But when Robert J. Scooter passed away, he left no will behind, and his family inherited everything — leaving our family cut dry. It wasn’t long after that that our grandmother passed away, our grandfather following quickly after. Dad always said it was from a broken heart, but he never clarified if it was Grandma who’d broken it or the Scooter family.
I always thought it was a little of both.
Dad had never given up on our family, though, and he’d already established himself as an integral part of the Scooter Whiskey Distillery before the founder passed away. He was young, ambitious, and the Scooter family was happy to keep him around. He worked his way up the ladder, eventually becoming part of the board, and that’s where the trouble started.
Somewhere along the line, my dad pushed the wrong buttons.
He wanted to stay true to the Scooter brand, to the company his dad had helped build, but the ones who inherited the distillery had other plans. Where dad wanted to keep the tradition, the “old ways” of making whiskey, the Scooter family wanted to lean more toward innovation. The more Dad fought them on it, the more they did to silence him, and sooner or later, Dad learned to just comply to get by.
But his pay suffered, and so did his job duties.
He went from essentially running the company to pushing papers, taking care of remedial tasks that were better suited for a secretary. One of his last tasks was cleaning out Robert J. Scooter’s old office, and though Mom was upset when they assigned it to him, Dad took it in stride. He was always so optimistic, and used to always say that, “Every experience is an opportunity, no matter how trivial it may seem. Some of my best ideas and most memorable achievements began from a seemingly ordinary day.”
Little did we know that that “seemingly ordinary” day, that “seemingly ordinary” task, would be the literal death of him.
There had only been one fire in the Scooter Whiskey Distillery, and my father was the only one who perished in it.
To this day, no one in our family believed the story the Scooter family fed to us. The fire department claimed the fire was started by a cigarette, and our dad didn’t smoke. I would never forget when Patrick Scooter, Robert’s oldest son, tried arguing with my mother that he’d seen Dad smoke plenty of times.
Maybe he just never told you, Patrick had said, and I’d seen murder in my Mom’s eyes when she stepped up to that fully grown man, chest to chest, mascara streaked down her face, and told him no one knew her husband like she did, and she dared him to try to tell her otherwise again.
We’d never been given the truth, not in all the years we’d looked for it.
And that one time in our life was the only time I ever remember the machine breaking down.
We fought. And cried. And asked for answers when we didn’t even know what questions to ask. Mom drank for the first time in her life, and Jordan and I struggled to hold the family together, all the while fighting for who was the man of the house.
I wanted that title so badly, and Jordan tried to take it simply because he was the oldest. So, we fought one night — literally, punched and kicked until we were both bruised, bloody messes — and then, we came together.
Jordan was the one who made me realize that we were all the man of the house — and we were all in this battle together.
Ever since that day, the machine seemed to work even better together than it did when Dad was alive. We were in sync, tuned into each other’s needs, and forever protecting each wheel and axle.
God help any man or woman who ever tried to break down a Becker.
“What are you boys getting into tonight?” Mom asked, taking advantage of all of our mouths being full.
It was Friday night, which was like a weekly holiday in Stratford. Other than the tour guides, the weekends were slower for most employees at the distillery, and that meant less time spent working and more time spent living. We always did family dinners on Friday night before dispersing to whatever weekend plans lay ahead.
Michael was the only one of us who still lived at home with Mom, and he had just turned seventeen. He was going into his senior year after the summer, and we were all just waiting for the day he said he was moving out of the house and into a place with his high school sweetheart. They’d dated for two years now, and he was the only one of us I could ever imagine actually settling down.
I worried about when he moved out, though — and part of me wondered if I should move back in at that point. The thought of Mom living alone in a house that once fit a family of six was hard to stomach.
“There’s a party out at the Black Hole,” Logan answered, grinning at Mom. “Wanna come?”
“And have to bear witness to whatever debauchery lands one of you in jail tonight?” She shook her head. “Just bail each other out and I’ll see you for dinner next week.”
Logan’s smile mirrored Mom’s, the resemblance uncanny. He and Michael favored her — hazel gold eyes, olive skin, lean and fit, a smile that stretched across their entire faces. I looked more like our dad — stout, tan skin with a reddish tone that he attributed to the Native American in our blood, striking blue eyes that almost took on a silver hue in the sunlight. Mom said sometimes when she looked at me, she saw Dad when he was a boy, when they first met.
I’d always worn that like a badge of honor.
Jordan, who was the quietest at the table, didn’t look a thing like any of us. His skin was a light umber, his hair black and cut in a short fade. He was the tallest, the largest, the one who always stood out in family photographs.
And yet, he was our brother just the same.
“Bailey and I are heading up to Nashville for the weekend,” Mikey announced, and judging by Mom’s widened eyes, it was the first she’d heard of the plan.
“Oh?”
He nodded, stuffing his mouth with more mashed potatoes and speaking around them. “Her label is doing a showcase at one of the bars on Broadway. It’ll be kind of like Nashville’s first taste of her as part of their team.”
“I thought she hadn’t signed with anyone yet?” Jordan asked, speaking for the first time since we’d dived into our dinner.
“She hasn’t.”
“And when she does?” Mom asked, brows pulling together.
Mikey was quiet, pushing green beans around on his plate before stacking a few on his fork with a shrug. “I don’t know. I guess we talk about it then — where we’ll move, what our next steps will be.”
An uneasy silence fell over all of us then. We knew the day would come that he would move out, but what worried all of us — though no one said it — was that he was so sure his future was with Bailey.
And we couldn’t be sure she felt the same.
She seemed to love him, to care for him the way he cared for her, and we all knew he was like me in the sense that he wanted what Mom and Dad had. They had met in high school, and I knew Mikey felt like Bailey must be it for him because she was his high school sweetheart, too.
But anyone who knew her could see that music was her first love. And we weren’t sure where that would leave Mikey.
“Well,” Mom finally said, forcing a smile. “Be careful. And don’t get into too much trouble.”
All of us scoffed at that, because just being a Becker meant trouble was never too far off.
After dinner, Logan and I helped Mom clear the table — Logan’s favorite job — while Jordan helped Mikey pack up his car. I walked out onto our old wooden porch just in time to see Mikey’s taillights pull away, the sun setting over the hills in the distance. I sidled up next to Jordan, draping my arms over the railing and cracking open the two beers I’d brought while he stood with his arms crossed hard over his chest.
“Your worry is showing, big bro.”
He humphed, taking the beer I offered him and popping the lid open. “Kid pretends to be so tough, but if that girl leaves him behind…”
“It’ll break his heart,” I finished for him. “I know. He’ll be okay. He’s a Becker.”
&nb
sp; Jordan nodded, shoulders relaxing a little, as if that one fact was all the reassurance he needed that everything would be alright.
“How’s the team looking?” I asked after a moment, taking the first swig from my beer.
“Better than last year. The seniors are strong, and we have some good freshman blood rolling in, some sophomores who got tougher while on JV.” He shook his head. “But, still too early to tell how they’ll all work together. It’ll be a long summer of conditioning.”
“And the parents?”
He rolled his eyes. “Still assholes.”
I chuckled, sipping from the can in my hand before letting it drape over the railing again. Jordan was the head coach of the Stratford High School football team and had been for four years now. He was the only man in the family who didn’t work at the distillery, who never had, who never wanted to. Part of me wished he were there with us, carrying on Dad’s legacy and helping solidify the Becker name in the Scooter Whiskey history book. But, I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to work in a dirty warehouse all day — and I couldn’t do anything but support him when I saw him on that field.
Football was his everything.
He’d played his entire life, and where my brothers and I took our aggression out on each other or enemies in the town or even strangers at a bar, he took his out on the field.
And now, he was teaching other boys to do the same.
He was one hell of a coach, and the parents knew it — whether they wanted to argue about who started and who rode the bench or not. And the single moms in Scooterton?
Well, let’s just say they were more than happy with Jordan’s coaching.
The married ones didn’t seem to mind much, either.
“So, I heard you caused a bit of a scene at the distillery this week?”
I cocked a brow. “You heard?”
“Look, I try as hard as I can to ignore the football moms chattering behind me in the stands, but sometimes I swear they speak louder just so they can be sure I hear them.”
“Like when they talk about how tight your ass looks?”
“Or when they talk about you pushing your luck giving whiskey to a minor.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “They have no proof.”
“Do they need any? You know as well as I do that the people who run this town can find evidence for anything they want.”
We both fell silent at that, each of us taking a swig of our beer as memories of our father filled the space between us. Crickets chirped to life, the sky taking on a purple glow.
“It was the Barnett daughter,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Mary Anne?”
“Ruby Grace.”
He balked. “She’s like sixteen, Noah.”
“Nineteen,” I corrected, swallowing down another gulp of beer. “And she’s getting married. She was buying one of the single barrels as a wedding gift.”
“Wonder who the lucky guy is.”
“Some young buck in politics she met at UNC.”
“Politics, huh?” Jordan’s gaze drifted somewhere beyond the horizon. “Guess he’ll fit right in, then.”
I nodded, but my stomach tightened as I pictured Ruby Grace’s eyes — wide and taken aback when I asked her if she was ready to get married. I still couldn’t believe I was the first to ask her.
I still didn’t believe she knew the answer herself.
It made no sense, that I harbored some kind of sympathy for a girl who had looked at me like I was the mud staining her designer shoes. She and her family had never wanted for anything, and yet I felt sorry for her, because I knew without being around her for more than even three minutes that she wasn’t happy.
She didn’t know who she was.
Then again, did I at nineteen?
A familiar tune sparked to life from inside the house, shaking me from my thoughts of Ruby Grace as a smile stretched on my face. I glanced at Jordan, who was smiling, too, and he looked back into the house as a long exhale left his chest.
“I used to think she’d remarry, find someone else eventually. But, after the first full year of her playing this song every night, I knew I was wrong.”
I followed his gaze, throat tightening at the sight of Mom and Logan dancing around the living room to Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.” It was the song she’d danced to the night she and Dad got married, and I’d watched them dance to it so many times in that living room that I’d lost count.
But it was her son who held her now, swaying and smiling and acting like that song didn’t hurt a little for all of us. Logan exaggerated a dip with Mom in his arms before spinning her around the coffee table, and she laughed and laughed, her messy pony tail swinging with the motion.
“I don’t think there ever could be anyone else,” I mused.
Jordan nodded, each of us finishing off our beers, and I wondered what it felt like to love someone that much.
I wondered if I’d ever know for sure.
Chapter 5
Ruby Grace
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I crossed my arms, deadpan expression on my face as I glared at my best friend — though I was debating the title at the moment.
The bonfire the Jensen twins had started was high and warm behind her, dozens of Stratford’s residents littering the space around it, as well as stretching into the barn and beyond. There were five kegs, an entire table dedicated to liquor bottles and mixers, and every single person held a red plastic cup that housed either beer or a mixed drink. Ages ranged from sixteen to fifty-five, though everyone seemed to have their own little sections of the Jensen property marked off for their clique. The last time I was here, I was with the high schoolers who liked to party in the barn next to the resident DJ. Now, I was somewhere in the in-between, not sure where to stand or where I fit in.
The Black Hole was the main party spot in town, especially on Friday nights, and Annie had begged me to come with her since it was my first week back in town.
And now, she was bailing.
Annie cringed, forcing a smile through it as she gestured to her belly. “I know, I’m sorry. I really did want to come, but little man is rolling around so much tonight. I just want to go lie on the couch.”
“I think that sounds pretty perfect,” her husband, Travis, said, wrapping his arm around her. He pulled her into him, kissing her temple as she melted into his side. When she looked up at him, they shared a longing look before he kissed her nose.
And as cute as they were together, they weren’t cute enough to bail on me.
“I didn’t even want to come here,” I reminded her, an almost whine in my voice. “You begged me, Annie. And now we’ve been here for an hour and you want to leave?”
She apologized again, going on about how she’d make it up to me, she’d take me out for ice cream at my favorite little diner in town later this week, and she’d come over and help me and Mom with wedding planning, too. The longer she rambled, her little belly bouncing with her as she pleaded, the less I could hold my anger.
My best friend was too cute for her own good.
I sighed, running a hand back through my lightly curled hair — hair that had taken an hour to fix — before I conceded. “Fine. Let’s go.”
Annie blanched. “Wait, I meant we would like to leave,” she said, gesturing between her and Travis. “As in, the two of us. You should stay. Have some drinks, catch up with people.”
“Catch up with who, exactly?” I probed. “The girls I thought were my friends in high school before you and I both found out the hard way that they only hung out with us for our money? Or how about the boys who, even after graduating, are still boys, and are already tripping over themselves with the urge to ask me out… even though they know I’m engaged?”
I glanced over at a group of guys I recognized from high school — some of them graduated, some of them seniors now — and they all looked away simultaneously, sipping on their beers and pretending like they hadn’
t been staring.
Annie chuckled. “Okay. Fair point,” she said, but then her eyes flicked somewhere behind me. “Well, would you look at that. It’s your buddy from the distillery.”
I turned, following her gaze over my shoulder, and immediately locked eyes with Noah Becker.
He was standing with his younger brother, Logan, as they filled their cups from the keg. He smirked when I saw him, saying something to Logan before he started toward me, and I whipped back around, eyes wide.
“He’s walking over here,” Annie whispered as Travis pulled to the side, saying goodbye to his buddies.
“I noticed. Come on, let’s head out,” I murmured through clenched teeth, but before I could take even one step, Noah Becker was standing in the space in front of us.
“Ruby Grace,” he mused, holding one of the red cups in his hands toward me.
“Noah,” I nearly seethed. I didn’t take the cup he offered. “We were just leaving.”
“We were just leaving,” Annie corrected, gesturing to her and Travis, who was a few yards away with his buddies now. “But, Ruby Grace, you were thinking of staying, weren’t you?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Noah smirked, first at Annie, then at me. “I saw you were empty handed. Thought I’d be a gentleman and bring you another beer.”
“That was so nice of you,” Annie said, practically melting in a cartoonish swoon.
I glared at her.
“I don’t drink beer,” I told Noah, my glare still on Annie.
“Oh, I didn’t realize. Is it a man’s drink, too?”
I rolled my eyes. “Honestly, yes. And it’s carby. I have a wedding dress to fit into.”
Noah kept his gaze on me, but the corner of his mouth twitched a little at that comment. “Suit yourself,” he said on a shrug. Then, he lifted the cup he’d been offering me to his lips and drained it in three clean swallows before he stacked the other full one inside the now empty one.
“Classy,” I mumbled.
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