Page 27 of Taken Away

Locals had definitely talked when he built it. Probably still did. Didn’t matter. He’d designed every inch himself after selling the cabin, carving out a space that felt like him—clean, deliberate, spare. Mabel had stood in the raw doorway during construction, hands on her hips, and declared it “pretentious as hell and entirely perfect for him.” Then she’d demanded the biggest window seat overlook her vines.

Back then, dense woods had separated his land from Blackwood Estate. In summer, you could barely glimpse the old Victorian through the trees. Now the vineyard stretched between them in clean, rolling rows.

From his back porch, Bennett could see almost the entire operation: the tasting barn lights that would glow gold at dusk, the production building, the lower vines curling down the hillside, and farther off—the old Blackwood house itself standing watch beneath the mountains.

The Blue Ridge Mountains had rooted themselves inside him somewhere along the way. He’d stopped pretending years ago that he would ever leave.

And now Mabel was gone.

The funeral was in a few hours. The thought of that sanctuary—the lilies, the casket, the soft talk of “peaceful passing”—made his stomach knot. He’d said goodbye to one life in a church already.

He wasn’t sure he had it in him to sit through another.

He could still see that morning if he let himself.

Moose’s frantic barking rattling the old mudroom door. The ruined hinge hanging crooked where the dog had finally broken through. Mabel in her bed upstairs, too still, skin already cooling beneath his fingers.

He’d poured bourbon into a coffee mug after the ambulance left and hadn’t wanted to stop since.

God, get me through this one.

Bennett stood now at the kitchen windows, one hand braced against the dark stone counter while rain streaked the glass beyond him. He was already in his funeral suit, the jacket discarded, the top buttons of his white shirt undone, his dark tie hanging loose around his neck. The black suit fit him perfectly, its crisp lines at odds with the exhaustion in his eyes.

He looked dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with malice—the heavy gravity of a man who didn’t care who was looking.

The vineyard blurred beneath the storm.

Mabel was gone. The woman who’d dragged him back toward life with wine and sheer stubbornness. The woman who’d seen straight through his grief and refused to let him disappear into it.

He would always love her for that.

Always miss her for it.

And somehow the entire valley felt quieter without her in it.

Even with Aubrey there.

Bennett tightened his grip on the counter, his knuckles whitening as his mind betrayed him, sliding backward in time.

Not to Napa. Not to the funeral pews.

To the patio at Drift Bar.

He hadn’t expected to feel what he felt. Not even close.

When he’d backed Aubrey Langford against the dark wood of that patio, it had started as pure aggravation. She had arrived in town looking like an untouchable corporate blueprint, entirely convinced she could manage, litigate, and control a world she didn’t understand. She’d looked at him like she already had him filed and sorted, but up close, beneath the sharp words and the defensive posture, there had been heat.

So he’d kissed her.

Because she’d challenged him. Because he had wanted to shatter that perfect, rigid composure and see what was hiding underneath.

He remembered the exact second her sharp defenses crumbled. The way her breath caught in a soft, jagged gasp against his mouth before she went entirely weak in his arms. He’d intended to teach her a lesson, but the moment his mouth claimed hers, the lesson had been his.

He’d walked away from that kiss trying to feel smug, but his own blood had been roaring in his ears. Underneath the petty satisfaction of proving a point, something else had dug its claws in.

He hadn’t dated the first four years after Claire died. He couldn’t. The thought of it felt like a betrayal, a mechanical exercise he had no stomach for.

Mabel and the book club ladies had treated his isolation like a town emergency. They’d pushed widows, cousins, teachers, realtors, and one terrifying dental hygienist at him for years. He’d sat through a few dinners out of guilt.