“Then one day, six months later, she came home, picked Campbell up, and took him away with her.”
“Oh wow. Even after your dad said she couldn’t do that?”
My jaw clenched. “Yep. Dad was furious. They fought more. He threatened to take her to the police for kidnapping.” I shrugged. “Campbell was gone for two weeks, and then he was home. And Mom came with him, but the fighting never stopped. I thought they’d get a divorce. But they were trying to stay together for the kids.”
“That doesn’t sound like it worked.”
My face was solemn. “It didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“They stayed together all that time. Just fighting and miserable. Until one night, she stormed out in the middle of the night after a fight and was killed in a hit and run. Campbell blamed Dad for the fighting. It was all fucked up.”
Luckily, our food arrived, breaking the tense conversation. She let the heavy topic lapse, for which I was grateful.
Instead, we laughed about her latest raunchy book obsession; my interest in early 2000s emo rock, which she found hysterical; and the large amount of sauce that had ended up all over her mouth, cheeks, and hands.
“Come on,” I said, holding my hand out after she used a dozen wet wipes to clean herself up. “We have one more place to go.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. You’ll like this.”
23
Piper
“You brought me to my own winery on our date?” I asked skeptically.
Hollin grinned. “Hey, it’s your favorite place.”
That was true. Sinclair Cellars was and always had been my favorite place on the entire planet. And maybe, finally, I could show Hollin what was so great about it.
“All right, it is.”
“I thought you could show me around. Tell me all the ways it’s better than Wright Vineyard.”
I snorted. “That’s not going to be hard.”
His smile was magnetic, and I wanted to lean into him. Nothing about this date was going as I’d expected. Though, technically, our first date had been with my entire family present and he’d passed that interaction with flying colors, I’d still been worried. I almost talked myself out of going a dozen times the last week. We talked on the phone, and he texted me all week. My friends were ecstatic. They said I looked happier than ever.
But trepidation had still almost won out.
Now, I had no idea why I’d been so worried. It was easy to be with Hollin if I stopped trying to fight him. If I didn’t take everything he said as if it were an insult specifically designed for me.
The last thing I’d expected when I agreed to do this was that I’d feel bad for Hollin Abbey. I had known that his mom had died. I hadn’t known about everything else that led to that moment. No wonder he had issues with dating. He clearly didn’t trust women after his mom. Not that it justified how he’d treated people in the past, but I could see the invisible scars that had created that behavior.
“So, what do you want to see first?” I asked.
“Well, I did bring one thing with me.”
“And what is that?”
He removed a bottle of wine from his bike.
I arched an eyebrow. “You brought Wright wine to my vineyard?”
He laughed. “I knew it’d get your hackles raised.” He passed it to me, and I read the vintage on the front—Abbey. “It’s the competition wine.”
My cheeks heated. I remembered how he’d refused to let me drink any of it when he found out I’d also applied for the competition. I’d been embarrassed. He’d called me the enemy. That whole night was a blur of anger.
“You were such a jerk.”
He nodded and slipped his hand into mine. “Yep. Kind of my MO, babe.”
“And now, you think I want to drink that shit?”
“Was hoping you’d see it as an olive branch.”
“Fine,” I said, taking the bottle out of his hand. “I guess we’ll do a little taste test then.”
His smile only widened. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I directed him into the barn. Sinclair Cellars wasn’t a Friday night hot spot. The barn was mostly used for weddings, fall hay rides, and Christmas tours. That sort of thing. It was dark as I showed Hollin around to the back of the building and unlocked the door to the office space. I flipped the lights.
“Ah, this is where the magic happens,” he said.
I grabbed a bottle of our wine and held it out to him. “Here we go.”
“Where should we do this?”
I toed open the door that led into the barn and flicked on the twinkle lights overhead, which made it seem like we were really under the stars. I filched a pair of glasses from the bar and set them out. I tossed him the corkscrew. He caught it one-handed and pried open the cork on my wine and then his.
“You sure you want to do this? Sure you don’t want to wait for the official tasting?” he joked.
“Pour the damn wine, Hollin,” I said with a laugh.
Once the wine was poured, we each took a glass. I started with my wine. I knew exactly what it would taste like, but I wanted a baseline. He seemed to have the same thought, going for the Abbey vintage first.
“Why’d you name it that?” I asked.
Sinclair Cellars didn’t have original, catchy names. We told you what the fuck you were drinking. And this was a beautiful, full-bodied merlot that was my go-to.
“I said that Wright could go on the sign, but Abbey was the blood of the vineyard. It was going on the wine.”
I nodded, understanding. I’d always wanted Medina on the wine. I wanted to claim it for what it was. Mine. It had always been mine. And yet it had someone else’s name on it. The Sinclairs had owned it before we did, and there was no reason to fix what wasn’t broken.
“Cheers,” I said.
I tipped back the glass and took a sip of my wine. Perfect. Exactly what I’d wanted. Hollin grinned and took another full drink of it. As if he couldn’t get enough of the Abbey.
“Next?” he suggested.
I eyed him as I took the Wright wine in my hand. He cracked a smirk as he reached for my wine. We stood there for a matter of seconds. Each waiting for the other to make the move. It wouldn’t change anything about the competition in a few weeks. But it felt momentous nonetheless.
“All right, Abbey,” I said, and I took a drink.
Hollin mirrored me. His throat bobbed around the merlot as I took in the richness of his wine. Fuck. It was good. It was really good.
We looked at each other and then spoke at the same time.
“Yours is better,” he said as I said, “Damn, that’s amazing.”
We both laughed.
“Well, fuck,” he said. “I guess that doesn’t prove anything.”
“I guess it doesn’t,” I admitted. I took another sip of his wine. “But it is good.”
“Yours is…perfection, Piper. You should be proud.”
“This is your first official year, Hollin. How are y’all making this?”
He winked at me. “Can’t tell you trade secrets.”