I look around at the mess. Thick beams of wood lie on the ground, blackened and charred. Black dust hangs in the air. Shattered glass litters the ground, and there are scattered piles of twisted metal that was once furniture I assume. It’s funny how the aftermath of something that once blazed bright with heat can be so gray and cold.
“I can’t believe he did this. If that deputy would’ve told me he’d caught Liam doing anything else, it would be easier to understand. I could at least try to wrap my head around it. Drugs. Fighting. Breaking and entering. But a fire? I just don’t get it.” I stare out into the distance, not even sure who I’m talking to. The Universe. Blaze. Myself. Maybe all three. I push down the knot in my throat and look back at Blaze. “You’re sure there was no one else here with him when it happened?”
He shakes his head, slow and deliberate. “No. Just him standing next to an empty gas can.”
I try to imagine it, but all I can come up with are images of the terrified teenage boy that showed up at HoH three months ago.
“His parents died in a fire.” I don’t know why I tell Blaze that. I just do. Maybe a part of me needs him to understand. Maybe I don’t want to try to figure this all out alone. “For weeks after he came to the house, I couldn’t even burn a candle. I wish he would just talk to me.” My voice is hoarse as I swallow back unshed tears.
Blaze places his hand on my shoulder, my bare shoulder. The second his skin touches mine he inhales a sharp breath. His eyes fall to the spot where he’s touching me. He runs his fingers from the curve in my neck all the way across the top of my shoulder, his gaze never leaving where his hand trails. It’s like he’s touching a woman for the first time. I watch him like I’m being touched for the first time. His massive fingers, strong hands, thick veins all leading to the sexiest ink-covered forearm I’ve ever seen. God. Am I breathing?
A long stretch of silence passes before he speaks. When he does, his voice is soft. It’s a strong contradiction to the hard man in front of me.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” He takes my chin between his thumb and index finger. “He’s a kid. He fucked up.” His hand falls away, and his mouth twitches. There’s a sparkle in his eyes. “Sorry. I forgot you hate that word.”
“Oh my God, stop. I like that word.”
He tips his head to one side then swipes his thumb across his bottom lip and arches his brows. His mouth turns up in a half-smile. So cocky, so presumptuous, so… sexy.
My skin feels hot, and I have no doubt I’m blushing for the second time in five minutes. That’s got to be a new record.
“That came out wrong,” I say. Blaze straightens his head but keeps staring at me with that smirk. God, that smirk. “I don’t hate the word. I just don’t like using it in front of the boys.” I take a breath then sigh. “It probably sounds stupid, but I want to shield them, give them some of their innocence back. And I’m not naÏve enough to believe that by not dropping an F-bomb here and there, these boys will somehow feel like they’ve had a normal childhood with normal overprotective parents. But it makes me feel like I’m at least trying.” I shake my head, shaking off my words, shaking off the idea that something so simple can make any kind of difference, shaking off the fact that I’m entirely too comfortable sharing this with a guy I hardly know. “Like I said, it’s probably stupid.”
His golden-brown eyes pierce mine, searching and finding, all-knowing and intense. I feel it all the way to my bones. That stare is going to be my undoing.
“That doesn’t sound stupid at all,” he says.
My tongue snakes out involuntarily and wets my lips. “Thank you. Not just for saying that but for listening.” I rock back on my heels, feeling nervous all of a sudden because the other guy is off his phone and staring at us with his mouth open. “I should let you guys get back at it.”
Blaze notices it too but doesn’t seem the least bit affected by having an audience for what felt like an intimate conversation—at least for me. He glances over his shoulder at Liam, who hasn’t stopped working for even a second, then back at me. “You were right, you know. He’s a good kid.” I can’t help but smile at his words. His gaze drops to my lips for just a moment. Then he clears his throat and looks over my shoulder rather than directly at me when he speaks again. “I promise to have him home by dinner.”
I yell across the parking lot to Liam. “You’re doing awesome.” He answers with a grin and a thumbs up. “Blaze is going to bring you home later.” Another thumbs up. I laugh and shake my head. “I’m surprised you can get any work out of that chatterbox,” I say, bringing my attention back to Blaze.
He smiles. “The words will come when he’s ready.”
My heart hammers in my chest. According to every assumption I’ve made about this man, he should know nothing about the world Liam lives in—the world I live in. Yet here he is, standing in the middle of it and turning it upside down.
Right after Brody called to tell me everything was fine with the board and that we’re both still employed, Haley called to ask me to take her shift due to a family emergency. I don’t know whether to thank fate or curse it.
Kai finally replied to my email with a thank you and a recommendation that Liam seeks professional counseling. He doesn’t need therapy. He needs guidance. But I don’t tell Kai that.
The boys are outside shooting basketball while I cook dinner and wait for the last load of laundry to finish. Just as I slide a pan of garlic bread in the oven, Jake walks through the front door. He’s dressed in jeans and a casual polo that hugs his biceps and brings out the blue in his eyes.
Shit.
I forgot all about him.
“Damn,” he says as soon as he sees me.
I wipe my hands on a nearby dishtowel then toss it onto the counter. “I thought you were going to call.” A thought occurs to me. “Unless you came to see Haley, in which case, sorry to disappoint you, but she isn’t here.”
He walks through the living room and into the kitchen, stopping right in front of me and placing a hand on the counter to cage me in on one side. “Put the green-eyed monster away, Tiger. I’m not here for Haley. Brody told me you’d be here.”
Fucking Brody. Every day he gives me new reasons to want to suffocate him in his sleep. And I’m not jealous.
The front door opens again, and the moment I see who it is my heart stops. Liam walks in with Blaze not far behind him. Jake peeks over his shoulder then turns back to me. His eyes glitter with amusement as we both realize how this looks, how intimate we look.
I swallow the lump in my throat, but my body stays frozen in place. My gaze locks on his expression, the way his eyes narrow and his jaw clenches as he tucks his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He’s wearing a shirt this time—my ovaries thank God for that—a Carolina blue T-shirt and the same charcoal beanie from last night. God, that beanie.
“Hey,” I say as I slide away from Jake.
Jake huffs a laugh then follows me around the bar and into the living room.
Blaze straightens his posture and looks down at me. “He doesn’t need to come tomorrow.” That voice, his voice, is like a drink of water in a vast desert.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”
“I’m sure,” he interrupts. He looks over my shoulder at Jake then back at me. “I have people coming tomorrow to clean up the water, so there’s nothing for him to do.”
“Water?”
“From the firehoses.”
Oh. Right.
The front door swings open, and the rest of the boys come in, nearly knocking Blaze down as they rush past him. They stop before they reach the stairs and glance toward the kitchen at the unmistakable scent of garlic and butter.
“What’s for dinner?” Zeke, the youngest one, asks.
I walk back to the kitchen to check the bread because standing here between these two men is more tension than I can bear. “Chicken alfredo.”
Liam looks at Blaze. “Dude, you have to stay for dinner. Miss M’s chick
en alfredo is the bomb.”
The way Blaze looks at me sends the hair on my skin prickling up. If I was a romantic person, I’d call it possessive, fixated almost. But I’m not, so I won’t.
After several seconds of melting me under his stare, he swallows. “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” He flicks his gaze to Jake, and his expression tightens. “Maybe some other time.”
Liam shrugs. “Your loss.” Then he follows the rest of the boys upstairs.
Jake plops down on the sofa, splaying his arm across the back as though he belongs here. I suppose in some ways he does, just not on my shift. His smile morphs into a mischievous grin. He knows exactly what this looks like, and he’s eating it up. As soon as Blaze walks out this door, I’m going to punch Jake in the throat.
Blaze turns around and opens the door. “I’ll call you,” he says over his shoulder. Then he walks out, leaving me standing here with a knot in the pit of my stomach until I work up the nerve to follow him outside.
“Blaze…”
He turns around just as he’s reaching for his door handle.
“I just wanted to say thank you. Not just for today but for giving Liam a chance. Not many people would have done that.”
“Don’t mention it.” He opens his car door but stops before he climbs inside. “He reminds me of someone I knew when I was a kid. Someone I hope was able to get another chance too.” His wounded expression chips away at another piece of the wall I built around myself. In an instant, he’s granite again. The pain is gone as quickly as it appeared. He halfheartedly smiles. “Night, Adrienne.”
“Goodnight, Blaze.”
It takes me a solid five minutes after he drives away for my heart to beat right again.
She’s taken.
Good. She needs to be taken. By someone other than me, because after seeing her today, I was thoroughly convinced the next few weeks were going to be pure hell. It just sucks that the guy’s a Grade A douchecanoe. I know his type. I see them at The Taproom every weekend. Sure, they look the part, but once you peel back the layers, they’re insecure pieces of shit. She can do so much better than that.
Why the fuck do I care?
Her love life is not my problem. The brewery is my problem.
Thank God the insurance adjuster came early this morning so we could get started on clean up. The sooner I get things back in working order, the sooner I can be done with my obligation to the kid… and this ridiculous fascination with Adrienne.
I don’t date. I haven’t even thought about a woman in that way in over three years, not since the accident that tilted my entire universe and replaced my heart with an empty shell. But this woman with her brown eyes that are so much more than brown has the power to bring me to my knees. I want to drink whiskey from her belly button and trail my fingertips down her spine while we lay in bed naked and watch the sunrise. Jesus, she’s under my skin already, and that aggravates the fuck out of me.
Until last night, I was the workaholic. I get out of bed, then work until it’s time to go back to bed. Not for success or money or notoriety. My last name gives me enough of that already. I work to forget because in the stillness, I remember. In the stillness I feel the pain.
I live in a loft in uptown Charlotte–a one-bedroom lease to keep me from getting any bad ideas about settling down. I have one coffee mug in my cabinet and zero extra keys to my apartment. Until last night, I wanted for nothing. I needed nothing. My life was simple, uncomplicated, exactly the way I like it.
Now, I’m sitting at a diner across the street from my complex scouring the menu for chicken fucking alfredo.
I wipe down the bar for the eighteenth time in the past two hours. Ten years ago, breweries were content with crafting their brew and distributing it to the world. Now, most of us have taprooms where we serve our beer right from the source. Mine is the largest in this area. I started out with a twelve-foot bar and ten stools. Three years later, I have that same bar, thirteen tables inside, and nine in a closed-in outdoor patio. I serve hot dogs, fries, wings, and choice cocktails. There’s a different band here every Saturday night. But today, The Taproom is a ghost town. For the first Saturday in three years, I’m staring at an empty room.
“So, are you gonna tell me what’s so special about the brunette, or do I need to find out for myself?” Hector’s voice comes out of nowhere and scares the shit out of me. Dude is like a ghost, always popping up when I least expect him.
“Jesus, dude. I told you to stop that shit.”
He laughs. “I can’t help it you’re a pussy.” He reaches into a bag of Combos and pops one in his mouth. “Speaking of pussy…”
“Fuck off. It’s not like that.” I’m not fucking her. I grab the remote from the bar and flick on one of the televisions, muting ESPN because I don’t need a recap of the Nationals/Phillies game, but I do need a diversion from this conversation.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t.”
He grabs a glass and pours himself a Coke to go with his pretzel-coated processed cheese. “Could’ve fooled me. All that tension yesterday damn near gave me a chubby.”
I’ve known Hector since our freshman year at college. One semester in, and we left the dorms behind and got a house. It was a match made in heaven. He’s an eternal optimist, and I’m a sarcastic ass. He’s got a degree in computer science—yes, the unfiltered pervert is a brainiac—but the minute I told him about opening the brewery, he was one hundred percent in. Now he’s my right-hand man, and I couldn’t keep a level head without him. He’s been keeping up the paperwork while I’ve been dealing with the mess.
“Don’t you have emails to send or some shit?”
“Look man, you know I only have your happiness in mind. And this is the first girl since—”
I spear him with a hard look. “Don’t. Stop right there.”
We don’t talk about the accident. Ever.
He drops the bag of Combos on the bar and holds his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Let me just ask you one question.” His boyish features turn firm the way they always do when he’s about to get serious. “When you woke up today, what year was it?”
“Fuck you.”
Hector doesn’t budge. “Answer me, Blaze. What year was it?”
Fine. I’ll humor him. I square my shoulders and face him head-on. “2019.”
“Exactly. 2016 is gone, man. You gotta stop living there. Pack your shit and move on.”
He says that like it should be easy. Take my baggage and run. Run from the past. Run from the pain. But the pain is a beast, an angry, hungry beast, and I’ve been feeding it for three years.
How do you run from a hungry beast?
Service Professional is busy cleaning up the residual water from where firefighters put out the fire. Once that’s done, they’ll check for mold spores, then we can start cleaning up the smoke residue and soot. Then I can get my life back.
This brewery is my home. I gave up everything to chase a dream, and I’ll be damned if I watch it crumble. I’m thankful as shit that fire didn’t make its way past the patio. If it had gotten to my kettles or tanks, I might as well have just cut my own balls off and served them to my father on a silver platter.
As if his ears were burning, my cell phone vibrates in my back pocket. When I pull it out, I see Dad’s name on the screen.
“Were you ever going to tell your mother and me about the fire?” He’s already started with the guilt trip, and I’ve barely even said hello.
Then again, Chase Abbott isn’t one for small talk. He runs a billion-dollar banking industry. His time is literally money.
I grab a bottle of scotch and a glass and fill it to the rim.
Dear old dad continues his rampage. “Hell, Blaze. Levi even knew about it for Pete’s sake.”
Fuck Pete. And fuck Levi.
“Well, I sure as fuck didn’t tell him.” I haven’t talked to my brother in three years, not since the funeral. I could go three hundred more without a word,
and it wouldn’t make a shit’s bit of difference to me.
“He saw it on the news.” Of course he did. Fucking media always sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong, especially when it comes to an Abbott. “It’s a sign, son. It’s time to stop playing this little game of yours and come home.”
Home. If home means a twelve-acre estate on the coast of New York where my mother drinks herself to sleep every time Dad forgets an anniversary or works through a holiday, then I’m good where I am. They say alcohol numbs the pain. I guess that’s why I own a brewery.
“It’s not a game, Dad. It’s my life.” I take a sip of my scotch and watch guys in yellow polos clean up what’s left of said life. I’ve been brewing beer since college. It was my thing. It’s always been my thing, and I’m damn good at it.
I started my brewery without borrowing a single penny from my parents. Maybe that’s what pisses him off the most, that my success has shit to do with him.
“Goddammit. Blaze, you’re killing your mother. She’s a disaster.”
I’m killing her? Mom was dead inside before I ever hit high school. He’s not pinning this shit on me.
“I’m not coming home. And I gotta go. They need me to help clean up.” It’s bullshit. Those guys are doing just fine without me, but I’m not wasting another minute on a dead-end conversation. “Great talk, Dad. Tell Mom I love her.”
I end the call and look across the room to the patio area, glancing over the charred wooden beams and dangling wires. Sheets of aluminum from the tin roof hang on the outer edges of the building, and the scent of burnt cedar dominates every breath I take. Two of the walls inside the taproom area are covered in soot along with most of the tables and chairs, but thanks to a wall of double-paned, bulletproof glass that separates the brewing area from the serving area, nothing made it past that point.
I chug the rest of my scotch back in one long gulp. Then I refill my drink and lean against the back counter where the taps are, sipping slower this time, watching as the yellow polo guys set up sump pumps and dehumidifiers.
Blaze: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 4
