off the engine and sank lower in my seat, letting my stare bounce around the part of the property I could see.

  The oak trees that crowded the far side and back portion of the house. The pens and corrals just a short walk away, filled with only a chunk of the animals. The barn that held as many good memories as bad.

  My brother.

  A mumbled curse slipped free as I rubbed at my jaw.

  Because there he was, standing in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest, ball cap pulled low, staring at me like he was waiting for me to make the first move.

  Except I wasn’t sure what I was doing there.

  Emberly had left all kinds of distracted and distant after the call to Kip.

  When Sawyer and I had crossed in the kitchen an hour later, he hadn’t even bothered to look at me when he’d said, “Hurt my best friend, I’ll kill you.”

  After that and the bullshit at Beau’s, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to get sent away again.

  To fight.

  But I’d ended up at the ranch all the same, exactly the way I’d ended up in Amber.

  I glanced at my phone when it began ringing for the umpteenth time today. When I saw Gabriela’s face covering my screen again, I silenced the call and turned it to vibrate.

  When I looked up, Hunter was holding the storm door open in silent offering. Head lowered, staring at the porch like he was struggling to figure out how this was about to go, same as me.

  But he didn’t say anything as I got out of my truck or walked up to the house. Just waited until I’d passed him to follow me in.

  “Wondered how long it was gonna take you to head this way,” he said as I took in the house.

  The changes he’d made.

  All new flooring and furniture and color on the walls. If I hadn’t already known where I was, I might be able to make myself believe I was somewhere else.

  “Haven’t gotten the best reception so far,” I responded, twisting to give him a wry smile. “I was told to give you time.”

  A crease formed between his eyebrows, his head slanting just slightly. “Why’s that?”

  “Apparently, I ruined your life.”

  His chest pitched with a silent laugh as he removed his hat and twisted it between his hands. “That you did. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t come here.”

  “Must have missed that offer sometime in the nine or so years where we weren’t talking.”

  He shrugged easily. “You ruined my life.”

  A relaxed laugh rolled from me. “Right.”

  Silence crept between us for a minute before he nodded behind me. “You gonna go in?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly, unsure if I could get myself farther than the entryway.

  “Want a drink?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Beneath the hardened stare, Hunter was looking at me like he understood my hesitation. After a moment, he nodded and started past me. “Look good, Cays.”

  I rocked to the side when he clapped my shoulder a little too hard and stayed in that spot, staring at the door I’d slipped out of so many years before to start a new life.

  My head listed when I heard the low timbre of Hunter’s voice mixing with a higher, more animated pitch. I hadn’t known anyone else was there . . . only a truck had been parked outside when I’d pulled up. Also hadn’t known Hunter was seeing someone considering Sawyer said he wasn’t.

  “I can come back,” I offered when he stepped into the entryway, water in hand. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Confusion swept across his features until I gestured in the direction he’d just come from. “Oh, no, it’s fine,” he said with a hushed laugh. “It’s just Izzy.”

  I looked behind him as if Izzy would appear, my shoulders bunching when she didn’t. “Who the hell is Izzy?”

  “Isabel Estrada,” he answered, waiting until recognition covered my face before continuing. “She’s the bookkeeper for Dixon Farms now.”

  A huff tumbled from me. “No shit?”

  “Saw didn’t tell you?”

  “No.” With everything else Sawyer kept me updated on, I was surprised he hadn’t considering Isabel had been his friend.

  Her dad had been on the main crew for the orchard—I was pretty sure he still was. He brought Isabel every weekend to help and hang out with us until she started high school and decided she had better things to do. Funny how people found their way back to certain places.

  Funny how we all seemed drawn to this one.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  “Right after I took over,” he said casually. “Anyway, she was asking about an invoice.”

  “In the kitchen?” I asked wryly.

  The corner of his mouth twitched with amusement. “I turned the downstairs guest area into the new office,” he said, indicating the rooms tucked behind the kitchen. “That way she can come and go easier. Or catch me if I’m walking through . . . like just now.”

  “And probably best considering where the off
ice used to be,” I said with a smirk. “A little more professional.”

  When we were young, our parents expanded their room to include the den just outside it. What was supposed to be a huge, walk-in closet for Mom somehow turned into Dad’s office. Dick.

  Assuming that was now Hunter’s room, I couldn’t imagine it would go over well to have an employee working in there.

  Hunter’s only response was a soft laugh.

  “Hey,” he began, voice hesitant and taking on a more somber tone as he switched tracks. “I’ve got something for you. You think you got time?”

  My brows drew close as I heard the questions hidden just beneath the surface.

  Hunter already knew I had time, that wasn’t what he was really asking. He wanted to know if I could handle whatever he had for me.

  If I could handle being there.

  I was so damn curious to find out whatever it was that I would’ve stayed even if he came back out with arms raised and fists swinging.

  “Yeah, sure.” I followed him into the dining room, hanging back when he told me to wait.

  I stared at the old farmhouse table that used to sit in the kitchen.

  It had been fixed up and given a new coat of stain, but I could still see it. Me as a kid sitting in the middle of the bench, face smashed against the table as Dad raged and sneered because I’d been totally oblivious to anyone around.

  “Hated you for a long time, Cays,” Hunter said as he entered the open room. “Might still.”

  “There’s a line you should probably get in.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “I’m sure you noticed the house is a little different.”

  “You did good,” I said in way of acknowledgment.

  “Updated every room,” he said, his tone hinting at something I wasn’t picking up on. “Went through one at a time, giving them new windows, walls, flooring . . . whatever was needed.”

  I nodded, brows lifting in both confusion and wonder when he set a shoebox on the table. “That’s, uh . . . great. Outside looks great too.”

  He tipped his head toward the box. “There were loose floorboards in your room.”

  My face fell.

  Stomach twisted.

  But I wasn’t sure if it was out of fear and worry or excitement.

  “Found all that beneath them.”

  I dropped into a chair and just stared at the box for long seconds before I was finally able to lift the top.

  “Holy shit.” It was a breath wrapped in the sweetest kind of pain as I pulled out thick stacks of papers.

  Of drawings.

  Of smoothed out frustrations where I’d tried to force myself to write the words that were in my head . . . and failed.

  Of Emberly. The picture I’d stolen from Sawyer in high school because it was the only way I could just look at her.

  “Thought you’d been writing in some language, so I tried to research it. Dropped it soon after when I didn’t come up with anything.” He heaved a sigh as he sank into a chair across from me. Tapping one of the papers he must have smoothed out when he’d found everything.

  The creases still showed every bit of my teenage self’s anger and embarrassment and contempt.

  “And then one day, it just hit me.”

  “Nonsense hit you?”

  “One of my buddies in the army had found out his daughter was dyslexic right before I—” He cleared his throat and shifted, his tone dipping when he continued. “Anyway, he brought in some paperwork that he’d been studying up on to better understand and help her with reading. Showed me a paper that indicated what letters might look like to her. Looked a little bit like that.”

  I nodded.

  Wasn’t sure how to respond or what he expected me to say.

  “Did you know?” he finally asked.

  “Not for a long time.”

  Hunter waited, the silence expectant. But I was walking on such dangerous, shaky ground with him.

  With all of them.

  I’d said one thing and been punched by Sawyer. I couldn’t imagine the rest of them taking anything I said differently—Dad had never stopped being a hero to them.

  Minutes had passed before he put a hand down on the papers, pulling them toward the middle of the table. “First thought was I hadn’t known you could draw. Wondered why you hadn’t told anyone but didn’t think on it for long.”

  Figures.

  “Then I figured out what was on the balled-up papers, and I thought about that shit for weeks. Because I was so damn sure that was you trying to write, and you’d hidden that you couldn’t along with everything else. And, Cays . . .” He pushed some of the sketches toward me. “These are amazing. You had to know that, but you still hid it like you were ashamed or afraid.”

  I glanced up to find him watching me, expression open.

  “Knew there was a reason,” he said softly, sitting back and folding his arms over his chest. “And if there was a reason, it might’ve played into why you left.”

  “That it?” I asked when he didn’t continue. When he just lifted a brow as if to say it was my turn, I looked to the side, out the large window. “How long since you came up with that theory?”

  “Did your room about two years ago.”

  My chest pitched as I met his stare again. “And you were just gonna sit on it until the day I came back—if I came back?”

  “Still ruined my life,” he muttered with veiled amusement.

  My eyes rolled.

  “We haven’t talked in a damn long time,” he continued, “why would I bring this shit to you when I wasn’t even sure if I was right? I’m still not sure if I’m right.” He leaned forward, expression sober. “But I do know you were the only one of us who wasn’t into sports. All Dad ever talked about was sports.”

  No matter how hard I tried to keep my expression neutral, I could feel the way my brows lowered, the way that bitterness and resentment simmered and had me gritting my teeth. My knee bouncing a mile a minute.

  “Pushing us to be better and faster, do more and find what we were best at. But not you.” He waved a hand over the papers before folding it across his chest and leaning back again. “This got so deep in my head that I was in the kitchen at two in the fucking morning, trying to figure out why you’d hide it and why Dad never seemed to care that you just skated by. Never doing or trying anything. And that’s when I realized I couldn’t remember Dad talking to you or about you at all. Even in the days after you left . . . before he died.”

  “Jesus, Hunter,” I rumbled. “If you’re trying to make me feel worthless, it’s working.”

  “I’m not. I wanna know if any of these papers have to do with why you left.”

  “Not directly.”

  “Did Dad?” he asked immediately as if he’d been expecting my answer.

  But it was his grave tone and ticking jaw that had me hesitating.

  Had my fingers twitching anxiously, preparing for fight or flight.

  “You gonna hit me if I say yes?”

  A crease formed between his brows, but his shoulders sagged as if he’d been waiting for that confirmation for so damn long—even just the hint I’d given him. “Why the hell would I hit you?”

  “Saw did . . . and I’d hardly gotten anything out.”

  Hunter hadn’t said a word as I told him everything. From that very first morning Dad had pulled me into the barn until the night I’d left.

  He moved.

  Head shaking at the times Dad hit me. Rubbing at his neck or jaw and scrubbing his hands over his face at the shit Dad had said.

  But he hadn’t spoken.

  Once I finished, he stood and started away from me. Calling out, “Hungry?” over his shoulder as he did.

  When I joined him in the kitchen, he asked, “Then what?”

  “I left,” I repeated dully.

  “Yeah, but you’ve been gone for about a third of your life, Cays. So, then what?”

  I huffed and leaned against a counter. “The part Saw
yer hit me for.”

  He straightened, his brows raised high as he kicked the fridge shut and walked over to dump the contents in his arms onto the kitchen island.

  His head bobbed as he turned and grabbed a loaf of bread and a knife from the cutting block, his mouth twisted like he was thinking about something. Just before he spoke, it quirked up into a smirk. “Should we wait until I’m not holding a knife?”

  A laugh crept up my throat. “Never know with this family.”

  He nodded toward everything he’d laid out to make sandwiches. “Eat. You can tell me after.”

  “You didn’t ask about the picture,” I said as we loaded up our pieces of bread.

  “Emberly Olsen, huh?” He sucked in a deep breath and released it just as slowly. “If someone had told me, I might’ve laughed. But finding it the way I did and with everything else that was there . . .” His stare drifted to me after a moment. “Made sense too.”

  I nodded in understanding and gratefulness and went back to assembling my sandwich.

  “Does she know?”

  “She does now.”

  A huff left him. “Never too late, I guess.”

  I stilled. “You mean that?” When he didn’t answer, I looked up to find him watching me curiously. “You, of all people, do you mean that? If Madison came back to town today and said she still loved you, would you take her back?”

  Hunter’s expression had slipped.

  A soul-deep ache I knew so damn well swirled in his eyes.

  “Fully,” I added meaningfully. “No holding it over her that she left. No worrying that she might leave again. No letting that come between y’all.”

  “In a heartbeat,” he said softly. “If she came back, I wouldn’t waste a damn second.”

  I nodded as I went back to my plate.

  Ice slipping through my veins and creeping around my heart.

  I was thinking he couldn’t really know unless it happened. Wondering if it might change if he were to ever come face to face with the girl who’d shattered his heart.

  Regardless, it wasn’t the answer I wanted.