Chapter 12
LIAM
Three nights later, four of my employees and I gathered in my kitchen.
I could feel their eyes on me, each gaze a mixture of expectation, worry, and curiosity.
I’d never called a meeting like this before.
It had always been the whole team or me and the managers.
Not this hodgepodge mix of two bartenders, a bouncer, and a line cook. And never at my house.
Amber leaned forward, her dark hair slipping over one shoulder as she traced the rim of her glass absentmindedly.
Ralph sat beside her tapping a steady, rhythmic beat that highlighted his impatience.
Cam leaned back in my living room chair, arms crossed, his ever-present smirk masking whatever he was really thinking and, across from him, Mara watched me closely, waiting for me to start the meeting.
I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the heaviness that wore on me like an oversized coat.
The ache of Holly’s rejection was still raw and painful.
I had hoped the feeling would ease overtime, but each day the suffocating sensation only got worse.
I knew how I sounded. We weren’t anything serious—friends with the prospect of more—but the hole she left in me was as deep as the ones left by every girl who’d broken my heart before her.
Possibly worse. The pain made no sense, but it didn’t matter.
Logic rarely played a role in heartbreak.
“There’s no way I can save Abbott’s,” I started.
Each word felt like a bitter confession as it left my lips.
At this point, I’d be wasting my time trying to win the bet because the only person I wanted to be with didn’t want me.
I was a mess emotionally—and judging by the way Amber had wrinkled her nose at me…
twice—I looked just as bad as I felt. I caught my reflection in the window: rumpled clothes, shadows under my eyes, and the unmistakable weariness of someone who’d lost too many hours of sleep.
I looked like the ghost of the man I used to be, a sorry consolation prize for any wife, even if she were only in it for the money.
Silence hung heavy in the room. My friends stared back at me with the same haunting expression I’d run from my whole life. Disappointment.
“But,” I continued, meeting their eyes one by one, “I can start something new. People don’t love Abbott’s because of the games or the decor. They love it because of us—what we’ve built.”
“And the location,” Cam muttered, earning a sharp shhh from Mara. He was a ball-buster with good intentions—usually. Today, though, he just wanted to poke the bear, and I wasn’t biting.
“We can find another spot.” My grip tightened around the edge of the counter.
I needed them to believe in my plan. Together we could do this.
Was Abbott’s in a prime part of town? Yes, but location was second to the people who brought the place to life.
Without my team, I’d fail in the first year. “A better spot.”
Amber tilted her head, her expression softening as her dark eyes searched mine. “What happened with Holly?” she asked quietly. “You two seemed to really hit it off.”
“I thought so too,” I admitted, the raw truth scraping out of me. “But even if we were to have made things work, she was never going to marry me. Which is why I started on plan B last week.”
Amber nodded slowly, her gaze understanding but not prying. She didn’t push and I was grateful for it.
“What do you say?” I asked, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “Are you in this with me?”
Ralph leaned forward, his earlier impatience gone. His face was serious now, all traces of jest wiped clean by the gravity of the moment. “What do you need from us, boss?”
I looked at him, then at the others. “Time,” I said simply, “and a place.”
The sharp slap of a palm hitting the bar jolted me out of my spiraling thoughts.
I blinked, startled, and looked up to see Cam grinning.
His eyes sparkled with mischief, the kind that danced dangerously close to madness, but behind it all, there was pride—pure, unfiltered pride—like he’d just unearthed the answer to every problem we’d ever faced.
“What’s this?” I asked as he shoved a crumpled packet of paper toward me.
“This,” he declared, leaning forward with the kind of theatrical flair that could’ve sold snake oil, “is where we make Abbott’s 2.0.”
I unfolded the paper, my brow furrowing as I took in the advertisement for a building; floor plans, rough sketches of what I think was supposed to be a restaurant, and a handful of grainy photos.
“It’s an inn,” I said flatly.
Cam’s grin didn’t falter. He snatched the pages and flipped through the packet with a dramatic flourish. “No,” he corrected, tapping an image with triumph. “It’s a beachside inn and restaurant. And it’s cheap. Technically, it’s in Ponte Vedra, but it’s only a fifteen-minute drive from here.”
I squinted at the faded images—peeling paint, cracked tile, sagging railings. “Cam, this place is falling apart and Inns come with restrictions and codes we’ve never dealt with before.”
It was like I hadn’t even spoken. Cam flipped to another page and countered, “It doesn’t have to be an inn. We can renovate the suites upstairs—there are twelve of them—and make you a three or four bedroom condo.”
I lifted a brow. “I have a condo.”
He waved me off like I was missing the point. “Sell it. Rent it out. Who cares? Because this—” he jabbed the page hard enough to crinkle it, “—is a goldmine.”
The words hung in the air, too bold, too brash, but something in them tugged at me. I sighed, my mind churning with what-ifs and half-formed plans. “Say we renovate six suites and build me a killer home, what about the rest?”
Cam’s grin stretched wider, practically daring me to dream bigger. “We combine singles into two-bedroom apartments. Fair warning, I’m moving into one.”
I scoffed. “Oh, you are?”
“Hell, yeah! And if we combine these two over here,” he said, pointing to a corner of the floor plan, “Amber could move in too. It would give her a place to work and somewhere her kid can be safe while she does.”
I glanced at Amber across the bar. She shrugged, a slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and I realized Cam had already gone to her first. Possibly the others, too.
“You’ve really thought this through,” I murmured, a thread of admiration slipping into my voice.
“Damn right I have.” He nudged the paper closer. “Look at the price.”
I did, and my jaw clenched. It was cheap—too cheap. “It needs work.”
“It does,” Cam admitted, his grin undeterred. “But my brother’s construction company can knock it out in no time.”
“How much time is ‘no time’?”
“Six months tops,” he said confidently, as if it were already a done deal.
“I have three.” A little less if he were counting, but rounding up sounded easier than saying two months, three weeks, and four days.
Cam shrugged, unfazed by my ticking timeline. “Do you want it done or done right?”
I turned to Amber, who’d been watching me, reading my reactions. I needed her to be my bar manager on this one. She needed to love the location, but even more so if she were to live there. “What do you think?”
After a long moment, Amber said, “I think that if we’re doing this, we need to do it right.
It’s not just a fresh start for you, but for all of us.
And...” She swallowed hard. “If you’re open to the idea, we threw around the possibility of being partners.
I couldn’t afford to contribute much, but I’d finally have something that would be mine. ”
I looked down at the pictures again and tried to imagine what Abbott’s 2.0 would look like. How we would renovate the halls to ensure Stephanie’s safety without the building feeling like a cage. And what would a real partnership with people who respected my opinions be like?
“Partners means you wouldn’t have to worry about us bailing,” Ralph added. “And we don’t want much, five percent each, because we can’t help with much financially, but we’ll put our blood, sweat, and tears into this place if you let us.”
I looked at each of them, my heart pounding with a determination that burned hotter with every second. They wanted this, possibly even more than I did. “Mara’s on board too?”
“Yes!” her voice said, carrying through the fabric of Cam’s front pocket shirt. He pulled out his phone and shrugged.
I laughed for the first time in days. The Inn needed so much work, but Cam’s brother was a contractor with a great reputation.
He would get the job done. If my team could keep this bar functioning in my absence, I could cover everything monetarily.
The plan was crazy and half-cocked, but I loved it.
“Okay, team. Let’s make it happen.”