SNEAK
PEEK into
MAKE
IT A DOUBLE
BY
USA Today Best-selling Author Sawyer
Bennett
Last
Call, #2
Adult
Contemporary Romance
Releasing
April 21, 2014
Brody
Markham has endured a nightmare, spending the last five years in prison and
losing everything that was dear to him. Now he’s back home, trying to survive
in a world he doesn’t recognize anymore. While his family and friends
desperately try to reach through to him, he shelters himself further and
further away from their love.
Alyssa
Myers has worked her entire life to distance herself from the luxurious and
privileged lifestyle in which she was raised. Running her non-profit agency,
The Haven, she is content to spend her days helping abused animals find
sanctuary, which fulfills her in a way that money just can’t buy.
Maybe
it’s that she recognizes in Brody some of the same characteristics she sees in
her homeless wards, but Alyssa is powerless to stop her personal quest to make
Brody whole again.
While
Brody struggles to surface from the darkness, Alyssa tries to protect her heart
in case he’s not willing to accept the light that she offers him.
*MAKE IT A DOUBLE can be read as a stand-alone*
I put the last of my groceries away, fold up the brown paper bags,
and tuck them in the space between my refrigerator and the kitchen wall.
Turning around, I observe my little studio apartment. I see it all in just a
quick glance, because it’s about the size of a postage stamp.
While I just helped Gabby move into Hunter’s house, I
certainly didn’t need to ask them to reciprocate the favor. The only things I
own are my clothes, and those were gifts to me from my mom. She had taken me
out shopping the day after I got home from prison, outfitting me with an
entirely new wardrobe. I mean… new as opposed to wearing prison garb for five
years. I felt ashamed that my mom had to buy her twenty-eight-year-old son
clothes because he didn’t have a dime to his name.
Past my clothes and some basic toiletries, I have no other
possessions. The car I’m driving is courtesy of my parents… on loan, of course.
It’s an old Chevy Malibu that had been sitting under a tarp, which Dad used to
drive. They don’t use it, but it runs fine. Mom and Dad tried to give it to me,
but I wouldn’t accept it. Instead, I capitulated only by agreeing that I was
borrowing it until I could save up enough money to buy it from them.
Luckily, this studio apartment came completely furnished, and
the kitchen was stocked with dishes, pots, pans, and utensils. I had all the
basics that I needed to survive, because let’s face it… it wasn’t too fucking
hard to boil some Ramen noodles for dinner, and that was a huge step up from
the prison food I’d been eating.
So with my duffel bag filled with clothes purchased by my
mom, I drove my old Chevy borrowed from my parents to the grocery store and
stocked up on some basic provisions. Then it took me all of five minutes to
move into my new home.
A knock on my door has me glancing down at my watch.
Right on time.
In three regular strides, I’m from one side of the apartment
to the other and opening the door. There stands my parole officer, Jimbo Peaks.
He is six-foot-six of solid muscle, his neck as thick as a tree truck, and his
biceps the size of smoked hams. With skin darker than midnight, his light hazel
eyes are spooky as shit when he looks directly at you, in that contemplative
sort of way I’ve come to know over the last two months since I’ve been home.
“What’s up, Brody?” he says with a huge grin on his face,
sticking his hand out for me to shake.
I take his hand, and it freaks me out how mine is dwarfed by
his. I mean… I’m not a small man myself, almost as tall as Jimbo, in fact. But
when comparing my muscle mass to his, I feel downright puny and I kept myself
in pretty decent shape while in prison. Other than reading, working out was
about the only thing that was a resourceful use of my time.
“Come on in,” I tell him as I step back so he can enter.
Jimbo walks into my humble abode and turns around once. Yup…
he’s seen everything. A small kitchen on one side that merges right into my
living room that abuts one wall. A double bed takes up the other wall, and the
bathroom takes up another. It’s four hundred and fifty feet of cozy living,
situated right above Mabel Fisher’s three-car garage.
Miss Mabel is older than Methuselah but has been a friend of
our family’s since I was a baby. She’s eccentric, rich as hell, and loves to
thumb her nose at polite society.
And by polite society, I mean those people here on the
islands that look at me in disdain because I killed someone.
Not Mabel though. She was at my parents’ house within
forty-eight hours of my return home, giving me a hug and a papery kiss, then
making me sit down while she drank tea and filled me in on all the Outer Banks’
gossip for the past five years. She’s a trip… a breath of fresh air, and one of
the few around here willing to give me a chance. When she offered to rent this
apartment to me for a ridiculously small amount, I couldn’t say no.
“Nice digs man,” Jimbo’s deep voice rumbles. “All moved in?”
“Yup. Bag of clothes and some groceries. I’m settled.”
Jimbo chuckles and moves to my small kitchen table that seats
only two people. Sitting down, he motions to the other chair so I do the same. “How
does it feel to be out of your parents’ house?”
I crack a small smile and tap my fingers on the kitchen
table. “It’s good. I mean… I love my parents, but it was time for me to get my
own place.”
“Heard that,” Jimbo agrees, and then transitions into his
next question. “How’s work going?”
“Going great,” I tell him, because it is. I enjoy working at
Last Call, and I’m thankful as fuck I have a job. Most parolees struggle to
find work, or get shit jobs that scrape the bottom of the barrel. When they can’t
find work because no one will take a chance on them, they go back to a life of
crime. If I had a nickel for every repeat offender I met in prison, who was
there just because they couldn’t make an honest living, well… I’d be buying
Mabel’s house from her rather than renting this apartment.
Jimbo doesn’t seem satisfied with my short answer, so he
delves a bit more. It’s his job to make sure I can acclimate to life on the
outside, so I’m not bothered when he asks, “Any problem being around the
alcohol?”
“Nah,” I tell him genuinely. “No desire to drink at all.”
“That’s good,” he says with a smile. “Seeing as how that’s a
condition of your parole.”
“Look, man… doesn’t matter if it’s a condition or not, there
is nothing on this earth that could get me to drink a drop of alcohol.”
“And why is that?” he asks, but he knows the answer.
I tell him anyway.
“Because it shattered my life. Because it killed a man. It
left a mother without a husband and a little boy without a father. Need any
other reason?”
“No,” Jimbo says quietly, staring at me with those light
eyes. “That’s a good enough reason.”
I hold his gaze, waiting for the next question. We’ve had
this same meeting on five other occasions since I came home, but today it’s
being done at my new home so he can check it out. As a parole officer, his role
is part jail keeper, part counselor. It’s his responsibility to keep me on the
straight and narrow, but to also do what he can to make sure my head is clear
when I’m making my choices. So that involves talking… a lot. Just to make sure
that the emotional and psychological toll of reentering the real world doesn’t
cast me in a downward spiral.
Yeah, I talk a lot to Jimbo. He knows more of my internal
struggles dealing with life on the outside than my family does. For whatever
reason, I’ve been able to open up to him—somewhat—in a way that I just haven’t
with my family. I suppose that boils down to the simple fact that Jimbo asks me
questions… asks me how I’m feeling and how I’m coping. My parents, my identical
twin Hunter, my baby sister, Casey… while they love me more than the air they
breathe, well… they’re just not sure what is open to talk about and what may be
taboo. So they walk on eggshells.
“Tell me some of the problems you’ve had adjusting?” Jimbo
leads in.
Heard this question before too, and my answer the last time
was, Not anything to tell.
I start to tell him the same thing, but the look on his face
stops me. It says, And don’t hand me any
bullshit, either.
I suppose I can skirt the real issues only so long before
Jimbo is apt to put me in a headlock and beat the information out of me. Taking
a deep breath and letting it out slowly, I decide to go ahead and lay it out. “I
wake up at five AM every day, no matter what time I get to sleep the night
before. It’s because I’ve been getting up at the same time every morning for
the last five years… because I had no choice but to get up every morning at five
AM. I don’t even know how to have a leisurely morning where I sleep in. When I
go to sleep at night, I can hear metal cots squeaking and my cell mate rubbing
one off while he tries to stifle his groans into the two-inch piece of flimsy
foam that’s called a pillow. I hear the newbies crying, and I hear the lifers
telling them to shut the fuck up. When I’m awake… out in the real world, I can’t
walk around a blind corner without my palms sweating, because I’m expecting
someone will be there waiting to jump me. I was always on alert… I’m still
always on alert. The air smells too fresh, the food tastes too good, people
talk too loud, and I’m having a hard time letting people touch me. It’s
overwhelming and that’s just for starters, Jimbo. So yeah,” I say with some
sarcasm as my eyes drop to the table. “I’m having a bit of an adjustment
problem.”
“How does all of that make you feel?”
My eyes slowly rise to meet his. “I’m pissed off. All the
time. I’m withdrawn, moody, and restless. I have all this wide-open space
available to me, yet I’m having a hard time straying too far from the things
that are safe to me. So I go to work, and I go home.
That’s it.”
Jimbo gives me that contemplative look, and I can see the
wheels turning inside his head. I’m prepared for him to launch into a pep talk,
about how I have a chance to make something with my life… to atone for my
mistakes and put the past behind me. Instead, he says, “You know… there’s
something odd about you.”
My eyebrows shoot up and, for a moment, I consider being
affronted by that statement, but then I just mentally shrug my shoulders. Odd
is one of many things that I am.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“I’ve been doing this work close to twelve years now… and I
can count on one hand the amount of parolees I’ve had that don’t try to
convince me that they didn’t do it… or they were framed… or hell, even if they
did do it, they blame a corrupt system for sending them away.” He pauses, his
green-gold eyes flickering back and forth between mine. “But not you. You
accepted responsibility and never once tried to blame someone or something else
for your lot in life. It just makes you… odd.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I lean back in my chair. “No one to
blame but myself.”
“That’s right,” Jimbo says with a nod. “No one to blame but
yourself, and you’ve done a remarkable job accepting responsibility. In fact,
you’ve done such a good job at it… some might say that it would help you have a
clear conscience.”
“What’s your point?” I ask, genuinely curious as to where he’s
going with this.
“My point is that if you truly took responsibility and had a
clear conscience, then you should have some measure of peace.”
I scratch my chin absently, pondering his words. I did the
time. I took my lumps and accepted my punishment. Should that give me peace?
Jimbo’s probably right. In those circumstances, maybe my soul
should feel a little lighter… more free. If I truly was remorseful for what
happened, and I truly had done my penance, I shouldn’t be struggling the way I
am.
Except… my circumstances aren’t exactly the way Jimbo
describes it. He sees my sorrow and guilt, but he doesn’t see past that.
Because there’s a whole lot more that makes up Brody Markham’s fucked-up world
than just the after effects of a few years in prison. My issues started before
I even got sent away.
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