Sizzling Hot Apple Cider
Adulting Not Allowed Book Two
Jaliza A. Burwell
Sizzling Hot Apple Cider
Copyright © 2020 by Jaliza A. Burwell
Published by J. Ann Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copy Edited by Bookends Editing
Proofread by Becky Edits
Book Cover Design by J. Ann Publishing, LLC
Printed in the United States of America
Dear Savy,
I love your stinkin’ guts.
You make me smile.
You are the marsh to my mallow.
Love,
Jaliza
Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Author’s Note
From the Author
Stalker Links
Chapter One
Dr. Adam Lunsted sat across from me patiently as my time ticked away. Normally, I’d get down to business, blurting out whatever was on my mind before he had a chance to ask me how everything was going.
In this case, I had nothing to say. Nothing. Ten minutes had passed already, my precious time disappearing, and nothing left my mouth. I didn’t know words anymore. But I did. I knew I did. I always had something to say. Always.
Yet, my mind remained blank and my tongue numb.
After reaching over and putting his notepad off to the side, Dr. Adam leaned forward. If a therapist was good at anything, it was disruption. Part of his job was making sure our sessions moved forward, not stalled.
“Maddie, is everything okay?” The concern on his older face was genuine and twisted my heart, making my chest feel heavy.
I blinked and met his gray eyes. Swallowing, I told him the truth. “I don’t know. It’s been, what, only a week since I told you about the court case.” I chuckled bitterly. “Darn, that was only last week. It feels like it should have been weeks that have gone by, not one mere week since our last session.”
“The court date is in two weeks, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “So far away, and yet not close enough.”
“Do you feel prepared?”
“Everyone keeps telling me I have nothing to worry about. That the stepmonster doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Her kneecaps were shattered from the start and now she’s only grasping for something to help her stay standing.”
“That’s an interesting explanation.”
“I was trying to sound all gangsta-like.”
Dr. Adam’s lip twitched. The good old doctor had been mine for years now. As a middle-aged man, he oozed calm and patience, something I’d had to teach him since our introduction when I was twenty-one, new to Boston, freshly out of college, and ready to take on the world. He pulled from that talent now as he tilted his head to the side.
“So Mrs. Hansen doesn’t have a chance. But you’re still scared.”
“You’re not supposed to say that out loud. You’re supposed to let me tell you.” I played with my clothes, my nervous habit coming out to play. Today, I wore black. It was fitting for my weird, funky mood. A black tulle skirt with yellow sparkles weaved throughout the sheer, black fabric, and a black sweater to fight against the November chill. There was also a sheer black veil like you’d see at funerals on TV. I wasn’t even sure where I got it from. I’d been tempted to wear it but didn’t want to scare the twins. It was in my purse though, so I could pretend I wore the completed outfit.
The weather made the outfit easier to get away with and I didn’t get as many weird looks as I’d expected. It had been annoyingly warm this last week, but early this morning, the cold smashed into the warm air and took over.
For a couple of days at least.
“Then tell me,” Dr. Adam said, knowing I was getting lost in my head again. He always knew when he needed to pull me out of my thoughts.
I sighed. “Your funeral.” It was like his words were permission and all my fears came surging up. I didn’t know what to do with them and didn’t have a chance to separate my thoughts. It all came pouring out instead.
He wanted to know, and I was all about answering wishes.
“This last week has been too good to be true. The twins have been clingy, but we’ve been having fun. I make it a point to do something with them after school every day, and this past weekend was full of so much laughter that I think I grew abs. Laughing should be a verified effective method in strengthening abs. Then we have Dayton, Bryce, and Koen. They’re good. Too good to be true. They like to talk to me. Actually talk to me. Adult conversations. And they like to talk with the twins too. Now those conversations aren’t so adult-like, but Lawson and Lee are eating it up. And I’m not afraid to admit, I do too. They adore those guys. And I don’t know what to do with that because I also adore them, but I don’t really understand what that means. Can you even adore men? Three of them?”
I took in a breath, but before Dr. Adam could speak, like he looked like he was about to do, I continued.
“And it’s all been perfectly wonderful. A week of epicness. Too perfect. And I hate it. It freaks me out, because if everything continues like this, all the goodness is going to be used up by the time the custody hearing arrives, and that leaves only one outcome. All that bad is going to catch up, and it’s going to be at court. I know it. I just know it. That’s how my life always works. It’s like when my mother died. She was fine. She had a good day. We laughed, had fun, and it was amazingly perfect.” Tears burst forward and I blinked them away. “But then the next day, all that bad came out and took her life with it. Good to bad. The pendulum of life. And I blame Karma. Karma with a capitalized K. She’s a B, but not any B, she’s Queen B, surrounding herself with As and Cs. She even has a few Ds in her court too.”
My mouth clamped shut as my throat closed up. It felt like air didn’t exist anymore. At some point, we must have been shot off to outer space. Or maybe the ozone layer finally collapsed and all that outer space nothingness flooded our fine planet. Would that even happen? Or would we be cooked up by the sun? Now that I thought about it, it was awfully hot in the office. They must have turned on the heat in the building.
Breathing became difficult, my lungs refusing to draw in one molecule of air. Dr. Adam managed to kneel in front of me without my noticing. His mouth moved and all experience told me that sound should be coming out of it, but I heard nothing.
Oh, my God, there really was a universal remote and someone put Dr. Adam on mute.
I wanted that remote. I desperately
wanted it. Screw the butterfly effect.
Dr. Adam squeezed my face and forced me to look at him. “Breathe, Maddie. Keep breathing. Open those lungs up for me. If you pass out, I’ll have to call the ambulance. And I will.”
That got me breathing again because the thing I hated the most was the hospital. I wished I could say it was second to broccoli, but it wasn’t. It was number one with broccoli a distant second. That meant everything, because if I could destroy one vegetable in the world, it’d be broccoli. I’d be happy to take a flamethrower to it, or drop an atomic bomb on it, and I knew atomic bombs were a huge no-no. But I’d do it in a heartbeat.
“I’m okay,” I croaked out.
“No, you aren’t, but that’s fine. You don’t always have to be. Keep breathing for me. Okay?” He pushed my head down between my knees. “One breath at a time. Remember the breathing exercises I told you. Follow them.”
After he taught me how to breathe again, the two of us relaxed and the quiet was back. I wasn’t sure where my thoughts were exactly, too much was whirling around inside, but Dr. Adam was trying to work through everything I had vomited out.
He had a good head about him, and by the end of the session, we were going to talk about every single issue I’d just thrown his way. I wasn’t even sure what I brought up exactly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in his notes he wrote “spasmodic.”
“Okay, first off, I think it’s safe to say I don’t know why you mentioned the alphabet.”
I suppressed a giggle. “I don’t think you want me saying those words.”
He nodded his agreement. “Now, last week, we had already talked about Lawson and Lee potentially becoming clingy. It’s hard for them to understand what is going on in a custody case, the reasons for it. All they most likely understand is a stranger wants to take them away from you. We knew this was going to happen. I’m interested in hearing more about the three guys, so don’t think we won’t talk about that. With your track in relationships, not just romantic, but in all its forms, that will be good to talk through. But first, we should discuss the pendulum of life as you called it.”
“Good game plan.” I was bobbing my head up and down in agreement, my neck aching at the movement.
And the rest of the session followed that plan. An hour was nowhere enough time to talk about all the issues, but Dr. Adam and I made a good attempt at it.
By the end, exhaustion settled in my bones, and I think Dr. Adam was contemplating sticking me into a hospital for extra help. Or I could have been projecting.
Yeah, okay, I was projecting.
When it was time to walk out the door, I wanted to go home and sleep. But that wasn’t how life worked. Adults didn’t get naps anymore, and I had a couple of conference calls in the afternoon. They wouldn’t appreciate me snoozing on the other end while they talked. That wouldn’t be good for business, and after already losing what was now four clients, three before I learned about the slander, and one more last week because of the breach of security, I needed to be at my best, giving two hundred percent.
Apparently, a man had been going around and calling my clients, letting them know that I was up to criminal activities, like stealing their money or using them to clean drug money. I only found out because I had loyal clients and they headed a huge tech company. They let me in on the big secret that was costing me clients.
It felt like it was going to go downhill after that, but since then, I’d only lost one more client; one of my newer ones. The others were all understanding and even sympathetic. They knew me, and they totally got it. Some had even gone through similar situations.
And Koen had been a godsend. He hooked me up with an investigator and he was shaking up the world to get answers. Koen thought it was my stepmother, Olivia Hansen. I believed him. The timing with the custody battle was too convenient, and she’d basically made a threat when we had our mediation meeting.
Unfortunately, the investigator was having trouble connecting the hacker to Olivia. She had always been a slippery one.
So, no. Long story short, I couldn’t go home and sleep, even if I desperately wanted to.
But Bryce made that okay.
When I walked out of my session, closing the door behind me, he stood there waiting for me.
Bryce was a psychiatrist. As a recent hire to Dr. Adam’s office, he was priceless to them. They didn’t need to refer their patients elsewhere for prescriptions and could expand their clientele.
The man was a yummy stick of goodness, which I would never say to his face. And luckily, my therapist was Dr. Adam and not him, so he didn’t have to listen to me going on and on about him. That would have been an awkward conversation. I briefly wondered what Dr. Adam thought about me crushing on his employee.
The man flashed me his lovely smile that showcased the dimples in his cheeks. I was still jealous of them. How would one go about stealing dimples? His hazel eyes took me in slowly, not in a flirty I-want-to-eat-you kind of way—which I would have totally been okay with—but in an are-you-okay kind of away.
“Hey.” Bryce’s deep voice was warm and cuddly. Was a voice allowed to sound cuddly? “Are you okay?”
“Psh.” I waved my hand. “I only had one panic attack.”
“Panic attack?” He frowned, his concern pulling at me and making my stomach all warm and fuzzy. I liked that he gave me the fuzzies, even if I’d forced him—and the other two—into the friend zone the moment we’d met.
Dayton had asked me out on a date on Halloween, but I had to politely turn him down no matter how much I desperately wanted to scream yes to the world. I didn’t do rebounds, and I had just broken up with Felix. The moment I was sure my next exploit wouldn’t be a rebound, then I’d need to think really super hard because I not only liked Bryce and Dayton, but also their best friend and my lawyer, Koen.
They were just a big mess of confusing emotions.
So while Bryce’s concern made me want to jump him, I buried those emotions and gave him a watery smile. “Only one.”
“Do those often happen in sessions?”
“Well… no.” I looked down. “But it was only one. That has to count for something.”
“Maybe. Come on.”
He grabbed my hand and led me out of the office. It was becoming a habit for us to get hot chocolate after my sessions. A treat I was always looking forward to. He had a way of helping me get past the session, to not dwell on it too much and let it put me in a foul mood.
I was a mean butthead when I was in a foul mood, especially after a grueling session like the one I just had. It’d be too easy to push everyone away and just work to lose myself, but Bryce made that impossible.
He made me forget in a different way, by having good company with me, no matter how he forced it. I liked him all the more for it. Not once had he ever tried to push me to talk.
The coffee shop was a short walk from his office, and it didn’t take long to find a table and take in the bliss of good hot chocolate. Flour had my favorite drink, but this place was growing on me. It was more relaxed, acting more like a hangout place. People came there to study, to talk, and to just exist without having to rush off somewhere. It was like once you walked through the doors and the bell rang to announce your existence, time slowed down.
It was super nice.
Bryce settled for an iced tea, while handing me a huge cup of pure bliss. Apparently, they had a secret size that only regulars knew about and that was what he handed over to me. It was an extra-large on crack. Man, it was good to know people who had an in.
“How are the twins?” Bryce asked.
I smiled. That was becoming his first question when we sat down for our weekly drinks. “Better. I didn’t need to walk them into the classroom today, but I also promised to have pizza night to get away with it.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad. They’re good kids.”
My smile morphed into a proud grin for my two munchkins. “I know.” I went into a long story about our dramatic mornin
g when Lawson blamed Lee for some of his missing candy.
Silly boy, he didn’t know I took it, but it was also his fault for thinking that hiding the candy in different places around the apartment was going to work.
I did clean once in a while.
The next hour was fun as Bryce and I exchanged stories about our families. Dayton and Koen didn’t know it, but Bryce was a good source of blackmail material that I was so going to use against them at a later date, when they least expected it.
Before I knew it, the ickiness of my session with Dr. Adam disappeared and everything was all right with the world again.
Chapter Two
The halls of the elementary school were filled with happy kids as I made my way to the twins’ classroom. I ignored some of the looks I got from the adults and children. The adults were more judgey than anything, and some of the children were jealous. I was adorable and they could only wish they were as awesome as I was.
My phone buzzed. ‘Stepmonster’ scrawled across the screen.
Nope. Nuh uh. I was not going there. I ignored it, letting it go to voicemail. If she wanted something from me, she could leave a message. Otherwise, I didn’t want to deal with her.
The classroom was nearly empty when I got there, with only a handful of children. Good, I wasn’t too late. The conference call had gone longer than it should have, and I had been about to start singing a bad rendition of ‘A Whole New World.’ I didn’t think they’d appreciate that.
“Sissy!” Lawson spotted me first when I went into the room. He came running over, wrapping his small arms around my waist. “I missed you.”
I laughed. “You act like you haven’t seen me in days.”
“Not days, just all day,” he said.
I hugged him back, squeezing him real tight until he squirmed out of my arms and ran off to get his stuff.
“Lee will be right out,” Dayton said. “He wanted to wash his hands.”
“Okay, thanks.” I smiled at their teacher, doing my best to keep my schoolgirl crush to myself. Did it count as a schoolgirl crush if I wasn’t a student? He was still the teacher. There was still a feeling of forbiddenness in my crush.
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