The Bluff (Graham Brothers, #2)(92)

I screwed up. I know I did. But I’ve been screwing up for months, a slow slide into failure as I let myself get carried along by someone else’s dream. I can’t run the brewery. Now that I’ve had a tiny taste, I don’t even want to do it. I want to go back to my solitary life—living alone, brewing small batches to distribute on a small scale. Alone.

Only … Winnie has ruined alone for me. Because I’ve seen what life is like when I’m not alone. I’ve gotten a taste of being with Winnie, and already, her absence feels like a festering wound.

Gross analogy, but I said what I said.

It’s for the best, I tell myself. For HER best. I watched Winnie at the conference and at Feastivus. Being around people is like plugging Winnie in—she lights up. Whereas my circuits overload and my system shuts down. We don’t work together. Better we end things now before they go any further—as far as both Winnie and Dark Horse are concerned.

I can hand over my recipes, hand over everything to my family. They can run it. Or not. I’ll even give them the launch plan Winnie sent me, which of course I looked at last night, being a glutton for punishment. It’s perfect.

Perfect for someone else.

When I hit the newer part of Sheet Cake, a stabbing pressure assaults my temples with every beat of my pulse. My chest feels like it’s been clamped inside some kind of medieval torture device, and I can’t stop sweating.

I stop at a Walgreens next to a Shipley Do-Nuts and a tanning salon. There’s a blood pressure machine right next to a locked glass cabinet full of birth control options. Somehow, this juxtaposition seems fitting.

After I manage to cram my arm into the metal loop with the cuff, I listen to the computerized robot voice tell me super obvious things like how to sit still as I wait for the cuff to inflate. Despite the mounting pressure I feel, I get two thumbs-up from the cartoon dog.

Yay—my heart isn’t in danger of exploding.

My head, though, tells a different story. My night away has done nothing to ease the throbbing.

I’m not an idiot. Or, not too much of one. I’ve known that my stress level has been rising. It’s only been getting worse since I moved to Sheet Cake. No, since Winnie started working for me.

The start, though, was when I let myself dream too big, when I accepted seed money from my family and basically put all of us at risk over a stupid idea. I should have known I’d never be able to pull it off. Not alone, as I’d been trying to do it. Not with my family backing me. Not with Winnie beside me.

Not at all.

A lanky, over-eager employee appears beside me. His name tag reads Clark. He is a total Clark and reminds me of Gumby, especially as he bends unnervingly close to look at the screen.

Isn’t this some kind of privacy violation?

“Looks like you passed the blood pressure test with flying colors! Bravo!”

He adds a little round of applause, clapping in a circle the way you learn to do when you’re in elementary school. I cannot get out of the cuff fast enough.

No, actually, I can’t get out of the thing.

“Let me give you a hand,” he says. “I think if you just—”

“I’ve got it!”

And I do. Literally, I’ve got it, because when I wrench my arm, the whole cuff comes with me, ripping clean off the machine.

Then, of course, it slides right off my arm with ease and clatters to the floor.

Great. Now I’ve broken Walgreens.

Clark takes a few steps back, looking like he thinks I might break him next. “Don’t worry about it,” he says with a nervous laugh. “This kind of thing happens all the time.”

Doubtful. But I pick up the broken cuff, place it in his palm, and make a swift exit.

Convinced that physically I’m fine, even if ONLY physically, I drive straight back to the warehouse and park out front. I don’t have a plan, but when I see the banner Winnie purchased hanging outside the gate, I fixate on this.

Hopping out of the truck, I stride toward it and yank it down with one hand. If it weren’t made of vinyl, I’d rip it into pieces, but I settle for tossing it in the long, low dumpster I rented. The banner flutters and lands neatly on top of the mound of black trash bags from the mess of Feastivus.

Just thinking of the disaster of yesterday has the pressure increasing in my skull and my chest growing tight again.

“What’d that sign do to you?”

I whirl around, taken aback to see Pat standing behind me with his trademark grin—the one that looks like the Cheshire cat who ate a cage full of canaries. I hate that grin. Now, more than ever.

“I’m just cleaning up some trash.” I brush past to walk inside, hoping he’ll go. Knowing he won’t.

“Doesn’t look like trash to me. It looks like a perfectly good banner.”

“It was temporary.” It was all temporary. And a mistake.

Pat leans over and starts to pull the banner out, but I grab his arm. “Leave it.”

He searches my face, and I hope my expression gives nothing away. Pat steps back and crosses his arms.

“Why?”

“Don’t need it.”

“But why, James?”

A challenge lights his eyes, and the very last thing I need today, when I’m barely holding it together, is my youngest brother stirring up trouble.

“Why are you here?”