Zoe Brennan, First Crush

Chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

While Laine and I drowsed on the tasting room floor, the security footage shows Rachel lumbering into the winery, knocking into everything, then leaning over an exposed tote of base wine with what must’ve been a contaminated stirring rod and swirling it ferociously until Laine and I walked in and unknowingly cut the Brett sabotage short. Not that it did us any good. Brett spreads so perniciously, all it would’ve taken was Rachel walking in with Brett on her clothes, and she’d probably have been able to affect most, if not all, of our base wines for next year. The direct contamination with the stirring rod just made it move on a faster schedule.

I don’t know what to do about it. Call the cops for trespassing? Get on the phone with Kira and put together a devastating lawsuit of business sabotage? Hold her down while Laine pours a bottle of Georgia Vomit Girls down her throat? I alternate between a fury too big for my body and a crushing desolation that anyone could hate me this much.

The thing is, I’d started to think that maybe Rachel still cared about me. She had tried to warn me about Laine all summer. It seemed like she’d been watching out for me, in her own toxic way.

But the footage is unambiguous. She practically threw herself into that tote, which Jamal confirmed was ground zero as far as Brett goes. Its readings were the highest of all.

I lower myself onto the winery’s floor, propping my elbows on my knees, and breathe. Our entire season of base wines is both contaminated and irreplaceable. When Laine realized something was wrong yesterday morning, Tristan spent the day calling every vineyard in the southeast to see if anyone has surplus base wine they’d be willing to sell, but it’s too far along in the season—everything’s been sold or slated for use. Our short-term looks even worse. We’d have to thoroughly decontaminate the winery before we host anything here, or else we could spread it to every vineyard in the area. That kind of effort takes weeks, months even. How can we gather that much manpower in just seven days?

Can we even afford to?

Every free dollar I had, I put into the showcase, not to mention all the money I already owe Teddy for the infrastructure improvements. We’d have to buy hazmat suits and industrial cleaning supplies, plus throw away every barrel we have and start over from nothing. A winery with no grapes, no barrels, no money, is a winery with no wine . No future.

I huff out a breath as I scrub my bleary eyes with the palms of my hands. The biggest problem I had five hours ago—how to ask Laine to stay—is the one problem I no longer have. Because what’s left to stay for now? Me and my wreck of a vineyard? My mother’s dreams, which I’ve treated like an inheritance at best and a sentence at worst, instead of seeing them for what they are: an excuse.

An excuse to hide from life by burying myself in work.

“Zoe?” Jamal places his hand on my shoulder, but even through his thick glove, I can feel his warmth. “What do you want to do?”

What do I want to do? Give up and go to Oregon with Laine? She’s barely made eye contact with me since I got home and is currently slumped over my father’s worktable, but I have no doubt she’ll do anything I ask her to right now. For her, this is the Hayseed Vintner review all over again, only this time the failure’s been feeding on nuclear waste and has morphed into Failure-zilla, bigger and deadlier than ever.

This could ruin her.

The realization that Laine will carry this failure around for the rest of her life—whether here or in Oregon or somewhere else, letting it define her and keep her small—makes me lift my head.

I can’t let that happen. I won’t .

I’m Zoe fucking Brennan, and goddammit, I know how to lose. I know how to try and fail and keep trying and failing, until I win .

I stand up so fast that Jamal flinches.

“I want to get to work .”

I put out the bat signal to everyone I know, explaining the situation and what I need from them. Jamal, bless him, stays up with Laine and me into the wee hours of the morning, running scenarios for how we could fix this. We come up with one possible solution—an intense round of sterile filtration bookended with heavy sulfur treatments—and hold our breath as Laine pours us each a small tasting glass of the first batch it produces, sometime around three a.m.

“Okay, boss.” Laine tentatively passes me a glass, her bloodshot eyes filled with hope and fear in equal measure. “Bottoms up.”

Jamal watches nervously from behind his hood. This task is mine and Laine’s alone. I lift the glass first to my nose and …

“Nothing,” I announce, then sniff harder. “I smell nothing.”

Laine smells hers, too, and nods. “A light scent of the alcohol itself, maybe. Nothing else.”

We share a flutter of a smile. Not that that’s good , per se. Wine should smell like wine. But my heart beats a little faster, fueled by relief that at least it no longer smells like Baahlzebub’s stall. I lift the glass again, this time to my lips, watching Laine mirror my actions.

Here goes nothing.

Laine gags before I do. I can’t even swallow it, choking it back out and into my glass. “Oh god .”

“Like, sixty proof— Band-Aid water,” Laine splutters, wiping her mouth before gagging again. I guess Jamal feels left out, because he turns and gags, too.

“We have to dump it.” Laine’s face collapses in misery.

“Fuck that,” I croak, still pressing a hand to my roiling stomach. “Haven’t you heard of wine slushies?”

Her misery melts into horror. “Wine slushies?! With that ?!”

I clap her on the back. “There’s my Napa snob.”

Jamal tilts his head, considering. “Not a bad idea … That sangria slushy mix could make gasoline taste good.”

“Well, now we know what we’re serving all winter.” I smile grimly, then clap my hands as if to say, next!

By dawn, we have a plan. It’s not pretty, and it requires calling in every favor I’ve got, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Rachel’s sabotage destroy everything Laine and I have worked so hard for.

She doesn’t get to destroy us .

We agree to meet back at seven a.m., giving us a few short hours of sleep before the real work begins. I’m so grateful to Jamal I could cry, but I settle for a long hug through his hazmat suit. Then, Laine and I walk back to my cottage under skies the color of denim. I slip my hand into hers, and she begins to cry.

“ Shh , Laine, everything’s going to be okay.” I pull her close among the sleeping vines in the cool, damp stillness where night greets morning. And I realize I really believe it. Because I know now that this is my saving grace. It’s her. And me. And the beautiful, terrifying, completely worth-it risk of a great love. Not my family’s vineyard, my work, not even my dreams, inherited, adopted, or otherwise.

“Zoe, I’m so sorry. About keeping Oregon from you, about the infestation, about everything.” Laine’s voice rumbles and scrapes through her throat. “I know it was Rachel that contaminated our wine, but it’s still my fault. She was so furious with me, she took it out on Bluebell, and if I’d followed your dad’s protocol, we might’ve prevented the worst of it. I don’t care what I have to do to make it happen, but I’m going to decontaminate the winery before the showcase and Cosimo gets back. And then, I’ll—I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. Just please, believe me. I’m so sorry for ruining what you love most.” Her voice shatters on the words.

I brush a soft lock of her hair behind her ear, tilting my head back so I can take her all in, every ragged breath, every tear, every earnest, loving bit of her. How could I have ever doubted this woman’s devotion? “That’s not what I want, Laine. You haven’t ruined anything because you’re who I love most.” I run the bridge of my nose along her jaw before placing a light kiss in the hollow beneath her ear. “All we have to do now is try. Can you do that for me?”

She wraps her arms around my waist, crushing me to her, her head dipping to press her cheek against mine. “I will .”

A hope-starved heart hurts to the beat of its own blood. You get so used to the ache of not expecting that you see the world through a pain-colored hue. You don’t know the true color of happy or recognize all the shades of love.

Until one day, you do.

Laine holds me, tells me that she loves me, whispers into my hair how much she missed me these few days apart, and when we rise a few hours later, I swear the sun glows brighter than ever, a fat peach gilding the world just for us. The sky’s bluer, the chilly air fresh and tart. When Jamal shows up with a rainbow of trucks, cars, and even Trish and Darryl’s redneck tour bus in our parking lot at seven a.m. sharp, it takes my breath away.

I blink, wondering if I’m still dreaming as Jamal and half his team start passing out hazmat suits to a growing line forming behind his truck. My bat signal worked and then some—just about everyone I know is here to help scrub down the winery. River, Hannah, Maeve, Gloria, Teddy, Diego, Trish, Darryl, Gus, Martha, Ms. Betty and her whole horde of merry spinsters, Killian and the Genteelmen, and, I realize with a deranged laugh, about half my exes. The Everyday Bon Vivant team is here, too, Marisol looking foxy in her gettin’ dirty clothes while Matthew bustles over, his arms loaded with shopping bags full of industrial cleaning supplies. Their extended team mills behind with walkie-talkies strapped to work belts, which I find inexplicably impressive.

“Hope you don’t mind we phoned in some reinforcements.” Matthew smiles and sets the bags at my feet. He catches me staring slack-jawed at all the kindness flowing into Bluebell Vineyards, and his eyes go soft. “We fight for our vineyards, Zoe. And our friends.”

I could kiss him all over his meticulously shaven cheeks. I’d been scared to tell Matthew and Marisol about the Brett infestation last night—what if they called the showcase off before we could even try to save ourselves? But I see now that once again, my tendency to expect the worst from people led me astray. Behind him is an army ready to eradicate the Brett teeming across every surface, stirring rod, and barrel in our winery.

My heart squeezes as hope bursts in. When my eyes catch Laine’s, she looks at me as though to say, see how much love you have in your life.

And for once, I do.