Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)
Kandi Steiner
Here’s to the ones who don’t have it all figured out,
to the ones focused on the journey,
and not the destination.
To the messes —
because life’s too short to always be put together, anyway.
Logan
I was made to be a tour guide.
I know, it sounds crazy, right? What little kid looks at the endless list of possible career choices and thinks, “When I grow up, I want to walk tourists around an old, dusty whiskey distillery in perhaps the smallest town in Tennessee and tell them stories about how the Scooter brand came to be.”
The likely answer? Not a single kid — except for me.
I could blame it on a number of factors — like that my dad worked at the distillery, and he was nothing short of Superman in my eyes. Or how my grandfather was a founding member of the distillery, of the Scooter Whiskey brand, of the distinct taste known around the world. Maybe I could attribute it to my weird fascination with history that developed at a young age, or my consistent need to learn something new every day and stash that information away to relay to someone else.
I loved reading books — especially biographies or history recollections. I loved watching documentaries, primarily centered around modern-day luxuries that we all take for granted and never wonder about how they came to exist. And, I loved checking the newspaper — every morning — for the latest technological advancement or forecasted “next big thing.”
Essentially, I was a nerd — through and through — though I’d never portray that on the outside.
To everyone in my small town of Stratford, Tennessee, I was a Becker boy. I was trouble, never too far from a fight. I was the third oldest son of the late John Becker, a legend in our town, one taken too soon from all of us by a devastating fire at the distillery. And, I was a player, a man destined to never settle down, to hop from bed to bed for as long as the girls in town would let me.
That’s what everyone saw me as on the outside, and only my brothers knew the real me.
I had three brothers — Michael, Noah, and Jordan.
Mikey was the youngest, a senior in high school, and he worked at the distillery with my older brother, Noah, and I. Mikey was in the gift shop for now, but I had a feeling that would change once he graduated. He was smart, and talented as hell on the guitar. Something told me he’d be moving on to an entertainment position of some kind, and that the distillery would be lucky to have him if he stuck around past graduation.
And Noah? Noah was the most well-known barrel raiser at the Scooter Whiskey distillery. He could put a barrel together faster than anyone I knew, and it’d been years since he’d had one that sprung a leak. He started as the youngest, and quickly moved his way up to a leader on the team. He loved to push my buttons when I brought a tour through his part of the warehouse, almost always pulling some sort of prank — like a sawed-off finger.
And I fell for it. Every single time.
Jordan was our oldest brother, and the only one who didn’t work at the distillery. He was adopted before I was born, and though his skin was a darker shade than that of mine and my brothers, his hair coarse and black as night, he had always been our brother through and through — no “adopted” necessary to put before that title. He was the Stratford High football coach, and in my opinion, the best damn one our town had ever seen.
My brothers had quite the reputation around town — especially after our father died in the distillery fire when I was seventeen. No matter what we did, it seemed trouble always found us. Sometimes it was just a small bar brawl, other times it was stealing the mayor’s daughter away on her wedding day — which was our latest scandal, thanks to Noah.
The town could say whatever they wanted about my brothers, but at the end of the day, they were the ones who knew the truth about who I was — and who I wasn’t.
They knew that when those fights everyone loved to talk about happened, the only reason I was involved at all was because I was trying to play referee, to break it all up before anything even started. I only jumped in when I absolutely had to — which, sadly, with my brothers, happened to be a lot of the time. And yes, it was true that I hadn’t held a single, long-term relationship in my life, but that wasn’t because I didn’t want to — it was because there wasn’t a single woman in Stratford who could keep my attention.
My mind craved stimulation — late night talks about deep and unexplored topics, book discussions and conspiracy theories, questions I’d never been asked and beliefs I’d never been introduced to.
I was waiting for a woman to surprise me, and thus far, there had been none.
Well… there may have been one.
I tugged at the collar of my Scooter Whiskey Carhartt jacket at the thought of her, gripping the handle on the large door that led to the barrel-raising area of our distillery. I held the door open for the tour group following behind me, forcing a smile in spite of the turning in my gut at the thought of the one girl I was trying not to think about.
“Right this way, folks,” I said, ushering our guests out of the cold and giving each of them an encouraging nod as they filed in. “Remember, this is an area where photos aren’t allowed. Go ahead and stow those phones away now. And if I see any of you sneaking a picture, my suspicions about you being sent by those posers in Kentucky will be confirmed and I’ll have no choice but to yank you out by your ear.”