Chapter 50
Luna
The bell over the door clatters when we push inside. The TV up in the corner is running a muted weather map, and Maggie’s wiping down the bar. She looks up, her rag slowing, and her face falls.
“Oh, no. Oh, you guys.” She comes around the end of the bar, the rag still balled in her fist. “I heard about the fire. I am so sorry.”
“Thanks, Mag,” Bram says. His voice is gravel, completely shot.
“Well.” She reaches up, her palm resting on Bram’s soot-streaked shoulder for a second. “Y’all come sit before you fall down. I’ll bring the usual and whatever else you want, on the house.”
We take the booth in the back. I slide in first, and Bram follows immediately, his heavy arm wrapping around my waist to pull me flush against his side. I press my face into the worn flannel of his shoulder.
Across the table, Ash drops his head into his hands, his knuckles buried in his hair. Reed slides in next to him, staring blankly at the wood grain of the table.
Through the bond, I can feel we’re all just hollowed out, the adrenaline crash hitting us all at once. Beside me, Bram’s shoulder is a hard, coiled line. I reach under the table, finding his hand and lacing my fingers through his. He squeezes back, his thumb tracing the side of my wrist.
Maggie returns, sliding four glasses of pale gold cider across the wood.
“Thanks, Mag,” Reed says, though his voice is bone-dry.
She sets her tray against her hip, looking down at us. “How many bottles do you still need?”
“One hundred and sixty,” Bram says.
Maggie’s hand tightens on her tray. She looks at Bram’s face, the soot smeared across his forehead, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “How long would making that many take?”
“It could only take two or three days,” Ash says, lifting his head, his face pale and tired under the neon lights. “But getting the press functional in that window is impossible. And we don’t know anyone in the valley with a line that size.”
“But don’t you boys still have the old-school gear?” Maggie asks. “Smaller presses, apple crushers, pole-mashers?”
Reed scrubs a hand down his face. “Yeah. But it would take weeks to make one hundred and sixty bottles this way. By then, it’d be too late to have the fermentation process have enough time to make the cider become real Hollow Gold.”
Maggie gives us a small, sad smile. “Don’t lose hope, boys, alright? There’s always something to do. I can give you the Hollow Gold bottles we have left here, if that helps, there’s about seven left.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mag,” Reed says.
She looks at the four of us a long moment, then reaches down to squeeze Reed’s shoulder and warm the back of my neck for a second before she retreats.
The ensuing silence is deafening. I can feel their anxiety about Warren Holt’s two million walking out the door and the orchard going under.
Beside me, Bram is hunched forward, staring into his glass. The eldest brother who carries the world on his shoulders, watching his family’s legacy turn to ash.
I slide out from under his arm and drag myself onto his lap. I get my arms around his neck, burying my face in the crook of his collarbone, letting my scent rise until the sourness of his own scent starts to yield.
But across the table, Reed and Ash are staring at their hands, both of them hurting just as bad. I turn in Bram’s lap, reaching across the sticky wood to grab their wrists. They both flinch, eyes snapping to mine. I pull their hands toward me and press them in mine.
“Hey,” I say. My voice is thin, but I force it to hold steady. “We saved the barn. We caught Derek.” I swallow past the dry lump in my throat. “It sucks about the press. It really, really sucks. But we’ll find a way.”
Ash exhales, a long, shaky breath through his nose. He turns his hand over to interlock his fingers with mine, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.
“Yeah...” Reed says quietly.
***
The bell over the door rings.
It’s Hal Brody. He’s wearing his brown coat, his hair sticking up on one side. He stands in the doorway, holding the heavy oak door open with his boot.
“There they are,” he says over his shoulder.
Then the door doesn’t close.
Behind Hal is the doughnut woman from the festival, Delia from the produce tent, Cal with his hat in his hands, and an old man in the Carhartt jacket. Behind them, a whole stream of faces come in out of the dark. The tiny pub fills with bodies in ten seconds flat.
“Heard about the fire,” Hal says, scrubbing the back of his neck. “Whole town heard. Maggie just called us and said you were here. Threatened to charge double for darts if we didn’t roll out of bed.”
“Sorryyy,” Maggie calls from the bar, not sounding sorry at all.
“We know what the fire did to your press,” Hal goes on, his face serious. “And your deadline.”
“And we can’t just let you miss it,” the doughnut woman says, stepping forward. “Apple Blossom Orchard is part of this valley. We’ve been drinking your family’s cider since we were old enough to reach the counter. Our parents did, and their parents before them.”
Reed’s mouth opens. He closes it.
The old man in the Carhartt jacket steps up to our booth. “I got my father’s press in my barn. Hand crank. Slow as Christmas, but she runs.”
“I got a scratter,” somebody yells from the back. “Old kind. Grinds the apples.”
“There’s two crushers at the church! Sitting in the basement,” someone else shouts.
“My granddad’s got a tiny press and a masher.”
It keeps coming. Somebody has a thing, somebody else has a thing, and I doubt any of them is enough on its own, but combined...
“And we’ve got the hands to run them,” Hal says, gesturing with a blunt thumb toward the crowd behind him. “Every person in this room is here to help with the labor. Ain’t no way we’re giving up on you.”
Behind him, the room erupts in a low, steady rumble of agreement. Bram stares at them, his eyes wet. He stands abruptly, clearing his throat.
“But we can’t pay you. You know where the books are. We can’t ask—”
“Bram Miller,” Maggie says from the bar. “Sit down and hush. Nobody asked you for a dime.”
Hal laughs.
Bram sinks back onto the bench, his jaw working as he stares down at his hands.
He blinks hard, the soot around his eyes smudging as he tries to swallow.
Beside him, Ash’s jaw is locked tight, his usual smooth charm evaporated, while Reed just stares blankly at the table, his throat bobbing.
They’ve spent their whole lives carrying the weight of this orchard entirely on their own backs, and now, they are left utterly speechless by a room full of people offering to carry it for them.
My throat goes tight. Hot tears prick the backs of my eyes, and I bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from sobbing. But since my alphas are currently incapable of speech, I guess I have to ask...
“Can—can you come by tomorrow with the equipment?” My voice cracks straight down the middle. “All of you?”
Hal looks around the room, at all those tired, lit-up faces nodding, and back at me.
“You bet,” he says, smiling.