Chapter 8 #2
“Yeah? You were a mechanic?” I tease.
“I like to think I still am.”
I cock my head, absorbing the new information.
He said he had a job when Myles came into his life.
A mechanic. A young Lane was taken in by the Baileys and turned into a country boy?
When he got into distilling, he became a little white-collar?
I can see the progression, and it’s fascinating.
Everything about him is, and isn’t that unfortunate for me?
He crosses his arms, humor playing over his lips. “I worked my ass off to afford classes.” He rolled his shoulders. “Maybe some gentle B and E.”
My scandalized gasp fills the shop. “You did not. Gentle?”
“My mom’s ex-boyfriends were all losers, and maybe my dad gave me the idea that they didn’t use or need all their tools.”
“Your dad led you to a life of crime?”
“Probably why he’s in a Colorado prison for a couple of decades yet.”
My heart twists for young Lane. I can picture it. A lankier version of him, wanting his dad’s approval. Wanting better. “Did you get caught?”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t have the guts to do it more than twice. If I got locked up, then Cruz would’ve been left alone.”
“For your dad to corrupt him too?”
His lips thin. “Dad wasn’t in the picture that much. Just when it was convenient for him.”
The stories I read and interviews I listened to run through my head, leaving one gaping question. “You’ve mentioned your dad in prison, but when I was reading up on Foster House, I thought your dad had died.”
He nods like both are right. “Myles’s dad passed away, and our mom went downhill after that. When Myles was almost eighteen, she gave up trying to control him and latched on to my and Cruz’s dad. She never married him, so we have the Foster name. To forever piss our dad off.”
“Was it effective?”
“At first. Kept him dogging her heels until he got bored.”
Wow. The relaxed man I met at Foster House had it all. The dapper look. The trendy business. The big family. The man in front of me came from a home more broken than mine. “If we’re playing the who had it worse game, I guess you win.”
He laughs, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. I could scale him and lick up the column of his throat. Lust fills me so fast, my vision becomes a haze and only Lane’s in focus. My pulse climbs higher and my breathing speeds up. My nipples poke hard into my shirt.
Overwhelmed, I spin around, but the truck fills my view. He’s fixing it up. He’s a mechanic, but it doesn’t make sense. A whole lot isn’t making sense, like why I can’t seem to quit finding myself in my husband’s orbit. We’re nothing but roommates.
“Why the pickup?” I ask again, spoiling for a fight. Tell me it’s because you want to keep it. Tell me you tricked a sick old man into handing it over. Tell me you’re going to sell it. Surely it’s worth something other than bittersweet memories.
“I’m getting it running again.”
I whirl back around. “For who?”
“You.”
The sound I make might be a gasp. A cry? I don’t know, and the loss of control that sends me reeling in this moment is too powerful. I huff out a breath like I’m going to tackle him. I went from pure desire to shocked confusion and now I’m just angry. At everything. At everyone. At him.
He drops his arms and takes a step closer, concern etching into his handsome features. “Em, you okay?”
It’s the Em that’s the last straw on a rickety pile of sticks.
“Why did you ingratiate yourself in every part of my dad’s life?
Were you afraid me and Brooks wouldn’t sell to you after Hutch was gone?
But if you get him to turn everything over to you, then you don’t have to worry about getting caught stealing? ”
He recoils like my words are a smack across the face.
“You’re more refined now, so your tactics are more refined too?” God, that’s so unfair. I remember a lot about growing up, and Dad’s big, messy heart is at the forefront.
“You’re doing it again, Emerson,” he says tightly.
My irritation could fuel the cute firepit in his backyard. “Doing what again?”
“Trying to piss me off. It’s working, by the way.” His jaw goes so hard.
I lift my chin, ready to wave the red flag at the pawing bull. “It’s not my fault it’s easy to do.”
“No. It’s not easy to do.” He says it with a frank confidence that leaves no doubt. “You’re pushing me away. You’re afraid. I understand, but—”
“You don’t understand anything!” I slide out from between him and the pickup. “You have people. You have money. You have everything. I have Brooks, and that’s only as long as he doesn’t have anything else in his life telling him to get rid of me.”
A quizzical expression lights his face, and there’s the pity. I can’t stand to see it, and I’ve said too much. If I stay, I’m only going to hurl more unwarranted insults at him and reveal embarrassing things about myself. I’m not scared. I’m sad.
I’ve gotta go.
I storm out, hoping he doesn’t come after me. Yet there’s nowhere I can go right now that won’t have some essence of him. Just my empty apartment, and I can’t go to Denver and leave Brooks high and dry.
Maybe I will check out that office of Lane’s. Maybe it has a lock so I can be pathetic in private.
Lane
I’m in the rickhouse to pull a barrel of one-year-aged whiskey to dump and bottle tomorrow. The door squeaks open, but I keep searching the line of barrels on the lower rack for the right one.
Steps head right for me. Whoever it is isn’t here for work. They’re here for me.
I know it’s Cruz before he talks. The other guys have asked if I’m doing okay, but they’re not as pushy as my brother.
He stops behind me. “What’s going on?”
Nothing. That’s the whole problem. “Why do you think something’s going on?”
“Because you’ve been in a pissy mood all week.”
I have. Emerson stays in her room until I go to work, and she’s locked in my office after I get home. I worked the tasting room again last night, and she was in her bedroom when I got home. We’re not even tiptoeing around each other. It’s like I’m living alone once more.
I turn to face my brother. Goddamn, he looks happy. Worry for me aside, Cruz practically floats around the distillery these days. “I can just be in a bad mood.”
“Sure. But you’re a newlywed.”
“You know it’s not like that. We’re not going to a Maine lobsterfest for our honeymoon.” I’m not losing myself in her every night. I’m not waking up to her. There’s nothing tying us together but a couple of pieces of paper. One for the trust and our marriage certificate.
“Maybe you should gorge on lobster. You’d be less cranky. Go to Maine. Take Emerson.”
Has she been out of the house? She went to Billings with her brother and niece, but she didn’t go to Denver with them for the few days they were gone. I doubt she’s been to town. “You haven’t even met her.”
“Let’s change that. Bring her over tomorrow night.”
I snort. “I don’t think that’ll fly.”
“Why?”
My irritation hits its limit. Cruz is going to keep prodding if I don’t give him something. “Because she accused me of being a thief.”
He shrugs. “There was a time.”
“I know.” Defensiveness prickles over my skin. Even after days, I’m still raw that she took something I shared with her and threw it in my face. “She came out to the shop and saw her dad’s truck, and it set her off.”
He blinks, but it’s followed by a frown. “Why?”
“Because she knows that pickup means something to her and she doesn’t want to admit it.”
“No.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Why do you have Hutch’s old pickup?”
The back of my throat burns. I never told him. The whole thing was supposed to be a surprise—after Emerson settled in and healed some old wounds. “To fix it up.”
“Damn, Lane.” He scoffs. “You are a thief.”
“I didn’t steal it. I haven’t stolen a thing for twenty years, and you know it.” Why am I so worked up over this pickup?
Because I never asked. Hutch died, and the next day, I rolled it into my shop, knowing Emerson would be in town soon. I never asked, and my gesture’s not only unwelcome, but it’s also thickening that protective bubble Emerson’s got around herself.
“Okay.” He draws the word out slowly. “You’re still a little sensitive about it.”
“No, I don’t fucking care about my past. She’s using it as an excuse. She’s trying to find every reason to stay away from me.”
His gaze is appraising. “I see.”
He probably does too. The hazards of growing up so close. “Yeah.”
He props a hand on the framework holding the barrels. “You ever wonder where we’d be without Myles?”
“I don’t have to. We lived it.”
“True. What about without Mae? And the rest?”
His point is clear, and guilt winds its way through my organs. We went from only having each other to having a whole family and the legacy behind us. She’s alone. By herself in my house. She has Brooks, but he’s trying to save Hutch’s ranch while raising a kid. “Fuck.”
“Yep.” He pushes off the framework and slaps me on the shoulder. “Go home. I can pull tomorrow’s barrel.”