Awake
Book 3 of the Wild Love Series
Red L Jameson
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Dedication
Copyright © 2016 by Lanita Beth Joramo
All rights reserved
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1
I’m a liar.
I have this realization when I look down at the white chocolate-almond bundt cake in my hands that I spent hours baking for my best friend’s evening luau party. It’s such a juxtaposition from me—sweet creamy saccharine frosting elegantly adorned with sweetened white almonds on a sugary cake. Pristine and lovely. While I’m…
I feel like I’m breaking through a black frozen lake I’d somehow survived on the bottom of for the last few years of my life. Everything in me feels monstrously dark, dripping with a tar-like substance and I’m taking my first breath in so long.
I don’t look like I’m gasping for air. I look like the cake. Pretty. Sweet. Non-threatening.
But I’m a beast. Or I feel like one.
I’m hiding behind a facade. Suburban, single mother who couldn’t hurt a fly.
Which makes me a liar.
I’m not startled by the realization. I’m not even fearful. I’ve known this for years but never admitted it. Of course, now that I’m walking to Eva Whitaker’s house, less than four doors from my own, it isn’t the best time to have this kind of epiphany. But that’s the way it’s been lately. Suddenly—poof!—I’m awake with ideas growling and growing inside of me. Ideas I’m not comfortable with, but I know they’re mine.
I swallow, staring at the blanched slivered almonds in the frosting, making the cake look pointy yet sophisticated. It fucking should. I spent almost three hours making sure the stupid bundt was perfect.
I suck in air. I swore. In my thoughts, I swore. I don’t swear.
Remember, something inside me laughs, you’re a liar.
I turn, slowly trudging up Eva’s sidewalk. God, I love her and I’d do anything for her like make a ridiculous amount of silly appetizers—what the fuck is with baby quiches anyway?—besides this absurd cake, which are already in my chafing dishes in her house.
Eva’s my one friend. Being in such a small town, even if it is the university town of Laramie, Wyoming, means—when I’d gotten the divorce two years ago, thinking I was making a better life for my children and me—that I’d become the pariah of our quaint and rustic, cowboy-infused village. I had no idea I’d be shunned. I, gullible me, thought people would rejoice. Well, maybe not rejoice, but I’d finally left the man who’d cheated on me throughout our marriage. Granted, my ex-husband is a nice man. He’s still nice. Our divorce was amicable. He’s a good guy. But his dick isn’t.
I cringe, amazed I’d just thought that too.
Who am I, swearing in my thoughts?
A monster. Pretty little monster.
I slowly, ever so slowly make the last fifteen feet to Eva’s house excruciating with my internal diatribe. There’s more than twenty cars parked along the cul-de-sac—meaning lots of people. I heard laughter all the way from my house, where I checked on my children before I left even though I know they’re at their dad’s this weekend. It’s a habit to check on them, and I wonder if when I’m an old lady I’ll wander around the house still trying to find them.
The summer sunset is leaving the sky a purple mixed with orange. Beautiful. I want to savor the night. So I stop and admire the few daring sparkles of stars above. Those stars are lightyears away but I see their light. Jesus, how I see their light.
I’m so fucking awake. I see it all. Finally, after years of getting by, I’m seeing life and I want to become a bohemian pot-smoker who stops to applaud it all. But I’m a divorcee with two small children, and especially since my divorce, since the odd shunning—“polite” society doesn’t outright shun, but there’s ruthless abandonment and apathy on the other side of being the center of gossip—has been about fitting in. Wearing cardigans with fake pearls for buttons. Smiling when I want to flip everyone off.
It shouldn’t be such a big deal to wear this facade, this mask. In high school, even junior high, I was the sweet girl, the girl everyone liked but never really wanted to know. In college I became hot for a couple years and that’s when I met my ex-husband, who liked his sweet, hot young wife.
I’ve been called the good girl, the sweet one, and it’s always been said by someone who looks like they’re stifling a yawn. I’m boring as shit.
And a liar.
Eva, for as long as I’ve known her, has had this luau every July. We’ve always been friendly neighbors, but her husband, Sherman Whitaker, a dean at the local university, seven months ago left her for his secretary. Suddenly we’re best buddies. The whole town is abuzz about their divorce. It’s a juicy scandal for this area because not only is his secretary younger than him by about fifteen years, but she’s black. And a foreigner, people say. She’s Australian, actually. I’ve met her a couple times at past luaus. And I envied her bright and sparkling personality. How she was who she wanted to be, no apologies. I liked her.
As Eva’s new best friend, I’m not going to admit that, though. Oh, and Eva? Sure, maybe I should consider just what kind of friendship it is that we have. I’m the only other divorced woman she knows and she’s clinging to me out of the blue. But I’ve been without a real friend for so long I’m not about to look a gift horse in its mouth.
I can’t seem to force myself the few last steps to get inside. This is a special luau because Eva’s youngest son was just honorably discharged from the Army. But I keep watching the sky, amazed and
acknowledging how different I feel, how new, how I’m not sure what to think of whatever it is that seems to be clawing its way out of me.
Maybe I’m so different now because I stopped drinking eight days ago. Three days ago I went to my first AA meeting. I couldn’t admit I was an alcoholic. Maybe I’m not. I mean, it’s called Mommy’s Helper for a reason, right? Wine. It’s my go-to. After the divorce, and everyone was polite to me to the point where I wanted to rip their fucking hair out but they never actually talked to me, I turned to my old college buddy, Chardonnay. Well, I’d actually started drinking in junior high. But I never let anyone know it. In college, everyone drank. So it was okay. By the time I was a mom, I learned how to regulate my drinking so I could find that perfect balance of numbness that I crave. I don’t like getting fall-down drunk. I love numb, though.
But something in me said I had to stop. No more numb. Maybe the same something that’s telling me I’m a liar. Or maybe it’s because my sponsor—even though I couldn’t admit I was an alcoholic I was assigned a sponsor—is a twenty-something, pierced, tattooed girl who sees through me. I hate her. No, I don’t. I just hate how she doesn’t know me, but she sees right through my bullshit and calls me out on it. Maybe it’s because of her—Bit, short for Elizabeth, but I think she’d kill anyone who dared call her by her full name, cut them into small pieces, and let the wolves in Yellowstone Park eat those chunks—that I’m so…awake.
“I don’t blame you.” A deep voice scares me out of my revere.
I jump, and strong, big hands snatch the bundt cake, catching it swiftly, ensuring it doesn’t end up a puddle in the middle of the sidewalk.
I have to look up, up, and up. In the dusky night is a flash of perfect white teeth. He’s smiling. He’s huge and grinning at me while holding my cake, my hands on his, trying to regain the dessert. He’s so warm, though. And that stops me in my tracks. As much as the weather’s been hotter than hell lately, maybe because I’d been standing outside in just my silly summer dress—a swath of black cloth with bright orange flowers and two teeny straps to hold it over my shoulders—I’d gotten cold.
My body wants to rush to him, push myself against him to feel his warmth. And oh my god, is his body something to catch my eye. He’s muscular and tall. The width of his shoulders to the narrowness of his hips leaves me with my mouth ajar, just staring at him.
He’s staring at me too.
His gaze bounces down my body in a way I’d long forgotten. It’s the way a man looks at a woman when he’s appreciating what he’s looking at. His warm, gray-blue eyes zero in on mine again. His smile is altered, slightly waning, his face showing signs of surprise. He swallows and regains that bright smile of his.
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to come in.” His voice rumbles down my body, my breasts really appreciate the timbre of his tone.
“Oh?” That’s all I can think of to say. But I’m pretty proud of myself for saying it and not smearing my body against his like I want to.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “It’s kind of crazy inside.”
“Is it?”
One of his fingers wraps around one of mine under the bundt. It’s such a subtle move, but it’s making my heart pound. I’m sweating now.
“Yep.” He nods. “My mom and dad are trying like hell not to argue in front of everyone.”
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Oh, shit.
“You’re Joseph? Eva’s youngest son?” And definitely, definitely off limits. You’re my new best friend’s offspring, right? You’re the reason Eva decided to go ahead and have this luau and invite your dad, even though she’d rather poke his eyes out.
I wait with bated breath for his answer.
His grin slowly widens. “Yeah. Joe, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” Try to act aloof, I tell myself. Don’t act like you’re attracted to this hunk of a man. Jesus, why didn’t Eva tell me her son is a blond Superman? Why didn’t she prepare me for this?
Granted, I’ve met her older son, Shane. He’s a lot like his dad—intellectual, a PhD candidate in a California university. And he’s an attractive man. Very attractive. But he’s maybe too much like his dad, where I think there’s a certain amount of pomp and patronizing behind that gaze of his. But Joseph, Joe—Fuck.
I’ve never met him before. And I can’t believe I’m attracted to him.
No, I can’t be. He’s very no-no, don’t go there.
Joe leans his head down slightly. “And you’re…?”
“I’m Moira. Moira Landing.”
Joe’s whole body stiffens. “My mom told me about you. You’ve gotten close. Been really good to her when the rest of this town would rather gossip about her.”
I shrug. “I know what it’s like to be the divorcee, the town’s outcast.”
“You’re not old enough to be divorced.”
I laugh despite the fact that I shouldn’t. “I’m definitely old enough.”
“Nah.”
I giggle even more. “Yes.” Then it hits me. I’ll tell him how old I am. I know how old he is and I’m much too…well, he’ll get scared of my age, I’m sure. “I’m thirty-three.”
He tilts his head. “You sure?”
I nod. “Pretty sure. Wanna see my birth certificate?”
“Yes, I do.”
I laugh even more but try to think of ways to remind him that there’s just too much division between us, so he’ll stop holding my finger, which I really, really like but shouldn’t.
“And you’re twenty-four.”
“My mom tell you that? And by the way, I’m twenty-five now.”
I shake my head. “You sure about that?”
“Wanna see my birth certificate?”
“I have.”
“Ah, shit. I’m going to have to have a talk with my mom.”
“No, you can’t. I loved seeing your baby feet.”
He softly chuckles. The hard pad of his thumb skims along the top knuckle of my index finger. Maybe that was on accident.
He does it again, which makes my breathing hitch. A slow burn begins in my chest, along the skin of my breastbone, to my breasts themselves. God, this guy is merely gliding his finger along mine and I’m turned on.
I can’t be turned on.
Oh, this is bad.
Really fucking bad.
2
“There you are.” Eva’s voice surrounds me long before I see her behind the huge frame of her son. We’re still standing on the sidewalk, but he’s adjusting his grip, so I have ahold of the cake.
Eva’s walking quickly to Joe and me, and I’m reminded again of how breathtakingly beautiful she is. She could pass for Angelina Jolie’s sister. Seriously. She might be prettier. She’s maybe fifteen years older than the actress, but Eva’s skin doesn’t reveal her age. At all. I’m a little envious of that and wonder how she looks so fantastic while I just found another gray hair—that’s three now—and I’m beginning to notice laugh lines around my eyes.
Eva doesn’t sound mad that I’m late to her luau. Just frazzled. Maybe a tad drunk too. I told her I wasn’t sure about inviting her almost ex to the party. But she said she wanted to so she could show him how she was getting over him and their marriage.
I get that. All too well, I understand. I’d love to show my ex that I stopped thinking about him. But I’m pretty sure he knows I’ve wondered all these years what I did wrong to make him turn to other women. And he takes advantage of my pining, that pining not necessarily over him, but over what could’ve been.
“And you found Moira, good boy,” Eva says to her handsome son.
Joe cringes as she careens around him, wrapping an arm affectionately around his waist. Somehow, due to Joe’s quick moves, it looks like we were never touching.
“Moira!” Eva air kisses my cheek. “I told you not to go to so much trouble. You made a cake too?”
I shrug. See, this is my problem: I think that if I do things for friends, they’ll stay. Forever.
Nothing has proven my theory right so far. But I’m still trying, like walking into a wall over and over again and thinking that will somehow get me to the other side.
“It was no trouble.” I clear my throat because I sound odd, probably because I’ve had to switch gears so quickly. I hate how attracted I am to Joe. Even worse, I hate how my body won’t simmer down even with his mother, my best friend, in close proximity.
But what does help is when the monster within tells me I’m a liar. Not in a sneering, cruel way. There’s nothing mean about this title. It’s just a fact. Like how I’d spent hours blanching the almonds, making the cake with gluten-free flour, and then ensuring the thing didn’t taste like cardboard. God, I’ll be so relieved when this gluten-free fad is over. All the time I’d been baking, I’d been doing it in the hopes that Eva will continue to be my friend, that she’ll think I have all my shit together, that everyone at the party will think I have a spotless house and not know that within me is a beast who swears and wants to burn my name in their well-manicured lawns.
“Joseph, honey, you met Moira?” Eva is definitely drunk. Her words aren’t slurred, but I smell a lot of alcohol on her breath. There’s a part of me that wants to grasp her face, forcing her to keep her mouth open, and breath that scent in. God, I miss wine. I miss it so much my skin is twitching.
“Yep.” Joe’s voice is now rough. Almost cold. “And she met me.”
“Isn’t she just the prettiest?” Eva reaches for my cheek and holds it. “She’s the best friend I’ve ever had. I’m so grateful for her.”
He smiles at me. No teeth this time. But it makes my heart thunder all the same. He seems strained, as if he wants to say something but won’t.
“Moira?” Eva leans heavily on her son. “Will you come inside with me, hold my hand through the night?”
With practice and elocution, I know, one doesn’t have to sound or appear intoxicated. But Eva’s eyes aren’t quite focused. They’re a tad glossy too. It could be because she’s been crying. But I know better. Not that I blame her for getting drunk at this party where she has to socialize with her soon-to-be ex-husband. It hasn’t even been a year yet since he left her, saying he wanted to spend the rest of his life with someone who really loved him.
Awake: Book 3 of the Wild Love Series Page 1