Southern Storms Read online

  Southern Storms

  Brittainy Cherry

  BCherry Books, INC

  Southern Storms

  By: Brittainy C. Cherry

  Southern Storms

  Southern Storms

  Copyright © 2020 by Brittainy C. Cherry

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Brittainy C. Cherry 2020

  [email protected]

  Editing: C. Marie Editing, My Brother’s Editor, Jenny Sims at Editing for Indies, Jenn Lockwood Editing

  Cover Design: Hang Le

  Photographer: Rafa G. Cátala

  Cover Model: Emilio Alcaraz

  Created with Vellum

  To every heart that needs a little healing,

  this one’s for you.

  Contents

  Quote

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  First Dance

  The Elements Series by Brittainy C. Cherry

  Also by Brittainy C. Cherry

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Thy fate is the common fate of all; into each life some rain must fall.”

  -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Prologue

  Jax

  Thirteen years old

  Sun,

  I’m sorry if I upset you with my last few letters. I don’t know what to do. Everything is ruined because of me, and I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore. My brother hates me. My dad hates me. He hates me so much, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop crying, and I want to run away forever and never look back. You said I could run away to you if I needed to, remember? Can I? Can I come stay with you? Maybe your parents can pick me up. You know my address. If you come, I’ll be ready. I hate it here. It’s all my fault. I want to run away. Please, let me run away to you.

  Are you afraid of me now because of what I did? Is that why you won’t write me back? It was a mistake. I swear, it was a mistake. I didn’t mean to do it. She was my best friend, like you are my best friend.

  Please write me back.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I hate this. I’m sorry.

  Please write me back.

  Please, Sun. I need you.

  -Moon

  1

  Kennedy

  Present day

  “Please don’t embarrass me tonight,” Penn said as he fixed his tie for the fiftieth time that night.

  The wallpaper of our home was infused with cigarette smoke and broken promises. My husband had broken some promises, and I’d shattered a few all on my own. Was that what marriage was? Days twisting into weeks that morphed into months and years of broken promises? The words “I do” came with fine print no one ever truly read. We scrolled past the terms of agreement and clicked the “I agree” box at the end, not knowing about the hidden consequences we were signing up for.

  I’d failed my vows, but he had failed his, too.

  Promises, promises, so many broken promises.

  That night, I promised him I wouldn’t tear up in front of his coworkers and clients during his real estate company’s event. The evening was a great opportunity for Penn to wine and dine very wealthy individuals who were in search of large properties. The smoother things went that night, the better chance Penn had at building his connections with his clients. He didn’t want to bring me along, but his boss insisted on spouses attending.

  I promised Penn I wouldn’t bring up our past, either. I wasn’t intending to break my promises at dinner that night. I took my anxiety medication. I did my breathing exercises. I only closed my eyes when we went through the intersections on the car ride to the event. When we were on the freeway, I was fine. Normal, even—well, my kind of normal.

  My promises were intact.

  Everything was perfect, as perfect as it could’ve been, given my issues, and then Marybeth—the beautiful, stunning Marybeth—leaned in toward me during our meal. There were five couples at our table, which included Penn’s work colleague, Marybeth. The others were potential clients of Penn’s that were worth more money than I could’ve ever imagine.

  I wished I could’ve been more like Marybeth. She was perfect. The perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect realtor. She smelled like Chanel No. 5, and her neck dripped in diamonds. Her pearly white smile made others grin with their lips sealed tight because they knew they couldn’t match the level of wow that Marybeth’s smile delivered. She was everything I wasn’t and everything I’d dreamed of becoming.

  There used to be a time in my life when I loved myself so much that I never envied another woman’s life.

  What happened to me? When did my strengths escape my body?

  Perfect Marybeth touched my wrist lightly and smiled with both her lips and her hazel-colored eyes. “Intriguing tattoo, Kennedy. What does it stand for?”

  Right at that moment, the promise I’d made to Penn dissolved. First, it was a crack in the corners of my promise, and then all the pieces shattered.

  “It’s…my…” I breathed in a sharply breath as I turned to see Penn staring at me so intensely. I saw it in his blue stare—the disappointment, because he knew the signs of my faults. He knew when I was slipping, slipping, slipping away. My body trembled, my voice cracked, and every breath of air felt labored. “It’s…well…”

  I looked down at the tattoo upon my skin: a daisy with a backward D in the middle of the flower.

  “My… It’s…” I swallowed the tight breath sitting in my throat and shut my eyes. Tears were waiting to break free, and I hated that I was about to let them fall. “It’s for my parents and my…” I opened my eyes and looked toward Penn, whose eyes were screaming Don’t, but I
couldn’t start and not finish the conversation. “Our daughter. The backward D is for our daughter.”

  Her lips parted as realization settled into her mind. She sat back in her seat with a look of guilt gathering in her eyes. Of course she knew about the accident. Everyone knew about the accident; they just preferred to tiptoe around the topic instead of facing it head-on. Death made people uncomfortable, and I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to talk about it. It was such an odd topic to tackle.

  I traced the backward D on my skin as the tears began rolling down my face. “My daughter’s name was—” I wanted to tell her. I needed to keep talking about them to keep them alive to me. It was the small comfort I needed, but sometimes the words came out a little too wobbly.

  “Kennedy.” A hand landed on my wrist, covering the tattoo. I looked up to see Penn staring my way, shaking his head lightly as he squeezed my wrist a little too tight. “Maybe you should go clean up your face, take a minute to yourself.”

  Which translated to: You’re embarrassing me again—pull yourself together.

  He didn’t feel sorry for me anymore. After over a year, why should he have? He had been able to heal from our tragedy. I should’ve been able to do the same, yet, for some reason, I wasn’t better.

  All I wanted to do was be better.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes just to have more fall rapidly. “Yes. Of course. Sorry, I just…” I pushed my chair away from the table and excused myself. “I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

  Marybeth’s eyes were filled with guilt. Her hand pressed against her chest as I turned to walk away, and I heard her whisper an apology to Penn.

  “No, no, you did nothing wrong, Marybeth,” Penn said, sounding apologetic as he comforted his co-worker instead of his own wife. “She just gets that way. You did nothing wrong. She’s too emotional for her own good. She needs to learn to pull herself together better. Really, at her age…”

  Too emotional.

  I headed to the bathroom to clean myself up. As I looked in the mirror, I was stunned by the reflection staring back at me. When had I lost it? When had I lost my color and my light? Had the bags beneath my eyes always been so heavy? How much weight had I lost to make my cheeks look so hollow?

  When the bathroom door was pushed open, a woman walked in—Laura, the wife of one of Penn’s colleagues.

  Laura was an older woman, probably in her late fifties. She was always so kind to me, even though I oftentimes came off as awkward and uncomfortable in most situations. Over the past year, Penn had made it seem as if I were more of a burden at his work gatherings than an asset. He’d tell me so many times that I’d be better off staying at home.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” Laura asked with the most sincere expression on her face. Her dark brown hair had waves of natural gray coming through, and when she smiled, you felt it.

  I chuckled a little to myself and wiped my eyes dry the best I could. “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m just too emotion—”

  “You’re not too emotional,” she cut in, walking my way with a paper towel in her hand. “You aren’t overreacting. I lost a child when I was younger—a miscarriage, but still a child—and it almost destroyed me. My saving grace was my husband. He was my rock when I crumbled. Now, I don’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help but see how Penn was treating you out there. Sweetheart, don’t take offense to what I’m about to say, but that’s not the way a husband should treat his wife. You should never be belittled when you are at rock bottom. He should lift you up, not kick you back down.”

  My lips parted to respond, but I didn’t know how.

  Laura patted the falling tears from my eyes and gave me a small smile. “Again, it’s none of my business, and Jonathon would kill me if he knew I got involved in other people’s affairs, but…you deserve healing, and you should be allowed to talk about your daughter without being shamed. Know your worth. Then charge more.”

  I swallowed hard as she gave me a hug I hadn’t even known my soul needed. My body melted against Laura’s, and she held me up as I cried into her arms.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. You’re okay. Don’t bottle it up. Let yourself feel.”

  After I finished falling apart in her arms, she let me go and gave me a smile. “By the way, I’ve read all of your novels. Your words are something to be treasured. I cannot wait for your future books.”

  I’d been publishing novels for the past five years, yet after the accident, I hadn’t written a word. My agent told me to take my time, and the words would come back to me, but lately I was beginning to think that wasn’t true. I lost my muse, therefore my words disappeared, too.

  The car ride home was silent, my back turned to Penn as I kept my eyes closed the whole way back. When we entered the house, Penn finally unleashed his pent-up anger.

  “You promised you wouldn’t do that,” he said with a sigh, brushing his hands through his gelled-back locks of hair. “You swore you wouldn’t have another fucking episode in public again! I mean, geez, Kennedy! Don’t you get tired of looking like a damn psychopath?” His words beat into me.

  I expected them from him because those words always came after one of my meltdowns. When they had first happened, he’d understood because he was grieving, too. But as the months passed, his understanding approach had turned bitter. He was exhausted by me, and I couldn’t blame him.

  I was exhausted by me, too. I just wished he could see I was trying my best. I was trying my best to be normal, to be me again.

  I was trying.

  I stared at him, uncertain about what to say because apologies felt so empty after so many failed attempts at trying to be my old self once more.

  He took off his sports jacket and tossed it over the living room chair before unbuttoning his cuffs. “I wish you would’ve never gotten that stupid-ass tattoo. It’s a fucked-up reminder of a fucked-up time, Kennedy. I don’t get why you’d want that reminder staring you in the eyes every single day.”

  His words were harsh, yet again, I didn’t blame him. I just stayed silent, staring down at the ink on my wrist. He didn’t understand it, but I needed that daily reminder. I needed to feel my baby girl on my skin. I needed to feel as if she was still with me.

  “Do you have anything to say?” he asked, unbuckling his pants. He tilted his head toward me as if he were a disappointed parent as opposed to a concerned, loving spouse. “Anything?”

  “I’m…” I swallowed hard and looked down to the ground. “I’m so-sor—”

  “You’re sorry,” he spat out, shaking his head. “Of course you are. You’re always sorry. Your whole life is an apology.”

  He was angry, and I understood why, but I didn’t get his aggression. It could’ve been the whiskey drinks sitting heavily in his gut from dinner. My husband was much more forward and shorter with me when he’d been drinking. His fuse was burning to an end.

  “You know what…? I can’t.” He sighed, shoving his hands through his hair before plopping down on the couch in front of me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. “I can’t do this.”

  “I-I know.” I swallowed hard and shut my eyes. “I know I can be a lot sometimes…”

  “Sometimes? Kennedy. This is all the time. You haven’t been normal for a long time, and it’s exhausting. It’s hard. You haven’t worked on any new novels in months. You hardly leave the house. Just getting you into a car is a chore. It’s suffocating me. You’re suffocating me. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t…” He shook his head. “I should’ve never done this in the first place.”

  “Done what?”

  “Married you. We should’ve never gotten married. My parents told me it was a terrible idea, but I was young and stupid, and look where that got me. They warned me that you were just trying to trap me, but I disagreed.”

  I shook my head as I looked his way. “Penn—”

  “But here I am—trapped. I should’ve listened. I should’ve run back then and not been an idiot.”

  “You…you’
re upset. I know I messed up today, but—”

  “Stop talking. Don’t you get it, Kennedy? I only married you because you got knocked up, and now I don’t even have a daughter to show for it because of you,” he spat out, raking a hand through his hair.

  My chest felt as if it were collapsing.

  His words stung even though we’d been so distant that his comments shouldn’t have hurt me anymore. We hadn’t been close in a while, minus meaningless sex and attending his work parties. I couldn’t recall the last time we laughed. My heartbeats were hardly ever crafted for him. Still, the venom on his tongue wreaked havoc on my mind, leaking into my brain cells and poisoning my self-worth—not that there was much left of it.

  He kept going. He kept digging. He kept destroying me with his words. “My father was right—you should’ve had an abortion. It would’ve saved us all a lot of time.”

  My heart…

  Its beats…

  They all came to a halt.

  Crashing…

  I was crashing down.