They say it takes courage to admit when you’re wrong.
And I’ve tried to muster up that courage for Amelia for weeks now.
I’ve wanted to tell her I lied when I said, “Maybe I was,” after she asked if breaking her heart was my plan to gain full control of the brewery. I want to take back when I told her to be a woman of her word.
But then Amelia, sweet Amelia, proved she was exactly that.
“What the hell do you mean, she agreed to sell?” I shout at Marshall Haney.
“The ninety days ends soon. She wants to start the paperwork, so everything is ready when the time comes.” Marshall scrunches his bushy eyebrows together. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Marshall Haney, Dude Who Delivers Bad News at Law, called this morning and asked to schedule a meeting. In hopes of seeing Amelia, since she’d shown up last time I met with him, I scheduled his soonest available appointment.
Amelia has nine thousand percent become a silent business partner. No emails. Not even replies to me. No texts, even when I send random questions. The pain-in-my-ass woman of her word acts as if I no longer exist.
I fucked up.
I did more than fuck up.
My father told me that verbatim.
My mother said it in kinder words.
But neither of them understands the torment of guilt festering inside me.
Guilt. That damn word.
It’s as if it were a cuckoo clock on repeat, singing out every single hour, a heavy reminder of what Chris accused me of.
Then, last week, Amelia’s father, Silas, paid me a visit at the brewery. I stood, positive he had come to kick my ass, but I’d accept it because I deserved to get my ass kicked for what I’d done. But that wasn’t what he did.
He sat down across from me, and I returned to my chair.
Silas clasped his hands into his lap and asked to talk to me, not about his daughter, but as a friend who’d gone through a similar hell as I had.
Peculiarly, he was easy to speak with, and it helped.
Did it completely erase the guilt?
Fuck no.
But it helped me understand it better.
It was … eye-opening? As corny as that sounds.
“Mr. Bridges?” Marshall asks, his voice cutting like a whip through my thoughts.
“Yeah, shoot, sorry.” I shake my head. “Tell her I don’t want it.”
He stares at me, as if he’d just come out of a coma and I was the first person he saw. “Isn’t that … isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Not anymore.”
“I’ll inform Amelia you’ve changed your mind … unless you’d like to do it yourself?”
“I’ll tell her myself.”
She’s cutting me off for good.
I start to brush past him when he says, “Oh, and one more thing, Jax.”
I raise a brow.
He tugs an envelope from inside his blazer and holds it out for me. I leer at the envelope, seeing my name in familiar handwriting but in red ink this time.
Jesus, fuck. Not again.
My gaze flicks from the envelope and settles on Marshall. “What’s this?”
He nudges the letter toward me, and flashbacks of when I did the same thing to Amelia in her entryway hit me. “It’s for you.”
I shake my head violently. “I don’t want it.”
“My job is to give it to you. What you do with it is none of my concern.”
“Why now? Why didn’t you give me this before?”
“Chris asked me to wait.”
Not only does it seem like Amelia’s life mission is to give me hell, but it seems like it’s Chris’s death mission as well—torturing me from the grave.
I take the envelope from Marshall.
He thanks me for coming and asks me to keep him updated on the future of Down Home Brewery.
I leave his office and get into my car. This time, I don’t wait to open the envelope. I rip it open, dig out the folded paper, and toss the envelope onto the passenger floorboard.
Then, I read Chris’s second letter.
The writing is neater, not sloppy, and there are no smudge marks this time.
Jax,
I want to start this letter with an apology. Sorry for the first one, man. I wrote it months ago and told Marshall that even if I begged for it back, not to give it to me. I didn’t want to throw it away, to take back what I’d written because at the time, it was how I felt. I won’t lie, bro, and say those thoughts still don’t creep up on me sometimes. But I’m sure you feel betrayed by me as well.
You’re probably wondering why I didn’t confront you. I wanted to. Hell, did I want to. I wrote that letter the day after Corey’s death and took it to Marshall. He was my father’s attorney, the one who’d broken the news to my mother that my father had left me everything.
The first time I planned to confront you was when I returned to the brewery following Corey’s death, fresh after finding out about you and Amelia. I walked in, and you hugged me and then handed me a business plan for a new ale—one named Corey in memory of him, with all contributions going into a college fund for his one-year-old son.
The second time was my birthday. Amelia and your family threw me a surprise party. I didn’t want to do it in front of your parents, so I sat back on the couch and watched you. I watched you watch her and realized I’d been blind as fuck to not see it earlier.
You were in love with my girl.
It was as clear as day.
You didn’t stay away from her because of some stupid childhood rivalry that didn’t make any sense. You stayed away because you wanted to be with her. And from reading Amelia’s diary, she had feelings for you then too.
I was already deep in my suicidal thoughts, but instead of wishing you the worst upon my death, I want to do the opposite. But I don’t want it to be easy, like I’m allowing Amelia to just fall into your lap. As bad as it sounds, I want you to suffer some for your secret, not for loving my girl.
So, you see, I’d wanted to die before I found out about you and Amelia, so don’t put all the blame on yourself.
But if you are stupid and lose her, I want you to have this.
If she came to Marshall to sell her share, to change her mind, you need to stop her. Because, Jax, no matter how many plans I had to confront you, there was never a good time because you’re a great dude.
You’ve been nothing but a good friend to me, even in times when I couldn’t reciprocate.
I left Amelia the brewery for a reason.
Even though I was so furious with you for what you’d done, after I sat and thought about it, I knew you were the only one who I would trust with her heart again.
I don’t want to live anymore.
But I want Amelia to.
Take care of her for me.
You’re the only man I know who will.
May we meet again soon.
Chris
I drop the letter in my lap and cry my eyes out in the parking lot.