Tonic (36 page)

I shook my head and thumbed her bottom lip. “Not even a little. I never thought … I didn’t know it could be like this. I didn’t know love until you, and now that I have you, I want you forever.”

And her smile could have moved mountains. “I’m yours.”

Acknowledgements

As always, I need to think my husband Jeff first. Thank you for always supporting me, for always stepping up, for being the one part of life that’s always easy and fun. You’re my hero, my ultimate, the reason why I write romance.

To Kandi Steiner — And here we thought it would be harder to write a book on the same schedule. You’ve pushed me, motivated me, loved me, supported me through writing this story, even when it was hard and things were ugly. I only hope I was able to do the same. I love you forever. #SteinHarts

To Becca Mysoor — Even though you weren’t a part of this book every day (THANKS A LOT, TRIP TO ASIA), your love and support has always been food for my soul, and this was no exception. Thank you for always having my back, and for making sure I’ve got panties on and that my lipstick is on point. I love you, boo.

To Brittainy Cherry — For always being there when I needed a friend. For always knowing just what to say, just what I needed to hear, even when I didn’t know it. Thank you for your heart. Thank you for your soul. Thank you for your friendship.

To Karla Sorensen — For being my ramble partner, my voice message queen, my cheerleader and cloned brain. I couldn’t have done this without your daily support.

To Tina Lynne — Thank you for kicking my story in the teeth when it needed it. Thank you for your honesty and for your organization and for your spreadsheets and reminders and Googling fingers.

To Amy Daws — For holding my hand and always telling me straight. Thank you, Dawsome.

To my betas:

Lex Martin — thanks for letting me blow up your vagina with my words.

Monique Boone — with the most thoughtful feedback, and for all the time you spent talking through this story with me.
 

Melissa Lynn — for always being my non-romance voice of reason.

Miranda Arnold — for always making me laugh in your comments, and for giving me such useful feedback.

Brandy Mello — please tell me you’re in for life, because your notes were brilliant.

Jenni Moen — please finish your book so I can beta read for you. PLEASE! *Cracks whip*

Ilsa Madden-Mills — for sending me the most helpful, adorable, blush-worthy voice messages. Praise from you is equivalent to it raining diamonds.

Zoe Lee and Matt Maenpaa — thank you for reading under duress and sending me your notes (also under duress)

To Sahar Bagheri and Meghan Quinn — thank you for reading the final version to make sure I didn’t walk out into the world with my dress tucked into my undies.

Special thanks to Jenn Watson of Social Butterfly for petting my hair and feeding me chocolates, and to Lauren Perry of Perrywinkle Photography for once again SLAYING my photoshoot.
 

And to Rebecca Slemons and Ellie McLove — thanks for making my words all shiny and pretty.

And YOU, readers. Thank YOU. You’re the reason for all of this, and I’m forever grateful for each and every one of you.

A Love Letter To Whiskey

MY BEST FRIEND KANDI STEINER just released her book, A Love Letter To Whiskey, and if you loved this book, I know you’ll love hers too. Her’s her first chapter, just to prove it.

Chapter One

First Taste

The first time I tasted Whiskey, I fell flat on my face.

Literally.

I was drunk from the very first sip, and I guess that should have been my sign to stay away.

Jenna and I were running the trail around the lake near her house, sweat dripping into our eyes from the intense South Florida heat. It was early September, but in South Florida, it might as well have been July. There was no "boots and scarves" season, unless you counted the approximately six weeks in January and February where the temperature dropped below eighty degrees.

As it was, we were battling ninety-plus degrees, me trying to be a show off and prove I could keep up with Jenna's cheerleading training program. She had finally made the varsity squad, and with that privilege came ridiculous standards she had to uphold. I hated running — absolutely loathed it. I would much rather have been on my surfboard that day. But fortunately for Jenna, she had a competitive best friend who never turned down a challenge. So when she asked me to train with her, I'd agreed eagerly, even knowing I'd have screaming ribs and calves by the end of the day.

I saw him first.

I was just a few steps ahead of Jenna, and I'd been staring down at my hot pink sneakers as they hit the concrete. When I looked up, he was about fifty feet away, and even from that distance I could tell I was in trouble. He seemed sort of average at first — brown hair, lean build, soaked white running shirt — but the closer he got, the more I realized just how edible he was. I noticed the shift in the muscles of his legs as he ran, the way his hair bounced slightly, how he pressed his lips together in concentration as he neared us.

I looked over my shoulder, attempting to waggle my eyebrows at Jenna and give her the secret best friend code for "hot guy up ahead," but she had stopped to tie her shoes. And when I turned back around, it was too late.

I smacked into him — hard — and fell to the pavement, rolling a bit to soften the fall. He cursed and I groaned, more from embarrassment than pain. I wish I could say I gracefully picked myself up, smiled radiantly, and asked him for his number, but the truth is I lost the ability to do anything the minute I looked up at him.

It was an unfamiliar, warm ache that spread through my chest as I used my hand to shield the sun streaming in behind his silhouette, just how you'd expect the first sip of whiskey to feel. He was bent over, hand outstretched, saying something that wasn't registering because I had somehow managed to slip my hand into his and just that one touch had set my skin on fire.

Handsome wasn't the right word to describe him, but it was all I kept thinking as I traced his features. His hair was a sort of mocha color, damp at the roots, falling onto his forehead just slightly. His eyes were wide — almost too round — and a mixture of gold, green, and the deepest brown. I didn't coin the nickname Whiskey until much later, but it was that moment that I saw it for the first time — those were whiskey eyes. The kind of eyes you get lost in. The kind that drink you in. He had the longest lashes and a firm, square jaw. It was so hard, the edges so clean that I would have sworn he was angry with me if it weren't for the smile on his face. He was still talking as my eyes fell over his broad chest before snapping back up to his sideways grin.

"Oh my God, are you fucking blind?!" Jenna's voice snapped me from my haze as she shoved Whiskey out of the way and latched onto my hand, ripping me back to standing position. I'd barely caught my balance before she whipped around to continue her scolding. "How about you brush that long ass hair out of your eyes and watch where you're going, huh champ?"

Oh no.

I didn't even have time to call dibs, I couldn't even think the word, let alone say it, before it was too late. I watched it, in slow motion, as Whiskey fell for my best friend before I even had the chance to say a single word to him.

Jenna was standing tall, arms crossed, one hip popped in her usual fashion as she waited for him to defend himself. This was her standard operating procedure — it was one of the reasons we got along. We were both what you'd call "spitfires", but Jenna had the distinct advantage of being cripplingly gorgeous on top of having an attitude. She flipped her long, wavy blonde ponytail behind her and cocked a brow.

And then he did, too.

His smile grew wider as he met her eyes, and it was the same look I'd watched fall over guy after countless guy. Jenna was a unicorn, and men were enamored by her. As they should have been — she had platinum blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, legs for days, and a personality to boot. Now, before you go thinking that I was the insecure best friend — I had it going on, too. I worked hard, I was talented — just not at the things traditional high school boys valued.

But we'll get to that.

"Hi," Whiskey finally said, extending his hand to Jenna this time. His eyes were warm, smile inviting — if I had to pick the right word for him, just one, I'd say charming. He just oozed charm. "I'm Jamie."

"Well, Jamie, maybe you should make an appointment with the eye doctor before you run over another innocent jogger. And you owe Brecks an apology." She nodded to me then and I cringed at my name, wondering why she felt the need to spill it at all. She always called me B — everyone did — so why did she choose the moment I was face to face with the first boy to ever make my heart accelerate to use my full name?

Jamie was still grinning, eying Jenna, trying to figure her out, but he turned to me after a moment with that same crooked smile. "I'm sorry, I should have been watching where I was going." He said the words with conviction, but lifted his brows on that last line because he and I both knew who wasn't paying attention to the trail, and he wasn't the guilty party.

"It's fine," I murmured, because for some reason I was still having a difficult time finding my voice. Jamie tilted his head just a fraction, his eyes hard on me this time, and I felt naked beneath his gaze. I'd never had anyone look at me that way — completely zeroed in. It was unnerving and exhilarating, too.

But before I could latch onto the feeling, he turned back to Jenna, their eyes meeting as slow smiles spread on both of their faces. I'd seen it a million times, but this was the first time I felt sick watching it happen.

I saw him first, but it didn't matter.

Because he saw her.

*     *     *

It was just over a week later that Jenna and Jamie put a title on the flirting relationship they'd been having for a solid eight days. That's how it was when we were in high school — there were no games, no "let's just hook up and see where this goes." You were either with someone or you weren't, and they were very together.

I had the privilege of watching them make out between classes, and as much as I wanted to hate them together, I just didn't. In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten that I'd seen Jamie first because they were disgustingly cute together. Jenna was taller than me, but she was just short enough to fit perfectly under Jamie's arm. She was a cheerleader, he was a basketball player — different seasons, but popular and respected nonetheless. His dark features complimented her light ones, and they had a similar sense of humor. They even sounded good together — Jenna and Jamie. I mean honestly, how could I be mad at that?

So I dropped it, dropped the idea of him, moved easily into the third wheel position I was used to with Jenna and her long list of boyfriends. Jamie was the first of them who seemed to enjoy me there. He was always talking to me, making jokes, bridging the gap between awkward and easy friendship. It was nice, and I was sincerely happy for them.

Still, I had opted out of tricycling that particular afternoon after school. Instead, I swung my Jansport onto my bed and immediately started ruffling through the clothes in my top drawer for my bathing suit, desperate to get some time on the water before the sun set. Daylight Savings hadn't set in yet, but the days were slowly getting shorter, reminding me that summer was far away.

"Hey sweetie," my mom said, knuckles rapping softly on the panel of my door frame. "You hungry? I was thinking we could go out for dinner tonight, maybe to that sushi bar you love so much?"

"I'm not really hungry yet. Going to go check out the surf," I replied, my smile tight. I didn't even look up from my drawer, just pulled out my favorite white, strappy top and avoided her eyes. It wasn't that I was a dramatic teen who hated her mom, I wasn't — I loved her, but things were different between us than they had been just two short years before.

Okay, this is the part where I warn you — I had daddy issues. I guess in a way, mommy issues, too.

But let me explain.

Everything in my life was perfect, at least in my eyes, until the summer before my sophomore year of high school. That was the summer I opened my pretty gray eyes and looked around at my life, realizing it wasn't at all what it seemed.

I thought I had it all. My parents weren't married or even together, but then again they never had been. I was used to that. It was our normal. Mom never dated anyone, Dad dated but never remarried, and somehow we still always ended up together — just the three of us — every Christmas. I'd always lived in my mom's house, but I'd spent equal time at my dad's. My parents never fought, but they never really laughed, either. I assumed they made it work for me, and I was thankful for that.

We were unconventional, me bouncing between houses and them tolerating each other for my sake, but we worked. Dad's skin was white, pale as they come, freckled and tinged pink while Mom's was the smoothest, most delicate shade of black. Ebony and ivory, with me the perfectly imperfect mixture of the two.

They may not have made enough at their respective jobs to shower me with birthday gifts or buy me a shiny new car on my sixteenth birthday, but they worked hard, they paid the bills, and they instilled that mindset in me, too. The Kennedy's may not have been rich in dollars, but we were rich in character.

Still, not everything is as it seems.

I never understood that saying — not really — not until that summer before tenth grade when everything I thought I knew about my life got erased in a violent come-to-Jesus talk. My mom had drank too much one night, as she often did, and I'd humored her by holding her hair back as she told me how proud she was of me between emptying her stomach into our off-white toilet.

"You are so much more than I ever could have wished for," she kept repeating, over and over. But then the literal vomit turned to word vomit, and she revealed a truth I wasn't prepared for.

You see, the story I'd been told my entire life was that mom and dad were best friends growing up. They were inseparable, and after years of everyone around them making jokes about them dating, they finally conceded, and it turned out they were perfect together. They had a happy relationship for several years, a bouncing baby girl who they both loved very much, but it just didn't work out, so they went back to being friends. The end. Sounds sweet, right?