Legacy

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Ashford Creek. Home of small town lore, single dads, a bakery that judged you, a brewery owned by a former NFL linebacker, a couple of restaurants without a rivalry, family drama, secrets, and most likely a murderer.

And why the hell did I continue to live in a town that my family had not only founded long ago but tried to destroy multiple times? I’d run from what crawled beneath and moved out of town. Gone to college, played a sport to the best of my abilities, had a career in which thousands upon thousands of people knew my name.

Found a life.

Lost that life.

Then, I moved back to this hellhole known as Ashford Creek.

Yay.

“What’s crawled up your butt?”

I narrowed my gaze at my best friend Rune before going back to pull the tap. A customer needed a beer, a shit beer since it wasn’t one of mine, but the customer was always right. At least, that’s what they told me.

“Nothing,” I finally answered, since Rune wasn’t about to let me off with just a glare. The man was damn persuasive and annoyed the hell out of you until he got the answers he wanted.

That was probably why we were still best friends after all these years, despite the fact I’d lived far from the area for over a decade, and why he was such a damn good bartender. It didn’t matter that he owned the bar and grill. He was at his best when he was behind the bar, watching over the town residents and making sure we stopped fucking things up. We weren’t always great at it, but Rune did his best.

I much preferred my brewery. Yes, we served beer behind the bar and some small eats, but we weren’t open as late as the Summit Grill, nor were we open every day for the public. The scent of scarcity made reservations a top hit, and we sold more beer because of it. People would line up for hours for just a taste of the latest small batch in whatever four packs we sold that month.

I didn’t need to be behind the bar in order to get my job done. The fact that I was behind the bar today just to help Rune notwithstanding.

Rune finally shoved my shoulder, lifting his brow as the light above us glinted off his septum ring. “I totally believe that ‘nothing’ you just said. Seriously, what’s going on with you?”

I shrugged. “Not a damn thing. I’m just being myself. I’m sorry that I’m too much of an asshole for you right now.”

Rune rolled his eyes. “Well, now that you mention it, you’re always an asshole, so you looking like you want to stab my customers is pretty much on brand for you. However, if you could stop looking like you want to stab my customers, that would be wonderful.”

“He looks like that when he walks into Ashy Buns, so I assume it’s just his face.”

I turned and looked at the familiar voice and did my best not to roll my eyes. Fiona, said owner of Ashy Buns, loved to get under my skin. First off, who the hell named a bakery Ashy Buns? It made no sense, and frankly, it felt rude. She hated her job, hated her bakery, and hated the town. Sure, I might complain about the town, and I might hate some people within the town for good reasons, but I didn’t actually hate Ashford Creek. I was just an asshole sometimes.

Fiona, however, was just completely ridiculous. Her icy blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun on the top of her head, and she had this new cat eye makeup thing going on that I didn’t understand. She glared at me as she pointed to the wine behind me.

“Can I get you something, Fiona?”

“You can get me a few things, Callum,” she purred. “In fact, why don’t you get out from behind that bar, and we finish what we should have after high school?”

I resisted the urge to look over at Rune, who snickered behind me. Asshole. Fiona and I had never dated. Not in high school, and sure as hell not when I’d come back home. She’d always wanted to date the quarterback of the football team, and since Rune had turned her down, she’d tried for the tight end. I’d run faster away from her than I had on the field, and she’d never truly forgiven me. Even when I’d been playing in the NFL, she’d tried to find a way to hit on me and treat me like shit at the same time. I never quite understood her. Nor did I feel the need to any longer.

“Fiona, what do you want to drink?”

The edge in my voice was not lost on her, and her gaze narrowed. “Are you really going to let this man continue to work here?” the woman asked as if she hadn’t just been hitting on me.

“Sure. I’m good like that. What do you want, Fiona?” Rune said, this time his voice was not as sweet.

The bakery owner rolled her eyes. “Chardonnay. The buttery kind, not the kind that tastes like olive juice. You would think you would learn by now.”

I pasted on a grin, poured her a Chardonnay, being sure to fill up the proper amount and not giving a single drop extra like I might have with nearly anyone else in town, and handed it over. “Are you opening a tab?”

“Maybe. It depends on what I have going on later.”

This time, Rune just threw his head back and laughed, and I flipped him off.

“Let me ring you up,” I said dryly in answer.

There was just something diabolical about that woman, and one day, I hoped she would eventually just close up that bakery of hers like she kept promising and go away. Of course, she wasn’t the only person in Ashford Creek I would wish would go away, but I just needed to get over it.

By the time she went back to her table, my head ached, and I knew I was done for the night.

“Stop glaring at me,” Rune said after a moment. “You’re all done for the night. Now we can get on to being customers and let my staff do what they’re supposed to.”

“It’s about damn time,” I snarled, though I smiled as I said it.

I did like helping out Rune. He helped me out at the brewery all the time. He was my best friend, and we’d been friends since we were kids. Between him and his brother Atlas, we’d run Ashford Creek scared when we’d been kids. My brothers Bodhi and Malcolm had joined us, as well as a couple of other town mainstays like Kellan and Thatcher. We’d been a menace on our small town, and I knew our reputation still tended to be a little loud for some of the town’s residents.

Rune merely winked at me, and I quickly filled one more order before heading to the corner booth where our group had slowly been assembling.

Ashford Creek wasn’t that small of a town. There were smaller up in the Colorado Rockies. But it wasn’t a huge suburb of Denver or even a town that had multiple schools or versions of stores, either. We had one florist. One bakery, one high-end restaurant. One bar and grill. One brewery. There wasn’t too much competition for each place, and that meant we all thrived, but it also meant that places like Ashy Buns didn’t try to do any better.

Many people moved away from Ashford Creek once they finished school. There wasn’t a university or community college here, and though some people did their courses online, most went down to Denver for school. There were countless colleges and community colleges there, and our small high school worked hard with a few of them to make sure our students got the right degrees and trade opportunities.

So, while we were still a small town, the fact that we even had a fire station, police station, and more than one building as a school for all of our kids, I considered us a decently sized town. Then again, I had lived in multiple major cities in my twenties, so perhaps I was a little skewed.

I’d even lived in LA when I had played for the LA Ruins, and that was pretty much as big as you got. Ashford Creek felt like sometimes it was smaller than a few of the neighborhoods a couple of my fellow players lived in. So maybe I was just a little off. I’d only been back in town for a few years once everything had crumbled, and my family had needed me.

“It’s about damn time,” Kellan said, lifting his chin at me and taking a sip.

Kellan was the main general physician in town. He could have gone anywhere and found his specialty as a doctor. He could have been a neurosurgeon with how brilliant he was, but he’d come back to Ashford Creek after he had finished school and, instead of specializing, wanted to be the doctor the town needed. When our older doctor had finally retired, the gaping hole in medical services in Ashford Creek had been evident, and Kellan had taken their place. All while single-parenting three boys. How he found the time to come out tonight surprised me, but I knew he had a fantastic support system with his family—let alone the people in this room.

“I’m surprised you’re even here,” I said as I shoved him into the center of the booth. He rolled his eyes but scooted in a bit so I could have space at the end.

“My parents kicked me out.” The other man ran his hands over his face. He looked like he needed a nap or a vacation, not a night out at Summit Grill without his kids, but I wasn’t in charge.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re in your thirties, Kellan.”

He smiled, his eyes brightening. “They stole my kids and decided that I needed time out of the house. I assumed that my time off would mean I would finally be able to sleep, but what is sleep?”

Thatcher snorted as he took a seat on the other side of the booth. “Tell me about it. My parents are currently watching my three kids, and instead of napping or doing the countless things I need to do around the house, like work on the fucking staircase that is about to crumble at any moment, I’m here with you idiots.” He held up his drink. “Cheers.”

I rolled my eyes. “How am I surrounded by so many single dads?”

“Because Ashford Creek seems to be a small town of single dads,” Bodhi put in as he sank into the back of the booth. My brother glared as he said it, and I could have kicked myself for even mentioning it.

Only Bodhi was the one who had spoken, so I wasn’t going to elaborate. After all, Bodhi might’ve never been a single dad, but he had been a father. I wasn’t sure if Bodhi even considered himself one anymore, not since the worst had happened. I wasn’t about to ask him, though. He wouldn’t have answered anyway.

“I thought Finnian and Sterling were coming.” Changing the subject seemed to be the best route, and I leaned forward.

“The twins are out doing their thing,” Rune said as he took a seat next to me, shoving me further into the booth.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It’s Finnian’s night with the kids, and Sterling’s working. He needs to be working tonight, considering he owns that fancy-ass restaurant and is a damn good cook,” Rune answered.

I nodded, wondering why they hadn’t texted me. Then I remembered that my siblings were all in their twenties and thirties, and they didn’t have to tell me where they were at all times. Of course, as those thoughts slid through my mind, my sister Teagan walked into Summit Grill, lifted her chin in hello, and then went off to the corner with a couple of her friends.

“I see Teagan’s here,” Callum said.

Rune followed my gaze and narrowed his eyes as he counted the crew. He liked to keep an eye on the people in his circle, for sure. “Is it nice to have most of your chicks under one roof?”

I rolled my eyes. “If you ever say that around Teagan, make sure I’m there. Because I really want to be there when she tears your balls off.”

“Your sister scares me,” Rune said with a mock shudder.

“We’ve taught her well then,” Bodhi put in and then went back to his normal glare.

I rolled my eyes and sat back as everybody talked about their weeks. We didn’t have a lot of time these days to get together like this. When we did, we usually ended up at my brewery or Summit Grill because Rune and I barely took nights off.

The fact that our friends could even take time off from their busy lives to hang out with us was a testament to planning and pure exhaustion. Let alone the support systems that let the single dads in the group have a night out.

Pulling Bodhi down from the mountains and into town was like pulling teeth, and I had a feeling the only reason that my brother was even here was that he needed to sell a few of his pieces at the shop Teagan worked at. And rather than going back up to his cabin and ignoring the rest of the world like he was prone to do, he decided to kill two birds with one stone and hang out with us.

That meant he would have a respite from us kicking his ass at his cabin and just pulling him down into civilization sometime soon.

“Wait, they’re having prom?” Rune asked, and I leaned forward, finally listening to Callum and Thatcher’s conversation.

“Yes. Junior prom. Which makes no sense to me because my children are still infants,” Thatcher said as he growled into his beer.

I snorted. “Your twins are fifteen. I don’t think they’re infants,” I said with a laugh.

Thatcher flipped me off. “Fuck you.”

“I only have one fifteen-year-old, and they’re already talking about this prom as if it’s the be-all-end-all. Thank God the thirteen-year-old isn’t old enough to be invited.” Kellan took a sip of his beer, his shoulders finally relaxing.

“How are we old enough to have kids in their teens?” Rune asked with a sigh. “Weren’t we just dealing with prom at Ashford High?”

“We’re old. Crotchety old men.” Of course, as soon as I said the word, the door opened, and the true reason I was a crotchety old man walked through the doorway.

She’d pulled her honey-blonde hair back from her face in a crown braid but let the rest of her hair flow down her back. She had on this lacy, flowy top and tight jeans with holes at the knees. She wore these platform wedge heels and a tiny little crossbody bag that separated her breasts in just the right way.

I was going to hell for whatever thoughts happened to cross my mind when it came to Felicity Carter, but I had known that for more than deemed right.

After all, my best friend’s little sister was now in her early twenties and all woman.

And I knew exactly what she tasted like.