AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Stare at the one woman who’s turned your head in the past several years and wonder what her story was.
Nope. Not doing that. Charlie had already lost half his summer chasing after Tatum Pettit. He hadn’t looked like such a dumbass since he was a fourteen-year-old virgin wishing he could take Krissy Collins to prom. Thankfully, Krissy never knew the lengths of his crush, but his damned sister Sarah did.
“The fuck’s up your ass?” Sev leaned over the table and gave him a hard stare. Charlie swallowed the last of his fifteen year and made a note on his tasting sheet. He liked the twelve year better, and that surprised him enough to write it down.
He lifted his gaze to look at Sev, but he didn’t say a word. No way his youngest brother would ever get it. Not until he got his fill of crazy, hookup sex. Charlie supposed someday Seven might grow up and find himself in love, but it wasn’t on the horizon yet.
A glance at Mal found him staring back at him. Neutral facial expression. But there was something in his eyes that made Charlie sweat. Had Tatum said something to him? Or did he just suspect something had happened?
“You didn’t like the fifteen year?” Mal asked him. Charlie gave him a small nod of thanks for changing the subject.
“Not so much.” Over Mal’s shoulder, he saw Tatum at the girls’ table. Her eyes were on Pete, as if she was listening to a professor lecture, but after a moment, she flicked her gaze over to look at Charlie.
20
She waited around for the crowd to thin out, pretending to be totally in tune with the conversation between Adele and her daughters. Everleigh seemed comfortable with all of them, making Tatum wonder if she’d spent time with them before. She and Mal had been a thing now for a couple of months. Everleigh claimed they were just having fun, but from the outside, it looked like more than that.
Charlie’s sisters liked whiskey. Tatum had sat stiff as a board for the first thirty minutes of the tasting, not knowing what to expect of the club meeting, of Charlie’s sisters, and of a room full of people slamming shots of whiskey. The first thing she learned is they didn’t slam anything. They studied the color, the nose, and then they tasted. Still not like shots; they tasted each pour in at least three swallows, and they broke down the flavors and the mouthfeel. The finish—how each compared to the other. Did the twelve-year flavor live up to the nose? The general consensus was yes. How did the fifteen year stack up to the twelve? Most preferred it, but Tatum noticed Charlie didn’t raise his hand for that poll.
After a third sip, a lot of people added a drop of water to their glen cairns and talked about how the water opened up the flavor of the whiskey and made it sweeter.
After a while, she relaxed and sipped her water, seriously curious about the discussions Pete Murphy led. No one was drunk or rowdy. There was loud conversation and loud, bawdy laughter—a lot of that from Charlie’s sisters. But it was all controlled, more of an educational experience than a drinking thing.
Tatum fought a wave of bitterness. Why had her dad been one to suck down a bottle every day or two to function?
Charlie stopped at the door and turned back to look at her. The look on his face wasn’t inviting, but she stood anyway and grabbed her purse to follow him outside. His sisters were still talking, but Adele met her eyes as she slipped away from the table. The woman offered her a small smile, but it felt a bit cold after the way they’d grown a little closer over the past several weeks. Not for the first time, Tatum wondered if Charlie had confided in his mom. She doubted that he would have given her the dirty details, but what if he told her they’d been together? That Tatum had used him?
It wasn’t anyone’s business, but it made Tatum feel a little sick to her stomach to think his mom might know what she’d done.
“What do you want?” he asked the second they were alone outside.
She opened her mouth to answer him, but the hell if she knew what to say. What she wanted.
In a perfect world, she would say she wanted him. To talk to him. To tell him why she couldn’t be with him. Why she was afraid of him.
But then, in a perfect world, her dad wouldn’t have killed himself in a drunk-driving accident, and her mom wouldn’t have left her and Sutton, and Sutton wouldn’t have gotten knocked up by an ex-con—
“Charlie, wait.”
He stopped walking, but he didn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared at his back for a long moment before he finally turned to face her.
“For what, exactly, Tatum?”
She shrugged and swallowed hard. “I don’t drink.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s why I’ve told you no before,” she whispered. “When you’ve asked me to come to the…to the tastings.”
He shrugged impatiently.
Tatum powered on, praying that the nice guy she’d met earlier this summer was still in there.
“My sister,” she started and stopped. “My niece.”
