Whisky on My Mind (23 page)

****

She sat at the kitchen table and waited until he appeared the next morning. Her heart was heavy—it felt as though it were weighed down with a lump of lead. Her fingers were cold and she felt only emptiness as she swallowed over a painful lump in her throat.

“What are you doing?” he asked quietly as she saw him taking in the large bag by her feet.

Whisky stood up slowly. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said sadly. In the silence that followed she could hear the loud tick of the clock on the wall.

His voice when it came out sounded husky...
raw
. “Just give me some more time to sort this out. I promise, I can make this go away. Things will go back to the way they used to be.”

Whisky shook her head and felt tears swelling rapidly. “It’s always going to be something, Sawyer. Maybe you can make whatever the hell is going on now,” she flipped her hand in the air, “go away…for a while, but it’ll come back again…you’ll have some other deep, dark secret you can’t tell me about…something to take care of…it’s this life. It’s the way it will always be. Johnny was naive to think just because the club went legit—that life would suddenly be
normal
.”
There was always going to be some kind of threat hanging over their heads.
“Someone will always want to try and take what you’ve got. Nothing will
ever
change.”

He shook his head, taking a step closer. “I can make this work,” he said quietly.

Whisky placed her hand against his cheek and shut her eyes tightly to stop the flow of hot tears which threatened to spill down her face. “I know you believe it when you say you can make things better. I know you
truly
believe it,” she whispered, and opened her eyes to look into his tortured gaze. “But you
can’t
win, Sawyer. They won’t
let
you. There will
always
be something waiting to take you away from me. I can’t just stand here and wait for that day to come.”

“So you’re leaving.” His tone was empty.
Dead.

“I have to. I can’t live like this anymore. One day you won’t come home and that will kill me, Sawyer,” her voice cracked as she said the words she feared the most out loud. “I can’t do it. I love you but you will always belong to this life…and one day it’s going to kill you. I can’t compete with the club and all its secrets.”

“There’s stuff goin’ down…Baby, I swear if I could, I’d tell you…but I just can’t…I won’t put you in danger and I can’t turn my back on it…on this place, right now.”

She nodded wearily. “I know.”

They looked at each other, wordlessly, for a long time. There was nothing to say, their heartbroken gazes locked tightly on each other said everything words could not. Slowly Whisky slipped her hand from beneath his where he’d covered it—holding it tightly against his face. “Be careful.” She stepped back, swallowing hard, unable to stop the tears as they ran down her face.

She saw his own eyes, red rimmed and painful, filling with tears that he fought hard to keep from falling. As she turned away she heard the sound of a fist slamming hard against the wall, but she didn’t stop. She picked up her speed and ran the rest of the way to the car, fumbling with the keys as she tried to fit them into the ignition. They slipped from her fingers, dropping to the floor. “Damn it,” she cried out loud, thumping the steering wheel with the palm of her hand and bowing her head as sobs raked her body.

The slam of a door made her lift her head, and she saw Sawyer rushing to his bike. He slammed his helmet onto his head and started the bike with a ferocious kick, taking off in a cloud of dust and a roar that sounded like a scream of rage from the metal beast he rode.

Wiping her eyes, Whisky fought for calm—there was no way she could drive anywhere if she didn’t manage to get some kind of control back. She took a deep breath and reached down, groping for the keys on the floor beneath her.
Just hurry up and get away from here,
a voice screamed inside her head, panicking because she knew if she stopped to think about what she was doing she wouldn’t be able to force herself to do it.

She didn’t remember much of the drive back into the city; all she remembered was stumbling into her bedroom and shutting the door on the world she’d once known.

6 months later…

Whisky turned the sign over to
‘Closed’ and locked the front door. She looked outside and saw the snow covered sidewalks and people hurrying to get home. Christmas lights decorated most of the shops across the street and she managed a small smile at the winter wonderland, Christmas card perfect scenery that was New York in winter.

It had been a hard six months full of dizzy highs and dark lows, but thankfully she had the coffee shop to keep her getting out of bed in the mornings. She hated to think what would have happened if she didn’t have that small piece of her life after everything else had been torn away.

A week after she’d left the clubhouse, Caleb had arrived at the apartment wearing his serious Detective face and her heart had literally stopped beating for a few moments. It took a moment to realize Bella was standing behind him—her eyes red and blotchy as though she’d been crying. She remembered shaking her head in denial before Caleb had even opened his mouth. She didn’t know what he’d come to tell her, but instinctively she’d known it wasn’t something she was prepared to hear. She’d tried to close the door on him, but he’d wedged his foot inside and held it open.

His words poured over her, and although she heard them, they were jumbled and sounded like they were coming through a long dark tunnel, but she remembered a few vital words.
Sawyer. Accident. Beyond recognition. Dead. She remembered Bella sinking down on the floor beside her, holding her tightly. She recalled the following days, the funeral, the club circling her like a protective force field…even after she’d left them…they were still there for her. She remembered feeling the sting of shame—that she didn’t deserve their love or loyalty. She remembered the paperwork and lawyers and signing over the Bar and Grill to the club. She’d already distanced herself from it, and had begun the negotiations—happy to hand it over for a song, knowing that the club deserved to have it more than she ever had. Johnny and Sawyer had created it—it belonged to the Mustangs.

She’d taken over the
coffee shop and threw herself into it, working long hours, spending every waking moment dedicated to her little business. She worked until she was exhausted; collapsing into her bed each night, grateful that she was too tired to think about anything else. In the rare moments when she wasn’t consumed by the coffee shop or sleep…she cried. It was getting easier, but it was a slow, painful journey. She tried to keep too busy to let her mind drift back to Sawyer and the fact he was gone, just as she’d always feared he would go out—violently and far too soon.

There was talk that he’d sacrificed himself in an attempt to protect the club, but she didn’t care about any of that. What did it matter? He was gone…and he’d taken a large part of her with him. 

She finished cleaning and switched off the lights before heading out into the cold. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, shoving her hands deep into her pockets, kicking through the snow beneath her boots as she walked home toward the apartment.

Christmas trees sparkled in the windows of apartments and shops as she walked by, and although she acknowledged the beauty of Christmas that surrounded her, it didn’t touch her. How could it?

Bella and Caleb had asked repeatedly for her to join them for Christmas, but she couldn’t. Everything reminded her of Sawyer. She couldn’t even listen to carols any more—Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas” had reduced her to an emotional wreck the previous day while she’d been serving a customer as Christmas carols played over the shop speakers.

During the week she’d walked through the mall and stopped to watch as children lined up to sit on Santa Claus’s lap, whispering their Christmas wishes into his ear with sparkling eyes. She longed for that kind of trust again. What she wouldn’t give to be able to sit on that jolly fat man’s lap and whisper the one thing she craved more than life itself…but she’d outgrown that time of innocence
. She no longer believed…in anything.

She shook off the melancholy mood.
It didn’t matter, the one wish she had was impossible to deliver…so what was the point?

Up ahead she saw a figure climb onto a sleek silver bike, the roar of its engine filling her with a wash of emotions. One day she would be able to hear a bike or see a man in denim and leather and not have to wipe tears from her eyes. Her heart wouldn’t clench violently and feel as though something were ripping her in two.

She climbed the stairs and unlocked her door, dumping her bag on the hall table and removing her scarf and gloves.  Then she heard it; the music softly playing over the speakers. She forced herself to walk into the living room and toward the CD player where Toby Keith’s “Whiskey Girl” played on repeat.

She hadn’t been able to listen to that song again…and there was no way it should be playing on her CD player.

Her heart kicked into a rapid, out-of-rhythm beat as she looked around the room, wildly. On the coffee table she saw a folded piece of paper and she forced herself to cross the room slowly, her heart thudding loudly in her ears.

Cautiously she picked up the paper and stared at the contents numbly. She couldn’t think…she couldn’t move…she
couldn’t breathe. It had to be a mistake—some kind of cruel joke…but how? How would anyone else know?

Whisky lowered herself slowly onto her sofa, her knees unable to hold her up as she clutched the note in her hands
tightly, unable to take her eyes off what was written. Her eyes began to sting and her hand went to her mouth, pressing on her lips to keep them from trembling.

Empire State Building.
8pm.
The date and time leapt from the page as she stared at the paper in her hand and a giant sob tore from her chest as fat, hot tears fell from her eyes.

Leaning back against the sofa she let the song on her CD player wash over her, bringing back memories of a man who smelled like leather and tobacco,
who had walked into her life and turned it upside down. A man who’d torn down her carefully erected walls she’d built to safeguard her fragile heart and who had taken that heart into his hands and claimed it for his own.

The man who had sacrificed his old life…for her.

Empire State Building

Christmas Eve…

This was so clichéd it bordered on ridiculous, but she didn’t care. Her heart thumped so hard against her chest she thought it may explode. She searched the surprisingly crowded viewing deck frantically. Surely this wasn’t someone’s idea of a cruel joke? The thought gave her pause, but she forced it away. It
couldn’t be. No one else knew her silly Sleepless in Seattle fantasy she had—not even Bella, her closest friend.

No one but him.

What if he wasn’t here? She tried to push away the thought. She wasn’t sure she could go through that again.

The viewing deck was practically empty as she pushed through the doors and held her breath. She hated heights but if anything was worth walking outside a multistory building it was this. She passed by a young couple who held hands and looked out over the view of the city below them and an elderly man pointing out landmarks to two small children, and fought to keep her tears in check.

She hadn’t wanted to think about what would happen if he wasn’t there. She couldn’t bring herself to think about it, it was far too painful. The wind lifted her hair and she shivered, wrapping her arms about her tightly, unsure if it was to fight off the cold or the disappointment that threatened to swallow her whole. She stood there for half an hour. There was no point dragging it out any longer. Maybe she’d just dreamed the letter; wanted it so badly that somehow she’d conjured it up out of her desperate imagination. But God, she’d wanted it to be true so badly that her chest ached.

As she rounded the corner the doors of the elevator opened with a loud ding.

Then she saw him.

She stopped moving and stared at him, her knees feeling as though they would give out at any moment.