Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Wyn
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says, swaying closer.
The deep current of his voice is as distracting and smooth as the warm river roaring behind him.
I wanted to touch him, glide my fingers through his hair and forget why this isn’t smart.
Watching his eyes close like he’s been craving the touch as much as I had is what has me remembering myself.
I close my eyes as the smell of oak and mint mingle in the air.
I shake my head. I’m smarter than this. The red fucking flags that parade ahead of this man are too blatant to ignore.
With my heart pumping, I turn away from him and move toward the distillery, ignoring the fact that he’s following right behind me.
I like that he’s not so quick to give up.
I glance at the movement along the riverbank. “You may want to step up here; there’re alligators who feel very territorial living in that river.”
He tips his chin up, eyes on me. “Can we quit it with the bullshit now?”
“Nothing bullshit about being eaten by a prehistoric reptile,” I say, turning my back to him.
“Amphibian,” he says. “Alligators are amphibians.”
“You’re very wrong. They’re reptiles.” I squint my eyes closed and shake my head, frustrated. “You know what? I don’t care. What exactly do you want, Julian?” I ask in a huff as I shove open the sliding barn door to the distillery.
“You’re not serious,” his words echo as he follows me once again.
When I left Montana, I made an agreement.
To return to the life I had before—it was safe for me now—but I had to forget where I’ve been for the past three years.
I couldn’t talk about it or be in contact with anyone.
It’s for everyone else’s safety, not mine.
Make up a lie, embellish the truth, whatever it would take to preserve Hideaway, Montana as the safe haven it was built to be.
It had been that for me. A place for people who survived the worst, but who still need to hide and be protected.
I left Montana and every person who knew me as Naomi behind, including Julian Colton.
How am I supposed to tell him to leave, when the last thing I want is to see him go? I’ve been trying to feel like myself again, the old me who worked hard and earned my place. But nothing has felt right, not since I’ve been back. Not until right now . . .
I look around the open room, trying to find my bearings and swallowing down how much this place makes me feel more like myself than anywhere else too.
I count the barrels stacked two high, three wide, with space for more all along the right and far back walls.
The workspace in the center is the most polished and professional component of all of this.
A small lab that I built a long time ago, when making whiskey was the most interesting thing about me.
All of it was barely touched in my absence, and ready for when I returned.
My Uncle Tommy’s doing, most likely. He would listen to me talk about atoms and orbitals or the basics of hybridization and bonding—even if he was bored out of his mind.
And then we’d make some sort of mash or try a different flavor combination.
“Doesn’t matter what you nerd out on, Wyn.
Just means you’re passionate about something. ”
“You have a distillery,” Julian says slowly, almost like he’s awestruck. “Your whiskey. The flavors you bottled and made, that wasn’t just a small hobby to pass the time . . .”
I stop to flip off the vents to cool the mash that was starting to turn over in the large steel vats and then pluck two bottles from what I bottled up earlier this week.
“It was that. Still is, really,” I confess. I don’t understand why I feel the need to be so forthcoming with this man.
“This is where you live? Where you’re from,” he concludes as I turn, practically colliding into him with how close he’s standing. He plucks one of the bottles from my hands and reads the flavor profile handwritten along the ribbon waxed to the neck.
The way I’m trying to appear unaffected is blatantly ignored, like he isn’t going to play these games with me. I hold my breath, not wanting to give him anything. If I do, I don’t trust myself to not tell him everything. And that’s too risky.
“Whatever it is you think you want from me, I’m not interested. I don’t know you,” I mumble through my lie, then add with a little more strength, “I barely remember you.”
When his eyes meet mine again, my stomach flips.
“You’re going to tell me that you don’t remember me? The lines on my palms? The way you studied the curve of my hands and the length of my fingers?” He bends lower when I look away to force me to look him in the eyes again. “Does that mean you’ve forgotten the way you came all over them too?”
He went there. This fucker. I try not to react, but he saw my lips part. There’s no mistaking the way I swallow or how my pulse quickens at a flash of memory, one I’ve replayed countless times in my mind, wanting to remember exactly the way he touched me and teased me.
“I haven’t.” His words are slow and smooth when he adds, “The way it lingered on my fingers long after I left you.”
My face heats as tingles travel between my legs as if his imagination is touching me.
“My mouth is watering remembering it now,” he says with a small hum.
I huff out a breath. “What do you want me to say, Julian?” My brow furrows as I think over his words. “It wasn’t that for me.” I tilt my head condescendingly, trying to hurt him. I should be scared of this man, but I’m not.
He takes a step closer, rubbing the silk bow of my blouse between his fingers.
“Dr. Wynona Crowne,” he whispers, like he’s trying to get used to saying that name.
It’s annoying how good it sounds when he says it.
His gaze follows down the front of my blouse, and while I’m going on far too long without a shower, I’m at least thankful I’m wearing my version of armor.
The respected professor, who has her act together and isn’t on the cusp of a panic attack, is far easier to play with my high-waisted trouser pants, a wrinkled white blouse, and black silk tie.
It’s a far departure from the jeans and fitted T-shirts I wore when I tended bar in Montana.
He tugs on the tail of my tie as he whispers, “I like this.”
I swat his hand away.
“It just doesn’t feel like you.”
“And you think you know me well enough to know what I feel like?” And the second it comes out, I regret it. The innuendo and the very real possibility that he’s a little bit right make my cheeks warm and lips part. Dammit.
His lips curve up into a knowing smile.
I lift my chin and shove down my shoulders. “You’re not going to romance anything more out me,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster.
“Romance?” He sniffs a laugh. “That was romance to you?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” I bite back, more softly than I intended.
I clear my throat. There isn’t any space to be vulnerable with this man, so I bristle myself, take a small step back, and add some distance as I put my hands on my hips.
“Call it whatever you want—romance, intimacy, manipulation . . . I’m not falling for it.
” I don’t let him interrupt, asking what I want to know, even as my pulse hammers at the thought of his answer.
“Tell me why you’re here, and don’t lie to me. ”
When he moves a piece of my hair out of my face, his finger brushes along my jaw, and I shamelessly sway closer.
I’m touch starved and disappointing myself at a masterful rate at the way I haven’t added more distance between us.
This feeling I have when he’s close, it’s the same now as it was months ago.
He looks me in the eye when he says, “I didn't kill anyone.” I feel relieved the moment I hear it. It’s an assurance I need, because I, for some reason, believe him. But still, it doesn’t explain why he’s here.
Before I can say anything, my uncle’s voice calls out from the far side of the distillery. “Wyn, you alright over there?”
I turn toward Tommy as he grabs his work gloves, taking long strides to us.
My Uncle Tommy is one of the only reasons things work around here; not to mention, my place looking more like a home than a forgotten, run-down barn.
He also made it his business to teach me as much as he knows about making whiskey.
My mother waltzes up behind him. “She’s fine. Aren’t you leaving, Mr. Colton?”
He smiles at her, and I know full well just by his body language that him leaving is more like her idea. “I actually saw a bed-and-breakfast on my way into town?—”
“The Rackhouse,” Tommy chimes in. “That’s my place. And yeah, there’s a room for you.”
“I thought your business was done here?” Lu puts her hands on her hips and looks at my uncle. “Thomas, I actually don’t think there’s any room at the B&B right now.”
Tommy crosses his arms and levels an annoyed look at her. “Lu, don’t pretend like you aren’t keeping tabs on what goes on over there.”
“Quit flattering your fragile ego, Thomas,” she bites back.
While there’s always been rumors swirling around my family, Tommy stays out of most of them. My mother, however, is the centerfold of many.
The name Tallulah Crowne is Rumor, Tennessee lore that picks up every few years when someone either becomes a widow or gets divorced.
When I was sixteen, my English teacher went on a bender and showed up to school still wasted on pinot grigio, carrying on about how Lu Crowne was the kind of good time she was missing and it was her pleasure to watch her work her magic—whatever that meant.
That was a fun one to try navigating as a teenager, trying to understand why I should care if my mother was a lesbian like Greta Cooper called her, or if I should be more concerned about why my English teacher went from married to a widow shortly after that.