Page 28 of Pour Decisions (Stryker Family #3)

JD

I take a long sip of my third coffee of the day, looking at Bubba across the room. He’s passed out in his bed, paws twitching as he dreams. Every time he goes to Waylon’s, he gets tuckered out by playing all day with Duke and Murphy.

Would Waylon want to watch Bubba more? The overnight trip with Kat was one of the best I’ve had in a long time.

Everything went exactly as I wanted it to, and more.

Not having to worry about waking up early or getting from place to place let me relax fully.

That and fucking the daylights out of Katrina over and over again.

Between that and the fact that I’ve finally been able to get back into the gym, I’m starting to feel loose. Relaxed, almost, even though the workout was hardly as intense as mine used to be. But it felt good to be able to do something without nearly falling to my knees from a back spasm.

A knock on my doorframe pulls my eyes away from Bubba. It’s my uncle Jim, from finance.

“Did you get a chance to weigh in on those numbers for the upgrades to the bar and distillery?” he asks.

“Not yet, no.” The spreadsheet with a thousand tabs is haunting me.

My uncle sighs. “Usually you’d be done by now.”

“I had things to do this weekend, and I didn’t get to it,” I say, my tone short. My good mood disappears in an instant. “You asked for it to be done by Wednesday, so you’ll get it Wednesday.”

He narrows his eyes at me for a moment, and I regret my tone. Jim isn’t going to take over the entire company, but he's still my uncle. I can’t be a huge asshole to him and expect word to not travel back to Dad.

“Wednesday,” I say again, my tone more measured. He nods.

“Good. Looking forward to it.” He leaves, and Bubba sighs.

“I know, bud. It’s exhausting,” I say to the dog, pulling up that fucking spreadsheet.

Usually I can lose myself in a spreadsheet, analyzing everything until my eyes ache, but my motivation is completely gone. What’s the point of this one? Comparing two sets of numbers that won’t have a big impact if we choose one path over the other? We just have to pick one.

I rake my hands over my face and check the time. I have an hour until the founders of June, the gin company, come to the office. I kept the meeting even though Dad declined it. He hasn’t brought it up since, and I’m not going to remind him. I’m just going to take the meeting and see what happens.

I check my texts. I have one in our brothers group chat — a dumb meme from Wes that I laugh at for a tenth of a second. Then another from Katrina, a photo.

Kat: A little food porn for Bubba

She’s attached a photo of a butterfly on a bush outside of the physical therapy clinic. I smile. Bubba is awake now, gazing at me the way he often does when I’m working, so I snap a photo of him to send with my text.

Me: I’m not going to show him because he’ll lick my phone, but here he is.

Katrina sends back several heart emoji. I bite the inside of my cheek so I’m not smiling like an idiot alone in my office, and dive into the spreadsheet.

I don’t work on it for a minute longer than I have to. Instead, I go up to the front to wait for Annie and Frank, the gin company owners, to come. Bubba follows and stretches out a few feet from the door, belly exposed for immediate petting.

He gets those belly rubs the moment Annie and Frank come in. I’m glad he loves attention because petting him usually puts people in a good mood.

I hang back and look them over while they pet Bubba. Most of the other companies and vendors we work with are older men, but they’re probably around my age, dressed in a slightly bohemian style I wasn’t expecting.

“Sorry, how rude of us,” Annie says with a sheepish smile. “I’m assuming you’re JD? I’m Annie, and this is my partner, Frank.”

“I am, and it’s fine. I’m used to it. Thank you for coming in,” I say, shaking their hands. Bubba gets up too, looking up at both of them for even more attention. “Would y’all like a tour before we stop by my office?”

“We’d love that,” Frank says.

I pat my leg for Bubba to follow us as I show them around the building.

The atmosphere is upbeat and positive, even though it’s Monday.

I hold my breath as we approach the break room, hoping no one’s brought in a seafood boil or a rack of lamb or something absurd like that.

Thankfully, someone brought cookies, which we try.

“I’m glad to see everyone seems to like being here,” Frank says as we step into my office. “Not gonna lie, we tend to be a bit wary about older companies and their work culture.”

“We try to create an environment where people like coming in to work,” I say, leaving the door open enough for people to pop in necessary, but not to stop in for any old conversation.

Bubba noses the drawer where I lock his treats.

“My grandfather, who took the brand from my great-grandfather bootlegging in his barn to a genuine company, wasn’t the type to stick to corporate structures and rules. ”

Or anything, really, after a while. The man’s streak of luck is legendary. If he hadn’t been so lucky, I probably wouldn’t be standing here today. He’s fucking insane.

“But you’re productive,” Annie says.

“Yes, very.” I give Bubba a few treats since he wasn’t able to eat any of the cookies we got from the break room. “We’ve only been growing, especially since we launched the canned drinks.”

I give them a quick rundown on what we’ve been doing lately, before shifting into what the future might look like. They seem interested, and hopefully they’re seeing where they could fit in.

I’m not particularly talkative most of the time, but talking about ideas and the future have me chatting for longer than I probably should.

The more receptive they seem to be toward my ideas, the more confident I become.

And the more confident I become, the more I realize that there’s not a chance I could do all of this with my dad at the head of the company.

I keep my composure even as my stomach sinks. Like I’ve summoned him, Dad appears in the doorway. I raise an eyebrow at him, and Frank and Annie turn to look at him.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” Dad says in his warm, charming voice that he uses sparingly. “Just heard there were some visitors.”

“I’m Frank, and this is my business partner, Annie,” Frank says, standing and running his hand down his pants. “We own the gin brand June.”

“John David Stryker,” Dad says, shaking his hand, then Annie’s. “The third.”

He always throws in the third . I’ve never felt the urge to mention I’m the fourth except in situations where I have to show I’m not my father or grandfather.

“Nice to meet you.” Annie smiles and sits back down.

“We were just discussing the future of the company,” I say when Dad gives me a questioning look.

“Ah.” Dad presses his mouth into a line, half smile, half grimace. “Interesting choice.”

We stare at each other for a few beats longer than we probably should in the presence of others. Annie picks up on it first, then Frank. I clench my knee under my desk. All his doubts are coming through that gaze, undermining me without saying a word.

I hope my irritation isn’t showing too much. Why the fuck does he do this? Did he come over here because he knew the meeting was happening now? I wouldn’t put it past him.

It almost makes me feel like I’m crazy for believing in June, but I know I’m right. He’s not going to intimidate me into second guessing myself.

“We have to get back to it since Frank and Annie have limited time,” I say.

“Of course.” His jovial smile, which reads fake as fuck to me because I know him, returns. “Lovely meeting y’all.”

Dad disappears again, and I focus on Frank and Annie again.

“Sorry for the interruption,” I say. Bubba senses that I need him and wanders over without me patting my leg.

“It’s fine.” Annie smiles, but it doesn’t fully reach her eyes.

“He was invited but said he couldn’t make it for the whole time,” I say, even though I should shut up.

“I understand,” Frank says, crossing an ankle over his knee. “I worked under my dad for most of my life until I left to start June with Annie. It’s hard, working with family. Not for the faint of heart.”

“Yeah.” I pet Bubba’s side and he curls up on top of my feet. I’d done my research on both Frank and Annie, but I didn’t realize the company that they’d both worked for was his father’s. Maybe his father scrubbed that connection off the internet.

“It got worse when we had a difference of opinion on the future,” Frank adds, giving me a knowing look. In most cases I’d find that familiarity irritating, but I get the sense that he understands me more than I anticipated. “So I left, even though it scared the shit out of me.”

“It looks like it paid off,” I say.

“It did.” He shrugs. “It’s not what I imagined, but ironically, all the time and effort Dad spent on training me is what allowed me to succeed outside of his company. We have a few new ideas that were inspired by my time at my family’s company, if you’d like to hear about them.”

“I’d love to.”

I listen to Frank and Annie talk about their upcoming seasonal gin, but the conversation is tickling the back of my brain the whole time. It starts to take over after they leave, the energy between us completely positive again.

Not once have I considered leaving Stryker Liquors. Ever. My future has been a straight path since the day I learned what our family business even was.

But now that path has a little branch off of it, and I want to know if it’s one I should go down.