Whiskey (Brewed Book 2)

by Molly McAdams

  Her face creased with sympathy. “I’m sorry he’s gone. He sounded wonderful.”

  My head bobbed. “Yeah, he was.”

  “That’s why you’re here?” she asked uncertainly. “Because he died?”

  I hesitated for a moment before clearing my throat that suddenly felt thick with betrayals and pain. “Uh, no. I mean . . . if he hadn’t, I don’t think I’d be here. I’d probably just be at his place. But . . . no.”

  When I didn’t continue, her brows drew together in wonder. “Will you tell me?” Her gaze fell to the floor and her hands pressed to her stomach. “I know you’ve mentioned the furlough. But Sawyer talked about you often, so I know this has happened before, and you never came back any—”

  “I found out Gabriela was pregnant.”

  In an instant, Emberly’s face drained of color.

  Her lips parted on a shaky exhale and her legs slid out in front of her.

  “You should let me explain before you start hiding behind those walls again.”

  Her stare flashed to me, wide and hurt and shuttered.

  “Emberly.” Her name was a whisper. A plea. “You think I’d be here if my girlfriend was pregnant with my kid?” When her head just moved in faint shakes, I repeated, “Let me explain.”

  But instead of the comfort I’d hoped for, my words made her sag as if I’d placed a weight on her that she couldn’t bear.

  “We’d been caught in this routine for a long time,” I started softly. “We went out with her friends or mine when I was home, but when it was just us, we hardly talked. Just went through our day to day like clockwork. You make the coffee, I’ll make breakfast. You go to yoga, I’ll go to the gym. You go do your thing, I’ll do mine. Then we’ll meet back up in time for whatever and then goodnight.”

  Something like a laugh crept up my throat even though there wasn’t anything about the situation that was funny.

  It was that looking back, I had no clue why we’d stayed together as long as we had.

  Perspective and all that.

  The excitement and newness that came with relationships had never really been there to begin with. Same with the want to rip each other’s clothes off.

  We’d been great friends.

  Great partners in pretty much every aspect.

  And that had just evolved into more until we’d found ourselves trapped in a four-year relationship, three of which had been in the same house. Unable to find a way to leave each other when it was all so comfortable and easy.

  “Sex was almost nonexistent that last year—year and a half, maybe? Almost,” I muttered. “I remember thinking I didn’t know how to do another year like the last, but I also didn’t know how to get out of that routine. I thought that a lot, actually . . . and then she was pregnant.”

  Emberly flinched.

  Fucking flinched like the thought of me having a kid with someone else caused her physical pain.

  I wanted to reach out and comfort her, I wanted to ease her worries more than I’d already tried, but I needed her to understand it all.

  Understand my anger and resentment. My pain.

  “Because of that almost, I didn’t question it. I was just ecstatic,” I said gruffly. “I have AJ to thank for that. Knew if it weren’t for him, I’d never want kids. But he showed me how caring and loving a father should be, and I want to be that for someone.”

  My jaw worked as flashes of the past few months ripped through my mind before I was able to block them.

  “Things were still . . . I don’t know, weird between us—worse than before. But when it came to the baby, everything was different. It was like we were able to meet in this place of excitement and love for the baby. But the due date . . . ‘I don’t know, around this date,’ she kept saying, changing the date every time like a mom-to-be wouldn’t know exactly.

  “She saw the doctor twice without me and then tried to schedule the ultrasound to find out the gender for when I was offshore again. When I asked her to wait ’til I could be there, she just shut down. Not that I really caught on to that until later. You know, because we didn’t talk all that much anyway.”

  Emberly was staring at me, suspicion weaving into her puzzled expression. Trying to put it together and looking like she was worried I was going to confirm whatever she’d come up with.

  “I couldn’t really catch anything she threw my way when all I could focus on was the fact that I was gonna be a dad. Not us having a baby, just me being a dad. That’s how distant we were.” My head slanted, a little smile filled with the deepest kind of pain tugging at the corner of my mouth. “And then the ultrasound was happening, and I was so damn excited it was a girl that I didn’t notice what was right in front of me until I was on my way to the rig the next week.”

  Swear the room was holding its breath with Emberly. The pressure surrounding us felt alive with anticipation and worry.

  “See things or hear them, and I remember them,” I mumbled, nodding as if acknowledging my own words. “The due date that had been on the ultrasound . . . it was different than any of the dates Gabriela had been telling me. Way different.”

  Emberly pulled her knees up to her chest and covered her mouth with her hand. Sadness creased the corners of her eyes as though she already knew how this story ended.

  “I looked it up before I got on the rig—did one of those reverse things to see when she would’ve gotten pregnant.” The corner of my mouth twitched with frustration. “I was offshore.”

  “Cayson, no . . .”

  “I asked one of the guys on the crew whose wife had just had a kid, he said the due date can change a little as the pregnancy goes along. So, I tried to forget about it. Told myself that was all it was. But all those things she’d been doing started clicking. A few days later . . . shutdown.”

  Emberly’s hands fell to her chest, worry bursting from her as she felt the worst of it coming.

  “Considering she wasn’t expecting me for another week and a half, he was there when I got home,” I said and gave a little huff. “I didn’t say anything, just packed while she sobbed and apologized, and he tried to tell me how it was my fault.”

  “How could it have been your fault?”

  “He had a well-thought-out list,” I said dryly. “He’s on the crew opposite me, which is how I didn’t know about him for a year. What’s worse? All of her friends knew about him the entire time. The ones we hung out with. The ones who saw me so many damn times and never said a word. Who congratulated me even though they knew the baby wasn’t mine.”

  “Oh my God.” The words were a stunned breath. “I can’t—none of them—I don’t understand how,” she stammered. “Cayson, I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  The hands that were against her chest pressed harder, her face creasing with pain. “What about Gabriela?”

  “What about her?”

  “You were together for . . . God, I don’t know, so long. There has to be a part of y’all that still loves each other, and it seems like she might regret what happened. Half the time your phone goes off when I’m with you, it’s her calling.”

  “All I feel for her is a shit ton of resentment,” I said gravely. “As for the calls? She’s trying to get me to come back to Beaumont because my crew’s freaking out. No one has been able to get ahold of me, and all they know is that I left. So, they’ve been going to her. She doesn’t know how to keep holding them off.”

  “That can’t be the only reason. She still has to care about you. She wanted you to think the baby was yours,” she reasoned, her voice wrenching.

  “Told you, we were done long before this happened. We both knew it, we were just stuck. That’s why Gabriela let me think the baby was mine, that’s why she encouraged it.” I lifted a hand to stop Emberly when doubt covered her face. “Not for any reason other than she didn’t want to hurt me—her words.”

  “Bitch.” The word left her on a breath, her expression falling before the curse faded. “I’m sorry, I didn’
t—I shouldn’t have—I know she meant—”

  “It’s fine,” I assured her, but an uncomfortable silence fell between us as I remembered that day.

  The debilitating pain.

  The heavy betrayal.

  My voice wavered and cracked when I said, “For three months, I thought I was gonna be a dad. When she ripped that away from me, it wrecked me.” My stare shifted to Emberly. “That is why I’m here.”

  Her hands did that thing. Dropping to her stomach and then moving back up to her chest like she couldn’t contain all the things she was feeling, and I wanted to take them on.

  Bear a lifetime of her pains and frustrations and unknowns and let her try to heal some of mine.

  Her strained words burst from her when she said, “I need you.”

  “Then come here.”

  I moved across the floor as she shifted to her knees and slid toward me. Crashing into me with all her overwhelming confusion and sorrow and love as her mouth met mine in a pained kiss. Her fingers pushing into my hair when I wrapped my arms around her and tugged her closer.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered shakily against my lips, her forehead dropping to mine as I settled against the island and pulled her onto my lap.

  For minutes, we stayed just like that.

  Her fingers twisted in my hair and lips a breath away.

  Her air mine and mine hers.

  Holding her like a lifeline.

  “Cayson, I’m so sorry for everything.”

  My head rolled against hers before I let it fall away, my lips moving down her neck. Wanting to continue and needing to stop because we weren’t done. The way she’d just spoken told me as much.

  The words she’d breathed through our kiss minutes before had been full of sympathy and sorrow. The words that had just left her were slow, detached, unsure . . .

  “Like a fucking disease,” I said against her skin before finally forcing myself away to meet her conflicted stare. “Emberly, I can feel it, just talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing.” Her lie was so, so soft as she tried to assure me . . . as she tried to convince herself.

  “This is why we’re doing this,” I said with a hint of frustration. “To get all the shit out in the open and get through it. So, talk to me.”

  “It just feels . . . wrong,” she finally said, her head moving faintly. “Wrong isn’t the right word. I don’t know, I don’t know . . .” Her fingers curled into loose fists as she pressed the backs of her hands to her eyes, her shoulders jerking with her jagged breaths.

  “Then I’ll help you figure it out—what feels ‘wrong?’”

  “Us,” she cried out as her hands fell to hover over her chest, her lips parted as she tried to speak and couldn’t.

  And I remained utterly still.

  Of everything, us hadn’t been something I’d expected her to say. Not when wrong was connected to it. I couldn’t lose this girl when I’d just barely caught her.

  “You’re here because you’re in pain,” she said nearly a minute later, voice twisted with torment. “We only finally happened because of your pain.”

  “Emberly, no—”

  “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” She looked at me, brow furrowed and hazel eyes glassy. “And even if you had come back for some other miraculous reason, we wouldn’t be right here because you were content with her.”

  “We were—”

  “Stuck, I know. I heard you,” she said quickly. “Except you were still there. ‘Stuck,’ but there. Willingly. Happy. Both of you not wanting to leave the other until you accidentally found out she’d been with someone else for a year, Cayson. And in your pain—” She paused and took in a shuddering breath. When she continued, it was slow and warped with sadness. “In your pain, you turned around and saw me.”

  In an instant, it felt like I’d fallen to the floor even though I was already sitting on it.

  It felt like she’d ripped a hole through my chest with her thoughts.

  It felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  “Once again, like always,” she continued. “Except this time, you didn’t push me away. And knowing what led to you being here, it feels . . .” She shrugged weakly. “Wrong.”

  “Emberly, that isn’t what happened,” I said, gripping her like I needed her to stay grounded as I struggled to speak around the fear tightening my throat. “When I first got to Amber and followed Sawyer into Brewed, I was messed up. From the baby, from driving here of all places, from seeing my brother looking like my dad . . . and then you told me to get out. It wasn’t that I turned and saw you, it was that everything inside me went crazy just hearing your voice. Like stepping on a live wire.”

  “But you said . . .” Her stare fell to the side as she thought. “Something about me not changing. ‘Good to see you haven’t changed,’” she said, doubt driving the words.

  “Live wire,” I repeated meaningfully. “I knew if I turned, I was gonna see you for the first time in so damn long. But as fast as that thought entered my mind, I realized I’d found Sawyer only to find you right there too, the same way y’all had always been. The anger and jealousy that slammed into me in that second was . . . well, it was like I’d never left. Didn’t help that Saw told me to stay away from you just a few minutes later.”

  “That wasn’t his decision to make,” she said weakly.

  “Didn’t matter. I didn’t make it more than a handful of hours before I was waiting outside your shop to see you again,” I reminded her. I let my hands move, gripping her hips and pulling her harder against me as my voice lowered. “If I wouldn’t have come back to Amber, I might’ve been able to continue staying away because I’d already done it for so long. I’d convinced myself of all the reasons why I needed to. But the second I saw you again, it was over for me. It would’ve been that way no matter the situation. Pain, Gabriela, or none of it.”

  Her head moved in a jumpy nod.

  “Emberly, this worry and doubt you’re constantly feeling . . . we can’t survive that.”

  “I know,” she said on a breath. “I know.” Her fingers brushed over her chest before touching my own. “These days with you . . . I’m not sure you can understand what they’ve been like. Craving you and being terrified of what you might do. Feeling like that naïve girl all over again. Sure I was walking into your biggest prank yet and unable to stop.”

  Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, her head moving subtly as a tremor ripped through her.

  “And this all feels so strange because even though I believe every word you’ve told me down to my soul, my heart can’t grasp that you’re here. Wanting me. Wiping away nightmares with a few words and saying things I’ve wanted to hear for so long.” The tips of her fingers moved down my stomach, her slender throat shifting with her forced swallow. “That you’re holding me. That you won’t disappear if I close my eyes . . . or go back to Beaumont,” she whispered, the last words warped from the tears building in her eyes.

  She struggled to stand, stumbling away and holding out a hand to stop me when I followed and reached for her.

  “Because I’ve known . . . what Sawyer said, all the phone calls, and then you just confirmed it,” she said with a dejected laugh. “What you’re feeling isn’t my mind wading through all the conflicting information and thoughts and emotions. It’s my heart protecting itself because I wouldn’t survive you leaving if I completely opened myself to you.”

  “Emberly,” I called out when she rushed out of the kitchen.

  “Leave, Cayson.”

  I caught her hand and pulled her close, ice-cold fear exploding in my chest at the fierce determination on her face.

  “Just go,” she said through heaving breaths. “You plan to go back, so go.”

  “I’m here,” I ground out only to have the air knocked from my lungs when she snapped back, “I don’t want to think you’re mine only for you to be ripped from me.”

  My hold on her tightened at the crucial blow.

 
; My jaw clenched.

  “I want to forget about you,” she said, all wavering lies. “I want my life to go back to how it was. I want to be blissfully unaware of how you ever felt about me. Of what it felt like to be touched by you. I want you to give me back my heart.” The last was a pained cry.

  “No.”

  “Cayson, leave—”

  “Look at me,” I nearly begged and waited for her tear-filled eyes to meet mine. “Tell me you don’t love me, and I’ll do what you’re asking.”

  “I don’t want to love you anymore, don’t you understand?” A sob ripped from somewhere deep inside of her and was echoed in my soul. “Not being with you is excruciating, but being with you? It’s worse.”

  My hold on her loosened.

  I staggered back a step.

  “It’s bliss, but it isn’t pure. There are cracks filled with unknowns and worrying and wondering how long until you destroy me.”

  I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t.

  I wanted to tell her I was there.

  But I stood there, face blank as walls I’d spent so many years perfecting formed effortlessly around me.

  “So, destroy me now,” she pleaded faintly. “Leave.”

  I let her destructive mixture of emotions consume me.

  Let them obliterate the remnants of us.

  Then I left.

  The silence that followed in his wake was shattering.

  It was deafening.

  I wasn’t sure if the cries that were wrenching from deep within me were being muted by my breaking heart, or if his absence was just that significant.

  Then again, in my world, it always had been.

  I held myself up against the wall and somehow made it down the hall, but my knees buckled and a sob tore from my lungs when I opened my bedroom door and saw why my room had been off-limits before.

  Silver and lavender balloons littered my floor.

  A massive bouquet of assorted white and purple flowers took up the majority of my nightstand.

  On my bed sat a shoebox and a piece of folded paper.

  But I didn’t make it that far.