Page 75 of Illicit Illustration

“Yeah, no one says no to her.” Despite her and Hazel being so much younger than the rest of us, we had all known for decades that once Charley had something in her mind, she wouldn’t let up until everyone else had bent to her whim.

“My mom said she convinced Hazel to do it. Did you just have to skip talking to her or something? I can’t see my cousin dealing well with you being a part of it. Even though I was out of the country at the time, I still heard about that night at the bar with you and a girl in the storage room.”

“Or something,” I muttered, hoping she’d change the subject, but I knew she wouldn’t.

“Hazel knew you did it too, right? So, she knew not to give her number to you?”

Thankfully, a group of resort guests decided it was an opportune time to get refills, and we spent the next ten minutes mixing cocktails and talking about whiskey production.

I thought maybe she’d drop it, but as a bar towel cracked against my arm and she hissed my name from a few feet away once the crowd had cleared, I knew she hadn’t.

“Reid! You didn’t fucking tell her.” Opening my mouth to respond, she snapped the towel against me again. “And let me guess, she gave you her number, and you spent the entire weekend secretly flirting with my baby cousin without her knowledge.”

“I…” Another towel crack had me jumping away from her, but I didn’t fight back when she pushed me through the door that led to the warehouse.

“What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Reid Harding?”

As Hazel’s furious cousin—who was about an entire foot shorter but still scared the shit out of me—twisted the bar towel around her fingers, clearly wanting to continue beating me with it, I was asking myself the same question.

Ihadasked myself the same question about a million times over the last two weeks. It would’ve been awkward as fuck, and Hazel probably would have stopped talking to meagain, but I’d had plenty of opportunities to come clean about my secret identity and hadn’t.

Every bit of ire headed my way from the people in Hazel’s life who I knew would jump to her side in a heartbeat was deserved, but it didn’t really change anything. If given the opportunity to go back and change things, I wouldn’t. Not if it meant giving up the time I’d spent with her—both by phone and in person.

“I love her.”

Colette stopped in her tracks, blinking up at me, clearly not expecting that to be the excuse that came out of my mouth. Not that it was an excuse. It was the truth. And it had been for a while. It may have started off as a mutual fondness between a shy teenager and an arrogant young twenty-something who thought he had lifefigured out, but it’d shifted into something I’d always wanted, just never thought would happen. Especially not with her.

“She’s gonna kill you. And I might help,” she responded, crossing her arms in front of the apron emblazoned with the distillery’s logo.

“I just hope she listens to me and doesn’t shut me out again.”

“Yeah, well, you deserved to be shut out after your dumbass behavior back then, and you still probably deserve it now.” She was right. I knew what I was doing was wrong. Hazel probably wouldn’t have taken me seriously if I’d have confessed how my feelings had been changing for a while, but now I wasn’t sure what was worse… Her not believing my intentions toward her were real, or her deciding that building a foundation on lies and half-truths wasn’t something she would forgive.

“I know, I fucked up.”

“Yeah, you did. How much time before this reveal?” she asked, pulling her phone out of her pocket at the same time I looked up. The clock read 4:40 pm on the wall over her shoulder, and my eyes widened as I realized I was cutting it too damn close and should have left already.

“Fuck. I’ve gotta go.”

Colette playfully snapped the towel at me as I yanked off my apron, throwing it on the desk by the door before I burst back through it into the tasting room and grabbed my stuff.

She followed me toward the side door, holding it open against the icy February wind as I covered my face, yanked on my helmet and pulled up the zipper on my jacket to protect me from the cold, fastening the snaps on the part that wrapped around my throat.

“Donotfuck this up,” she growled, but the smile on her face gave her away.

“Pretty sure I already did that, but I’ll try not to make it worse.”

Shaking her head, Colette leaned forward and gave me a pat on the shoulder before she pulled me into a half hug. “I’m sure Hudson will be the first one in line to fuck you up if you do, but if you don’t, please don’t break her heart.”

I nodded, unsure of what else to say. My decision to leave last night instead of staying to tell her the truth may have already sealed my fate, but the only thing I could do right now was to show up and hope she didn’t hate me.

Flipping the visor closed on my helmet, I crossed the parking lot, straddling my bike and backing it out of the spot it’d been in all day. The snow had been sparse, so I hoped the roads would be mostly clear for the ride over the pass back to Sage Springs, but when I hit traffic coming back into town caused by a few cars sliding into a ditch because of ice on the main road, I knew I wouldn’t make it on time.

The bar’s parking lotwas packed as I finally turned the last bend coming down the mountain pass, coasting slowly onto the gravel. County services had been able to get trucks out to clear the cars from the road and I followed a plow half the way, trying to stay far enough back so I wasn’t getting sprayed with ice melt, but I was still really fucking late.

Charley had been blowing up my phone, the speaker in my helmet chiming each time my pocket buzzed, but because of the conditions, there was no way in hell I was pulling over to check a text message. I may have been a daredevil, but I didn’t actually have a death wish.

She was waiting inside the door to ambush me when I finally showed up, pushing me out of sight with two hands and slapping a lanyard against my chest. “You’re fucking late! As if you hadn’t already made this hard enough.”

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