“Then, that means we’re partners.”
Amelia’s words are on repeat in my head on the drive back to my apartment. When I park in the lot—the one behind Down Home Pub—I slam my hand against the steering wheel in frustration.
Who does she think she is?
Amelia wasn’t there, working day in and out, like Chris and I were.
Sure, she made appearances, helped some, and dropped off food. I’ll give her that. But she didn’t put her blood, sweat, and tears into it. It was never her dream. All that woman did was cause me to lose my best friend. She’s done enough damage here, so why can’t she just stay the hell away?
All I’ve ever needed from Amelia Malone for years is distance.
It’s what keeps me sane.
What keeps me out of the past.
What doesn’t make me remember so many things.
And that’s what I need to convince her to do. She needs to be a silent partner, and then when the time comes, I’ll convince her to walk away. I’ll convince her to keep that distance we’ve fought like hell to maintain all these years.
Today, Amelia and I became business partners.
Tomorrow, we go to war.
My body and my mouth are dry when I wake up. A strand of sunlight creeps through the curtains, and while on my back, I rub the spot between my eyes and groan.
I’m blind on what today will bring.
My life, my business, changed the moment I got the call about Chris’s death. He’d already left me with enough on my shoulders, so why would he do this to me—throw Amelia in the mix of the chaos that is now my life?
I was finally getting in the routine of tackling every job of the business head-on. It was a struggle, learning Chris’s jobs since we’d split responsibilities. But I’ve managed without any additional help.
Amelia can’t wake up this morning and suddenly know how to run a brewery. She doesn’t know the equipment, the drinks, or about fractional distillation. And I don’t plan on teaching her this shit either. Just because she manages social media for bars and companies that sell booze doesn’t mean she’ll know what she’s doing here.
Chris and I performed so much research to get the business started. It was risky to putting our life savings and the money I’d borrowed from my parents, into it, knowing the possibility that we could lose it.
I drag my tired ass out of bed and trek to the shower, and as I wash my face, I pray to the good Lord above that Amelia doesn’t show up at the brewery today. And if she does, I’ll be more than happy to prove why she doesn’t belong there.
The brewery is silent when I walk in.
It’s my favorite part of the workday.
That enjoyable moment of uninterrupted silence, where I take everything in and make sure it’s running okay.
When Chris and I announced our plans to open the brewery, some thought our business would be in competition with my father’s. The fact that anyone would ever assume I’d do that to my family over money is dumb as shit. We aren’t a bar. We brew and distribute craft beer. We do have a small tasting area in the front, where we sometimes hold events, but it’s nothing fancy.
Down Home Brewery creates craft beer. Good beer. No chemicals, preservatives, or any of that gross shit in it. We focus heavily on perfecting our malts.
Starting the brewery was a process but well worth it. Since Amelia’s mom, Lola, is the VP of 21st Amendment, one of the largest liquor distributors in the Midwest, I showed up at her office and pitched the idea of them investing with us. She took it to the board, and boom, we had another investor.
We purchased a chunk of land outside of Blue Beech, construction began, and everything took off from there. I hired a guy at the equipment company to guide us through everything we needed and the best way to run the business. When I asked him for his best advice, he told me to have fun cleaning. When I asked why, he said owning a brewery was ninety-percent cleaning and ten percent paperwork.
The dude wasn’t lying.
I’ve never been so OCD about cleaning in my life.
No bullshit, the first batch of beer we brewed was what I’d imagine sewer water tasted like. I couldn’t even swallow it. It took us another three months of tweaking recipes to fine-tune our beers. It was long hours and stressful but fun as hell, especially experiencing it with my best friend.
The next plan was to expand it and make another Down Home Pub location, but that was a few years out.
After checking that everything is in order, I head to the office. Leaving the door open, I set my coffee down and take a seat in the rolling chair behind the desk.
The office isn’t anything special. Our time and energy were spent on the brewery and the front of the building. We only threw the basics of what was needed in here, and then we were done with it. The large desk is minimal with only a computer and the absolute office essentials. The stack of papers on the edge of the desk typically isn’t there, but I’ve been playing catch-up.
I spend the next thirty minutes answering emails and going through the nightmare of paperwork Chris left behind, but the sound of a door slamming interrupts me.
The fuck?
Our day employees don’t come in for another hour. I turned the security system off but locked the door, so whoever it is either broke in or has a key. I stand, venture out of the office, and take a sharp left into the brewery room—the largest part of the building, where the majority of our equipment is.
Amelia’s back is to me as she stands there, her head moving from side to side as she takes in the room. She hasn’t been here since Chris’s death. When she came with Ava and my cousin, Essie, to collect Chris’s personal things, I told her she wasn’t welcome here again. She called me an asshole, Ava kicked me in the shin, and Essie flipped me off.
But she did as I’d said. She took Chris’s stuff, clearing him from the place we’d built together, and hasn’t looked back.
Until today.
Until Chris handed her everything I don’t want her to have.
Everything she doesn’t deserve.
She could’ve at least given me a few hours to enjoy the day before ruining it.
“What are you doing here?” My question is said sternly, and my tone is cold, startling her.
She groans before turning around to face me. I’m standing in the doorway, keeping my distance, and she narrows her eyes at me.
Her dark hair—on the edge of a deep brown and black—is pulled back into a sleek ponytail, displaying every inch of her face. I might not be an Amelia fan, but there’s no denying she’s breathtaking.
I’ve thought that for as long as I’ve thought girls were pretty, and my attraction to her grew when I hit my teens. Her thick hair, plump pink lips, and the dimples that pop out when she smiles are perfection in my eyes. Our friend and my cousin, River, once made fun of her dimples, and I elbowed him in the stomach.
My eyes travel from her face down the rest of her body. Black leggings hug her curves, showing off her tight waist, and she’s wearing a black zip-up jacket. Half of her legs are covered by her Hunter rain boots.
At least she was smart and wore decent shoes. The brewery floors are always wet. She will need to get a better pair though, so she doesn’t end up slipping and busting her ass.
“I work here now.” Amelia shrugs and walks toward me.
There’s no smug expression on her face. It’s blank, expressionless. A rarity because I can typically read her so well.
I cross my arms. “How’d you get a key?”
She’s quiet, and I step to the side, allowing her space to go into the front of the building, where the office and tasting area are. There’s a temperature increase from the brewery room to the front, so she unzips her jacket and shrugs out of it, displaying a black tank that shows off her cleavage—which she has plenty of. I gulp, hating myself when my cock stirs.
Hating myself for finding my dead best-friend’s girl so damn attractive.
She folds the jacket over her arm and simply answers, “Christopher.”
I scoff. “Of course he gave you one.”
He was so pussy-whipped. He would’ve given her anything she asked for.
Except a future.
“I’m his fiancée, so yes, of course he did.” She uses the present tense, as if he were still here, as if he’d be the next one to walk through that door.
“Wrong, Millie,” I bite out. “You were his fiancée, and then you turned into his ex-fiancée.”
She shuts her eyes in pain before slowly opening them and almost looking at me in desperation. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
She shakes her head, as if attempting to knock away her emotions, to rid herself of my hurtful words. “Are we going to talk about the same stuff repeatedly?” She takes a step closer to me, the scent of her sweet perfume—the same one she’s worn for years—taking over my space. “You not liking me and blaming me for his death?”
I wince when she reaches forward and stabs her fingernail into my chest.
“But you know what?”
“What, Amelia?” Those two words are strained as they leave my lips, and she pulls away from me, but not as far as I’d like.
“At times, I blame you for his death.”
Her words are a sucker-punch to the gut, and it’s as if all the air in the room left.
I reel in my pain, gain control of myself, and then place a hand over my heart. “That’s real rich, coming from you.”
I don’t need her coming in here, trying to manipulate me. I was nothing but a good friend to Chris for years. I almost ask her why, to hear her bullshit reasons for how she could even try to point the finger at me, but I don’t. I don’t because what if she knows something I don’t?
What if she says something about Chris that would consume me with guilt?
She juts her chin out and focuses on me. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m here. Get over it. We have a business to run now.”
I recoil at her words. “I’ve been running it just fine without you, sweetheart.”
“Really?” She snorts. “Let’s start off with whoever you hired for social media marketing after firing me. It’s terrible, and I’m taking that job back over.”
I slip my hands into my jeans pockets. “I didn’t hire anyone.”
“Wait.” She holds up a finger. “You’ve been doing it yourself?”
I scratch my head. “Well … yeah.”
“That makes sense why it sucks then.”
“Whoa. My apologies for not being someone who spends all day tweeting and posting bullshit.” I quit being a social media fan after my mom saw a picture of me doing a belly shot off my high school teacher on my twenty-first birthday.
“Which is why you hire someone who does.”
“Whatever.” I dismissively wave. “Consider that one of your new responsibilities as an employee then, but I’m not sending money to your company for it.”
“As a partner, not an employee.”
“As an employee.” I curl up my lip. “You can’t be a partner in a business you don’t know shit about.”
She raises a brow. “Haven’t you seen Shark Tank, dumbass? Sure you can.”
I ignore her point-making response.
“And who’s to say I don’t know shit about this brewery, huh?” Her tone is challenging. It’s a tone I recognize since she had it every time we argued when we were kids.
“Have you ever worked here before?” I rub the spot between my eyebrows. It’s not even eight in the morning, and I’m already getting a headache.
“Sure did. I helped Christopher sometimes.”
Christopher. She always calls him by his full name for some reason. Everyone else, including me, called him Chris.
I offer her a fake smile. “Bringing him coffee and lunch can’t be defined as helping.”
“I know more than that.”
“Prove it then.” I jerk my head toward the doorway we just walked through and motion for her to return to the brewery room.
She places her jacket on one of the barstools in our tasting area and slowly grins before walking away from me. I follow her.
“I probably know just as much as you, if not more,” she says.
I smirk. “You wish, sweetheart.”
Those are the only words I can form because I’m fighting to keep my eyes from focusing on Amelia’s chest, where the cold has hit. Her nipples are peeking through her thin tank top, and it’s hard to focus on being an asshole to someone when you can’t stop staring at them.
I turn and signal toward the first thing I see. “What are those?”
She gives me a really look. “I’ve known what kegs are since freshman year of high school.”
Good job, asshole. Help her out by choosing something a damn teenager knows about.
“And this?” I nod toward another large kettle.
Another really expression. “A brew kettle. Are you going to make all these that easy?”
I point to the malt mill. “Why do we need this?”
She rolls her eyes. “You can’t brew beer without milling grains, obviously.”
“And this?”
“The fermenter.”
“And why do we need a fermenter?” I feel like Bill Nye the fucking Science Guy, asking her all these damn questions about this shit.
“To ferment the brew, so there’s actually alcohol in it.”
As we walk through the brewery and into different rooms, she answers most of my questions correctly. It half-pisses me off and half-impresses me. Her tone turns professional, as if she’s pitching a life-changing deal.
She gives me a smug smile when I’ve run out of questions. “Now that we know I do know shit about this business, you can listen to me and my suggestions.”
“I don’t need your suggestions. You get an A-plus for your brewery knowledge. For that, you can clean the brewery room, stock the bottles, and help load the trucks.”
“Sorry, but I am spending the day going to local bars and stores to convince them to carry our product.” She taps me on the shoulder. “Like it or not, I’m an asset to this brewery. And I will do right by it because it’s all I have left of Christopher and it was one of the most important things in his life.”