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28
AUSTIN
“She’ll come back to you,” Miles says, when I return.
I don’t meet his gaze as I drop the keys on a side table that looks like a slab of wood. “I’m not in the mood to talk about it right now.”
He’s in the great room and a ballgame is on the flatscreen TV mounted on the wall in a nook beside the massive fireplace. Whoever the interior designer was on the place did an amazing job. It makes my mom’s house look so… average.
Will I ever get used to what billions can afford?
“Are you in the mood to drink about it instead?” Chance holds up a beer bottle from his position on a leather couch. His boots are off and his sock-covered feet are up on an ottoman that also serves as an oversized coffee table.
“Brother,” I say, “you’re going to have to give me something a lot stronger than that.”
I’m tired. Dealing with Sea-Air, and then my mom in the ER, and then flying home in a hustle because of a dead body? That’s plenty. Then Carly being in the middle of that and dealing with her asshole father? Yeah, I’m thrilled she chose me, but fuck, if I want to be with Carly, I need to get her old man to like me. I have no idea how to do that other than to change my name and walk away from the money I’ve inherited. The money I need to either build the seaplane business back up or start it from scratch and ensure Mom has the best treatments money can buy.
“You got it.” Chance rises, goes to the fancy-ass bar, and pulls a bottle of what appears to be scotch from the shelf.
“What the hell is that?”
He turns and holds up the golden liquid. “This, Austin, is twenty-five-year Macallan, aged in sherry oak casks.”
I squint at it, trying to figure out what makes it special. For me, a beer import is fancy. “I’m supposed to know what the hell that is?”
“I know what the hell that is.” Miles perks up from his slouched position. “I’ve only had the eighteen-year, and it’s sweeter than mother’s milk.”
“I’ve always been content with beer. Never had scotch,” I admit. “What the hell? I’ll try anything once.”
Chance pours a couple fingers of the scotch for each of us in short glasses from the cabinet. He brings them to us and we clumsily clink glasses.
“What are we drinking to?” I ask.
“To you.” Chance says. “To Carly.”
I’m surprised, but I let it go. “Okay. I’ll drink to that.”
“And to Jonathan Bridger, the no-good bastard,” Miles adds. “But at least he had high quality sperm, as evidenced by the fine specimens we are.”
Despite my melancholy at missing Carly, that gets a laugh out of me. I raise my glass again. “To our sperm donor.”
We clink again, and I take a drink of the scotch.
And oh. My. God.
It sits on my tongue for a few seconds, meandering over every taste bud and nearly giving me chills. It’s smoky, woodsy, earthy, with a touch of caramel sweetness. As it slides down my throat, it doesn’t catch at all. It’s smooth as silk, and it leaves a subtle warmth, as if my throat is coated in the finest cashmere.
“What do you think of your first taste of scotch?” Miles nods to me.
“I think,” I say, “that if being fathered by Jonathan Bridger means I can drink this stuff? Dealing with his bullshit may be worth it. Fuck, that’s good.”
“I’ve got to say”—Miles pauses as he takes another sip—“I didn’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between this and the eighteen-year. But I’ll be damned. The fruity oak is phenomenal.”
“That’s the sherry cask,” Chance agrees. “Like Austin, I’m mostly a beer man, but my father did know his liquor. Not that he ever let me drink his stuff.”
A haunted look passes over his face. Must be a story there, probably about how much of a dick the guy was.
“But hell, it’s ours now.” Chance raises his glass.
