Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Wyn
“Am I misreading things?”
I cough, waking myself up. What was that? I keep repeating that question, but I don’t understand why or who said it.
As I turn over, paper crinkles beneath my cheek. I wonder for the briefest moment where I’ll be when I open my eyes. Breathe. Listen. Feel. The hum of the air-conditioning, warm cotton sheets, and a folded piece of paper sticking to my face.
Remembering the last thing I did, I sit up quickly.
He’s not still here. I stare at the chair Julian sat in last night as he watched me, covering my smile with my hand at the audacity of my behavior.
I felt so sexy, longed for, wanted, and in control.
Looking down, sheets pool at my waist. I’m naked and almost entirely stripped of the armor I still feel necessary to wear.
The scar along my side is exposed and my pulse ticks higher—I didn’t think about it.
And he didn’t ask questions or flinch. Instead, he took complete pleasure in what I did to myself, working out every last drop of cum from his cock.
I pull the covers up over my face, dropping back onto my mattress.
Oh god, I did that. Embarrassment peeks out before I’m turned on all over again.
I wish he’d stayed. I was so comfortable and felt so good that I must have dozed off.
I felt his lips on my forehead, his fingertips in my hair, and then nothing after that until right now.
Shifting the covers, I sit back up again and reach for the folded white paper airplane. Its pointed tip and crisply folded wings are only slightly bent from being laid on. When I unfold it, there’s a note waiting for me.
Borrowed back my cuff. Don’t worry, I’ll return it. Xo, Julian
P.S. You make the most beautiful sounds when you come
I smile and cover my face, and since he’s not here, I punch the air in front of me repeatedly and squeal.
“Holy shit!” I start laughing. When I finally calm my morning post-mutual-masturbation celebration, I stare at the door to my pathetic garden patio and see The Whispering Fool in the distance.
The rest of last night pummels into me. The reality of what my mother and grandmother have done, or rather, do.
Even though the details about how aren’t clear, the reasons why are. I suck in a deep breath. Don’t spiral.
I try taking my time counting down from ten.
Exhaling all of the air from my lungs, I shake out the nervous energy from my limbs.
It takes a dozen more times until I start rolling through logic.
Pain can come in many forms. Helping Cora Billings meant hurting someone else.
It feels justified. If I think that, what does that make me?
I’ve been in the presence of death—what that looks like when it’s for sport and when it has no purpose.
That isn’t what my family does, I know that without a doubt.
Glancing at the time, I’m relieved that it’s still this early.
Sunday mornings are my time to focus and center myself.
A tactic I’ve learned to help me feel in control when I start to get lost in bad thoughts and memories.
When I shower and wash my hair, I let the steam fill the room.
I play the latest episode of The Distilled Truth and listen to my sister talk about the nuances of bourbon being strained through charcoal to create Tennessee whiskey.
As I sip my coffee, I shove aside everything else.
It makes me want to skip breakfast and spend as much time as I can inside the distillery today.
It was a lazy morning before I found my way up the walkway to the distillery.
Parked out front when I finally get to the top of the hill is my uncle’s truck.
While Tommy runs the only bed-and-breakfast in Rumor, he keeps things running around here, too.
He always has and stepped in with my father being out of the picture.
He might get on my mother’s last nerve, but Birdie loves him as if he’s family and not an extension of it.
Truthfully, I don’t know how he’s survived all our bullshit over the years.
From here at the top of the hill, to the other side of the river and just beyond that, belongs to the Crowne women.
On this side, there’s the distillery and my place.
I love this little plot of land. I smile and can picture a grandiose garden in the back, one to rival, or at least match, the one Birdie has.
The river flows in a horseshoe, wrapping around the sides and back of The Whispering Fool—my mother’s pride and joy.
And on the other side, beyond the line of birch trees, is where we grew up in Birdie’s house.
The minute I slide open the barn door, something feels off. The last time something felt off, I walked in on a crime scene. A transistor radio plays an old country station somewhere in the center of the big room, echoing off the walls and high ceilings.
I slowly walk past the pile of wood staves that’s been deconstructed from used barrels and through the entryway to the small office that was once used as storage.
The second I walk past, I stop dead in my tracks, slamming my eyes closed, and then walk backwards to make sure I’m not hallucinating about what I think I just saw.
“Mom?” leaves my mouth before I can stop it.
“Oh, fuck me!” She flails her arms, nearly falling out of the chair. The same chair that Tommy is sitting in beneath her.
When the hell did this start?
“For fuck’s sake, Wyn,” she shouts, scurrying off Tommy’s lap with such dramatic flair that I’m almost unable to process what’s happening. Leave it up to Lu Crowne to get caught doing something, and then she’s the one who gets out of sorts about it.
“Are you shitting me?” I say to the both of them, pointing between them. “How long has this been going on?”
Eyes wide, I stare at the two of them, waiting for some kind of answer or excuse that I’m reading the situation all wrong, despite the fact that my mother is shoving her skirt back down over her hips and my Uncle Tommy is manspreading on the chair, trying to cover the smile playing out across his mouth.
“I don’t know what you think is so funny right now,” Lu says to him as she stuffs her foot into her heeled boot. “Dammit, where’s my phone.” Her eyes flick around as she squats to the floor.
“Are you wearing the same clothes you worked in last night?” I ask with a squint.
Looking down, I close my eyes when I catch sight of something that definitely confirms any remaining doubt of what was going on here, and tip my head back to look at the ceiling.
“Your underwear are on the coffee table.”
“Lu,” Tommy interjects, but she ignores him.
“Before you start getting all out of sorts about this, do me a favor and don’t,” Lu says to me.
My eyes widen at her. “Getting out of sorts?” Is she for fucking real right now? This isn’t some random guy I found her giving a lap dance to, which I might add, has happened before. This is Tommy. He’s been in my life for my entire life. I am all kinds of out of sorts about it.
“Lu,” Tommy says again, but she flicks her wrist at him as she rummages through the desk on the other side of the small room.
“This is—” I blow out a breath. How do I navigate this?
But she finishes the sentence with, “None of your goddamn business, Wynona.”
I shake my head and scoff.
“Tallulah,” Tommy says louder this time.
“You just made it my business,” I bark back to her.
Ignoring me, she turns toward him, visibly annoyed. “What?” Her arms fly out to her sides. “Thomas, what?” she yells. “I’m lookin for my?—”
“Phone,” he says with it held between two fingers.
She tries yanking it from him, but he holds tight.
I tilt my head, observing this wordless exchange between the two of them, and start to wonder how much more I’ve missed. Not when I was gone either, but how much I didn’t see or wouldn’t see when I was here.
When Lu finally pulls the phone away, she barely glances at me when she says, “I’m not interested in your judgment right now.”
“I’m not judging you, Lu,” I huff out. But she’s well on her way through the sliding door and down the path to the house, stomping away like a pissed-off child.
“Could have fooled me, kiddo,” Tommy says, buttoning the second button on his flannel shirt.
“What the hell does that mean?” I rush out. Propping my hands on my hips, I watch as he scoots forward on the worn chair.
With his elbows on his knees and forearm hanging in front of him, he exhales heavily.
“It means, what you’re saying isn’t the same as how you’re actin’.
I’m sure you think you just walked in on your mother and me fucking around.
” He sniffs out a laugh. “Not happening. But she had a hard night. Those don’t happen too often, but even the great pain in the ass that is Tallulah Crowne needs someone to melt into, lean on, and lose time with sometimes. ”
“And last night, that was you?” I say, lifting my eyebrows, trying not to smile at how I wouldn’t have guessed it. My father’s brother . . .
“I’ve always been that for her. Long before you were ever in this picture, Wyn. And she’s been that for me,” he says as he stands and moves past me, through the center of the room.
Have her bad nights been after murdering men in the name of revenge, or has it been the norm of shitty customers and the typical stresses that come with being a woman owning a business and navigating being a single parent?
“Whatever you’re working really hard at in that big, beautiful brain of yours, I’ll just ask that maybe you should give her a break.
” He tosses the long copper whiskey thief onto the bench in front of me.
“You want to be pissed off at her, I get it, she’s frustrating as shit.
Your mother is complicated. Doesn’t mean you have to absorb it or even understand it. ”