“I grew up with it. I don’t know. She is the way she is, and what she says still hurts, but she won’t change. She and Logan are my only family.” When push had come to shove, Mom had wanted me. No matter what she said.
“No word on Logan?”
I shook my head, a lump growing in my throat. “Mom is bitter and mean, but I can only imagine how she grew up. I had Aunt Tilly.”
Teller braked in the middle of the empty road. “Madison.” His brows pinched together. “You know you don’t owe your mom anything. You can walk away from her and never look back.”
I smiled sadly. “And where would I go? To finish school for a job I never really wanted?”
“You never wanted to be a nurse?”
I lifted a shoulder. No one had ever asked. Mom had told me I’d never finish school, and Damien had said I should quit. Neither had asked what I really wanted to do. “It’s a good-paying job with openings in any part of the country. If I became a travel nurse, they’d even pay me to move around.” The freedom had sounded divine.
“And you wanted to travel?” He started driving again, but his jaw was clenched, like what I’d said continued to bother him.
“Yes,” I said, wistful. I had wanted to get away from home. “Starting school was such a highlight. I applied for all the scholarships I could, got grants, and lived on campus. It was divine.” I let out a sigh.
“Then Cocksucker came along?”
I smiled. “Yup.”
He pulled into the empty parking lot. The distillery loomed large, the sinking sun glinting across its windows. Everything was quiet, and when I emerged from the pickup, I was struck with the pleasing smell of grain.
I sniffed.
Teller noticed and grinned. “That’s the old mash. We store it and then feed it to the cattle.”
“The mash?”
He cocked his head toward the entrance. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Inside, I gawked at everything. Timber beams cut through rock walls and soared across the tall ceiling two levels up. To my right was the tasting room. The glass door between the entrance and the tasting room let me glimpse the wooden tables and chairs. There was also another entrance inside.
Ahead of me was a store filled with displays of bourbon bottles and packages—gift sets with small, one-ounce bottles, special batches only available to purchase here, and regular bourbon sizes for sale. Then there were hats, shirts, and candy displays.
A reception desk lined the exterior wall to my left, and a flight of stairs rose behind the merch store. Offices filled the second level, but the masterpiece of the whole view was the wall of windows.
On the far side, giant copper-and-steel stills lorded over the room. Closer to the viewing windows squatted large tanks. Metal piping soared between the stills and across the ceiling.
Impressive. “Whoa.”
He stood next to me as if trying to see it from my eyes. He’d been taking in this view since he’d been born. “I’ll take you through there. Then we can have a drink.”
Inside, the room was quieter than I’d thought it’d be.
He pointed to the short tanks. “Mash tanks. You can smell the yeast farts.”
“If it’s anything like bread, I’m a fan of yeast.”
“It’ll do its thing and become what we call distiller’s beer.” He pointed to a series of pipes arching from the mash tanks to larger columns. “That gets pumped to the distillation tanks.”
“And it becomes bourbon?”
He shook his head. “First moonshine, then we distill it down. Even if it’s got fifty-one percent corn, it’s gotta be put into a barrel at a certain proof, and that barrel needs to be new oak. Then we age it for four years.”
“Never shorter?”
He lifted a shoulder. “We can if we put an age statement on it, but Dad was a purist. Four years or bust. We also bottle in bond. More rules, but bourbon enthusiasts associate it with quality.”
