Sweet Bitter Honey

by Liz Crowe

  Ryan tried to rustle up some sympathy but found only ‘It’s-About-Time-itis’ with regard to his brother’s frustration. “Okay, so I’ll post an ad on Craigslist and on our website. I say we see what we get and determine salary value then.” He turned to his screen and started fiddling with recipes and checking fermentation temps before heading toward the small lab.

  They’d managed to morph the empty auto factory into a twenty-thousand-square-foot brewery, plus three-thousand-square-foot pub that on most nights was standing room only. By the time Ryan had joined the company, infant son in tow, the brewhouse was in place, run by a woman who was now his assistant. She’d happily turned over the reins, declaring herself “unqualified” to be the head brewer. While he was probably even less qualified, he’d jumped in with both feet, using his time spent training at a brewery in Charleston, and between them, they’d managed to crank out some damn good beers.

  Ryan was happy with his life, if a little lonely for adult companionship beyond what his brother and the sparse staff provided. But he kept busy and looked forward to each day in his very own brewery, which was more than a lot of people could claim about their day jobs.

  “Hey, Fran,” he hollered across the brewery to get his assistant’s attention. The woman was cleaning out the mash tun after their brew day, the sinewy muscles of her arms flexing as she scraped the spent mash into large garbage bins. He watched her a few seconds, admiring her strength, not to mention the way her jeans highlighted the full curve of her hips and ass.

  He shook his head at himself. He knew damn well Francine played for the other team most days, not unlike himself, and they’d established up-front that the knee-jerk flirting they’d been doing during their early days together would never lead anywhere. They had too much to accomplish at Ypsi Brewing to allow for anything else between them. Their relationship now was solid, based on mutual respect, humor and a love of craft beer.

  When he glanced at his phone, he realized if he didn’t hurry, he’d be late to get Jamie from day care…again. “Shit, Fran!”

  The woman propped her arm on the handle of her tool and wiped sweat off her face with the towel she kept hooked in her belt loop. “Go on already—you’re late picking up your kid.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

  She waved him off, her smile wide.

  Not for the first time since landing here with nothing but an empty bank account, no place to live and squalling infant in tow, Ryan thanked God for his luck.

  He grinned, picturing his son’s eager face and bright green eyes. He was pretty much a small replica of Ryan, right down to his temper and apparent need for constant stimulus and movement, which was a blessing and a curse. Ryan shouldered his backpack and headed out, convinced he could find a sales specialist and really get things rolling in a successful direction.

  * * * *

  “I met somebody.”

  Ryan looked up from his appraisal of the new fermentation vessel’s temperature controls at the sound of his brother’s voice. He frowned at the odd look on Quinn’s face. The man’s first marriage had been one of similar tastes, drive and looks. Ryan had never gotten to know her well during the marriage, but she’d shown her true colors clearly in the last few years, keeping the twins away from their father while demanding ever more in alimony and child support. Ryan knew not having his sons in his life nearly killed Quinn on a daily basis and was only just beginning to understand how awful that must be. His nephews were around this month, however, spending time with their dad while their mother worked on snagging rich husband number two.

  The fact that Quinn was owning up to even dating, much less having ‘met someone’ shocked Ryan to his core. But he determined that playing it cool would be the best current course of action. Not to mention he was jealous. His own love life had seemingly been put on permanent hold for the last five years, but he didn’t give it much thought anymore.

  “Oh? Who? Where?”

  They’d had great response to their call for a marketing director in the last few weeks, and he was working on a group interview, but still wanted to make one more call to the Eastern Michigan Business School. A couple more decent candidates would be ideal before he brought them all in for a group-think session so he could see who stood out from the crowd. There. That’s it. Focus on other things and not your neglected libido. “That explains the goofy look on your face. I assume you’ve gotten laid?”

  “Maybe. It’s Audrey…um…Audrey Traynor. Met her on the job, actually.” Quinn ran a hand through his thick black hair. The two of them were about as far apart in looks and personality as brothers could be. Quinn resembled their mother, with night-black hair and bright blue eyes. Ryan was green-eyed with wavy dark blond hair—that same hair that repeated itself on Jamie’s head and was in sore need of cutting. Kid could pass for a girl with his soft features and flowing locks these days. His mother nagged him daily about it. Ryan stopped musing, processed what his brother had said then stared at him, open-mouthed.

  “Traynor…Traynor Wholesale Company…our distribution partner…the one I want to fire because they suck?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Wow.” Ryan put down the clipboard and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nice one. Hope she’s worth it.”

  “Oh, I think she is.” Quinn raised an eyebrow and stuck his hands in his pockets. “She wants to have us over for dinner this weekend. She, um, she has a brother at home with her right now. He’s a Marine Corps vet, served in Iraq, and he’s…a little messed up, at least physically, but she’s determined to take care of him until he can get settled.”

  “A brother,” Ryan said, slowly finally realizing what was going on. “A wounded warrior brother. No, thanks, Quinn. I’ll take a pass.”

  “I’m not setting you up with the guy, Jesus. For the record, I still think you should stick with girls, but since you can’t seem to make up your mind… Well, I just thought since you haven’t been out or anything in a while, and Audrey said her brother was…your type. Although you should know, he is blind, after a firefight that got him discharged with a Purple Heart and a Navy Cross. He has a service dog that he’s trying to get used to plus a new job as an internet security consultant. The shit they can do with computers now—it’s like his being blind makes no difference at all in that respect. His name is Cole.”

  Ryan gaped at his brother. “A blind, gay, pissed-off, computer geek ex-Marine? Gee, Quinn, sounds like fun. Maybe I’ll invite my son’s drug-addled mother along, you know, to complete the dysfunctional family portrait.” He turned away, aware he was being an ass about a guy he didn’t even know.

  “Sorry,” Quinn said.

  “Whatever. I’ll think about it. Can Jamie come over and stay with the boys and the nanny that night?”

  The thought of a man, any man, in his orbit startled him and made him more than a little tingly. He’d spent so much time and energy sublimating these feelings to his new responsibilities. He hardly drank anymore, didn’t touch cigarettes or pot, and he ran at least five miles every morning, rain or snow or shine.

  His early days in Ypsi, getting the brewery going and running on something like three hours of sleep a night thanks to Jamie, had been a blur and he’d fallen back on some bad habits. But the morning about a week after he’d awoken with a brutal, clanging hangover, lying next to a naked stranger, to the sound of his mother’s repeated banging on his apartment door, he’d made a vow of austerity, paternity, maturity and, apparently, celibacy.

  He’d never gone without getting laid for any extended period of time, so he’d never questioned it. Sex for a guy like him was pretty easily arranged. He wasn’t hard to look at, and he knew what buttons to push for both men and women. Being bisexual had always seemed a bonus.

  But right now, at this moment, looking at his brother’s happy face, he’d never felt more alone. The slight twinge of horniness at the base of his brain when he thought of the faceless, wounded Cole Traynor made him want to punch something. Words to
the contrary spilled out. “I’ll go,” he called to his brother’s retreating back. “I need to get out.”

  “I thought you might. See you in the morning?”

  A shiver passed down Ryan’s spine. He was lucky. He had the job he wanted and family he loved. The support Quinn had given him in the last few years meant more to him than he could ever explain or repay. The Saturday morning pancake ritual with his uncle was something Jamie talked about every Friday. It gave Ryan an entire morning alone, and he was always grateful for it.

  Quinn’s boys were visiting on one of their rare trips to Michigan and Jamie was beside himself. They were great kids and loved their cousin, or at least tolerated him. Ryan shook his head. The least he could do was meet this Cole and his sister, Audrey, whom Quinn seemed gaga over.

  What will it hurt?

  * * * *

  “Daddy! I want to come with you.” Jamie did his usual round of whining before realizing he got to have a sleepover with his cousins. By the time Ryan had showered, tugged on dark jeans and a somewhat non-wrinkled button-down shirt, the little boy was standing by the door, backpack full of Legos, ready to go. Nervousness coated Ryan’s brain when he kissed the boy’s cheek prior to dropping him with the sitter at Quinn’s. “Take me with you.” Jamie gripped his arm once until he saw the older boys headed toward him.

  “Next time, sport,” Ryan said, his heart clenching for the millionth time at the sight of his son. He hesitated, somehow understanding this was a pivotal moment but unable to pinpoint why. He smiled at the sitter and climbed back into his car, pointing it toward Ann Arbor and the address Quinn had given him for Audrey and Cole.

  He arrived, parked in front of the tidy bungalow-style house and took a long breath. Quinn needed his support, so he was here, nothing more or less. His life was complete. He didn’t need anything, including a relationship with a total stranger. By the time Quinn pulled up, Ryan felt steadier—like he could handle whatever lay behind the front door he’d been staring at for ten minutes.

  The brothers walked up the steps in silence. Quinn knocked on the door. The smile Ryan saw spread across his brother’s face when it was opened by one of the most stunning blonde women Ryan had ever seen made his face hot. He’d met Audrey Traynor once before, but all he recalled from that encounter was fury at her nonchalance about their plight and his utter determination to cut Traynor Distribution loose. At that split second, he remembered her brother, the stiff but model-handsome Marine who’d been in the office that day, on leave or something, visiting his sister.

  The woman pulled his brother into an embrace and they exchanged a soft kiss, before Quinn introduced him to her. The whole thing passed like a surreal dream. Quinn frowned at him at one point, but Ryan just grinned and acknowledged that the sensation of hovering over the scene, observing strangers going through the socially accepted motions. He was judge-level sober, but he sensed a wooziness in his brain while something else, something much more interesting, hovered on his horizon.

  He stepped into the tidy foyer, his eyes adjusting to the lamplight in the minimally decorated room. It was empty. Ryan blew out the breath in relief. When he turned back to say something to his brother, he heard a low growl.

  “Audrey,” someone spoke in a rough voice. “The, ah, timer’s going off.”

  Ryan stared, stunned by the sight of the man in the kitchen doorway. A broad-shouldered masculine man who stood with his Ray-Bans on and canine assistant by his side, his face set in a scowl, back-lit from the kitchen. Cole Traynor was dressed in dark jeans and a gray T-shirt. He was, in a word, amazing. He was also furious—so much so Ryan could sense his anger from across the room, palpable and real. But he kept staring, taking in the Marine Corps tattoo that peeked out from under Cole’s sleeve and the strong lines of muscle that the shirt did nothing to disguise.

  “Huh?” He stumbled when Quinn shoved him with an elbow. His entire body was on alert in a way he’d forgotten. “Oh. Sorry.” Ryan let his gaze return to Cole. The other man’s brown hair was growing out from its military severity and his square jaw was covered in a light, tidy beard. He oozed a simultaneous ‘fuck off’ and ‘fuck me’ vibe that Ryan’s neglected libido picked up, absorbed and translated to an embarrassing boner that forced him to shift behind the nearest chair to hide.

  “Ryan.” The woman stepped in front of him. “This is my brother, Cole.” She tugged the handsome, angry man out of the doorway. His shoulders tensed. “Cole, this is Ryan, Quinn’s brother.”

  Cole held out a hand. Ryan stared at it, unwilling to touch him and admit what his every nerve ending was screaming, but realized how rude that must seem. The moment stretched way out beyond anything resembling polite. Quinn cleared his throat, startling Ryan into action. He stuck out his hand. Cole took it without help, somehow sensing what to do, how to reach Ryan’s palm. Ryan’s life was never the same again.

  Chapter Three

  Cole

  The dream was back. Cole knew it for what it was. Yet he was unable to stop it. He flinched, inhabiting that in-between state of sleep and wake, of before and after, of a whole Cole and a fractured one.

  The dream kept coming.

  Screaming. Fire. Pain. Over and over again. He heard it a split second after he spotted the seemingly innocuous wire on the side of the road. He started to speak, to warn the driver then…screaming…fire…sand… and pain became his entire universe.

  He opened his eyes, expecting the bright, hot, blue sky. And saw nothing. He thrashed around, tried to find his weapon, remembered Dan was in the Humvee behind him and panicked all over again. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe and…shit…he couldn’t see. Not to mention that his right leg had been replaced by a flaming ball of agony.

  His ears rang, even while the screams of men and women all around him filled his brain. With a huge effort, he finally pulled loose from the safety harness and fell onto all fours, trying to make his eyes and ears function. He scrabbled around on the floor of the truck and connected with what felt like a man’s boot. He felt his way up, making contact with the bloodied flesh of the man’s leg. He realized too late that the limb was definitely not attached to anything else. He yanked his hand away and brought it to his face. The sickening, coppery smell of blood made him gag.

  He sat, blinking fast, but his eyes burned and watered so he shut them and kept crawling, trying to locate the source of all the yelling.

  Dan. He had to find Dan.

  He called out, picturing the younger man’s handsome face. He reached his hand out into thin air then tumbled down to the sand. Yelling and cursing when his knee connected with something sharp, sending a fresh bolt of pain up his spine, he froze when he heard it.

  “Cole!”

  He rolled over onto his side and groped around, keeping his eyes clenched shut to spare the agony of trying to force them to work, then attempted to stand. The horrific stench of burning flesh suffocated him. He reached out a hand again, hoping to find something to grab onto to guide him back to the truck Dan had been in. “Cole!” The voice was hoarse, weak, but he recognized it.

  He and Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Anderson had been together for nearly two years. Dan was from Ohio, career military, and a computer super geek, like Cole. They were both high up on the “need to know” list and were able to manipulate more information between them than was probably healthy. They’d led the small, secretive counterintelligence effort in this particular corner of hell.

  Cole was due to rotate back to the States in two weeks, and Dan was going to join him when he finished his tour a year later. Cole was in head-over-heels love with the tall, dark and handsome fellow Marine. And right then, the sound of Dan’s voice fading to his left in the chaos was freaking him the fuck out. That, and the fact he still couldn’t see, no matter how much he rubbed his eyes. His nasal passages and throat burned, but he ignored it all and dropped to all fours, muscling through the agonizing pain in his knees and hips, half-crawling, half-dragging himself toward the sound
.

  “Cole,” Dan coughed. Cole put a hand on what he hoped like hell was Dan’s arm, still connected to his torso, thank Christ. The yelling had mostly stopped, leaving in its wake a terrifying silence punctuated by the snap and crackle of flames and the yammering of a radio somewhere to his right.

  “Cole,” Dan croaked out, “I’m…shit…” He made a terrifying noise somewhere between a sob and a moan of pain. Cole dragged him up, held him close.

  “Shh, I’ve got it. Help me find the com. I can’t fucking see anything.”

  Dan groaned. The metallic odor of blood filled Cole’s nose again, making him want to puke. His hand found Dan’s. He tried to remain calm, to remember his years of training. “Your face…” Dan whispered.

  “I know how good-looking I am. Now help me find the com.” Cole grunted in pain when he started to stand again, his leg singing out a clear tune of torment. He shook, called on his inner reserve of Marine-instilled calm, took a breath and let Dan grab his arm. If only he could just see.

  “No, go to your left, pull Tanner out of the fire.”

  Dan’s voice guided him to save a couple more of the doomed platoon of grunts that had been their escort, even though the more he tried to rub whatever the hell was in his eyes out, the more they hurt and the darker it got. He stumbled, cursed, limped and finally dragged the last man Dan could see from where he sat out of the blaze that used to be the shit-heap houses they’d been sent to recon. His head pounded and his throat felt coated with sand.

  “Dan!” he ground out, crawling again, unable to use his left leg at all. He felt encased in a cocoon of darkness where all he knew was the smell of blood and burning flesh and the sounds of men in pain. Cole found his target, heard Dan’s ragged breathing and touched the man’s leg. Terror slithered into his brain. His chest ached from inhaling so much smoke. “My eyes,” he said, weakly, touching his face and feeling moisture.