“And as for the company…” He laughs harshly. “I barely managed to graduate high school. I was partying hard, screwing around. I wouldn’t come home most nights. My mother couldn’t control me, and after a while, she stopped trying. I turned eighteen, and it was supposed to be all mine, the company—Segal fucking whiskey.”
He looks at me. “Even with the scandal of what happened, it didn’t affect the business. I was the hoping the disgrace would burn the company to the ground, but it didn’t. It made it bigger, popular. Sales increased. That first year after their deaths, sales went up by fifty percent. Apparently, people like a shot of scandal with their whiskey. Fucked up, right?”
He rubs his face, looking frustrated. “I was eighteen years old, and they were trying to get me to run Segal’s under the guidance of the board. I could barely tie my own fucking shoelaces most days. I was a mess. I just wanted out.” He lets out a heavy breath. “I was just a kid. A screwed-up kid. So, I took some money from my trust, enough to see me through. I packed a bag, got in my car, and drove to New York.”
He lets out a miserable sounding sigh. “I ran away. When I arrived in New York, I dropped my surname and became Tom Carter. For the first year, I just bummed around, partied, got high…slept around. Then, one night, I met Denny at a mutual friend’s party. We got to talking about music. He was into it in a big way. I liked him. He was a cool guy. We just clicked, and it had been so long since I’d had a real friend. The friends I’d made in New York were just people to party and get high with. But Den, he was different. We started hanging out, and he made it his mission to get me on the straight.
“Den was in college, so I decided to go, too. I had no clue what I wanted to do, but I’d always loved music. Den was doing a BA in music, but the thick shit was having to repeat the year as he’d flunked out.” He smiles with fondness at the memory.
“I took the same major as Den, but we took a few different classes. I was interested in musical history, whereas Den was interested in composition. He met Jake and Jonny in that composition class. Introduced us, and the rest is history.” He takes a drink of his whiskey. Leaning forward, he puts the glass on the coffee table in front of us.
He comes back to me and takes my hand in his. “I never thought we’d get famous. We were good. I knew that. But how many bands get signed, right? I was having fun with them, and they felt like family. Steady. Something I hadn’t had for a long time. So, when we started to take off, I couldn’t leave. And I thought, correctly, that no one would give a shit about the bassist who likes to screw lots of chicks. No one would be interested in me or where I came from. And if anyone did ever ask about my family in interviews, I would just downplay it. They were interested in Jake and Jonny, and that worked well for me. I got to be with the guys, doing something that I’m good at, and that I love.” He looks at me with tenderness.
“I was happy, Ly. I hadn’t been happy for a long time. Then, things went to shit when Jonny died. I just couldn’t fucking believe it. I thought that was gonna push me over the edge. I couldn’t see straight. Jake and Den weren’t coping. I thought we were gonna fall apart.
“Then, out of the blue, a month after Jonny died, I got a call from Heather. In all my selfishness, I’d just left her behind. I never even said good-bye. I thought about her every day, but I just couldn’t go back. When she called, it was like old times, when we were kids, before everything happened. She asked to see me, and of course, I said yes. I was living in LA by this point, so she flew in the next day. We met up, and after that, she became my lifeline…that was, until you.
“Heather had taken on running the company as CEO. She’d graduated early, gotten her business degree. She was always smart, way smarter than I ever was. To this day, she’s still running Segal’s. And I make sure to see her regularly. She usually comes here to see me ’cause I don’t like to go out to Kentucky if I don’t have to. Every time I see her, I try to sign the company over to her, and every time, she refuses and asks me to come run it with her.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “I let Heather down all those years ago when I left. But I won’t make that mistake with her again.”
“She sounds really great, Tom.”
His eyes meet mine with warmth. “She is. You’re alike in a lot of ways…spunky, argumentative.”
“I’m not argumentative.” I grin.
“Firecracker.” He presses his finger to the tip of my nose.
“And what about…your mother?”
His eyes darken. “Heather sees her. I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I was eighteen. I can’t forgive her for what she did. If she never had an affair with Joe, then…”
He stops there, and I don’t push it. I, better than anyone, know how hard it is to forgive and forget.
He puffs out a breath. “Ly, what I said to you that day…when I pushed you away, reacted like I did…after you told me you were in love with me…” He shakes his head, regret in his eyes. “Sure, there’s a reason why I’ve lived my life the way I have, using sex to get by, but I also liked my life. It was straightforward. I didn’t have to care about anyone but me. And after my dad, after what happened, why it happened…I promised myself that I would never put myself in that position. I swore to myself that I would never fall in love. I would never give a woman the opportunity to shred me like my mother did to my father.
“I was afraid that if I fell in love, and she broke me the way my mother did with my dad…that I wouldn’t be able to cope, the way he couldn’t…”
He meets my eyes, and I see it there in his. His fear. He doesn’t have to say it out loud.
“So, I kept an emotional distance from women, taking what I wanted, and then walking away. It was easy…until you.” He touches my face, running his fingertips over my cheek, into my hair. “I couldn’t get you out of my head.”
“Still, you pushed me away.”
“I panicked. What you were telling me…deep down, I knew that I felt the same, but I was fighting it. Fear had me fighting it.” He lets out a soft laugh. “You scare the motherfucking shit out of me, Lyla Summers.”
“You scare the motherfucking shit out of me, too, Tom Carter.” I give him an uneasy smile, baring myself to him again. “What I feel for you…I’ve never felt anything like it for anyone ever.”