Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
LIAM
“Mr. Miracle, huh?” asks a gangly, curly-haired guy I’ve never seen before. He gestures pointedly at my name tag.
Hi! My name is MR. MIRACLE, and I like to WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW.
I grin, patting the name tag, a “gift” from the new retirement-age floor manager at Big Catch Brewing.
I like him as much as I like anyone, especially since he’s friendly with my sister, Hannah, but he needs to lighten up.
So I’ve taken it upon myself to help him out by messing with the name tags he forces everyone to wear.
He even brought them out tonight, for a party, so he was basically asking for people to revolt.
“That’s not actually your name, is it?” the curly-haired guy presses, raising his eyebrows.
A grin spreads across my face. “It’s my preferred nickname. I also answer to Sir Miracle.”
“Or ‘asshole’ will do too,” suggests Travis, Hannah’s boyfriend.
My grin stretches wider. I actually like this boyfriend. I hope he doesn’t screw up with Hannah and force me to tear him from limb to limb.
“It’s just a little joke between me and the new evening floor manager,” I explain to the new guy, who isn’t wearing one of the name tags.
“Oh, you mean my dad,” New Guy says, glancing around the crowded space for his father, one Eugene Peebles.
Huh. No shit. It’s a good thing I didn’t say any of the other crap I have on my mind. Like: Big Catch is boring as hell, and we have to make our own fun. Or: I got sick of working here before I started, and that was four years ago.
Four long, tedious years.
Boring is good, Hannah would tell me, even though she does not think boring is good. None of us Moroneys do. We were born with a wildness at our core that nothing can fully satisfy.
What Hannah would mean is that boring is good for me.
I suppose she has some say in the matter, given that my sister is the only reason I’m employed right now.
Yup that’s right. I was given this job as a favor to her.
Hannah was working as an evening floor manager at Big Catch at the time, and I’d just lost my job at Mountain Morning Brewing for beating up the owner.
Trust me when I say he deserved it.
Other people did not agree with me, unfortunately. I got arrested and condemned to a year of probation and a round of anger management classes. In all likelihood, that’s what I deserved, although it would have made it hard for me to find a job if Hannah hadn’t pulled some strings for me.
Can’t say the classes did much for me. I met my buddy Mick at one of them, though, and he introduced me to boxing—the one activity in life where punching people is allowed and even encouraged. He owns a crappy little gym that I go to several times a week.
It’s boxing that’s helped me maintain an even keel. Boxing, and having Hannah working here at the same brewery. We’re used to keeping an eye on each other. We’ve been doing it our whole lives, ever since our mom walked out on our family.
New Guy is still looking my way expectantly, and I realize I must have zoned out midconversation. So I give him a nod. “And you are?”
“I’m Cormac, Sir Miracle.” He nods to Travis. “And not to be creepy, or whatever, but I know who you are.”
I laugh. Travis laughs. Cormac laughs.
It’s a pretty feel-good moment, truth be told. We’re all picking up on the cheerful energy in the room, which is infectious compared to the way this place has felt for the last few months.
For me, it has nothing to do with the holiday decorations or the free-flowing beer. It’s all thanks to my sister.
Hannah quit in late summer, which was my fault, but she’s finally back. I still hate this place, but I hate it a hell of a lot less than I did while she was gone.
“I know who you are too,” Travis says pointedly, waving a finger in the direction of Eugene. “My girlfriend’s the one who set up your dad and—” Travis’s eyes widen, and he turns away. “And—”
“And the woman my sixty-six-year-old father is making out with in full view of everyone,” Cormac says wryly. “Yeah, I noticed that too.”
Damn. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the high of having Hannah back at the brewery again, but I like this guy too. That’s gotta be a new record for me.
Travis laughs and then looks for Hannah in the crowd, a lovesick expression stealing over his face when she blows a kiss at him. “She’s pretty proud of the way Eugene has embraced public displays of affection.”
“Don’t take a page from his book,” I warn, hiking up an eyebrow. “I might know you’re sleeping with my sister, but I don’t want the evidence shoved in my face. There’s only so much a man can take.”
Travis lifts both of his hands, and Cormac snorts a laugh.
“Actually, though, I know your band,” he says, smiling at Travis. “Garbage Fire.”
Travis’s smile gets strained. I pat him on the back before saying, “Sore subject right now.”
Travis’s friend Bixby, the former bassist in the band, stabbed him in the back, and they had to boot him out.
They’d already been looking for a new rhythm guitarist to replace a guy who’d moved out of town, so they were left with just Travis on the drums and his pal Rob as the lead singer and only guitarist.
Two people do not a band make.
I offered to play with them for a while as the rhythm guitarist, but I’m not interested in sticking around.
I’m not what you might call a team player.
I’m trying to sweet talk Mick into taking my place.
He can be a bit of a dick—we both came by those anger management classes honestly—but he’s good people. He’ll do right by them.
Cormac makes a face he probably thinks is sympathetic. “Yeah, I know. Actually…I was wondering if you were maybe looking for a new bassist.”
He’s acting aw-shucks embarrassed, which is hilarious. Travis and Rob had to cancel a bunch of shows after losing Bixby. At this point, they would happily invite a serial killer to be their bassist, so long as he could lay it down with his guitar.
“You’re a bassist?” Travis asks, his face lighting up.
Cormac nods but says quickly, “I haven’t been in a band before, though. I play alone.”
A weird instrument to play alone, if you ask me, but no one did, so I just grunt.
As predicted, Travis doesn’t seem to care about the hows and whys. He scans the crowd, his eyes darting wildly, then blurts, “Wait a sec.” He disappears, presumably to find Rob, or to light a candle to whatever deity he believes in.
Now that Travis is gone, Cormac and I are left in silence. Cormac rocks on his heels a couple of times as if searching for the optimal standing position, then says out of nowhere, “What’s your biggest problem as a brewer?”
No need to think that one through. “Talking to people.”
He surprises me by laughing. “That’s my biggest problem as a person. I’m told you’re supposed to ask questions to form a dialogue.”
“Silence is good too. Silence is underrated.” I’m just giving him shit, though. He’s funny, this son of Eugene’s. Maybe he doesn’t mean to be, but I’m willing to accept him at face value.
He smiles at me. “It would be a stretch of the imagination to call this silence.”
That makes me laugh, because we’re surrounded by bustling activity, people talking, and the low hum of Christmas music. The song that’s playing at the moment is, ironically, “Silent Night.”
A few seconds later, Travis comes back. Twisting his mouth to the side, he says, “I can’t find Rob. But he’ll want to have a conversation.”
While we wait, we talk music. Cormac knows his shit, and it’s obvious Travis is excited. I’m pumped, too, because once Travis and Rob get him settled in, presuming he can play anywhere near as well as he talks about playing, I can bow out and leave them to it.
The front door opens to admit a late arrival, and I glance over—
And feel like I’ve been frozen in spot from the cold air wafting in.
It’s a woman with long blond hair, down past her waist, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans despite the cold. For a second, my eyes linger on that hair—feet and feet of it, the shiny gold of a perfect lager. It seems to catch the low lights and radiate them back. Then my gaze finds her face.
Her eyes are big and light brown and full of misery. She looks like one of those princesses in the movies my sister’s friends liked to watch growing up. The ones that always made Hannah roll her eyes.
It takes me half a second to register that this is Briar, one of Hannah’s new friends.
I don’t really know Briar, although I know the story of how Hannah met her and Sophie. The three of them, plus another woman, were all unknowingly sleeping with the same guy—Jonah, a spineless piece of shit whose brother, Rob, happens to be the front man of Garbage Fire.
Rob and Jonah don’t get along, which is good, because once I found out what Jonah was pulling with my sister, I threatened to kill him and hide his body if he ever came near her again.
Now, Hannah, Sophie, and Briar are friends.
Sophie’s dating Rob, Hannah’s seeing Travis, and Briar…
well, I don’t know much about Briar other than that she works for her rich father’s brewery, which is infamously one hundred percent organic.
A pointless gimmick, if you ask me, but I suppose there are enough breweries in this town that you’ve got to stand out somehow.
Might as well stand out for something stupid.
I’ve only seen Briar a few times, exchanged probably two dozen words with her, at least three of them hello, but I’ve seen enough to know she’s usually more put together than this. More aloof. A princess in a tower. Tonight, she looks desperate and on edge—a different kind of princess entirely.
My instinct is to stride over and ask who did this to her so I can punch them. Or, if it’s a woman, hand the situation over to my sister. But I made a promise to Hannah that holds me back.