by Shen, L. J.
Copyright © 2021 by L.J. Shen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial use permitted by copyright law.
Resemblance to actual persons and things living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Title Page
Copyright
About This Book
Epigraph
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Stay in Touch
More Books from L.J. Shen
Preview of Vicious
From Wall Street Journal bestselling author L.J. Shen comes a romantic comedy that will make you fall in love…or at least stumble your way to it, laughing.
I would say Dr. Cruz Costello is my archenemy.
But that would require acknowledging one another, which we haven’t done in over a decade.
He’s the town’s golden child. The beloved quarterback-turned-physician.
I’m the girl who got knocked up at sixteen and now works at a diner.
He is Fairhope royalty.
I get my monarch dose from tabloid gossip.
He’s well-off.
I’m…well, off.
When our siblings get engaged, Cruz’s parents invite both families to a pre-wedding cruise.
Except Cruz and I find ourselves stuck on a different ship from everyone else.
Cue ten horrible, insufferable days at sea with a man I cannot stand.
(My fault, of course.)
But when the alcohol pours in, the secrets spill out, and I’m left with one question:
Can I take another chance on love?
“When women go wrong, men go right after them.”—Mae West.
“True love is singing karaoke ‘Under Pressure’ and letting the other person sing the Freddie Mercury part.”—Mindy Kaling.
To the real Mrs. Turner. You can have the Freddie Mercury part any day of the week.
The important thing to remember is that I, Tennessee Lilybeth Turner, did not try to kill anyone.
Look, I’m not saying I haven’t contemplated killing people in the past, nor am I virtuous enough to declare that I would be terribly sad to learn if some people (fine, most people) in this town found their unfortunate, untimely demise.
But taking a person’s life?
Nuh-uh.
That’s something I am one-hundred percent incapable of doing.
Mentally, I mean.
Physically, I could totally take a bitch down if I put my mind to it. I’m in pretty good shape from working on my feet all day carrying twenty-pound trays full of greasy food.
Emotionally, I just couldn’t live with myself if I knew I’d made someone else’s heart stop beating.
And then there’s the going to jail part, which I’m not super hot on, either. Not that I’m spoiled or anything, but I’m a picky eater, and I’ve never had a roommate. Why start now?
Plus, I sort of reached my sin quota for the past three decades. Killing someone at this point would be—excuse my pun—overkill. Like I’m hogging all of the bad press Fairhope, North Carolina has allotted to its citizens.
There Messy Nessy goes again. With her out-of-wedlock baby, throat-punching tendencies and spontaneous murders.
(I shall explain the throat-punching incident in due time. Context is crucial for that story.)
So, now that it is established that I definitely, certainly, unquestionably did not try to kill anyone, there is one thing I should make clear:
Gabriella Holland deserved to die.
There was a ninety-nine point nine percent chance I was going to kill someone in this diner this sunny, unassuming afternoon.
The teenager with the yellow Drew hoodie, colorful braces, and stoned expression deliberately dropped his fork under the table of the red vinyl booth he occupied.
“Oops,” he drawled wryly. “Clumsy me. Are you gonna pick that up, or what?”
He flashed me a grin full of metal and waffle chunks. His three friends cackled in the background, elbowing each other with meaningful winks.
I stared at him blankly, wondering if I wanted to poison or strangle him. Poison, I decided, was better. Might be a coward’s way to kill, but at least I wouldn’t have to risk a broken nail.
My gelled, pointy, Cardi-B-style nail art was precious to me.
His neck, decidedly, was not.
“Don’t you have hands?” I popped my pink gum in his face, batting my fake eyelashes, playing the part this town gave me, of the airheaded bimbo with the big blonde hair who was barely literate and destined to serve them burgers for eternity.
“I do, and I’d love to show you what they’re capable of.”
His friends howled, some of them rolling into a coughing fit, clapping and enjoying the show. I felt Jerry, my boss, glaring at me from across the counter while wiping it furiously with a dishcloth approximately the same age as me.
His gaze told me not to “accidentally” spit my gum into their fountain soda (Tim Trapp had it coming. He’d insinuated I should become a hooker to put my son through college). Apparently, we couldn’t afford the legal fee nor the problematic reputation.
Jerry was the owner of Jerry & Sons. The only problem with this wonderful name was that there were no sons.
I mean, there were.
They were alive and everything. They were just lazy and burned their unearned paychecks on women, gambling, alcohol, and pyramid schemes. Exactly in that order.
I knew, because they were supposed to work shifts here, and yet, most of the time, it was just me.
“Gotta problem, Turner?” Jerry chewed on tobacco. The leaves gave his teeth a strange hue of urine-yellow. He eyed me meaningfully from across the counter.
Dang it.
I needed to bite the bullet and just do it.
But I hated horny teenagers who only came in to check what was under my dress.
Jerry’s waitresses (or: me. I was the only waitress here) wore pretty skimpy dresses because he said it got them (again: me) better tips. It did not. Needless to say, wearing the uniform was a must. White and pink striped, and shorter than a bull’s fuse.
Since I was pretty tall for a woman, half my butt was on full display whenever I bent down in this outfit. I could always squat, but then I ran the risk of showing something even more demure than my tuchus.
“Well?” Yellow-hoodied boy slammed his fist against t
he table, making utensils clatter and plates full of hot, fluffy waffles fly an inch in the air. “Am I going to have to repeat myself? We all know why you’re wearing that dress, and it ain’t because you like the breeze.”
Jerry & Sons was the kind of small-town diner you saw in the movies and thought to yourself, there’s no way a crap-hole like this truly exists.
Checkered black-and-white linoleum flooring that had seen better days—probably in the eighteenth century. Tattered red vinyl booths. A jukebox that randomly coughed up “All Summer Long” by Kid Rock entirely unprovoked.
And Jerry’s claim to fame—a wall laden with pictures of him hugging celebrities who’d made a pit stop in our town (namely, two professional baseball players who got lost driving into Winston-Salem and a backup dancer for Madonna who did come here intentionally, but only to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, and looked every inch of a woman who had just said goodbye to a loved one).
The food was questionable at best and dangerous at worst, depending on whether our cook, Coulter, was in the mood to wash the veggies and poultry (together) before preparing them. He was truly a great guy, but I’d rather eat crushed glass than anything his hands touched.
Still, the place was full to the brim with teens sucking on milkshakes, ladies enjoying their refreshments after a shopping spree on Main Street, and families grabbing an early dinner.
What Jerry & Sons lacked in style and taste, it made up for by simply existing: it was one of the very few eateries around.
Fairhope was a town so small you could only find it with a microscope, a map, and a lot of effort. Your-worst-ex’s-dick small. And a real time capsule, too.
It had one K-8 school, one supermarket, one gas station, and one church. Everyone knew everyone. No secret was safe from the gossip gang of elderly women who played bridge every day, led by Mrs. Underwood.
And everybody knew I was the screw-up.
The town’s black sheep.
The harlot, the reckless woman, the jezebel.
That was the main irony about Fairhope, I supposed—it was not fair and offered no hope.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted Cruz Costello occupying a booth with his girlfriend of the month, Gabriella Holland. Gabby (she hated when people called her that, which was why I did it sometimes, although only in my head) had approximately six miles of legs, each the width of a toothpick, the complexion of a newborn baby, and arguably the same intellectual abilities.
Her waist-length, shiny black hair made her look like a long-lost Kardashian (Kabriella, anyone?), and she was equally high maintenance, making outrageous changes to the dishes she ordered.
For instance, the triple-sized, Elvis-style beef burger with extra cheese fries became a free-range, reduced-fat organic veggie burger, no bun, no fries, with extra arugula leaves and no dressing.
If you ask me, no thigh gap in the world was worth eating like a hamster. But Coulter still went along with all of her demands, because she always whined if her plate had a smear of oil by the time she was done with her food.
“Just give it up, Messy Nessy. Pick up my fork and we can all move on,” the teenager hissed in the background, snapping me out of my reverie.
Heat flamed my cheeks.
While Cruz had his back to me, Gabriella was watching me intently like the rest of the diner, waiting to see how this situation was going to play out. I shot another peek at Jerry before sighing, deciding it was not worth getting fired over, and crouching down to pick up the fork from the floor.
Two things happened simultaneously.
The first thing was I felt the douchebag’s fingers pinch my butt cheek.
The second was I saw the flash of a phone camera behind me as someone took a picture.
I turned around, swatting his hand away, my eyes burning like I’d just opened them in a pool full of chlorine.
“What in the hell?” I roared.
The kid looked me straight in the eye, chewing on the straw of his milkshake with a vicious grin.
“I heard the stories about you, Messy Nessy. You like to slip under the bleachers with boys, don’t ya? I can take you back to the scene of the crime, if you feel nostalgic.”
I was about to lose my temper, job, and freedom and really kill the kid when he was saved by the (Southern) belle.
“Waitress? Yoo-hoo, can I get some help here?” Gabriella waved her arm in the air, giving her extra shiny hair a casual flip.
I pointed at that kid. “I hope you choke on your straw.”
“I hope you choke on my straw.”
“That’s probably about accurate for size, I’m guessing.”
“Turner!” Jerry barked, suddenly paying attention to this interaction.
“All right, all right,” I muttered.
My only consolation was that, with a face and pickup lines like those, Drew hoodie kid was bound to stay a virgin deep into his thirties.
Still, it sucked that I had to keep this job to be able to provide for Bear. Finding a job in Fairhope was no easy feat, especially with my reputation. Secretly, though, I’d always wanted to save up enough to study something I liked and find something else.
I stomped my way toward Gabriella and Cruz’s booth, too angry to feel the usual anxiety that accompanied dealing with the town’s golden boy.
Cruz Costello was, and always would be, Fairhope’s favorite son.
When we were in middle school, he’d written a letter to the president, so eloquent, so hopeful, so touching, that he and his family were invited to the Thanksgiving ceremony at the White House.
In high school, Cruz was the quarterback who’d led Fairhope High to the state finals—the only time the school had ever gotten that far.
He was the only Fairhope resident to ever attend an Ivy League school.
The Great Hope of Fairhope (Yup. I went there with the puns. Deal with it).
The one who helped Diana Hudgens give birth in her truck on a stormy Christmas Eve and earned a picture in the local newspaper, holding the crying baby with a smile, blood dripping along his muscular forearms.
It didn’t help that upon graduation from college, Cruz had followed in his retired father’s footsteps and become the town’s beloved family physician.
He was, for all appearances, holier than the water Jesus walked upon, more virtuous than Mother Teresa, and, perhaps most maddening of all, hotter than Ryan Gosling.
In. Drive.
Tall, lean, loose-limbed, and in possession of cheekbones that, frankly, should be outlawed.
He even had a pornstache he was unaware made him extra sexy. There wasn’t a woman within the town’s limit who didn’t want to see her juices on that ’stache.
Even his attire of a blind, senior CPA, consisting of khaki pants, pristine white socks, and polo shirts, couldn’t take away from the fact that the man was ride-able to a fault.
Luckily—and I use that term loosely because there was nothing lucky about my life—I was so appalled by Cruz’s general existence that I was pretty much immune to his allure.
I stopped at their table, leaning a hip against the worn-out booth and popping my gum extra loudly to hide the nervous hiccup from being touched by that kid. Whenever the occasional urge to speak up for myself rose, I remembered my job prospects in this town were slimmer than Gabby’s waist. Raising a thirteen-year-old wasn’t cheap, and besides, moving back in with my parents was not feasible. I did not get along with Momma Turner.
“Top of the mornin’ to you. How can I help Fairhope’s Bold and Beautiful?”
Gabriella scrunched her button nose in distaste. She wore casual skinny jeans, an expensive white cashmere shawl, and understated jewelry, giving her the chic appearance of effortlessness (and possibly French).
“How are you, Nessy?” she asked without moving her lips much.
“Well, Gabriella, every morning I wake up on the wrong side of capitalism, I’m pretty sure my car’s about to die, and my back’s not getting any younger. So all in all, pretty
good, thanks for asking. Yourself?”
“I just got a big contract with a cosmetic company that will probably gain my blog a lot of traction, so really good.”
“Wonderful!” I cooed, doing my best not to notice Cruz.
Gabriella did that thing where she posted pictures and videos of herself on Instagram, trying out new products, making you believe you could look like her if you used them, too.
She dragged her plate across the table like there was a dead rat on it.
“Look, I don’t want to be that person, but I don’t think my turkey burger is…you know…”
“Cooked?” I curved an eyebrow. Or turkey…
“Organic,” she whispered, shifting uncomfortably.
I had a Sherlock on my hands.
Did she think she was at The Ivy? She should be happy her lettuce was washed and that the bun didn’t come from a can.
“It’s probably not,” I agreed.
Her eyebrows slammed together. “Well, I specifically asked for organic.”
“And I specifically asked for a winning lottery ticket and a hot date with Benicio del Toro. Looks like we’re both having a bad day, hon.” I popped my gum again.
Cruz was quiet, as he usually was when I was around. The elephant in the room was that Gabriella Holland was my baby sister Trinity’s best friend. And my sweet baby sister was engaged to Wyatt—Cruz’s older brother.
Sounds super Jerry Springer? Why, I think so, too.
Which meant that, technically, I had to play nice with both of these uppity gassholes. But while Cruz made a deliberate effort not to acknowledge my existence in any way, I was perfectly happy to show him what I thought about him.
“Do you think that kind of attitude will help you get a tip?” Gabriella asked incredulously, folding her arms over her chest. Some best friend to my sister she was, treating me like I was a dry horse turd on the bottom of her stiletto shoe.
“I don’t think I should be given attitude over a diner burger’s origin story,” I supplied.
“Maybe if you were nicer and more conscientious, your poor son could have more opportunities.”