Page 32 of Sweet Like Whiskey

‘What do you see for yourself, Jackson? You and Otto were talking about marriage before he left.’

Remi’s reminder is like a punch to my gut, but he goes on, his hands and arms relaxed but moving swiftly.

‘Do you want to build a life with someone? Or did he take that away from you?’

I scrub my hands over my eyes, stalling more than anything. A year ago or certainly two, I would have saidno, that I didn’t want that anymore. That he’d crushed that dream under his boot as he walked out of my life.

But now? Time really does heal. It heals broken hearts, fractured memories. It heals those places in us that feel endlessly gaping and painfully raw. Maybe it’s because we forget. We can’t hold on to those fragments like we once could. But in the end, I’ll take getting older and forgetting over hanging on to the sharp edges of my past.

‘I want that,’I finally sign.

My brother nods once. “You’ll get it, Jackson,” he says, sounding so sure.

A part of me wants to believe him. A part of me is scared to hope.

‘And you?’I sign.‘What do you want?’

It’s easy to look at Remi and see only my baby brother, but he’s nearly thirty. He’s not a kid anymore, and conversations like this remind me of his age and the fact that he likely has his own dreams that could very well extend beyond these boundary lines.

Remi shrugs, a loose, casual motion.‘I’m happy with where I am,’he signs.‘If I meet someone… They’d need to fit into that. Not change it.’

I clasp my brother’s shoulder, squeezing once.‘I love you,’I tell him, the words shaped with my hand as well as my lips.

Remi rolls his eyes, but he returns the sentiment with crossed fingers, emphasizing the meaning. I swear he mutters something that sounds an awful lot like “big softie,” but I probably just heard him wrong.

My brother goes back to tending to the horses and mucking empty stalls as I collect the tack to bring into town. Despite my best efforts, I can’t get his—or Colton’s—words out of my head. All day, they stay with me like the scent of livestock, sticking to my clothes and my skin and burrowing under my very fingernails. I pick at them for hours, trying to loosen their hold, but they don’t budge.

Idowant someone to call my own. But I’m under no delusions of that being an easy task. I live on my family’s ranch at forty, my job is demanding and can be, at times, a twenty-four/seven commitment, and I’m not exactly a honey-coated treat. I’m set in my ways, abrasive, downright difficult.

It took time for Otto to find my charms, buried and few as they are. And in the end, even he didn’t judge me as worthy. He came, and he left, and now I’m still here, picking up the pieces of the life I thought I’d live, trying to mash them into a recognizable shape again.

Like Remi, I could be happy on my own. I know I could. But I do want more. Idreamof it, even though I long ago told myself to stop.

I want warm skin pressed against mine at night. I want to dig my fingertips into muscle and hear the sounds of someone unraveling because of my touch. I want to see that look in their eyes that lets me know I’m seen, I’m heard, I’m loved.

Goddamn it, I want love.

And it feels like the worst fucking thing.

I miss dinner hour at the ranch, not returning home until long past eight. My dad waves at me from the rocker outside his cottage as I drive past. I slow to a stop and roll down my window.

“You’re soaking wet,” I call.

“It’s raining,” he answers. I stare, and he says, “What? Were we not stating facts?”

I shake my head, flicking a quick goodbye as I roll up the window. No point in trying to understand that man. When I get to my house, I kick off my muddy boots and carry them inside to be washed later. Unlike my dad, I do my soaking in the shower, washing off the day’s grime and lingering for a few minutes, letting the hot water soothe my tired muscles.

My thoughts, much to my consternation, return to Ash.

I never would’ve guessed that the sunshiny man who’s invaded my life is living with chronic back pain. He sure doesn’t show it. Apart from the time I caught him with the heat pad and maybe a wince here or there, he’s always smiling, always happy. Is it fake? It doesn’t feel it.

I’ve had my fair share of aches and pains, of course, and part of that, I’m certain, simply comes with aging. But it’s not every day. It’s notevery single day.

Goddamn it. I don’t know why I even care.

I shut off the shower and step out of the tub in a swirl of steam. As I’m drying off, I hear what might be a knock. Detouring to my bedroom, I pull on underwear and jeans, and then I head for the door.

I’m not expecting Ash to be the one standing on my porch, but there he is, hair dampened from the rain and eyes widening as he takes me in, his gaze running over my bare torso for far longer than is polite.

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