Page 108 of Bourbon and Lies

“A little more every day.”

I run my fingers through her hair and down her back. “A little more every day,” I say back to her. A promise we made when I asked her for forever.

She kisses my chest, right over my heart, before she says, “Now it’s your turn. Pour me some good bourbon, cowboy, and let’s go for a ride.”

Epilogue

Laney

“Don’t,”Grant said, his tone serious, but he knew I wasn’t going to listen, which is why he smiled as he said it. He knew by the smirk on my face that there was no way I was listening to him. Not with an audience and armed with a piece of bourbon-vanilla cake in my hand.

Tonight was the eighty-fourth wedding I had planned. And out of all of them, it was my favorite, because it was mine.

“Open,” Grant says with a forkful of our wedding cake hovering in front of me.

“Mmm, it tastes even better now,” I say with a mouthful. The hammock swings gently as I let my bare foot skim the grass beneath.

“I agree, because,” he says over a bite, “the first piece I had got shoved so far up my nose, I don’t think I really savored the flavor.”

I can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of me as he kisses my head.

He had held up a piece, and like a good husband, led it to me with minimal mess. I even licked a bit of frosting from his thumb as stealthily as I could. But when it came time to do the same for him, I went for it. I held it to his mouth, and just as he opened, I flicked my hand higher, smushing it on his mustache and slightly up his nose. He got me back. He snagged me around the waist and kissed me deeply as Italian buttercream slid around my mouth and down to my neck when he kept going. The hoots and hollers from our small wedding party egged it on. It was one of the dozens of memories from today that will never leave me.

I walked down the aisle toward Grant in a pair of white cowboy booties and the prettiest cream-colored dress I had ever seen. I wanted to wait so we could get married outside in the field of wildflowers behind our home, so I chose a short, flowy dress from Loni’s, a pair of custom cowboy boots from a designer in New York, and a certain German Shorthaired Pointer as my guide. It felt only right to have Julep as my escort—she was my guardian. There was no other way to put it. And I was lucky enough to be joining her family.

“I don’t smell it as strongly anymore,” I say, taking a sip from the round silver flask that Hadley had given to me this morning.

“The air doesn’t smell the same. It does, but I think I’ve gotten so used to it now that I don’t notice it.”

“It’s because you’re a Foxx now,” he says in that deep voice that hits me right in the gut and sends goosebumps down my arms.

“That’s not a thing.”

“You’ve been smelling a lot of bourbon, tasting new things, your senses are being conditioned. It’s a real thing. It just means you’re one of us.”

I smile at that, swinging slowly on our hammock and thinking about the day.

Grant stood in front of me, holding my hand as he slid on a diamond ring to join my finger that had been wearing his nana’s band. His eyes watered as he said his vows. “I promise to love you. In this life, but also in the next. You’re the part I never believed in. The kind of partner I didn’t understand. Until you got here, I didn’t know. But now that I do, I vow to stand next to you always, behind you for backup, and in front of you for protection.”

“Griz seemed to know how to whip you around that dance floor,” he laughs.

“He might have strained his back when he spun me,” I say, wincing a little.”

The Doobie Brothers played over the speakers in what should have been the father-daughter dance, but it felt like my dad was there as his favorite band played. Griz was a great stand-in. We have a standing breakfast date every Monday morning before I head into the distillery, and he makes his way there every afternoon for a survey of the place. Grant and his brothers think it’s Griz’s way of keeping tabs, but I just think it’s his way to stay tied to something he loves so deeply.

My husband starts humming a little Fleetwood Mac.“Go Your Own Way” isn’t a typical wedding song, but our story isn’t very typical either.

“Happiest day of my life, Mrs. Foxx,” Grant says with a mouthful of cake.

I smile and look up from his chest. “So far...”

“Yeah, baby. So far . . .”

Grant

The humidity finally broke, and it’s the first autumn night that actually feels like it. The heat lamps crackle every time a bug fliesinto it, but they’re keeping us warm so we can still enjoy dinner out on the patio.

Ace flips the banana pancake onto the stack he just piled at the center of the table. “I didn’t do chocolate chips this time. Cinnamon and banana seemed like it would be sweet enough.”

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