Adulting
PRAISE FOR LIZ TALLEY
“Talley packs her latest southern romantic drama with a satisfying plot and appealing characters . . . The prose is powerful in its understatedness, adding to the appeal of this alluring story.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Relevant and moving . . . Talley does an excellent job of making her flawed characters vastly more gray than black and white . . . which creates a story of unrequited loves, redeemed.”
—Library Journal
“Talley masters making the reader feel hopeful in this second-chance romance . . . You have to read this slow-burning, heart-twisting story yourself.”
—USA Today
“This author blends the past and present effortlessly, while incorporating heartbreaking emotions guaranteed to make you ugly cry. Highly recommended.”
—Harlequin Junkie
“Liz Talley has written a love story between a mother and daughter that captured me completely. By turns tender and astringent, sexy and funny, heart wrenching and uplifting, Room to Breathe is an escapist and winning story that will carry you away with an imperfect pair of protagonists who just might remind you of someone you know. A delight.”
—Barbara O’Neal, author of When We Believed in Mermaids
“There is no pleasure more fulfilling than not being able to turn off the light until you’ve read one more page, one more chapter, one more large hunk of an addictive novel. Liz Talley delivers. Her dialogue is crisp and smart, her characters are vivid and real, her stories are unputdownable. I discovered her with the book The Sweetest September when, in the very first pages, I was asking myself, How’s she going to get out of this one? And of course I was sleep deprived finding out. Her latest, Come Home to Me, which I was privileged to read in advance, is another triumph, a story of a woman’s hard-won victory over a past trauma, of love, of forgiveness, of becoming whole. Laughter and tears spring from the pages—this book should be in every beach bag this summer.”
—Robyn Carr, New York Times bestselling author
“Liz Talley’s characters stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. Complex, emotional stories written in a warm, intelligent voice, her books will warm readers’ hearts.”
—Kristan Higgins, New York Times bestselling author
“Every book by Liz Talley promises heart, heat, and hope, plus a gloriously happy ever after—and she delivers.”
—Mariah Stewart, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
“Count on Liz Talley’s smart, authentic storytelling to wrap you in southern comfort while she tugs at your heart.”
—Jamie Beck, author of If You Must Know
OTHER TITLES BY LIZ TALLEY
Come Home to Me
Room to Breathe
The Wedding War
Morning Glory
Charmingly Yours
Perfectly Charming
All That Charm
Prince Not Quite Charming (novella)
Home in Magnolia Bend
The Sweetest September
Sweet Talking Man
Sweet Southern Nights
New Orleans’ Ladies
The Spirit of Christmas
His Uptown Girl
His Brown-Eyed Girl
His Forever Girl
Bayou Bridge
Waters Run Deep
Under the Autumn Sky
The Road to Bayou Bridge
Oak Stand
Vegas Two-Step
The Way to Texas
A Little Texas
A Taste of Texas
A Touch of Scarlet
Novellas and Anthologies
The Nerd Who Loved Me
“Hotter in Atlanta” (a short story)
Cowboys for Christmas with Kim Law and Terri Osburn
A Wrong Bed Christmas with Kimberly Van Meter
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2021 by Amy R. Talley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542026031
ISBN-10: 1542026032
Cover design by David Drummond
This book is dedicated to the senior class of 2020, who missed so much in what should have been the time of their lives. Most especially, this book about growing up is dedicated to my own senior, Gabe, who will start adulting very soon, but pardon me if I hold on a bit longer to the little boy who curled up in my lap and wanted me to snuggle him (and scratch his back).
I love you, Beebs.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
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
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Please note that this story includes some sensitive subject matter. While this material largely occurs off the page in characters’ backstories, please be aware that there is discussion of substance abuse, depression, suicide, sexual abuse, and rape.
CHAPTER ONE
August
Chase London woke with a raging headache and no clothes. Never the best way to wake up, but at least she was awake. By rights, she could be dead. Which sometimes didn’t seem so awful. The quiet darkness of death often sounded better than the color-soaked world of criticism and disappointment she normally inhabited.
Yeah, things suck when death looks like a better option.
She swallowed the acridness in her mouth because, well, what else was she going to do? Spit it out? She wasn’t even sure where she was. She fluttered her eyelids and tried to bring the world into focus.
High ceiling above her. Bed beneath her.
But whose bed?
She moved her fingers against the fabric beneath her. Decent thread count, so there was that. She opened both eyes, blinked away the blurry, and turned her head slowly because she could hear heavy breathing beside her and had no clue who it might be.
The man lying next to her seemed to be naked underneath the tangled top sheet. His shaggy, violet-streaked hair looked spiky from sweat. He breathed through an open mouth, junkie purple shadowing his closed eyes, track marks dotting spread arms that lay palms up like an offering. A narrow chest, slim hips, and tattoos that wended their way around his body, disappearing beneath the shroud of the sheet only to appear again on a thigh, calf, or foot.
Oh God . . . what had she done?
Chase lifted her head and winced.
Jordan. She remembered him asking her over and over last night. Say my name, babe. Come on. Say it.
He’d had blow—a lot of it. His skin looked waxy, almost corpse-like. She watched him to ensure he was breathing.
His stomach rose and fell.
Thank God. She didn’t want to deal with the police. Been there and done that before. Besides, she was supposed to be clean. She wriggled her foot, feeling the court-issued SCRAM on her ankle. The battery had died yesterday afternoon, and no one from the monitoring company had called by the end of the day. So she’d called her girls and said, “Let’s go out before they change the batteries.”
Which had been so stupid. But in her defense, she’d spent weeks doing nothing but eating takeout and watching Real Housewives. She wanted to move, to feel like a real person again. She wasn’t going to drink much. Maybe one glass of wine. And she damn sure wasn’t going to do drugs.
Chase carefully lowered her throbbing head back onto the mattress, telling herself she could figure this out.
Carefully, she rolled over. Empty champagne bottles dead soldiered the carpet, and her lacy thong lay like a surrender flag in the threshold of the large room. That’s why her head hurt so bad. Champagne messed her up.
She pulled her hair from beneath the shoulder of the guy. Jordan’s eyes fluttered, but he stayed asleep. Chase slid her own naked bottom toward the edge of the bed, which was flanked with swaths of linen. She winced as she sat up. The bright-white room tilted, so she grasped the edge of the mattress and stilled herself until the world stopped moving. Then she stood.
As soon as she reached for the bedside table to steady herself, the nausea from earlier made a curtain call. She headed toward the closed door, praying it was a bathroom. The door banged against the bedroom wall as Chase sank onto her knees and hugged the porcelain like it was a lifesaver tossed to her. She pleaded with her body to not heave forth the contents of her stomach.
“What the hell?”
Chase couldn’t answer whoever was asking the question behind her. She was focusing on not throwing up.
A shadow fell across the toilet.
Jordan.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, moving in her line of sight. He wore boxers. Thank goodness.
She didn’t answer because she was too busy hugging a toilet and praying for the strength not to puke.
“Whoa, you feeling sick? Lemme get you something.”
She was afraid opening her mouth to answer might be an invitation to her body, so she focused on the tiny blue writing on the lid and tried to fight down the nausea. Nothing so humbling as tossing your cookies into a stranger’s toilet while naked. But she’d done it before. Halfway to a habit now.
God, she hated herself.
What in the hell was wrong with her? She should have called her parole officer and reported the dead battery. Brownie points could have been added to her file or banked for the next time she screwed up.
Something cold pressed against her neck. “This will help.”
The shock of the cold sobered her, and she managed to push her blonde hair back as the nausea lessened.
Jordan sank down on the edge of the soaking tub. The bathroom was large, impersonal. Like a Vegas suite. Where were they? She couldn’t remember anything after dancing at whatever club they’d gone to.
“Man, I can’t believe I partied with Chase London. That’s some crazy shit.”
Chase took the cloth from the back of her neck and used it to wipe her face. She looked at the nearly naked guy sitting inches from her. “Yeah, crazy shit all right.”
“I mean, I used to jerk off to you when I was little. That movie? The one with the cheerleader skirt? Hot as shit, and now I’ve had that ass.”
Her stomach rolled over. “Yeah, happy to help you out with that fantasy. Could you hand me a robe or towel or something?”
“Nah.” His gaze slid down her body, and Chase could see he was getting turned on because, yeah, he wore boxers and was really close to her. “You should never cover that body, baby. You’re so smokin’. Come back to bed. We’ll have some more fun.”
“Are you joking? I feel like death. I’m not going back to bed with you.”
Jordan made an exaggerated sad face.
“Where are we, by the way?” Chase pushed herself up. They weren’t in a hotel, but the place was nice—she’d glimpsed the sand and surf out of the large sliding glass door in the bedroom, and the hand towel hanging by the sink was monogrammed with a scrolling letter she couldn’t discern. “Are we still in Orange County? Please tell me we are.”
Jordan looked at her like she was crazy. Then he laughed. “Relax, mama. We in Malibu.”
Chase rose and went in search of her clothes and phone. As she shoved pillows out of the way, she tried to piece the night together. She remembered going with her friends to a new club. Maybe she’d popped a pill with the wine? No. Wait. She’d done a few lines in the bathroom. Once she did coke, she usually lost time. Still, how did she end up in Malibu, bombed out of her mind, with some guy she couldn’t remember meeting?
Chase snagged her thong and wiggled into it, thankful to have something on.
“Aw, come on.” Jordan stood by the bed, erection bobbing beneath the cotton fly of his boxers. “You look like you feel better.”
Chase stalked over to the chaise lounge and grabbed her dress. The sequins would look ludicrous in the light of day, but she hadn’t packed a bag, now had she? She slid it over her head, not bothering with her missing bra. Scanning the room for her shoes, her gaze landed on a syringe on the nightstand.
God.
Chase passed a hand over her eyes, squeezing them together as if she could erase what she saw. Erase the bad decisions she’d made. The ones she couldn’t seem to stop making. Why did she keep doing this to herself?
She had no answer to that question. Her intentions were always good. Every time she went through rehab, went before a judge, got a second chance . . . or fifth . . . she swore she would get herself together and walk a straight line.
But she didn’t.
Jordan had given up, flopping onto his stomach, burying his head under the pillows with a groan that jarred Chase into action.
Okay, first she needed to find her phone. Then she could Uber back to her place with no one the wiser. She could call her parole officer and tell her that the battery was dead. But wait. Social media. Someone had probably posted pictures of her last night. She was busted. No way around that.
Shit.
Leaving the bedroom, she made her way down the floating staircase, clinging to the iron handrail, focusing on where she placed her bare feet so she wouldn’t take a tumble. She didn’t want to end up in the hospital. Because that meant dealing with her mother and her manager . . . who happened to be one and the same.
Lorna had drawn a line in the sand after the last screwup, and Chase really didn’t want to deal with the fallout when she felt like warmed-up cat barf. If she could find her shoes and phone . . . wait, had she brought a purse?
Maybe that’s where her phone was. What had she brought with her last night? The Fendi crossbody. Yes, the pink-and-brown one.
When Chase reached the bottom of the stairs, she noted five other people sprawled on the white linen couches, all in various states of undress. More liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia were scattered across the large stone coffee table. A wall of windows allowed the late-morning or early-afternoon California sunshine to flood the place, which now looked vaguely familiar.
Had she been here before?
Chase tiptoed over to the group of people, noting she didn’t know any of them. Where were Margot and Jenni? They had promised they would make sure she only had a few drinks and went home safely. That was the deal when she’d handed over her credit card. They’d promised, pinkie sworn, made blood oaths—they would get Chase London home and keep her nose clean.
She raised a hand to a nose that felt raw and scratchy.
Well, that hadn’t happened. Obviously.
“Looking for this?” someone said from the open area that led to what looked like a kitchen. Chase couldn’t make out the features of the woman against the blinding light pouring into the airy space, but she knew the voice.
“Lorna?”
“That would be correct.” The blobby shape holding her Fendi bag disappeared. “Come on into the kitchen.”
Chase stared at the spot where her mother had stood, trying to make sense of what she’d just seen. Lorna? In this house? How had her mother found her? Probably Life360. But Chase had disabled that, hadn’t she?