Chapter Thirteen

JACKSON WATCHED Leo walk away, afraid that whatever move he made next would be the wrong one.

When Leo reached the corner and an Uber pulled up, Jackson went back inside, grabbed a beer, and started drinking.

No one asked where Leo had gone, not even Celeste, who had pointed out Leo’s bracelet. He was furious, simmering with anger and embarrassment, though his family was too polite to mention it.

Jackson didn’t get drunk very often, which surprised people who knew he owned a brewery. It wasn’t supposed to be the sort of party where everyone got wrecked, but by three in the morning, they were doing tequila shots in the kitchen and chasing them with more beer. Jackson liked the comfortably numb state he’d achieved, and he passed out on the couch somewhere around sunrise.

He woke only a few hours later and threw up in the bathroom until his eyes watered. That was fine—the alcohol was better out than in. With the house mostly quiet, Jackson made his way to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, knowing it was the only thing that would get him through the morning. Well, that and the Tylenol he’d swiped from the bathroom cabinet.

For a long time, he stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, and sipped at his disgustingly strong black coffee. Then he grabbed a trash bag and started the laborious process of cleaning up.

The people in his family were actually fairly considerate, so apart from a few plates and glasses left in weird places, the house wasn’t too much of a mess. He almost regretted that; having to do a deep clean would be a good distraction.

When the first floor was as clean as he was going to get it without running the vacuum cleaner around—and then waking everyone up—he went upstairs to the bathroom to splash water on his face. A glance in the mirror proved he looked like shit. Jackson didn’t care.

Since it was tradition, he went back to the kitchen and started prepping his post-Thanksmas-party breakfast. Every year Celeste threw the party and Jackson provided the beer and made carb, sugar, and fat-rich food the next morning. Usually Valerie helped, but she had yet to surface from wherever she’d crashed the night before.

The food was mostly out of a box or a can, but whatever. By now he wasn’t expected to be some kind of fancy chef.

Cinnamon roll dough was sliced and thrown in the oven, pancake mix mixed, eggs cracked, seasoned, and whisked, ready for the pan. The second round of coffee was initiated, and he was pretty sure the smell alone would start stirring people enough to come down and eat. And then he could get the fuck out of this house.

By the time he got the bacon sizzling on a skillet, they started to tumble down the stairs. In ones and twos at first, then the last great sweep. Jackson laughed and joked with his cousins, threatening bodily harm with a spatula when Megan went to steal bacon from the pan, laughing when she suggested that he’d made the cinnamon rolls from scratch.

This—this normality—was all that held him together as he pulled out the second batch of disposable plates and napkins and started serving up. It was good hangover food, just right for mopping up the alcohol enough for people to feel like they could drive home.

“You okay?” Megan asked, putting her hand on Jackson’s shoulder.

He jumped at the touch. “Huh?”

“You look out of it.”

Jackson shook his head and leaned his shoulder against his cousin’s for just a moment. “Sorry. I’m not feeling my greatest right now.”

She smiled. “I don’t think any of us are. Where did the cute guy from last night go? Leon?”

“Leo,” he corrected automatically.

“That’s it! Leo. I was talking to him, but then I got so fucking drunk….”

“He had to get home.” The lie rolled off his tongue.

“He was okay to drive?”

“He got a car,” Jackson said, ignoring the pain in his stomach.

“That’s good,” Megan said and plucked a freshly cooked pancake from the pile.

Jackson watched her walk back to the table and hated himself more than he thought was even possible.

AS SOON as he could reasonably escape, Jackson packed up and drove back to his house in Nine Mile Falls. If anyone had noticed something was wrong, they didn’t mention it, and he was grateful for the reprieve. He’d be seeing them all again at Christmas, so he didn’t let himself feel bad for abandoning ship.

For the next few days, Jackson threw himself into his work, starting earlier and staying up later than he had in years. It was like right back at the beginning of the business, when he was desperate to get production underway so he could start paying off his debts and making the brewery actually work.

He’d had some good feedback from the party—the beers that worked, the wine that tasted good, which flavors he should work on more and which ones should be ditched. Some of that feedback needed to be taken with a decent pinch of salt; his friends were fairly drunk when waving the wine around and declaring it the best they’d ever had.

He’d had a chance to bash out his plan for individual bespoke sparkling wines for weddings and celebrations with Valerie and Megan, who had adored the idea. Now it was starting to take shape in his head. It would, of course, be ridiculously expensive, but Jackson would take online orders for a distinctive sparkling wine for a couple’s wedding, tweaking his existing recipes just slightly every time. When he sent the order off, the bride and groom could choose to keep any number of bottles back with Jackson, who would hold on to them until the time came to celebrate a special anniversary or the birth of the couple’s children.

It was personal, intimate, and exactly the kind of operation Jackson could afford to run, being a small independent business. People got everything personalized for weddings these days. A specially created wine was just the natural next step.

He spent the last few hours of the day, and then the first few hours of the next day, in his office, hammering out overheads and prices and how, exactly, he’d make this branch of his business work. He researched wedding venues to contact across the state and into Idaho and Oregon, then ruled out any that weren’t fancy enough.

It was easy to get lost in his work; Jackson had years of practice doing just that.

During the day, he worked hard on increasing production, doing the physical labor that was as exhausting as it was rewarding. Then in the evening, he worked on his website, contacted venues, designed labels and logos, made orders for stock, and worked on his accounts. Most nights he fell into bed around two in the morning, only for his alarm to go off again at seven.

He worked every day, without fail, throwing himself into something he knew would be successful. The lack of sleep prompted a hazy sort of fatigue that didn’t allow him to focus on more than one thing at a time, so there was no space in his head to think about Leo or the gaping chasm of pain that had opened up in his chest. His whole body was violently reacting to their separation, something he didn’t even know was possible.

He ached for Leo in a very physical, very real way.

Jackson dreamed in echoes of their conversations, in the whisper of Leo’s laughter, in the deep swirl of blue the exact color of his eyes. Only in sleep did his defenses fail; asleep, he couldn’t keep Leo away.

Sometimes his alarm was a welcome relief from the unrelenting dreams.