Page 101 of Tennessee Trouble

LINDEE

I walk up the hill, my shoulders burning from the weight of the water buckets I’m carrying. There’s not much farther until I reach the hut, so I push myself, knowing that I can crash as soon as I get there. I need firewood too, but that can wait.

Cresting the top, my eyes land on something in the distance. Something sitting right in front of the hut. From here, it’s hard to tell what it is, other than large and freestanding. I certainly didn’t leave anything outside before I took off. Then again, my secret hideout isn’t that much of a secret. Despite my wishing it was. There’s a very good chance my siblings or parents put the pieces together, figured out where I’ve been for the last week, and decided to bring me something.

If that’s the case, I kind of hope it’s cheesecake. The moonshine cherries I’ve been snacking on would taste even better paired with some cheesecake. Plus, cheesecake is what every girl needs to cure a broken heart.

Especially when literally running away from it doesn’t magically solve anything.

I creep closer, water sloshing in the buckets, trying to see what I’ve been gifted. Even if it’s not cheesecake, it will aid in keeping my mind off of Brandt. Something that has been much harder than I thought.

This hut has always been my escape. The place I came when I needed to think. To not be a Murray for a bit. What I didn’t count on was all the memories of him that it would hold. Our first night together that we spent curled up in front of the fire right here. Or the breakfast tacos that we got the next morning. All the secrets we shared.

But he was still keeping one.

Dropping the buckets, I turn my attention to the contraption. Instantly, I know what it is. What I can’t figure out is what it’s doing here. And how it arrived. Or how someone would have known that it’s something that I’d already been thinking about. There’s only one person who⁠—

“It’s a cider press.”

The deep, soothing voice sends chills up my skin, making the hair on my arms stand at attention at the same time that the scent of Irish Spring assaults my nostrils. My body doesn’t know whether to ease or tense up, the mixed emotion soup inside my chest brewing all over again.

“I know what it is.” I turn and look at him, trying not to lose myself over how good he looks. How perfectly those jeans fit and how the charcoal gray of his Henley makes his brown eyes pop. Damn him. “What’s it doing here?”

“You said you wanted to try cider.”

You said you wanted to try cider…that’s what he has to say for himself? Of all the possible things he could say, he went with that?

I sigh, biting down on the inside of my cheek. I need him to leave. I give myself maybe five minutes until I cry again, and I don’t want him to see that. Don’t want him to know that he has that effect on me.

“Lindee…” Brandt steps toward me and I freeze. “I’m sorry.”

My brain snaps to attention, his words triggering my fight response.

“You lied.”

“I know. I’m a fucking dumbass.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

I circle the press, keeping my eyes trained on it so I don’t have to look at him. It’s an impressive piece of equipment, with a manual hand crank and grinder. Running my finger along the metal, I think about all the fun things we could make with this. All the fun fruits that we could experiment with.

If only there were still a we.

“You have no idea how sorry I am. How badly I wish I could go back in time and undo it all.”

My heart plummets. “All of it?”

I swallow hard, waiting for his answer and hoping that he doesn’t really mean all of it. That he doesn’t regret me.

“Yeah. Well, the keeping things from you part. Not the you part. No part of me will ever want to undo that. Whether you forgive me or not. You changed me, Lindee. For the better.”

I stop, finger still pressed against the locking mechanism of the press. Looking up at Brandt, I’m fully aware of the tears that are fighting their way to the front. I don’t try to stop them though. Or him.

“Southern Brothers has been my life for the last twenty years. Nothing else has mattered. I couldn’t even begin to think about something else mattering. And when I came up here, my first and only thought was doing whatever I needed to do to keep my business alive and unsullied. That’s it. And then I saw this beautiful blonde across the parking lot at a festival, and she turned my world upside down.”

I suck in as much air as I can, holding on to the press to steady myself. There is a part of me that wants to tell him to fuck off. That his pretty, flowery words mean nothing. Another part wants to hear him out.

“I didn’t expect to come up here and have a one-night stand. Or for you to be a Murray. And I certainly didn’t plan on falling in love.”