Southern Charmer (Charleston Heat 1)

Then I crash, hard, when I think about Eli not being a part of it. I glance at my phone, half hoping to see a text from him. A missed call. It hurts that he hasn’t reached out, especially after the things he said. I’m going through a lot at the moment—calling off engagements, quitting jobs, breaking my parents’ hearts—and I could really use a little moral support right now. Eli felt like my North Star when I was in Charleston. A reminder that I was always headed in the right direction.

But maybe I need to go through this on my own.

Maybe I need to learn to be my own North Star.

As much as it sucks, I want to know I’m making this decision because it’s what I want. Not what Eli wants. Not what my lusty pants feelings want.

What I want. Truly. Deep down.

Doing this by myself will hurt. It will be lonely and hard.

But I’d like to think it will be worth it.

I’m also not sure if I’m ready to forgive him for the way he behaved. My eyes still well up when I remember the look on his face when he said I’m done waiting on you. That was unkind. Unfair, too.

Maybe Eli’s not the guy I thought he was.

Sighing, I close the internet and open My Enemy the Earl. I’ve missed these characters over the past few days—with everything going on, I haven’t been able to work on them.

This has been a difficult book to write. Whoever said “do something you’ll love and you won’t work a day in your life” was full of shit. Writing always feels like work to me. It requires extreme focus. It’s often boring. But when I wake up and read through what I wrote the previous day, I’m bowled over by a sense of joy and fulfillment I feel all the way to my toes.

I wrote this. I came up with these characters. This story. I’m so proud of it, and so scared of it at the same time. I recognize writing a book and selling it require two distinct skill sets. But I hope to get a good grip on both.

I make a note on my digital calendar to email Kathryn Score, the professor-slash-romance author Julia introduced me to down in Charleston. Then I get to work on Gunnar and Cate.

Cate made the most of what she was given. She’d thought her family was all she needed. They filled her days and her heart. But recently—since she’d kissed Gunnar beneath the stars at Castle West—something had changed. Something inside her shifted, was different. Like a light shone inside the dark cavities of her heart, revealing a starkness, a bleed, she hadn’t noticed before.

And now that bleed consumed her.Chapter Thirty-FiveEliI can’t get out of bed.

A week passes. Another.

I have never been laid low like this before.

Then again, I’ve never failed like this before, either. Losing a restaurant—a dream—and a dream girl all at once is not for the faint of heart.

But I don’t shy away from feeling it. The pain. I let it pin me to the mattress. I let it keep me there, sweating and praying. Swearing and hoping.

Friends come and go in a steady, quiet stream, leaving behind casseroles and bottles of ibuprofen and books. Grace tries to take Billy, but he refuses to leave my side.

I appreciate the moral support. I get so lost inside my head—so twisted up—but Billy is always there to bring me back to the present. The little yelps he makes when he has nightmares. The way he licks my face in the mornings. How he wolfs down whatever bits of casserole I can’t finish.

He’s my lifeline to the real world. Without him and my therapist, I’d be lost.

It’s fucking weird not being at work. I’ve never taken more than a few days off at a time. I want to check in. I want to go in. Lose myself in the screaming bustle of the kitchen on a Saturday night. It’d be so easy.

But that would defeat the whole purpose of this little sabbatical I’m taking. I’m dealing with my fuck ups all on my own. So I leave instructions with Maria to call me in the event of an emergency. Otherwise, she’s in charge.

She hasn’t called once. Knowing that my kitchen is in such capable hands is both a relief and a disappointment. I’m not as essential as I thought I was.

Not as important.

Which begs the question: who the hell am I outside of Chef Elijah Jackson?

I glance at the stack of pages on my nightstand. My Enemy the Earl. All two-hundred some odd pages of it, marked up with my notes. Olivia left it here the last time she spent the night. I’ve re-read it countless times since. Made more notes. Thought about possible endings. Possible sequels.