He mounts the blacked-out bike, starts the engine, and revs the loud motor a few times. A curt nod is my signal to take my place behind him.
Straddling the bike, I slide close to Oliver with my arms wrapped tightly around his waist. Our first full-on physical encounter. Sort of. But to call it our first could imply there’ll be more, which makes me realize I wouldn’t be disappointed if there were.
“Can you hear me?”
I jump when I hear Oliver’s staticky voice echo in my ear.
I nod.
He shakes his head. “I need you to answer me so I’ll know your intercom is working.”
“Yes. I can hear you.”
“Good. I can hear you too. But unfortunately, the Bluetooth isn’t perfect. The clarity comes and goes so we’ll probably have to repeat some things after we get on the road.”
“Got it.”
“Want to try the block first so you can feel the tilt of the bike when I turn?”
I hadn’t considered it leaning to one side or the other. I guess I pictured it staying completely upright. “Probably a good idea.”
“Okay. Hold on tight.”
Oliver creeps around our block and takes the turns slowly, allowing me time to familiarize myself with the feel. “Doing all right back there?”
“All good.”
“Think you’re ready to hit the interstate?”
“I think so.”
Or maybe not. Fuck. I don’t know.
He turns onto the entrance ramp and I squeeze my eyes shut, wrapping my arms tightly around Oliver. Not that either will save me if we crash. “How fast are we going?”
The bike decelerates. “Seventy.”
“Which means we were just doing eighty, at least.”
“Eighty-five. Are you scared?”
I’m fucking terrified. “I thought the ride in the neighborhood would prepare me, but playing a life-and-death game of Frogger with eighteen-wheeler trucks on I-20 is entirely different.”
“Going slow on the interstate when everyone else is speeding is actually more dangerous.”
I guess I understand how a speeding vehicle might plow into the back of a slow-moving motorcycle. “Where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Is it possible to take a detour to this surprise?”
“Yeah, we can do that.”
Oliver merges into the exit lane to get off the interstate and I’m instantly relieved. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually a party pooper.”
“It’s all right. Lawrence was the same way the first few times she rode with me. You’ll get used to it and when you do, you’ll love it. You’ll beg me to speed down the interstate.”
That sounds very much like he plans on us doing this again. And not just once more.
“We’ll see about that.”
Loosening my hold on Oliver, I relax and enjoy the remaining ride to our surprise destination. “Ah. Iron City Brewery. Should have known.”
“Where did you think I was taking you?”
“Honestly, I had no idea. I was only hoping to make it there alive.”
“Come on. It wasn’t that bad.”
“It was fucking terrifying when it felt like you were going one hundred miles an hour.”
“Eighty-five.”
“I say one hundred. But it got better.”
Oliver uses a remote to lift a garage door and then pulls into the back entrance of the building. “You’re getting a VIP tour.”
“I hope VIP doesn’t stand for very intoxicated person since we’re at a beer brewery.”
“Not today.”
We take off our riding gear and Oliver leads me into the warehouse. “Wow. Those are some big—” Hell, I don’t know what those things are.
“Fermentation tanks.”
“How many beers are in one of those?”
“About ten thousand in the smaller kettles. The bigger ones in the back hold over sixteen thousand bottles.”
I’m not ignorant when it comes to numbers, so I can take a guess at how much profit one tank would make.
“How quickly does one tank turn out a batch?”
“Some as quickly as ten to fourteen days.”
“That’s pretty freaking impressive.”
My praise brings a smile to his face. “Come on. I want to show you the fun part.”
Oliver leads me toward the front of the warehouse. He slows as we pass through a hallway lined with doors on each side. “My office.”
I peek through the doorway. “Do you spend more time behind the desk or on the sofa?”
“The desk since I’ve only had the sofa a couple of weeks.”
“Wear the old one out?”
“I could say a lot to that as well.”
“Then do.” This ought to be good stuff.
“The sofa replaced two worn-out office chairs.”
“Wow. That was completely uncreative.”
One of Oliver’s brows lifts and a wicked grin spreads across his face. “I have lots of plans for how I’ll wear out the new sofa. That’s where I’ll exhaust all my creativity.”
I have lots of naughty images passing through my head. And damn if I don’t feel a surge of jealousy when I picture some random woman straddling him on the center cushion.
We end up at a horseshoe-shaped bar in the front of the warehouse where I presume the brewery tours end. “VIP tour includes a tasting. Choose any stool you like.”
Oliver jumps up and slides across the bar. “You’ve done that before.”
“Only one of my many talents.”
I’d be very interested in seeing more of those talents.
Taking a small tasting glass from behind the counter, he fills it with beer from one of the dozen taps on the wall. He places the glass on the bar and pushes it to me. “Although you tried it last night, I’m starting you on Pale Hazel to build up to the stouter ones.”
I grasp the base of the glass. “I’m drinking alone?”
“Sorry. I’m driving.”
“Thank you for that.”
“For driving? You didn’t seem too grateful about it fifteen minutes ago.”
“No. For not thinking it’s okay to drink even a little and then drive.”
“The benefit never outweighs the risk.”
We agree on that much.
“Your sister was right about me having a very passionate opinion about that but that’s because my brother, Tommy, was killed by a drunk driver.”
“I’m very sorry.”
I’m being a total buzz kill, and I don’t want to be. “Okay, Oliver. I rode with you on your motorcycle and by some miracle survived. Now, I want you to tell me what you meant when you said if anyone would understand what I’ve done, it’s you.”
He looks at me for a moment before grabbing a stool and pulling it over so we’ll be sitting across from one another. Face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. “I haven’t always been Oliver Thorn. I haven’t always been the son of Quentin and Libby Thorn. There was a time when I was Oliver McCollum, son of Jimmy and Christie McCollum, two of the sorriest, low-down people to ever roam this earth.”
Oliver pushes my glass closer. “Drink. You’ll need it for this story.”
I can already see that this is going to be very ugly.
“Jimmy and Christie weren’t only neglectful parents. They were abusive junkies who came up with new ways to be cruel to Lawry and me every day.”
How can parents do that? Having grown up in a loving home where my parents doted on me—and still do—I can’t imagine living in a home where my parents purposefully hurt me.
“That must have been terrible for you and Lawrence.”
“Christie’s neglect was equal when it came to Lawry and me, but her abuse focused more on Lawry. Sure, she hit my sister, but she enjoyed the verbal and emotional abuse more.”
Physical. Verbal. Emotional. Martin loved all three equally.
“Addicts are typically pretty mellow when they’re strung ou
t. I think Christie would have been more physically abusive if she hadn’t spent so much time being high.”
“I’m sure that stopping to beat her kids would probably have ruined her euphoria.”
“Christie was a smarter addict than Jimmy. She had more creative ways for getting a fix. When Jimmy was broke, he’d beg, borrow, or steal to get what he needed. Christie would trade a piece of ass for a hit. Jimmy was fucked in that department because none of the dealers wanted a piece of what he had. That caused a lot of problems at our place.”
Sex for drugs. Happens every day.
“Jimmy was a different kind of abuser than Christie. He loved any form of physical violence. Slaps. Punches. Kicks. Assorted objects. And I was his pick. Not to say he was kind to Lawry because he definitely wasn’t, but I don’t have any memories of him physically hurting her. She doesn’t either and I’m grateful for that. I’d have voluntarily taken every beating Jimmy had to give so she didn’t have to endure it.”
Oliver is a very protective brother. Reminds me so much of Tommy.
“How did y’all get out?”
“Christie tried to prostitute my sister to pay her dope debt. Lawry was only ten but she understood what Christie wanted her to do. So she made a run for it. We were taken away from them very soon after.”
“Thank God for that.”
“I know that there are things I’ve forgotten and probably blocked out, but I’ll always clearly remember one thing: the last time I saw Jimmy McCollum.”
“The day you and Lawrence were taken away?”
“No. The last day he ever walked without a limp. The story takes an unexpected turn at this point. And you may decide you don’t think very highly of me.”
I smile at his use of my words from last night. “I have a feeling this is where your understanding of my situation with Martin comes full circle.”
“Yeah. This is where it becomes black and white.”
He’s about to share a secret with me, a darkness that he feels is equivalent to mine. He’s trusting me.
Oliver grimaces as he tightens his hand into a fist and then watches it relax. He breathes in deeply and releases the air slowly as he repeats the motion a second and then third time. “I was seventeen, approaching eighteen, and right in the middle of a sudden growth spurt. I had three new obsessions in my life that summer.”
Oliver’s pained expression morphs into a grin. “Tits, ass, and pussy. I was a man on a mission with two goals. Get sucked and get fucked.”
“Quick question. Are your three obsessions and two goals much different at age twenty-nine than they were at seventeen?”
Shit. I can’t believe I had the nerve to ask him that.
Oliver chuckles. “No. They’re pretty much the same with some new goals added to the old ones.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“My pals and I were getting shot down with high school chicks, so we decided the best way to get laid was college girls. We had the bright idea that a bar was the best place to find some ladies ready to spread their legs for us.”
“Well, I’m guessing you’re probably half right about that.”
“No. We were zero right about it. Because there wasn’t one college girl at this bar we bounced into. It was all toothless hags.”
“Which is what you deserved to find since you had no business being in a bar at seventeen.”
My wit earns a louder chuckle out of Oliver this time. “I would agree with that today. Not so much then though.”
“Despite your new obsession with tits, ass, and pussy at that stage of your life, please tell me you didn’t hook up with a toothless hag.”
“Fuck no.”
“Okay. I can relax now. Continue on.”
“We had fake IDs. Not that this particular establishment really gave two shits but we decided if we couldn’t get sucked or fucked, we’d get hammered. So the two-buck beer pitchers started coming. It was our first time to pull a good drunk.”
Oliver fills a new glass halfway at a different tap and slides it in front of me again. “Apricot ale.”
He returns to his stool and picks up where he left off. “Good times were being had. And then Jimmy-mother-fucking-McCollum walked in. I hadn’t seen him in eleven years.”
“And you knew him.” Because you don’t forget those people who hurt you. It festers and grows like a cancer.
“I knew him immediately. And every bit of shit he did to me came flooding back like I was sitting in a theater watching it happen on the big screen.”
And his wound opens.
“Every bit of therapy I had went out the fucking window that night.”
Oliver Thorn is a beautiful man but right now, a scowl mars his gorgeous mouth. The anger in his normally mischievous eyes shows me that this reunion with his birth father at age seventeen may have happened years ago but the pain is still there. I can also hear it in his voice.
“My buddies were drunk and passed out cold while I sat in my parked truck waiting for Jimmy to come out. I stopped him and the fucker didn’t know me. I had to tell my own biological father who I was as I was about to stomp his ass. He laughed and told me I could try. That pissed me off even more so I yelled, ‘Let’s dance, motherfucker.’ And if I’m being completely honest with you, I have to tell you that I liked fighting him. I liked kicking the shit out of him while he was down. I liked seeing his blood on my busted knuckles. I lost all control. I wasn’t myself at all. And when it was over, I got into my truck and drove away like it didn’t happen. Like I didn’t leave him bleeding and unconscious on the ground.”
Oliver’s eyes meet mine and I easily recognize the darkness hiding behind the pale blue. I’ve seen that look before when I look in the mirror.
“I did those things to him and I enjoyed every moment. I didn’t regret a single blow. Still don’t.” Oliver leans closer and whispers, “And to this day the pleasure I took in hurting him makes me wonder if I’m more like Jimmy than I care to admit.”
How could this thoughtful, protective man think he is anything like his father? Surely he knows he was mistreated and that it wasn’t okay. “You were wronged in a terrible way. Never question what kind of person you are because you chose to take a stand.”
“I’ve never told anyone what I did to him.”
Surprise catches in the back of my throat and flutters like a butterfly. “Why me?”
“You confided your darkest secret in me. I wanted to do the same so you’d know we aren’t so different.”
His hand slides closer to mine and our fingertips make a game of advance and retreat. I think he intends his touch to be a show of support but it feels very sexy.
“Thank you for confiding in me.”
I feel all kinds of growing sexual tension between Oliver and me. It’s nearly suffocating. But something else is there too.
A seed of trust has been planted. Now we wait to see if it takes root. Will we nurture the fruit or allow it to be choked out by weeds of pain?
5
Oliver Thorn
“Fuck.” Lucas yanks his ball cap off his head by the bill and slams it against the arm of his recliner. “Come on. How many batters are you gonna let him walk before you swap pitchers?”
Lawry leans over the arm of the chair so her mouth is positioned above Lucas’s ear. “Language, Lucas. You know Tripp repeats every cuss word he hears.”
He sure does. That little shit is only two and I’ve personally heard him correctly use the word fuck on more than one occasion. That kid is hell on wheels.
“Tripp isn’t in here. Besides that, he learns that shit from his mama and daddy. Not me.”
“Fuck you.” Warren throws a bottle cap at Lucas, hitting him on the forehead.
“Did you see and hear that shit?”
Lawry nods. “Maybe so, but you know he’s crazy about his Uncle Bou. If he hears you cuss, he’s going to repeat it so he can be like you.”
“You’re right, boho girl.”
&nbs
p; Lawry kisses the side of her husband’s face. “Thank you. And I know Bridgette will appreciate your effort as well.”
Lucas drags Lawry onto his lap and nibbles the side of her neck as he continues watching the baseball game over her shoulder. “My beautiful, lovely, sweet wife. Will you please go get a beer for me?”
Lawry pulls Lucas’s ball cap down over his eyes. “You are worthless. Absolutely. Worthless.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
“Good grief.” Lawry punches Lucas in the chest and climbs off his lap. “Don’t say stuff like that. People will think we’re having sex or something.”
“Or trying to make a baby.”
Porter’s and Warren’s heads simultaneously spin toward Lucas.
Lawry stops and turns around. “Lucas—”
“I’m sorry. It slipped out before I knew it.”
“Congratulations. Best wishes.” Porter shrugs. “Break a leg? I don’t know what you say to someone who’s doing that.”
“I hope like hell I don’t break a leg. Let’s go with ‘good luck’ instead.”
They can forget my input on the correct way to wish one well on conceiving a baby. “I’ll make the beer run. Who needs one?”
Warren inspects his beer. “I think I’m good. Thanks.”
Lucas turns up his drink and gulps the last of it before holding out his empty bottle. “I’ll take one, buddy.”
Porter holds up his. “I’m ready for another.”
The empty bottles clank when I toss them into the trash.
“Your turn, huh?” Bridgette says.
“Something like that.”
God, Warren’s wife has a toddler on her lap and she looks like she’s going to pop out another one any minute.
“How’s the new house?” she asks.
“It’s great. Getting out of that condo and into my own place has been a good move.”
Lawry comes up behind me and wraps her arms around my shoulders. “You’re welcome.”
My sister has enjoyed taking the credit for my decision, but she’s right. I have her to thank for the push in the right direction.
“I had a meeting with your lovely neighbor yesterday.” My lovely badass neighbor. “We finalized everything for the grand opening.”
Southern Girl Series Bundle: Bohemian Girl, Neighbor Girl, Intern Girl Page 30
