Chapter 3
GEMMA
Making good on my promise, after I ate my cold leftovers in a warm bath full of Epsom salts and allowed myself a good, healthy cry, I dragged my ass from tub to bed and fell asleep before I even had a chance to get dressed.
I wake up six hours later to a ringing phone—a FaceTime request—and a giant cat making biscuits in my armpit.
“I’m sorry too,” I tell her begrudgingly when she lets out a small, pitiful mewl. Reaching up, I give her a quick scratch behind her ear before I dig my phone out of the covers, declining the FaceTime request in favor of a voice call instead. “Hey.”
“No FaceTime?” Em says, her tone almost as plaintive as my cat’s.
“Can’t,” I say on a yawn. Putting the phone on speaker, I set it on the pillow beside me. “Naked.”
“Ah—” Em answers me on a laugh. “Fell asleep in the tub eating potpie again?”
I bark out a laugh of my own while I attempt to dislodge the batch of biscuits being baked in my armpit.
“Look—” When I try to push her away, Janet sinks her claws into my side boob and gives me one of her slow blinks, her expression clear—be still.
I’m trying to apologize, bitch. Giving up before she draws blood, I drop my hand on a sigh.
She immediately goes back to kneading. “I don’t have much in this world—allow me my small, pathetic luxuries. ”
“Apologies,” she says dryly. “I wasn’t aware that you’re so dependent on bathtub potpie.”
“What else is there?” I mumble irritably. “All I do is work and all I have to show for it is a tax debt that’s actually growing, a verbally abusive cat, and a pile of dirty forks next to my bathtub.”
“All solvable problems if you ask me,” Em says quietly because she’s broaching the one subject we fight about.
“Em.” When I say her name, it sound exactly like what it is. A warning.
One she never listens to.
“Call Beck. I’m sure?—”
“No.” I cut her off before she can even finish. “I will not call Beck. He didn’t even come home for the funeral, so as a matter of fact—fuck Beck.”
“I have some savings,” Emily offers my gently. “Most of my trust fund went to college, but my latest book is?—”
“No.” It’s not the first time she’s offered and it won’t be the last. “Thank you, Em,” I say, tempering my terse refusal with a sigh. “But no.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she grumbles at me. “What’s the use of having money if I can’t do something fun with it?”
Most of the kids who grew up in Clearwater were indulged to the point of being spoiled.
Expensive cars. Extravagant trips. Designer clothes.
Beck and I both where given anything and everything we wanted—all we had to do was ask.
Emily’s upbringing was different. Her parents aren’t really her parents—they’re her grandparents—and they were strict about money.
Not because they didn’t have it—Aaron and Nadia Ackerman are worth nearly half a billion dollars—but because they simply don’t want to share it.
It was made clear to Emily at a very young age that she wasn’t a daughter to them.
She was an obligation. When she left for college, there would be enough to see her through, but after that, she was on her own.
Em never complained and she never asked them for more.
What money she has, she’s earned it on her own.
“Bailing me out of my financial sinkhole doesn’t qualify as fun, Em,” I remind her on a laugh. “For either of us.”
Emily answers me with a frustrated sigh. “Well, at the very least, you can take away your cats swear words. I mean seriously, Gemma—you did that to yourself.”
She’s not wrong.
Not even about the quiet part she isn’t saying out loud.
I did all of this to myself. All of my problems are of my own making because I’m too stubborn to ask for help.
Because I’m too angry with my brother for abandoning me here so he could go play big-time movie star in Hollywood.
I’m too angry at my mother for not even offering me help when Dent got sick, beyond the financial support of putting him in a home, all so she could lure me back to Clearwater—there’s a very nice facility not far from here.
They have a private room available and I’m more than happy to pay for it. That way you can move home?—
That’s as far as I let her get before I hung up on her.
That was eleven months ago and I haven’t spoken to her since.
Not even when the county came, itemized bill in hand, looking for their money.
The only one I’m not angry with is my father because…
well, you can’t really be angry at someone who is little more than an abstract concept.
I’ve met the man three times in my life—the first time being when I was six and he came home from the oil fields unannounced. He was drunk and Dent chased him off the porch with a shotgun while I was playing hopscotch on the front walk. I didn’t even know who he was until Beck told me.
The last time I saw my father was nine months ago at Dent’s funeral.
He was sober and sorry but by then it was too late.
I politely accepted his apology and his condolences and told him that we’d be having a potluck at the house after the service and that he was welcome to stop by for a plate on his way back to wherever he came from if he wanted.
If he expected more than that, he never let on.
He just gave me a flat smile full of regret and understanding before he just as politely declined and made his way back to his truck.
I haven’t heard from him since but at least he was there.
At least he showed up when it came time to put his father in the ground, which is more than I can say for my brother.
“I wanted Beck to come home after Dent died because he wanted to,” I tell her while I battle back the sudden sting of tears.
I’ve already had my crybaby pity party. One a week.
That’s all I get. “I wanted my mom to offer help because she wanted to, and I want my cat to stop calling me a bitch because she wants to—not because I made it impossible for her to.” Now I’m the one not saying the quiet part out loud.
That I want to be someone’s priority. That I want someone to care about me. How I feel. What I want. What I need.
I want to matter.
To stop feeling invisible.
I want to be first.
That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
“Gemmie…” Emily says softly, sounding as heartbroken as I feel. “Will you at least wash your bathtub forks?”
“I wash them,” I choke it out on a watery laugh because this is why Emily Ackerman is my best friend. Because she gets me. She knows how to pull me back from the brink. She knows I have a pile of dirty forks on my bathroom floor and she loves me anyway.
“Putting them in the bathtub with you to soak while you eat your soggy potpie is not the same as washing them, Gemma Rae Pierce,” she admonishes me in a tone full of fake condemnation. “Take them downstairs and put them in the kitchen sink with the other dishes where they belong.”
“You’re my best friend,” I remind her, aiming a scowl at the ceiling. “You’re not supposed to make my life harder.”
“Gemma Rae,” she says my name again, this time wrapping it around a laugh. “Promise me.”
“Fine.” I sigh the word while Janet gives up on her dream of baking boob biscuits and flops onto her back before unceremoniously jamming her head into my armpit instead. “Promise.”
For a moment, neither of us says anything. It’s late where she is—nearly 1AM in North Carolina—but Em calls me every Sunday at ten o’clock without fail. Finally she asks the million dollar question.
“So… how’s it going?”
By it she means my job at the Mill, and more specifically, have you killed Cade yet?
“All Montgomerys are alive and well,” I report, my tone more than a little disgruntled.
Cade and I had it out in the parking lot when he followed me out the door to give me back the money I left for him on the bar.
While we don’t pool tips at the Mill, we still have to tip out our bartenders.
Even though giving Cade Montgomery anything more than a black eye goes against every want and wish I hold dear, I paid him his twenty percent like I’m supposed to before I left.
What ensued was a ten minute yelling match that ended with me tossing the stack of ones and fives he heatedly shoved into my hand, into the air like confetti before slamming my way into my rattle trap of a Honda and leaving him in the parking lot with a pathetic lack of speed.
Still embarrassed, I begrudgingly put newer car on my list of things I can’t buy until I save Dent’s house.
“Considering one of them is the sheriff and the other is a convicted murderer, that’s probably for the best,” Emily reminds me. “And Sera?”
“Meh.” I roll my eyes. “We mostly avoid each other.” Unlike her brother, Sera Montgomery seems content to let sleeping dogs lie.
Aside from offering to cover my tables for me while I run to the bathroom or letting me know when the kitchen runs out of chicken wings, she keeps her distance.
Because, unlike her older brother, she’s smart enough to leave me alone.
Or maybe she just doesn’t give a shit about making amends for all the awful things she did. Knowing her, it’s probably the latter.
“You know… I’ve moved on,” Emily says in a calm, practical tone. “I’m happily married. Kevin and I have a good life.”
“And?” Still scowling at the ceiling, I shake my head. Happily is debatable but I don’t argue the point. Emily has never told me otherwise but sometimes I can hear it in her voice. Things with her husband aren’t as perfect as she wants me to believe.
“And you don’t have to keep hating them because of me,” she finishes as gently as she can. “What happened… happened a long time ago. We were young and stupid and I’m sure Cade?—”
“I don’t care if he regrets it,” I say, cutting her off because if I have to lay here and listen to her make excuses for Cade Montgomery I might actually throw up.
“That son-of-a-bitch put you through hell and as your best friend, I’m duty-bound to metaphorically kick him in the balls every chance I get—and only metaphorically because his is a convicted murderer and his brother is the sheriff which means if he didn’t kill me for lodging his nuts in this esophagus, I’d most certainly end up in jail for assault. ”
“God, I miss you…” Emily says on a heartbroken laugh of her own.
“I miss you too.” It’s true. I haven’t see her, face-to-face, in years.
When she left Barrett, she vowed never to come back and so far, she’s kept her word.
“Now tell me what’s happening with Triston and Greer.
Last we left off, he was launching a hostile take-over of her father’s company and she just realized he’s the nameless, one-night-stand from her business trip to The Caymans. ”
By day, Emily Ackerman is a sixth grade teacher, but by night she’s Emileigh Mayfield, a wildly successful indie romance author—a carefully guarded secret no one knows but me.
Her work in progress is an enemies to lovers, office romance featuring a cynical tech billionaire and the daughter of his biggest rival.
It’s salacious and messy and I absolutely love it.
“Triston’s about to gain controlling interest in the company and he’s just proposed a merger of sorts,” Emily tells me in a self-satisfied rush. Storytelling has always been one of her superpowers and she knows it.
“That dirty bastard.” I let out a scandalized gasp. “He’s blackmailing her?”
“Of course he is,” Emily confirms with a maniacal laugh.
“I love it,” I tell her, allowing myself to get swept up in the drama of her make believe world. “Does this merger happen to involve actual, physical merging?”
“Well...” Em pauses for dramatic effect. “He’s promised to leave her father’s company alone if Greer agrees to marry him and have his baby.”
“Shut. Up.” Beyond scandalized, I sit up, my sudden shift in positions sending up a yowl from the cat who’s been using me as a head rest. “Is she going to do it?”
“He doesn’t know it yet but she’s already pregnant,” she whispers into the phone which means our cackling has woken up her husband. “I have to go.”
“Boo.” I gripe loudly. Even though it’s completely selfish of me, I’d been hoping to get to talk to her until I have to get up for work in a few hours.
“I see your boo and raise you and bullshit,” Emily says, her tone suddenly going wistful. “Wash your forks.”
“Yes, Mother,” I say before flopping back on the bed, barely missing my cat.
“And go make some new friends tomorrow night,” she finishes quietly. When I don’t say anything, she sighs. “It’s Sunday.”
“So?” I grumble while my cat nudges my arm into place so she can reposition herself in my armpit.
“So, I know River invited you to their weekly hen party tomorrow night. I want you to go.” Emily has never met River.
Riv moved to Barrett long after she left but she’s heard all about her.
She knows River issues a weekly invite, just like she knows I always decline because I can’t stand to be in the same room with Sera Montgomery due to my overactive sense of loyalty to my best friend. “Go. Seriously.”
“Em, I can’t?—”
“You can.” This time she’s the one who cuts me off. “Please, Gemmie—for me. You need people.”
“I have people,” I insist stubbornly while panic starts to claw at the back of my throat because it’s a lie. I don’t have people. I don’t have anyone. Everyone left me. All I had was Dent and now he’s gone too.
“You have a cat who bullies you and a best friend who was too much of a coward to come home for your grandfather’s funeral,” she tells me bluntly, her scathing self-assessment instantly setting my teeth on edge.
“It’s not your fault,” I seethe, making excuses for her that I’d never allow for myself. “You just need?—”
“I need a backbone,” she says, her tone hard and unyielding. “And you need people. Not an emotionally abusive cat and a spineless voice on the other end of a telephone. People, Gemma. Real people.”
“I sincerely doubt that Sera Montgomery is my people,” I hiss at her, angry for some reason. Maybe because, once upon a time, she was.
“You never know,” Em says on a sad sounding laugh. “She might surprise you.” Waiting a beat, she sighs. “If you don’t go tomorrow night, I’ll never call you again.”
It’s a ridiculous threat—one we both know she’d never carry out but it’s enough to let me know how serious she is about this.
“Okay,” I concede on a long, drawn out groan. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“Thank you. I love you, Gemmie,” Emily says quietly. “I’ll call you Tuesday to see how it went.”
She hangs up, leaving me alone before I can change my mind.