Page 83 of Bourbon and Secrets

“My partner wasn’t Cortez?” She says, her voice kicking up at the end.

“Yeah, I fucking hate him,” I say as she gets up and kisses my lips before moving into the bathroom. I lie back and prop my head along the pillows and think about how I have no right to be jealous of someone in her past—not when I have one too.

She walks back into the room and plucks her dress from the floor, but before she can even think about putting it on, I sit up and pull her toward me. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I wasn’t paying attention when we got here, obviously, but this isn’t your room.”

“It’s the guest suite. But it is my room. I don’t use the master any longer—” And just as I say it, I realize how much gossip she’s heard, but she doesn’t truly know what went on the night that Olivia died or the conversation I had been reeling about just before I ran into her on the edge of the cornfield.

Chapter 29

Faye

He searches my face.The most I know is that Olivia died the same night that I kissed and blackmailed him. It was the only thing that Fiasco had talked about those following days after I buried a body—Olivia Foxx collapsing in her kitchen of a brain aneurysm. She was too young, too full of life, and all of it happened without warning. That’s what death always felt like to me.

I hate that night for so many reasons, and I hate it even more for how much it hurt him.

“Do you know the first time I saw you, you were demolishing a peach?” he asks as he brushes his fingers across his face to show exactly what he means by demolish.

I bark out a laugh and settle in next to him.

“You either didn’t give a shit or it was just that good. And I remember thinking that I wanted to be like that. Messy and not giving a single shit about the cleanup...Don’t take that wrong. It was not dirty or sexual in any way. I was just impressed.” Hereaches out and runs a finger along the knuckles of my hand. A simple touch in a place that shouldn’t matter, but the sweetness of it made me want him all over again. “It was the first farmers’ market of the summer and a few weeks before I ran into you in that cornfield.”

“I remember that farmers’ market.” I smile fondly. “And those peaches. That was a couple weeks shy from my move back home from Frankfort. I came to celebrate Maggie’s twentieth birthday. We demolished the peach cobbler my mom made from those peaches. Then we fell asleep on the porch after far too many shots.”

His smile doesn’t reach the corners of his eyes or pull out his dimples. “My life back then felt really...” He stares at the path he keeps drawing along my skin. “It wasn’t all bad. I just hadn’t ever failed at anything the way I failed at the one thing I promised I’d do.”

I shift my body closer, but it’s not close enough for him, so he grabs under my thighs and drapes me on top of him. We let a little bit of silence settle between us.

“What did you promise?” I ask. As I run my fingers from the front of his hairline and back, his eyes close.

“That I’d love my wife. Through everything. I would love her. And I didn’t do that. Not well enough, at least.”

My brow furrows at that.

“She slept with someone else,” he admits, and my fingers stop their motion. “Maybe more than just one; she wasn’t clear about that. Only that she was moving on with her life. And that meant without me.”

I hadn’t expected him to say that. Anyone who knew Lincoln and Olivia Foxx would have told you they were in love and happy.

His eyes meet my sad ones, and he moves my hand so I keep doing what I had been. When I see the comfort it gives him, something about it gives me comfort too.

“We had been short with each other. A lot. After Lark was born, it felt like she hated me. Neither of us did anything right, according to the other. There were blips of us being happy, but—” Shaking his head, he draws small lines across the top of my hand and around my wrist. “I thought it was just a bad patch. That we needed to grow through it. But I backed off. Started working longer hours. I didn’t make us a priority. I did the things I knew I could do right—making bourbon, being a dad, building out our business. But in hindsight, it was the wrong call. She said, ‘This is broken. We’re broken. And I have no desire to fix it. I stopped loving you a long time ago.’ I’ll never forget it, because it was one of the last things she said to me.”

I tip his chin up to look at me, my heart in my throat. “Lincoln, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody knows, other than Hadley, and now you.” He sucks in a breath. “It felt wrong to air that to the world when she had died so unexpectedly. She was so young, and it tears me up that she left this world unhappy with her life. Ihatethat. But I was so fucking mad at her and at myself for having to pretend I was the loving husband in mourning. I wasn’t; I was still angry with her. And I hate that my girls have to miss her.”

“If I knew?—”

But he cuts me off, “I fucking hated that you pushed me that night, putting me in another impossible situation.” His eyes glaze over with tears he blinks back. “Things between us had been over—she wanted a clean break and then she died. And I’ve been paralyzed by what that meant for a long time.”

I rest my forehead on his and hold him a little tighter. “I’m so sorry.”

He leans into me when he says, “I can’t lose any more people, Faye. Women do not survive after loving one of us. Grant lost Del’s daughter, Fiona, Griz lost my nana, then Shelby. Ace won’t go anywhere near a relationship, casual or otherwise...”

“Grant and Laney?” I ask.

“I’m nervous that one day I’ll get a call that she’s gone too.” He drags his hand through his hair, pushing out a harsh breath. “And I feel like a hypocrite because I told my brother to stop holding back, but now that I found...” His eyes lock onto mine, and I know what he’s thinking.

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