Sweet Bitter Honey

by Liz Crowe

  “I, uh, can’t remember,” Quinn said.

  “Well, congratulations. You knocked me up. Jesus.”

  Ryan laughed. “Well done, brother. I can’t imagine a more beautiful woman to knock up than this one.”

  Ryan kept moving toward the door. He had to get the hell out of here. Cole looked his usual devastatingly amazing—ever longer hair hanging around his face in gold waves. His dark blue jeans and bright white button-down enveloped his amazing physique with an exquisite perfection. His dark glasses were fixed firmly in place. Ryan bit the inside of his cheek to keep from dragging the guy up off the couch and tossing him down on the next available horizontal surface and fucking him until they both begged for mercy.

  Lynette, remember, Lynette. You have plans for her tomorrow, plans that will quell this stupid need to be with Cole once and for all. He is unavailable to you. Let it go.

  “I’m um, gonna go,” he said, shrugging when Quinn shot him an angry look.

  “Wait.” Quinn pulled Audrey to him and turned to face Ryan and Cole. “Now that we have this added wrinkle, I want you both to know that we bought the house, the big one by the lake. We’ll be moving out there in the next week or so. Cole is staying here.”

  “Alone?” Ryan asked, honestly worried.

  “Yeah, I’m a big boy, remember?” The other man didn’t face him, directing his clipped words toward Quinn and Audrey.

  “Anyway, so, I guess we just wanted you to know and um…then there’s this.” Ryan’s mouth fell open when he saw his brother drop to one knee, grab Audrey’s hand and open a small blue velvet box. “Marry me, oh knocked up one?”

  She put a hand over her mouth. “You planned this, didn’t you?”

  “Well, the buying the house part then asking you to marry me in front of your brother bit, yeah. The other…well…” He slid an impressive-looking diamond onto her ring finger. Ryan saw her hands shake, heard Cole’s sharp intake of breath and was completely surprised when the man grabbed him and pulled him close.

  “Don’t go,” Cole whispered, his voice low and sure.

  Ryan gulped, unwilling to admit how much he loved the feel of Cole’s arms around him. “Well, I’ll stay for dinner anyway.” He smiled when Cole tightened his grip but resolved not to fall into a sex trap with the guy, not again.

  * * * *

  Later, they lay on their backs, naked and catching their breaths. “You’re insatiable, you know that? Not that I’m complaining,” Cole said.

  Ryan sighed and closed his eyes, letting sleep pull him under for a brief moment. Quinn and Audrey had decamped to his place after a thoroughly annoying dinner show of kissing, grab-assing and sneaking off inside. Cole had declared them banished, shut the door, turned to Ryan and held out a hand. ‘Shall we?’ he’d asked and Ryan had not said a word, merely slipped out of his clothes and into bed with him.

  Ryan was self-aware enough to acknowledge that he now had a serious dilemma on his hands. He absolutely loved Cole’s strong body, firm lips and ass and what they did for him. The undercurrent of emotional vulnerability that was so part and parcel of Cole also tugged at him in ways he couldn’t square. Ryan was no caretaker, never had been. His parenting style with Jamie was a combination of buddy-dad on his best days and frustrated-guy-trying-to-cope on his worst. He still didn’t really trust his instincts, but he loved his son with every fiber of his being, so it worked.

  But now, this thing with Cole threatened to take him places he’d never been and was reluctant to go. The ghostly memory of the hot redheaded woman he’d made an early morning brew date with forced his eyes open. He stared at the ceiling, listening to Cole’s breathing even out into sleep. He rolled over, tugging Cole into to the curve of his body, shoving thoughts of her away until a loud, hoarse yell yanked him from a dead sleep, terrified and on alert.

  Cole was sitting, hands over his eyes, rocking back and forth, calling for someone named Dan. Ryan touched his shoulder, felt the clamminess of his skin. But the other man jerked away from him.

  “Cole,” he whispered, but Cole clawed at his eyes, leaving red streaks on his skin and making Ryan worry for his actual eyeballs. He tried to grab Cole’s arm, to make him stop, but Cole threw him off with a surprising strength and Ryan had to duck to avoid getting cold-cocked.

  “Jesus, man, wake up.” He came around to Cole’s side of the bed and tried to pry his fingers away from his face before he really hurt himself. “Cut it out.” A flicker of fear lit his nerve endings.

  Before he could blink, he was on his ass, on the floor, with Cole standing over him, fists clenched, face dark with fury. “Don’t fucking touch me,” the man said, voice low and leaving no room for discussion.

  Ryan held out a hand, realizing Cole was still in a half-dream state. And that he, Ryan, was in danger of getting the shit kicked out of him by a naked, pissed-off former Marine. He eased back, slid up the wall, keeping plenty of distance between them. Cole’s sightless eyes rolled in his head, his jaw clenched.

  “Cole,” Ryan tried to speak softly. “Cole, wake up. It’s me. It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not! The goddamn truck is on fire…shit…I can’t see, fuck!” He dropped to his knees and clawed at his eyes again. Ryan crawled to him, fear and sympathy warring in his brain. He put a tentative hand on Cole’s sweaty shoulder. The pain was shocking when Cole’s fist connected solidly with his jaw, then again, with his nose making a sick, crunching sound in his head. He lay back, covering his face, yelling for Cole to wake the fuck up already. The dog burst into the room, nearly tearing the door off its hinges in his effort to get at his master.

  Ryan scrambled to his feet. Cole stood, unclenched his fists, his face a mask of agony while the dog whined and keeping close to Cole, his dark eyes fixed up on Cole’s face. “Get away from me, Ryan, before I really hurt you.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Do you need…medicine?” Ryan put a hand to his bleeding nose and ignored the nauseating sound it made when he touched it, stifling the niggling little voice in his head that reminded him Cole could have killed him with his bare hands. But while he watched Cole crumple to the floor, hands over his face, his body curled in on itself and heaving with sobs, Ryan knew he couldn’t just bolt. He had to help. Had to drag the incredible person Cole had once been back into the light of day. The dog whined again, standing over Cole’s heaving body, looking at Ryan as if trying to get him to do something.

  He grabbed a towel from the bathroom and stanched some of his bleeding, pulled on his jeans, then crouched down on the floor, his hands hovering helplessly over Cole’s large, quivering form. It reminded him of his son, when the kid would break down after a particularly dramatic tantrum, spent and sobbing.

  He put his hands on Cole’s shoulders and tried to get him to roll over onto his back. Cole just curled in tighter, his hands over his ears. Ryan sighed, pulled a blanket off the bed and covered Cole’s naked body. Brutus bumped into his hand. But he hadn’t felt this helpless since he’d been handed a screaming infant and told it was his responsibility to care for it, that the kid’s mother had bolted, leaving the baby behind mere hours after his birth. He got some ice for his nose and fell onto the couch, contemplating how much he wanted to help but how little he’d done so far.

  He must have dropped off, because the next thing he knew, the dog was whining and pacing the living room. Ryan watched the display for a minute, then, when the dog hauled off and barked, he jumped up and followed the animal back to the bedroom. Terror gripped him, sending shockwaves down his spine when he saw the empty prescription bottle and smelled the sour tang of bourbon.

  Fuck, how long had he slept?

  His nose and jaw hurt like a motherfucker, but his chest was tight with fear and dread. “Cole!” He banged on the bathroom door, jiggled the handle, not surprised it was locked. “Open up, you son of a bitch. You are not allowed to do this. Do you hear me?” he yelled, threw his shoulder against the solid oak door, praying the nineteen-twenties-era lock would give. It
didn’t. He slammed into it over and over, while Brutus started howling like a wolf and scratching at the floor outside the door, shooting him looks of, ‘Hey, human, try those useful things you call hands and open the door already, would ya?’

  Ryan took a deep breath, put his ear to the door and heard it then. “Go ’way. Leave. Get the fuckout.” Slurred to be sure, but definitely still alive. His nose had started bleeding again from his efforts.

  “Cole, you asshole. Get up and open the fucking door, I mean it. Open the door!” He pounded on it, sending the poor dog into more paroxysms of howling and pained scratching. The water kept flowing. Finally, Ryan got his wits about him and dialed 911. Then he called Quinn, thinking if Audrey were here, Cole would listen. But they’d gone back to Quinn’s house, which was a solid thirty minutes away.

  He pressed his aching forehead against the door. When he spotted water oozing out from under it, his vision darkened from the edges. “Cole!” he yelled. “Please don’t do this!” He heard the words leave his mouth, then the siren. He ran to the front door after throwing a shirt over his bare torso. The EMT took a look at his squashed, bloody nose and streaming eyes then pushed past him to the back where he pointed, defeated, sore and aching all over. “Cole,” he whispered, sinking to the floor, his head in his hands. Blood dripped from his nose to the dark wood.

  “Sir!” one of the paramedics yelled from the doorway. “Can you please control this dog? It won’t let us near the door.”

  Ryan jumped to his feet, grabbed Brutus’ lead and held him back. He tried to calm the animal while the two men used a sledgehammer to destroy Audrey’s guest bathroom door before barreling in. They spoke in low, clipped tones while they pulled Cole’s limp form from the overflowing bathtub. Ryan buried his face in Brutus’s fur, praying as hard he could remember from his mother-enforced years of parochial school. He heard the paramedics barking orders, trying to revive the man laid out on the bedroom floor.

  Time stopped then rushed forward while he held on to Cole’s dog for dear life. When Audrey ran in screaming Cole’s name, Quinn tried to pull her out of the way. The EMTs were working, doing mouth-to-mouth, chest compressions, hooking up IVs and all sorts of shit. When he saw how blue Cole’s fingers were, he tried to drag the dog out of the room with him. But Brutus put all his nearly ninety-five pounds of muscle into staying put, whining and trying to claw his way over to his master.

  “Audrey, honey, let them do their job.” Quinn tried to keep her calm, but she kept shrieking her brother’s name. Finally, she broke down and sobbed, letting Quinn hold her. Ryan watched from what felt like a million miles away while the men tried to revive Captain Cole Traynor, Purple Heart and Navy Cross recipient, but nothing seemed to be working.

  One of them put his stethoscope to Cole’s chest, yelled for the other one to hook up the oxygen and prep for an on-site intubation. Taking this as a good sign, Ryan gripped Brutus tighter. A tube was inserted down Cole’s throat, hooked to an oxygen source and his chest start to rise and fall.

  “Oh, God,” Audrey whispered. Quinn let go of her. She dropped down to her knees and brushed Cole’s hair back from his forehead, murmuring to him, kissing his cheeks, holding his hand. She looked up at Ryan once, anger in her gaze. “What happened? What the fuck did you do?”

  Quinn started to step into it, but Ryan held him back. He handed the dog over to his brother and got on his knees next to Audrey. “He half-woke up in the middle of a nightmare. He nearly beat the crap out of me. When he really woke up and realized what he’d done, he just…snapped. I thought he went back to sleep, so I covered him up and left him alone and later the dog came to get me and…” His voice broke. He looked down at Cole’s washed-out face. His knees and calves were ice cold from kneeling in the water that had flowed over the side of the tub before one of the medics had turned it off.

  Something in him gave way, leaving him exhausted and more aware of how much his nose and jaw hurt than ever. He got to his feet. “I can’t do this…” He walked out without another word to anyone, the sound of the dog’s howling piercing his eardrums all the way out to his car.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lynette glared at her reflection in the small bathroom mirror.

  “Honey!” Her mother’s voice floated out from the kitchen. “Where are you going? Did you make coffee? Can you feed the cat? Lynette!”

  “Mom, what are you doing up this early? I have to go to work. Yes, the coffee is ready and I’ll deal with the cat later. He was sound asleep on the couch, last I saw.” She rolled her eyes at herself, yanked her hair up and tucked it under a cap, then turned, observing herself another minute. Her scalp tingled at the memory of Ryan Shannon’s angry glare, his touch, his voice. Jesus, everything about the man did things to her she had no reason to justify.

  She blew out a breath. The few tidbits she knew about Ryan Shannon she’d learned through the grapevine at work. He had a kid at home, from some failed relationship or another. Rumors also flew about him being bisexual. Of course, she had exactly zero business thinking anything about him other than work-related aggravation. She was just marking time until she found a real job. She had student loans and the brewery gig had come up quick and she’d leaped at it. It kept her local, which she needed. All the justifications she’d used for the past six weeks crowded her brain. All good for a temporary situation—key word being ‘temporary’.

  She smoothed her shirt down over her jeans, took a breath and walked into the kitchen. “Honey, really, why so early?” her mother asked.

  “I’m supposed to learn the beer brewing process so I can talk about it intelligently.” She poured a travel mug full of coffee and headed for the back door. “It makes sense.”

  “You’ll never get a real man, selling beer, you know,” her mother called out, always needing the last word at the expense of Lynette’s nonexistent love life.

  “I know, Mom. I know.” She shut the apartment door behind her. The engine of her piece-of-shit car sputtered to life, and she pointed it toward the outskirts of town. She lived only about ten miles from Ypsi Brewing, and the trip over gave her no time to contemplate why she’d even agreed to this ass-crack-of-dawn brewing session.

  She sighed and forced the memory of Ryan’s huge eyes, his mop of dark blond hair and the amazing span of his shoulders out of her head. He was all man, without a doubt. One who sometimes preferred his own sex when it came to relationships.

  He’s ‘bi’, Lynette. That means he can go either way.

  She squared her shoulders. She’d been told in no uncertain terms by the bar manager that she wasn’t Ryan’s type. There was even gossip that he was in the early stages of a relationship with some guy. What she couldn’t quite figure out was why every time she was around him, his masculinity—his raw sensuality, if she were being honest with herself—seemed so profound.

  She sipped her coffee while driving the few remaining miles to the brewery, berating herself. It’s no wonder you think he’s hot. He’s the closest thing to a guy you’ve allowed yourself to consider for, what? Nearly six years?

  Had it been that long?

  She sighed and flicked the broken left turn signal manually. Yeah, it had. Six solid years at least since she’d even allowed a second thought about a member of the opposite sex and a good thing, too. She had piled up thousands of student-debt dollars getting her MBA. And now she sold beer for a living, or had at least attempted to for the last few months. There was no time for men, or, would seem, anything resembling a social life. She sat, clutching the steering wheel and pep-talking herself a minute before grabbing her computer, climbing out and unlocking the back door of the brewery.

  The burble of fermentation and the ping-ping of stainless-steel vats of beer warming up and cooling down met her ears. The smells and sounds were a comforting combination. She stretched her arms over her head, trying to shake the cobwebs out of her brain. She glanced at her phone—only five-ten. She was early, as usual.

  She opened her lapto
p on a pile of malt bags to peruse the sales numbers from the week. But the longer she stared, the more the screen blurred, so after ten minutes she got up and walked into the cooler where their lagers were resting in yet more huge stainless-steel tanks. Kegs with the distinctive Ypsi Brewing label were stacked to the ceiling. She let the cold seep into her bones and get her good and awake, then pushed the doors open, assuming Ryan would be out there.

  She glanced around, but the place was still empty. After checking his small glass-framed office that was still dark, she shrugged and decided to make coffee. She sat, watching it burble, while the clock eased past five-thirty. Then she poured a cup and looked at her email. The usual mix of people asking for her ad money, donations for events, and distributors wanting point of sale swag filled it, but it hadn’t changed since last night.

  Gritting her teeth, she forced herself not to dwell on her lack of a life. Between her loan payments, the rent, utilities and her mother, she did nothing but work and pay bills and placate. She’d found herself in this job, knowing less than nothing about beer but willing to take the salary just to have an income. It had been fun and irritating in equal measure, mainly thanks to the man she’d dragged her ass out of bed for this morning, who was still a no-show.

  She sighed, sipped more coffee and stared at the phone clock. Once it hit ten after six she cursed and grabbed her keys. But something held her back. Telling herself it was to put in a few hours of work before heading home, she acknowledged she was waiting for Ryan to show up, pure and simple.

  By the time the door flew open, hitting the concrete wall with a bang, she was deep into her pity party, staring at the charts and graphs she’d created to drag the company into a more organized method of marketing. She jumped, looked over and sucked in a breath at the sight of him. His hair was sticking up, his eyes wild, and his jaw sporting more brown stubble than usual. Worse, his nose looked…crooked. And one eye was swollen shut. She clenched her fists under the table and looked away.