Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Everett
The thing about bourbon at four-thirty in the morning? It's either a solution or a starting gun.
Right now, it’s both.
I keep my back to the room while I pour like a good damn host. Not because I'm being a good host. Nope. But because my hands won't stop shaking and I need a goddamn second.
Just treat it like any other reunion. Any other version of reality where Sierra's taste isn't still burning on my tongue.
I’ve been clean for eleven years. A damn good run. I should have thought about that before I climbed right back into my addiction.
Warm and sweet and mine.
Yeah, I said it.
Except she's not, and if you ask her, she never was.
My cock throbs against my zipper, inconvenient as fuck, practically ready to step up and tend bar on his own.
Down, boy. Her brothers are right there.
I adjust myself with my free hand. A subtle move you pick up when you spend your formative boner years wanting a woman you’re not supposed to touch in a room full of people who can’t know.
Roman says something behind me, but I don’t catch it. Because her words haven’t stopped echoing in my head.
I hate you.
No, she doesn't.
That's the whole fucking problem. For her. Pisses her off good.
I pour a drink of my own, take a breath, and turn around with a smile on my face making sure the fucker reaches my eyes, because my best friends will see clear through anything less.
“So.” I slide glasses across the bar like I didn't just have my tongue in their sister's mouth.
“What possessed you assholes to show up to my mountain at the unfuckinggodly hour of four in the morning?”
“Oooh, he’s testy,” Caleb says with a hearty laugh at my expense.
A lesser bartender would spit in his drink for that.
Isn’t he lucky my lesser has a rock bottom that stops right between his sister’s thighs.
I’m sure he’d rather I spit in his drink.
“An idea that couldn’t wait, but it can wait another five minutes.” Roman’s gaze swings to Sierra. “What brings our baby sister to the lodge at ass o'clock in the morning?”
“I got roped into some last-minute documentation.” She shrugs. It’s a stiff one. “In my line of work it happens.”
“At four in the morning?” Caleb asks with narrowed eyes. “In the dark? With...”
“Nope. The four in the morning part is because of the spontaneous game night and the surplus of whiskey Sierra attempted to knock down to average seasonal levels on her own,” I correct smoothly.
“Ouch. That’s going to hurt, tomorrow.” He scratches his head and looks at his phone. “Today.”
“Maybe just don’t go to sleep,” Roman offers.
Nolan says nothing. Just watches. Cataloging like the human equivalent of a security camera with a psychology degree.
I fight the urge to scratch the burn streaking across the back of my neck.
“I’m fine. I’m not drunk. I’m just… overworked and under serviced.”
Three brothers wince in unison at Sierra’s one-two punch.
My brain short-circuits.
My hand continues to pour because muscle memory is the only thing functioning.
Under serviced.
Seems like someone should help her with that.
I happen to know a guy…
“You did not just say that.” Roman says with a cough as he pounds a fist on his chest on the heels of a deep gulp.
“That’s what you get for grilling me at four in the morning.”
Roman's suspicious glare softens into something more like exhaustion as he lays eyes on the woman we love.
Well.
That was—
You know what… not going there. Slapping that right back in the box.
One crisis at a time. And currently, I’m managing three.
“You've grown, Shutterbug.” Roman grins down at her like she's still five years old and he's still the one standing between her and the world.
Sierra makes a sound that might be a laugh—small, strangled, but real. The first crack in her armor since her brothers walked in.
Despite the panic still radiating off her just moments before, she softens... and smiles, framing Roman's face with her hands. “You always say that.”
There you are.
My hands still on the glass I'm holding.
You little heartbreaker.
Grabbing a clean bar mop towel, I swipe the gleaming wood.
And swipe again.
And shift the stack of glasses ready to go when the bar officially opens back up.
My lifeline of the moment—redoing mundane work that doesn’t actually need to be done.
Anything to avoid watching too closely because it’s what I love about them, and the very thing about them that keeps me from having her.