From the Embers Read online

  From the Embers

  Copyright © 2021 Aly Martinez

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  From the Embers is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Hang Le

  Editing: Mickey Reed

  Proofreading: Michele Ficht and Julia Griffis

  Formatting: Champagne Book Design

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Preview of Release: A Standalone Friends-to-Lovers

  Other Books

  About the Author

  To Mo Mabie

  Thank you for suggesting pure brilliance like steel-toed boots.

  And also for making sure I never wrote it down.

  AND

  To Corinne Michaels

  For all the nice things I’ve done that you never remember.

  EASON

  “Hey,” I breathed, catching Jessica’s arm as she tiptoed out of the nursery.

  “Stop, Eason. I’m not in the mood.”

  She was never in the mood. And not the kind of mood that happened in the bedroom. Though, coincidentally, she was never up for that, either.

  I gave her arm a warm squeeze. “Come on. You have to talk to me.”

  “No, I don’t!” she yelled, spinning around to face me.

  Bracing for war—and defeat—I silently shut the door to our daughter’s bedroom. “Quiet or you’ll wake her.”

  “You don’t have to remind me of that. I was the one who got her to sleep in the first place while you were out in the garage, pretending to be Billy Joel on that fucking piano.”

  Yep. She was absolutely right. Though, I was actually trying to be Eason Maxwell and force lyrical blood from my fingertips in order to string together a damn chorus that would allow me to keep our home out of foreclosure.

  “There is no winning here, Jess. If I spend all day trying to create even the biggest pile-of-shit song that I can sell to keep us afloat for another few months, you hate me for working all the time. If I stop everything to help you with the baby, we lose the house and you hate me. What am I supposed to do?”

  Her eyes flashed wide, her dark eyebrows jumping up her forehead. After three years of marriage, I had enough experience to know whatever was about to come out of her mouth was going to be the God’s honest truth as she saw it. I also knew it was going to hurt like hell.

  “You’re supposed to be able to support your family!”

  Yep. TKO.

  Willing my temper into check, I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds of her heaving breaths—broken and rasping just like our marriage. “I’m trying.”

  “At what point is trying not good enough anymore?”

  My eyes popped open as I read between the lines. That wasn’t just a stab at my career. That blow was as much about our marriage as my employment status.

  Gritting my teeth, I warned, “Don’t say something you can’t take back.”

  We’d vowed never to use divorce as a threat, and for the most part, we’d done a pretty damn good job. But in the six months since Luna had been born, the big D-word had hung on her lips almost daily. It gutted me each and every time, but I’d been walking on eggshells around her for so long I didn’t know how to do anything else.

  Tears sparkled in her blue eyes. “You promised me, Eason. You swore to me the day we saw those two little pink lines on the pregnancy test. You know how I grew up and you vowed to me our baby wouldn’t have to do the same.”

  All of this was true.

  But while I’d been struggling to give her all the things I’d dreamed about when she’d walked down the aisle with a lace vail covering a huge smile, the life we currently had was a far cry from the dilapidated farmhouse she’d grown up in.

  “That’s not fair.” I pointedly swung my incredulous gaze around our three-bedroom, two-bath, two-thousand-square-foot home we’d dubbed Maxwell Manor. It was farther away from Atlanta’s city limits than Jessica had originally wanted, but it was one of the few places we could afford with a basement to accommodate a studio. A studio that we’d never built because…well, life had happened.

  More accurately, Luna Jade Maxwell had happened.

  We hadn’t been planning on kids yet. Jessica and I had a lot of living to do before we wanted to start a family. What was the saying about best laid plans? The ink on my recording contract wasn’t even dry when I’d found Jessica on her hands and knees in our bathroom, tears streaming down her cheeks, and clutching a positive pregnancy test.

  Was the timing ideal? Absolutely fucking not. Especially when, a few months later, my label scrapped my album and then dropped me completely.

  Was Luna, with all her thick, brown hair and a set of honey-colored eyes that were so uniquely hers it was as if she defined the color, the most spectacular thing that had ever happened to me? Unquestionably.

  My shoulders sagged and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Look, can we put a pin in this for a while? I need to take a shower and start making appetizers, and as soon as Luna wakes up, I’ll run her over to Rob and Bree’s.”

  “Oh right, because we can’t afford a babysitter, so we have to lean on my best friend in order to hang out with them.”

  I let out a groan. Jesus, she never missed an opportunity to take a hunk of my flesh. She acted like I was the only adult who lived in the house. She’d wanted to be a stay-at-home mom like Bree. I’d wanted that for her too. But when things got tough and my savings dwindled to nothing, Jessica never once stepped up to ask what she could do or how she could help our family. And yes, I was bitter about it, but you didn’t see me taking that shit out on her.

  Above and beyond that, I wasn’t leaning on Bree for shit.

  Luckily—or unluckily depending on how you looked at it—Jessica’s best friend, Bree, was married to my best friend, Rob. This meant I’d phoned the closest thing I had to a brother and asked my best friend if I could drop our daughter off to stay with his sitter.

  He’d of course said yes. Then, after hearing the shame and frustration in my voice, he’d spent the next fifteen minutes on a pep talk, reminding me he and Bree had also struggled after their oldest had been born. To hear him tell it, everything we were experiencing was perfectly normal. I had a feeling that his wife wasn’t giving Jessica the same encouragement.
/>   It could be said that Bree wasn’t my biggest fan. It could also be said that I’d puked on her shoes the night we’d met. But hey, stomach acid under the bridge, right?

  We weren’t mortal enemies or anything. Bree and I got along just fine—on the surface. Deep down, she was a touch…uh, difficult.

  And judgmental.

  And snobby.

  And…well, high maintenance.

  I was learning some of that applied to my own wife too.

  I’d been moving heaven and earth to work my way back into Jessica’s good graces. My hopes were high that a double-date night would at least bring her smile back. There was no way I could afford dinner and drinks at whatever five-star restaurant Bree would deem worthy of her presence, so Rob had suggested we make it a game night. With the kids at their place, the four of us could hang out at our house, free from little ears and responsibility. Everyone would BYOB. I’d drink the remnants of the Scotch Rob had given me when Luna was born, and I’d buy Jessica whatever giant bottle of wine I could find on sale. The good news for me was she wasn’t picky when it came to drinking away her troubles.

  Gripping the back of my neck, I held her icy stare. “Can we just not do this tonight? Please. I’m so sick and fucking tired of fighting all the time. You’re pissed. I get it, okay? We’ll figure it out.” Reaching out, I hooked my pinky with hers and gave it a gentle tug.

  She inched closer, stopping before her chest touched mine. “You’ve been trying to figure it out for months now, and nothing has changed. The mortgage company is blowing up my phone like I can magically produce four months of payments if they just keep calling. Every morning, I wake up terrified that it’s going to be the day they finally turn off the water or the power or—” Her voice cracked. “Or…I don’t know. Something.”

  My stomach wrenched. Shit was bad, but arguing about it all the time wasn’t doing anything productive other than driving a wedge between us.

  I moved into her, wrapping her in a hug, and kissed the top of her head. I didn’t let her stiffness faze me. “I’m not going to let them turn the water off. Or the power. Or anything else you can think of.”

  “How?” she croaked, her lack of faith as insulting as it was justified.

  I sucked in a deep breath, my chest filling painfully. Dammit. It was time. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Not for pride. Not for what-ifs. Not for all the “maybe one days” in the world. It was our only way out. I was a father and a husband who had responsibilities that didn’t involve chasing a dream.

  “I’m gonna pull apart the album,” I whispered.

  “Eason,” she gasped, tipping her head back and resting her chin on my pec. So much fucking happiness danced in her eyes that it felt like a knife to the gut.

  The spotlight was out of my reach, but I knew how to sell music. Songwriting was where I’d gotten my start. It had paid for our first date, Jessica’s engagement ring, and the down payment on our house. Currently, my dwindling royalties were paying our bills—when we paid them. The first time I’d heard one of my songs on the radio, I’d called everyone I knew, simultaneously laughing and fighting back emotion. I was proud of my accomplishments, but the ultimate goal had always been for me to not only write incredible music, but also be the voice on the radio performing it.

  With my signature mix of laid-back pop and soul, Solstice in the ’92 was supposed to be my ticket to the top of the charts. Thirteen songs I’d poured my heart and soul into, each one representing a different stage in my life from growing up without a dad to my party days as a bachelor, all the way to the birth of my daughter. They were bold. They were raw. They were Eason Maxwell. Selling them off was going to feel like being ripped limb from limb.

  But they would pay the bills.

  Maybe even permanently bring back the light in my wife’s eyes, the spark in our marriage, and allow me to keep my family together. There was nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice—hopes and dreams included—to be the man Jessica and Luna deserved.

  For that reason alone, I managed a smile as I stared down at her. “It’s the right thing to do, babe. For you. For Luna. Hell, maybe even for me. A fresh start can’t hurt, right?”

  She circled her arms around my neck—the first physical contact she’d initiated in weeks. “How long do you think it will take to shop them around?”

  “Hard to say, but I’ll make some calls first thing on Monday.”

  She let out a giggle that momentarily quelled the burning in my throat. “‘Turning Pages’ is incredible. I bet someone huge snatches it up.”

  Great, just what I’d always wanted: an egocentric prima donna singing about my tumultuous relationship with my narcissistic mother.

  I shot her another tight smile. “That would be amazing.”

  Her voice had a renewed levity I hadn’t heard in months. “We should celebrate. Grab a bottle of champagne while you’re out.” She paused. “Actually, never mind. I’ll ask Bree. She’ll bring the good stuff.”

  Oh, of course. I’d ripped my heart out and set it at my wife’s feet, but it would be Bree who’d save the day.

  It was salt in the wound, but like so much of my marriage, I just kept right on smiling. “Sounds great.”

  BREE

  “He’s selling ’92?” I whispered with utter shock into the phone.

  Jessica blew out an exasperated breath on the other end of the line. “Well, he said he was. The real question will be if he actually follows through.”

  I peeked around the corner of the kitchen to make sure Rob wasn’t within earshot. My husband hated when Jessica and I talked about his closest friend. Rob always thought we were ganging up on the poor guy, but it was literally at the very top of my best friend job description to make sure Eason was taking care of my girl. My concern was more than warranted. For the last few years, he had been failing in spectacular fashion at that task.

  When I was sure Rob was still in the garage, probably whispering sweet nothings to his precious Porsche, I walked back to the oven to check on dinner for the kids. “But he brought up selling the album all on his own this time, right? That has to mean something.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah, it means he’s sick of sleeping on the couch and not getting laid.”

  “Well, whatever the case. As long as it ends with you and Luna not being homeless, I’m good with it.” I paused and chewed on my bottom lip. “You know if you need anything until he’s able to sell—”

  “Nope. Don’t even start with that crap. This is not your problem.”

  I let out a sigh. Jessica and I had been friends since our college waitressing days. She was stubborn, hard-headed, and so damn full of pride that she wouldn’t accept a helping hand even if she was flat on her ass. Which wasn’t too far from her current situation.

  “Jess, stop. Just let me give you a little—”

  “Champagne,” she finished for me. “The only thing I’m accepting from you is champagne. We’re celebrating tonight.”

  “This is technically the first time I’ve been away from the kids since Madison was born.”

  “Wow. Your first outing is to my crappy living room. What a lucky girl.”

  “Hey, I’m just happy to get a night out that doesn’t involve a diaper bag.” This wasn’t totally true. I’d been stressing about leaving the kids all week.

  It drove Rob crazy that I’d been shutting down date night after date night for almost ten months. We had a great sitter in our neighbor, Evelyn. She was crazy sweet and patient, with four teenage boys of her own. Rob and I both trusted her with Asher, but Madison was different. She had been a preemie who spent over a month in the NICU. At ten months old, she was thriving, but in my eyes, she would always be that tiny three-and-a-half-pound baby covered in wires and struggling to breathe.

  It was time though. Mentally and emotionally, this mama needed a break.

  “I’m calling bullshit.” Jessica laughed. “You’ve been pacing the house all day, haven’t you?”

  I peeked out of my
kitchen window for the sixth time in so many minutes to check on Evelyn and Madison playing on a blanket in the grass. “What? No. I haven’t.”

  “Liar.”

  Movement at the door to the garage caught my attention. Rob’s deep-brown eyes immediately found mine, and a mischievous smile grew across his face. It was the way he always looked at me—rapt and awestruck.

  My cheeks heated as he prowled toward me, his gaze sliding down my body, lingering in all the right places.

  “Jess, I need to go.”

  “Fine, but Eason should be there any minute to drop off Luna. Chances are Rob already knows about the album, but don’t mention to either of them that I told you.”

  “Mmhm,” I hummed, biting my lips. My husband’s muscular body swayed as he made his predatory advance. “See you tonight.” I didn’t say goodbye before hitting the end button.

  Rob plucked the phone from my hand and set it on the counter, hooking one arm around my hips to draw me close. “Wow,” he whispered, his breath ghosting across my lips. “You look gorgeous.”

  “Let’s not get carried away. It’s just a sundress,” I replied, smiling against his mouth. More specifically, it was my least favorite sundress. Yellow-and-brown floral had never been my friend, but I was still on the uphill climb of losing the last ten pounds after having Madison, so it was one of the few dresses I had that fit.

  Once upon a time, I’d been a businesswoman—pencil skirts and blazers had made up the majority of my wardrobe. Now, I was a stay-at-home mom of two. On a good day, I wore pants with a waistband.

  Sneaking his hand under the hem of my dress, he cupped my ass. “Don’t say the word just about anything when it comes to you in this dress.”

  “I take it you like—”

  “Mom!” Asher yelled down the stairs.

  Rob let out a groan and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I swear that kid has some kind of sixth sense for when I’m trying to make a move on his mother.”

  “That’s what you get for creating your mini-me. He knows when you’re up to no good.”