Chapter 40
Forty
Wyatt
The brewery usually settled me. Even on bad days, even when the fermenters ran a degree hot or a delivery showed up late, or a batch didn’t taste the way it should, there was a rhythm here I could lean on.
Stainless steel. Clean lines. Honest work.
If something went sideways, you could trace it back and fix it.
That morning, I’d been chasing that feeling like it was a rope I could grab before I went under.
I started before dawn, walking the floor with a coffee that’d gone lukewarm, checking valves and taps and inventory with the kind of focus that wasn’t focus at all.
It was avoidance dressed up as responsibility.
It was me trying to keep my mind on kegs and numbers instead of the quiet stretch of days where I hadn’t heard Tessa’s voice.
She asked me not to come around.
She hadn’t said it with cruelty, but it still landed like a gate slamming shut.
I told myself it was fair. I’d told myself she needed space, and I wasn’t the sort of man who took a woman’s boundary and treated it like a suggestion.
I’d told myself a hundred things, and most of them sounded good until the nights hit and the valley went dark and my phone stayed silent.
By the time the sun climbed high enough to throw light through the big front windows, the place smelled like fresh mash and citrus cleaner and the faint metallic tang that clung to everything in a working brewery. It should’ve felt like home.
It didn’t. Not today.
I was at the bar with a clipboard in front of me, pretending I cared about a delivery schedule, when the front doorbell chimed.
We weren’t open yet. Only the staff came through that door before hours.
I didn’t look up right away. I heard boots on wood, slow and heavy, and my chest tightened before my brain caught up. Holt didn’t walk like he had time to spare. Holt didn’t come into town for no reason.
When I lifted my eyes, he was standing just inside the doorway, cap pushed back, jaw set like it was the only way he kept his teeth from grinding through each other. Dust clung to his jeans. His shirt was darkened with sweat at the collar.
He looked like a man carrying news he hated.
“Boss,” he said.
I set the clipboard down carefully. Too carefully. Like if I moved too fast, I’d spook whatever was about to happen next.
“What is it?” I asked.
Holt didn’t come further in. He stayed by the door as if he needed the exit close, as if he’d driven hard and planned to drive harder.
His gaze met mine and held. No humour. No softness. Just blunt honesty.
“Her truck’s gone,” he said.
For half a second, I didn’t understand the sentence. It didn’t attach itself to meaning. It hovered.
Then it landed.
It landed so hard my stomach dropped, and my skin went cold.
“What,” I said, and the word came out flat, not because I wasn’t feeling anything, but because there was too much, all at once, and my mouth didn’t know what to do with it.
Holt swallowed. “I went up the lane. Just like you told me, and I checked the yard first.”
I stared at him, unblinking.
He took a breath, slow and controlled, like he was keeping himself steady on purpose for me. “The house was dark. No movement. No smoke. No sound. I waited a minute and called her name a few times.”
My hands curled around the edge of the bar without me deciding to. The wood felt solid under my palms. I needed something solid.
“And,” I said.
Holt’s jaw flexed. “Nothing.”
“Did you go inside?”
“No,” he said, and there was a bite to it, like he already knew I’d hate that answer. “You’ve been clear about not crossing her line. I knocked, and nobody answered.”
My throat tightened. “The barn.”
“I checked it,” Holt continued. “Everything looked in order. Water tanks full, the feed bins were closed. No gates swinging open. Everything was normal, except she wasn’t there.”
Normal. That word didn’t belong. Nothing about the last few weeks had been normal.
I forced my fingers to loosen on the bar. “So she could’ve been out.”
“Maybe,” Holt said. My pulse thudded hard enough I could hear it. I felt it in my throat. In my wrists. In my teeth.
“Maybe she came to town,” I said, though it sounded thin even to me.
Holt’s eyes stayed on mine. “Then she’d have left tracks. Yard looked settled. Dust on the step. No fresh tire marks I could see. If she left, it wasn’t this morning.”
I swallowed again. It didn’t help.
“How long?” I asked.
Holt shook his head. “Can’t say. A few days, I’d guess.”
She asked me not to come around. I listened and gave her space. And now she was gone.
I pushed away from the bar and started walking without thinking, a line behind the counter, then back again, like movement could keep panic from taking root.
Holt tracked me with his gaze. “Wyatt.”
I stopped. My boots planted hard. “Did you see any note?”
“No,” he said.
My jaw clenched so tight it hurt. I dragged in a breath through my nose, slow, controlled, the way I did when I needed to keep my temper from deciding for me.
“Okay,” I said.
Holt’s brows pulled together. “Okay.”
“Did you call Dani,” I asked.
“Went straight to voicemail,” Holt said. “Twice.”
That didn’t settle anything. It made it worse.
My phone vibrated on the bar where I left it. The sound cut through my chest like a hook. I lunged for it before I could talk myself out of it. For a split second, I expected to see her name, to see some message that explained everything, that made it all make sense.
It wasn’t her.
It was a number I didn’t recognize, but the first three digits were local, and something in my gut tightened.
I answered. “Wyatt Hargrove.”
“Mr. Hargrove,” a woman said, professional and too bright, like she’d been trained to keep her voice steady no matter what kind of mess she was calling about. “This is Marlene Fisher from the credit union.”
My blood cooled again. Different cold this time. The cold of paperwork and signatures and consequences.
“I’m busy,” I said bluntly.
“I understand,” she replied smoothly, not missing a beat. “It won’t take long. I’m calling regarding the Callahan estate.”
Holt’s head lifted slightly, attention sharpening.
My stomach turned. “What about it?”
“We’ve received confirmation from the county and from the estate’s legal representative,” Marlene said, as she shuffled some papers around.
“We’ve been given the green light to proceed with the purchase agreement submitted by Hargrove Brewing.
” The words didn’t make sense together. Green light.
Purchase agreement. Hargrove Brewing. Callahan estate.
It took a second for my mind to catch up, and when it did, anger flashed so hard behind my eyes I saw spots.
“What,” I said again, rougher this time. “What did you just say?”
There was a pause on the line, a polite recalibration. “We can proceed, Mr. Hargrove. The necessary authorizations are in place, so we can finalize the terms of the sale and begin the transfer process as early as this afternoon.”
My grip tightened on the phone until my knuckles ached. “Who authorized it?”
“I can’t disclose details over the phone,” she said, still polite. “But the estate has provided the required documentation.”
The estate. There was only one person who could’ve done that. Tessa.
My chest went tight, tight enough that breathing took effort.
Holt’s voice was low beside me. “What’s happening?”
I held up a hand, not looking at him, my eyes fixed on a spot on the bar top like if I looked away, I’d lose my grip on myself.
“Marlene,” I said, keeping my voice even by force, “are you telling me Tessa Callahan signed my letter of offer?”
Another pause. Not uncertainty. Caution.
“I’m telling you the file has been cleared to move forward,” she said. “The seller’s side has indicated acceptance and provided the documentation we need.”
My throat burned. “When.”
“Two days ago,” she replied.
I dragged my hand down my face, feeling the roughness of my own stubble. “I’ll call you back.”
“Mr. Hargrove,” Marlene said quickly, “there are timing considerations. If you’d like to maintain the current terms, we’ll need confirmation from you today.”
“Fine,” I snapped. I softened it a fraction because she didn’t deserve my temper. “Fine. I’ll be in touch.” I ended the call and stood there with the phone still pressed to my ear like my body hadn’t caught up to the fact that the conversation was over.
The brewery suddenly felt too quiet. The hum of refrigeration. The faint drip of a tap line. The distant clink of glass as someone in the back moved a crate.
Holt stared at me. “What?”
I lowered the phone slowly. My voice came out like gravel. “The bank says they’ve got the green light to accept my offer on Ray’s place.”
Holt’s face hardened. “What, how?”
I didn’t answer because answering made it real.
Holt swore under his breath, sharp and vicious. “So she’s gone?”
I swallowed. “Looks like it.” A tight silence stretched between us.
Something hot rose in my chest, fierce and ugly.
It wasn’t just anger. It was grief tangled up in it.
Grief because I’d thought after everything, after being dragged out of that cabin, after breathing again on her couch with Dani and Maddy nearby, she’d at least let herself be held for a minute longer.
Instead, she disappeared. She’d chosen a clean cut and made a decision that looked, on paper, like she surrendered.
I wanted to slam my fist into the bar hard enough to crack the wood. I didn’t. I kept my hands flat. I kept my voice low.
“I told myself this might happen,” I said to Holt, more confession than conversation. “I told myself she’d either dig in and fight, or she’d bolt.”
Holt’s expression didn’t soften. “Don’t take it personally.”
“It is personal,” I said, and the truth came out sharper than I intended. “Because she didn’t just accept the offer. She did it without telling me. She didn’t even give me the chance to be honest with her about what she means to me.”
Holt’s gaze held mine. “Maybe she didn’t want your honesty.”
That hit. It hit because it wasn’t impossible.
I exhaled slowly. “No. She wanted control. She wanted to do it on her terms. And she knows if she looks me in the eye, she wouldn’t be able to go through with it.”
Holt’s jaw flexed. “You think she cares that much.”
I heard my own heartbeat again, loud and stubborn. “I know she does.”
The certainty tasted like arrogance. It also tasted like the only thing keeping me upright.
I looked past Holt to the front windows. Outside, Main Street went on living. People walked by with coffees and dogs and nothing on their faces that suggested the world was tilting.
Tessa had vanished into that normal, and she’d done it quietly, like she was trying not to leave ripples. “Where do you think she went?” Holt asked.
“There’s only one place she has to go,” I said without hesitation. “Back to Dani. Back to the apartment. Back to a place where she doesn’t have to look at Ray’s handwriting on every damn label and feel like she’s failing him.”
Holt nodded once. “So what now?”
I looked down at my phone in my hand. The bank’s number still sat on the screen like a dare.
What now?
A version of me wanted to chase her immediately. Drive hard. Show up at her door. Demand explanations. Demand she look at me and tell me to my face she was walking away.
That version of me was angry and hurt and selfish.
The version of me that mattered, the one that had promised Ray, the one that held her when she broke, knew what I actually had to do.
I had to fix the problem she thought she was solving by making this decision. If nothing else, I would make sure she didn’t lose her land because she was terrified.
I had to accept the sale and erase the debt without taking what wasn’t mine. And I had to do it in a way that left no room for ambiguity, no loopholes, no bank clawing it back later, no developer circling with paper and smiles.
My throat tightened again, but my voice steadied. “Now I go to the credit union.”
Holt’s brows rose. “You’re going to sign today.”
“I’m going to control the terms,” I said.
Holt stared at me. “You’re going to buy her ranch.”
“I’m going to pay off Ray’s debt,” I corrected, each word deliberate. “I’m going to make sure the land doesn’t change hands out from under her.”
Holt’s expression shifted. Surprise, then understanding. “How?”
I swallowed, feeling the burn in my throat. “With lawyers. With conditions. With paperwork that keeps her name on title while I take care of the debt.”
Holt let out a low breath. “She’s going to lose her mind.” Holt’s gaze sharpened. “And you think she’ll let you do this.”
“No,” I admitted. “She won’t, but she can’t do anything once it’s done.”
Holt’s mouth twitched, humourless. “So you’re not asking.”
I met his eyes. “No. I’m not.”
The statement sat heavily. It tasted like the kind of control I hated. The kind Colin used.
But there was a difference, and I needed Holt to understand it, and maybe I needed myself to hear it out loud too.
“This isn’t me taking her choice,” I said, forcing the logic into the open so it couldn’t rot in the dark. “She chose to sell because she thinks it’s the only way to survive. She’s choosing survival. I’m just changing what it’s going to cost her.”
Holt’s face tightened. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“I’m not playing,” I said quietly. “I’m finishing what Ray couldn’t.”
Ray had been drowning and never told her. He’d been drowning and still writing to-do lists, still trying to give her something worth coming back for.
He failed at some of it.
I wasn’t going to.
I grabbed my keys off the bar and shoved my phone in my pocket. My hands didn’t shake. That was the part that scared me. The calm that came after impact, the calm that meant I locked onto a target, and nothing else mattered.
Holt watched me. “You want me with you.”
“Yes,” I said. “And then after, you’re driving back out to the Callahan place. I want eyes on it. If she comes back, if anyone shows up, you call me immediately.”
Holt nodded. “What about Maddy?”
The reminder hit like a hand on my chest. My kid. My anchor. The one piece of my life I couldn’t afford to shatter with my own choices.
“I’m picking her up after her lesson,” I said. “I’ll tell her the truth, enough of it anyway. Then she’s going back to her mom’s tonight like planned.”
Holt’s eyes narrowed. “And then.”
“And then,” I said, voice low, “I’m going to get Tessa back.”
Holt didn’t react. He just stared at me, like he was trying to see if I’d lost my mind.