Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
brIAR
“It’s going to be okay,” Sophie says, her voice upbeat, her smile fixed. “Hannah has a plan. I know she’s not usually a planner, but she really seems to be onto something this time. She had that look she gets in her eyes.”
Sophie and I are sitting on a couple of chairs in the big warehouse at the back of Big Catch Brewing—no decorations, no food, just a bunch of kegs, a few scattered chairs, and the muted sound of other people’s fun.
As soon as Hannah and Sophie saw me, they pulled me back here and dressed me in a sweatshirt Hannah grabbed from the merch section up front.
I’d told them my sob story through chattering teeth.
Every word made me feel more pathetic, reminding me of how little I’ve changed since I was first sent to boarding school as a six-year-old.
The second week of first grade, a girl named Melly stole my American Girl Felicity doll, and instead of demanding that she return her to me, I watched in silent misery as she gave Felicity haircuts and had tea parties with her.
The worst part was that Melly was supposed to be my friend.
My mother and father had told me to stick close to her like glue, because she was the daughter of one of their best friends, a real estate developer who always gave Dad the “good deals.”
Good people, my mother said. I know they raised her right.
I did get my doll back eventually, but only because my house mother finally figured out what was going on and forced Melly to return her to me and apologize.
It wasn’t much of a victory, though. Melly’s apology was insincere, and my relationship with Felicity never recovered.
From that point on, I only ever saw accusation in her hollow green eyes.
I’ve tried to work on myself for years. There’s been yoga, therapy, meditation, and art. But at my core, I’m still that frightened little girl who wasn’t daring enough to ask for her doll back.
I know without asking that Hannah would have punched Melly in the face, or maybe stolen her teddy bear to give her a taste of her own medicine.
I want to be strong like that, but I feel my father’s recipe for success hanging over my head—always poised to crush me.
Now, the weight of the brewery is on my shoulders too.
I have the building. The supplies. The beer. The profits. But I have nothing else.
If you can make it back from this one, I’ll know you’re a real Sterling.
But I’m not a real Sterling in any way that matters.
I’m a thirty-one-year-old failure, who’s tried to play the game, several times, and only gotten through the first few rounds.
Sophie starts rubbing my back again. “You’ll see. Hannah seemed really confident.”
She’s right. After dressing me and prying my story out, Hannah practically launched herself out of the room, insisting she was going to hire more staff for me.
Tonight.
She must have been talking about Liam, right?
I hope to God she was, because the only thing that will save me is if I find a brewer good enough to pull everything together.
I also hope she wasn’t talking about Liam, because if Hannah convinces her brother to work for me, I’ll be a nepo baby twice over—my father gave me the brewery, and my best friend gave me—
“I can’t let her give me her brother,” I cry out, tears tracking down my cheeks.
Sophie cocks her head, and I feel the telltale flushing of my cheeks again.
“I mean…she obviously can’t give him to me…
he’s a grown man. He’s six foot four, maybe even six foot five.
But he’d do anything for her, you know he would.
What if she asks him to come work for me, and he only does it because she made him, and then the brewery is a huge failure—”
“No one can make anyone do anything,” Sophie says firmly. “Let’s do more of that yoga breathing.”
We’ve been doing it off and on since Hannah left the room.
I learned Dirgha breathing when I was a kid from my great-aunt Sky. For a month every summer, I stayed with her in her cabin in Georgia, where we used to pick wildflowers and do yoga together. Sometimes she would take me to her art collective studio so I could learn from the different artists.
My great aunt is probably the only reason I made it through childhood.
She’d spent so much time teaching me ways to calm my anxiety.
But the most useful has probably been how to breathe through stress.
I can practically hear her whispering to me in her soft, musical voice: inhale deeply into your belly, then rib cage, then chest, and exhale in the opposite order.
She’d insisted Dirgha breathing was magic, and she may have been right. I can already feel the weight on my shoulders lessening.
The snick of the door opening at the back of the warehouse catches my attention. It lets in a spurt of noise from the staff party—someone laughing, followed by strains of that hateful song about a stalking Santa.
Oh, I’ll never listen to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” again without thinking about Bubba’s hostile raisin eyes.
I turn toward the entrance, expecting Hannah, but Liam walks in, shutting the door behind him.
Yeah, he’s definitely six foot five, with broad shoulders and thick arms. He has auburn hair and a short, trimmed beard that gleams red and gold or brown depending on the lighting.
His eyes are brown, not a dancing green like Hannah’s, and even though they’re light—the color of our amber ale—they’re not warm and welcoming. They remind me of a wolf’s eyes.
He nods a greeting as he walks over, his movements brimming with confidence. Something is tucked under his arm, but my overloaded brain can’t make sense of it. My heart starts racing like a scared rabbit’s. It’s that confidence of his, that swagger. He walks like he owns the world.
I nearly gasp when he comes to a stop in front of us, because there’s a sticker on his shirt that says,
Hi! My name is MR. MIRACLE.
I needed a miracle, and I came here. Perhaps I’m being foolish, but this feels an awful lot like a sign.
“We have to talk privately,” he says, his words giving me an electric jolt.
“Why can’t we talk here?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Hannah said you want to poach me. You’ve got some pretty big balls if you want to discuss it at my place of employment.”
My cheeks burn as I get to my feet, needing to show some agency, even if I’m suddenly hyperaware of my tearstained face and mussed hair. I had it in a ponytail earlier, but somewhere in the middle of my crisis the scrunchie must have slipped off.
I search his face but can’t tell whether he’s pissed, annoyed, or bored.
I can’t read him at all, other than his confidence.
If Hannah’s an open book, he’s a firmly closed one.
Actually, he’s like one of those lockable diaries every girl is given at some point, with a key that gets lost after a week.
It’s hard to imagine two more different siblings.
“Where’s Hannah?” I ask.
“I don’t want her anywhere near this,” he insists. “She works here too. People don’t look kindly on poaching employees.”
It feels like he just punched a hole in my chest with a rusty office implement. Hannah’s risking her job for me.
If she asked Liam to quit, and their boss finds out…
“Okay,” I say. “We’ll go to Silver Star. No one’s there.” Those words nearly pull another sob from my chest, but I hold it back through sheer force of will.
“People are going to find out about the mass walkout,” he says gruffly. “I can’t be seen at your brewery until we get this settled.”
I swallow down fresh panic. “Okay. Then maybe…”
My mind whirrs. Other than Silver Star and the tea shop that my friends and I love, what do I have? What places in this town are mine?
There’s always my apartment. But I can’t take him there. It would feel too intimate. And my cat, Karma, hates nearly everyone, sometimes even me.
“I have someplace private we can talk.” He gestures at the back door. “Let’s leave out the back.”
Sophie gives me an encouraging smile. “Good, this is good! We’ll meet at the tea shop tomorrow to run through everything. I’m sure Dottie will have tons of ideas.”
Dottie is the sweet older woman who runs Tea of Fortune.
Even though she has a huge extended family of people she’s “adopted,” she still found space in her heart for Hannah, Sophie, and me.
She reminds me of my great-aunt. Her aura of kindness ripples outward, touching everyone in her presence.
Just being around her makes you feel like you’re getting a warm hug.
“Am I invited?” Liam asks. The only sign that he’s teasing is the corner of his mouth lifting slightly, maybe two millimeters.
“Of course,” Sophie says. “But we all know you’re not going to come.”
He laughs, the sound low and deep, almost like the growl of a wild animal. “No,” he admits. “Not really my scene.”
I give Sophie a quick hug, then wrap my arms around my body for warmth as I follow Liam to the back door of the warehouse.
“It’s good that I didn’t take the bike today,” he says conversationally as we reach the back door. “I don’t have an extra helmet.”
“You ride a bicycle to work?” I ask, bracing myself for the burst of freezing air.
He gives me an incredulous look, his lip curling, and I feel like an idiot.
“A lot of people do,” I mutter.
“A lot of people are idiots,” he replies. He tries to hand me the thing that’s been tucked under his arm, and I realize it’s a coat. “Put it on, and let’s go.”
Offering me a coat is thoughtful, but he’s being condescending. I decide I don’t want to go anywhere with him, Mr. Miracle or not. I’m tired of being treated like a pretty imbecile.
“I’m not stupid,” I say heatedly.