Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87367 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Something wasn’t right. I could feel it in my gut. This wasn’t where things had been heading, not even close.
I went upstairs to Cohen’s room, where he stood at the foot of his bed, placing a stack of clothes into his luggage. I stopped in the doorway, and he caught my gaze and froze in place.
“Going on a weekend getaway?” I asked facetiously as he finished setting the clothes in his suitcase.
“Fucking Isaac,” he muttered. “I was going to call you.”
“When? When you got to the airport?”
He didn’t respond, just stood there, staring at me, not like a man who was regretting his decision, but like a man who’d made up his mind. There he was, the guy I’d thought was so fucking hot the night I’d kissed him at the Barn, who opened up to me so easily as we’d come to know each other, and now I could see in his eyes how the door that had been open for me had slammed shut on me.
But why?
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking…a hell of a lot of thinking. Brody, I didn’t even know what the fuck I was looking for when I came out here. And I thought I could maybe find myself by taking on this part of my family’s history. But then…I was going through some of my family’s belongings, and I guess you could say I found out that I’m not cut from the same stock as the Mitchells who built this place.”
“Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“Bullshit or not, I realized it’s time for me to go.”
“So you bust into town, invest all this money into the distillery, and now you’re gonna pick up and walk away from it? I know enough about you to know you ain’t some quitter.”
“It’s called a sunk cost, Brody. I poured some into this, but nothing I can’t get back. You know as well as I do that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I can hire the right people, watch all the goddamn YouTube videos in the world, but who the hell was I to think I could trek into an old distillery and get it up and running, ready for business, having never even picked up a book about this shit before getting here? This whole thing has been some desperate attempt at figuring something out that I’m not going to figure out here. This isn’t me.”
No. This wasn’t Cohen. Not the guy who came out here and picked it all up so easily, the guy who approached this work without any trepidation or worry. The words…they made sense for someone, but not the guy I was coming to know.
I could tell he was holding back.
I approached him, heartbroken as I saw the inside of that suitcase, which was too goddamn full for my tastes.
“Cohen, if something happened, you can talk to me. Why can’t you just talk to me as easily as you have the past few weeks?”
His mouth was open slightly, as though the words were on his tongue, but he sealed his lips nearly as quickly, tensing his jaw as if struggling to keep it all in.
“There’s nothing specific to talk about. I just… You know my future was always up in the air. Plus, I’m missing my mom, and she’s missing me. I figure it’s time to head back.”
As much as he’d talked about the distillery, it was hard that the thing weighing on my thoughts hadn’t come up. What about the time we’d shared? The laughs we’d had? It fucking meant something to me, and I didn’t believe it hadn’t meant anything to him.
“And what about us?”
“I think you’re incredible. God, I don’t deserve someone like you. One day you’ll see and—”
I held up my hand, cringing. “Okay. You can stop there. I don’t need this talk. What you’re doing says all I need to know.”
“Everything that matters to you is right here. You have an amazing family, and they’d do anything to protect you from getting hurt. Don’t ever forget that.”
It was an odd comment for him to make, but it didn’t change that I was hurt. Even worse, it was evident that nothing I said or did was going to change his mind.
I nodded, resigned, before extending my hand.
He eyed it for a moment, sorrow in his expression; surely, he had to realize this seemed to be what all we’d shared had amounted to.
He took my hand, and we shook firmly.
I held on a little too long…or maybe he did…or maybe that was what I wanted to believe. But I took a breath and forced my hand back.
“Thank you for all your help,” he said.
“And thank you for yours…and everything.”
“If you guys do need anything…”
“We’ll sort it all out, but thank you for offering. And I do genuinely appreciate everything you did to help out, Cohen.”