The Barrel House Series: Boxed Set: Bourbon Love Notes, Bourbon on the Rocks, Bourbon Nights, Bourbon Fireball

by Ryan, Shari J.

  I exhale through pursed lips, calming myself from the truthful words.

  Brody gives me the time I need to compose myself. “It’s okay to be mad and to feel the pain of what you’ve lived through, but he’s right.”

  “The road I told you not to go down,” I say, my words barely forming a whisper. “It’s where I need to be.” Brody locks his gaze to my face, waiting for me to say never mind or take me home. “Please.”

  “All you have to do is say the word, and I will pull over and turn around, okay?”

  I nod, agreeing to his offer.

  The ride takes about fifteen minutes until we pull off the exit I avoid. “It’s a mile ahead on the right.” The truck is quiet, and I can hardly hear the engine above the heavy beats of my heart. My eyes are closed when the truck comes to a stop. The dirt on the side of the road crushes sharply beneath the tires, and bile threatens to rise in my throat. “I feel sick.”

  “You will be okay. Try pouring out the bottle instead this time,” Brody says. He’s out of the truck before I have found the handle. Brody opens my door and offers me his hand. I never take a hand. I do things the hard way. This feels better. He squeezes his hand around mine and walks me toward the ledge. “You don’t have to look.”

  My breaths grow heavier and faster. “I have to.”

  I slowly open my eyes, finding the same pile of rocks that have survived damage, debris, cold, hot, floods, and tears. My hand is shaking furiously, so Brody wraps his hand around the neck of the bottle and loosens the top. “Come on. You’re strong enough to do this.”

  I remove the cap and place it in my pocket, then hold my arm out in front of me and slowly tip the bottle, feeling the contents spill out. The sound of a trickle becomes a splash, then droplets, one after another. The bottle is empty, light in my hand, free of the burning substance that has been waiting to be released.

  I swallow hard and take a few deep breaths, feeling the sensation of nausea pass. I stare up at the stars and speak out loud, “Okay, it’s empty.”

  My foot slips on the rock I’m standing on and tumble down the hill a couple of feet. I land on my butt, knocking the wind out of my lungs.

  “Journey!” Brody shouts, making his way down after me.

  “I’m okay.” I press my hands into the rocks on both sides of me and stare down into the dark cavern.

  “Are you sure?” Brody sits down beside me and places his hand on my knee.

  “Yeah,” I say, twisting my head to look at him. As my gaze scans across the rocks, something glistening catches my eye. It’s a few more feet down. “Do you see that?”

  “What?” Brody asks, looking around.

  “Hold this,” I say, handing Brody the empty Bourbon bottle. I carefully lower myself a couple more feet, careful not to go too close to the ledge. I see the glistening object again and reach into the crevice, feeling metal touch my fingertips. I press my hand in farther, feeling the scrape of the sharp edges against my hands. “There’s something here.”

  “Journey, you’re going to slip,” Brody says, reaching for my arm.

  I pry the object out from between the rocks, staring down at the dirt-covered metal. It’s a keychain, attached to another keychain in the shape of a G-Clef. These are Adams. “Oh, my God.”

  “What does it say?” Brody asks, still trying to pull me up from where I’m crouched.

  I rub my thumb over the circular metal keychain, revealing etched letters. After cleaning the dirt off, I hold the metal under the light of the moon and read the words:

  “It’s better to have loved,

  then have never loved at all.”

  Best friends first.

  Best friends always.

  * * *

  My hands shake as I read and re-read the words Adam had hanging from his keys. I hold the rusted pieces against my chest and shudder through a silent cry. Those rocks can take the bourbon, but it can’t take me too.

  “I need to go see Adam,” I tell Brody.

  “Of course,” he says, helping me up from the rocks I’m on.

  “Thank you for not giving up on me.”

  “How could I give up on someone who has proven the meaning of holding on and never letting go?”

  My mind is in a haze throughout the drive to the nursing facility, and I know it’s late and probably shouldn’t be visiting at this hour, but I need Adam to have this.

  Brody follows me silently as we make our way through the building and up to the third floor, finding Adam awake and watching Top Gun, which brings a smile to my face. “Yes!” Brody says as we walk in. “How’s it going, Goose?”

  A small smile appears on Adam’s lips, responding to Brody, but I need his attention.

  “I know it’s late, but I found something tonight. I think it belongs to you.” I hold the keychain up in front of Adam’s face, and he reads the words then slowly glances toward me. It takes a minute, but his eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t want to upset you. I just—I needed to give this to you.” I grab a tissue and blot his eyes.

  “Always,” Adam whispers through bits of air.

  “Adam?” I shout. He just spoke. “Oh my God, did you just say something?”

  Brody rushes to my side. Adam smiles again. “Always friends,” he whispers. “This was never your fault.”

  I feel like I’m dreaming. I didn’t think Adam would speak again. He’s been working with a speech pathologist for years, but he’s never said anything. Adam closes his eyes and swallows hard as if it was painful to make the slightest sound, but he smiles again and takes in a deep breath.

  Brody places his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder.

  This was never your fault.

  The only person I needed to hear this from is the only person who could never speak those words, until now.

  “Live for me,” Adam mutters through another breath without opening his eyes.

  I nod even though he can’t see me. My throat feels tight and swollen from the overwhelming emotions running through me.

  “I will,” I finally say. “Get some rest, Adam. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  I place the keychain down on his nightstand and leave the room that has offered me the selfish peace I have pleaded for.

  As we make our way back to Brody’s truck, he places a kiss on the top of my head. “That was some bourbon,” he says.

  The pain in my chest subsides, the tightness in my limbs weakens, and my pulse slows to a steady pace.

  I was sure there was only one direction. But, the horizon is clear—I see a new fork in the road, and I know it’s time to try a new way because I was set free of the burdens I have held onto. “I need to live—for him,” I tell Brody. “I want to do it with you.”

  “Then let’s live, let’s live until we run out of breath,” Brody says, placing a kiss on my lips.

  Epilogue

  Three Years Later

  “How’s the temperature?”

  “It’s good, a little hot, but—not bad,” Brody tells the woman filling his foot bath with water and soothing salts.

  Hannah and I give each other a look and snicker as we glance back down at our magazines.

  “Is this your first pedicure?”

  Brody set his chair on the highest massage level and he can barely speak without sounding like a talking vibrator. “Yeah, it’s Mother’s Day, and this is what my girls want to do.”

  The woman taking care of Brody’s pedicure looks at me and smiles, but I get the sense that there’s a feeling of hatred for me as she scrubs the bottoms of my husband’s feet. Better her than me.

  “When are you due?” The woman pouring salts into the basin my feet are in hasn’t said much since I sat down, but it seems like she’s trying to make conversation.

  “Last week,” Hannah answers for me. “A long last week ago.”

  I swat at Hannah with my magazine. “Be quiet.”

  “Oh, is it a boy or a girl?” the woman continues.

  “Ano
ther girl,” Brody sighs.

  “You’ll be getting pedicures for life,” his pedicurist says with what looks like a snarl. I might be making the same face, though. I hate feet, which works out well for me since I haven’t seen mine in about four months.

  I didn’t plan on having kids, but Hannah has opened my eyes to a new world. One I didn’t expect to find. I enjoy the challenges she has come along with, and the reward of seeing the effect I have on her life gave me an urge I fought for as long as I can remember. I’m still not sure I would have brought up the idea, but Hannah asked us for a brother or a sister less than a month after Brody, and I tied the knot. Surprisingly, Brody was way more on board than I expected him to be after raising a teenage girl. As for me, I thought baby fever was just a saying, but once it hit me, it was all I could think about. The weakness I suffered with through eating and the accompanying pains slowly faded over time, and I knew if I was going to become one little person’s world, I would need to make every sacrifice to remain healthy. I know I’m strong enough now.

  So, here we are, a week overdue, waiting on our little girl. I can already tell she’s going to be giving her daddy just as much trouble as Hannah.

  Hannah pulls her phone out of her back pocket, which she has been sitting on. I’ve asked her to stop doing that since she’s going to crack the screen, but she won’t listen. She places the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”

  Hannah looks between Brody and me. “Ah, yeah. We’re getting pedicures.” Hannah looks down at her feet, wiggling her toes around in the blue water. “Yeah, Dad too.”

  “Who is that?” Brody asks her.

  “Sure,” Hannah says. “It’s aunt Mel.” Hannah hands the phone over to Brody rather than me.

  “She wants to talk to your dad?” I question.

  Hannah shrugs. “I guess so.”

  “What’s going on?” I ask, using a more pointed tone with her. She has a weird look on her face, and it makes me think something is wrong.

  Brody glances over at me then back at his lap. “Yeah, no problem. I’ll ah—I’ll handle it and let me—an update would be great as soon as you find something out.”

  What the hell?

  “Did you pick out a color?” the woman asks Brody as she begins to drain his water.

  “Oh, no, color, thanks.”

  “No, color?”

  Brody looks at Hannah and me with confusion. “No, thank you,” he says again, slowly.

  I want to laugh at his expense, but I’m too concerned about whatever Melody just told him. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Bull. It’s something, and I want to know,” I tell him.

  “Here we go again,” Hannah groans.

  “Hannah, what did Aunt Mel say?” I ask her.

  “If she could talk to Dad.” Hannah shrugs the subject off, telling me she might know what I want to know.

  “Babe, everything is fine. No one is hurt. You just need to focus on you and baby fireball, okay?”

  “Fine, I’ll call Melody,” I tell him.

  “Journey, come on, I told her I’d keep you calm,” Brody argues.

  “Calm about what? Has anyone ever told you can’t keep a damn secret?” I snap at him.

  “Pregnancy hormones,” Hannah mutters.

  I take my phone out of my bag and search for Melody’s number. “Okay, okay, Brett had a small accident from one of his episodes. He’s fine. He’s checked into the hospital, and he’ll be out in no time. I promise.”

  “What kind of accident?” I snap.

  “It happened at home. He’s fine. Don’t worry.”

  “An episode,” Hannah huffs. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  “Hannah, be easy with your uncle,” I tell her. “He’s having a rough time.”

  “But no one knows why?” Hannah’s eyes widen, and her hands wave in the air as if we’re all imagining Brett’s issues.

  Brody takes Hannah’s hand and squeezes it between his. “Do me a big favor and stop stirring up trouble for just a blink, okay, sweet-pea? Daddy needs a break.”

  “Okay, daddy,” Hannah chuckles.

  “What triggered the episode?” I ask Brody.

  “Melody is still trying to find out. Your mom has the kids. Like I said, everything is fine. We can focus on what we need to focus on right now.”

  Everything is fine.

  “Did Melody seem worried or upset?”

  “Nope, she was calm and collected and said she just wanted to let me know what was going on.”

  Life doesn’t stop moving, the unexpected is never expected, and every time I think people have some sort of control over what happens in life, I’m reminded how untrue this is. It’s funny when I think back to the times where I questioned the weirdness of two sisters being married to two brothers, but our family is this little unit, an unbreakable unit. We won’t let each other fall, so when one of us is down, we’re all there together.

  But Brett is the strongest out of all of us combined, and I know he’ll be fine like he always is.

  “Hannah, stop splashing,” I tell her, feeling the water hit my legs. I look over, finding her foot basin empty.

  “I can’t splash you. There’s no water,” Hannah points out what is now obvious.

  “Hey um, babe, my water just broke.”

  Brody jumps out of his massage chair and goes sliding across the floor with lotion covered feet until he’s doing a seal dive down the center aisle of the salon.

  “Oh my God, did you just say your water broke?” It took a minute for Hannah to register my words. “Dad, get up!”

  “It’s okay. We have time,” I tell her.

  The women working on our pedicures quickly dries us off and wipes the lotion from Brody’s feet so we can get moving. There was so much chatter behind us that I’m glad I couldn’t make out one word of what anyone was saying. We’re a hot mess family, getting ready to add one more sassy mouth to the mix.

  If one night can hold the power to change an entire life, I need to spend all other nights being grateful to have a future. I didn’t think one person could change everything. Nor did I think one little game could go on forever and never have one winner. I especially never thought an unplanned, stupid teenage kiss could spark an everlasting, undying connection; one meant to survive heartbreak and unthinkable events.

  I needed someone to steer the wheel away from the dark turns I was taking, but now we can traverse through life side by side, knowing there isn’t much that can bring us back down to the bourbon on the rocks.

  Brody Pearson’s unimaginable story is next in Bourbon Nights. Tap to PREORDER now!

  Bourbon Nights

  BOOK THREE - BRETT

  Prologue

  Ten Years Ago

  I shouldn’t have acted on impulse.

  I could not walk away unscathed.

  Melody and I kind of grew up together, but it wasn’t like those stories you hear when two kids live next door to each other, play cops and robbers, or climb trees for years until they hit puberty. Then, bam, there was an unfamiliar kind of connection. Melody and I only saw each other a few times a year, despite living only one town away.

  Our dads had been friends since a young age and eventually intertwined their businesses. Melody’s dad, Harold, ran The Barrel House, a bourbon distillery, and my dad produces the barrels to store the bourbon. Therefore, the times our families spent together were at the distillery parties Harold liked to host.

  During the parties, Melody and I had always kept each other company, building forts with the wooden crates or partaking in wild games of flashlight hide-and-seek around the rows of barrels in the shop’s basement. No matter what we did, we ended up in a fit of laughter, rolling around on the ground until it was hard to breathe. Then, we’d fall asleep in a corner somewhere, waiting for the late-night party to end. Months would go by in between the times we’d see each other, but when the wait was over, it was as if no time passed at all. We picked
up right where we left off.

  Then there was one party, the party that sucked. We were in seventh or eighth grade. I brought a bag full of Pop Rocks, Pixy Stix, and Sour Patch Kids for Melody and me to share. We decided those were the best foods to have during an adult party because we’d get a sugar rush that would keep us entertained through the duration of the night. I waited for Melody in the backroom by the stacked wooden crates. My brother, Brody, was busy looking for a spare bottle of bourbon to sneak into a corner so he could convince Journey to join him at a party of their own. Melody and I called Brody and Journey our annoying older bratlings since they both enjoyed looking for trouble. Quite a pair, even as kids.

  When Melody and Journey arrived, I held up the bag with a smile, but they walked past me as if I was one of the wooden crates and continued into the stairwell that led downstairs to the distillery. They left me standing there like an idiot holding a bag full of candy as if it should be the highlight of our evening. I questioned their behavior, wondered if something happened, and thought of every possible cause for the sudden silent treatment.

  Nothing made sense until I thought back on what I learned in health class. I recalled an argument about hormones—whether the girls’ hormones kicked in first or the boys who were paving the way. It turned out; the boys won that battle most of the time. Maybe the girls were just better at hiding their feelings. The dramatic change in her behavior was very confusing.

  Maybe Melody realized she simply didn’t like me, or possibly found a boyfriend. However, there was also the chance that the shy girl I always knew was suddenly feeling bashful toward me, the person who had been her friend for longer than I could remember.

  The night of the party crawled by at a snail’s pace. My boredom was out of control; downing pixie sticks alone, feeling like a loser. Melody had come upstairs to use the restroom just as I was walking out of the men’s room, and we bumped into each other. I was about to say something, but she turned red. Her eyes widened, and with a small awkward smile, she ran off.