Rock Bottom (Bullet)

by Jade C. Jamison

  ROCK BOTTOM

  (Bullet #2)

  Jade C. Jamison

  Rock Bottom

  The much-anticipated sequel to Bullet.

  Ethan Richards has fought depression and a host of other demons all his adult life, and it’s caused him to lose everything—his wife, his son, his friends, and he almost loses the one thing that means the most to him—his band. He hits rock bottom and believes there is no way out.

  Enter Jenna McCormick, a feisty drug and alcohol counselor, a woman with her own share of troubles. She finds Ethan intriguing but keeps him at a distance while trying to help him face life without crutches. She feels a spark but denies it, knowing that a relationship with unstable Ethan could be dangerous for both of them.

  Ethan knows what he wants, though, and isn’t used to being told no. Jenna isn’t willing to risk Ethan losing his tenuous grip on sobriety, however, and is prepared to deny her deeper feelings to help Ethan climb out of his hole, but he learns how to let go of his pain when he finds that someone is prepared to walk with him through the shadows. Can he convince Jenna that they should take a chance on love or will they forever deny their feelings in an effort to keep Ethan on the straight and narrow?

  “You planning to help me set the room up?”

  Ethan smiled and walked in behind her. “I’d be happy to.”

  He started unfolding chairs and setting them up while Jenna filled the coffee pot up with water. When she started filling the filter with coffee grounds, Ethan asked, “So…do you have any plans tomorrow night?” She took a deep breath. No. That was what she’d feared. Before she could respond, he said, “I ask because I have two tickets to a band out of Pueblo I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about, and I don’t want to go by myself.”

  She couldn’t resist. “What kind of music?”

  She didn’t turn around to see the look on his face, but she could hear the smile just the same. “What kind do you think?”

  It was a lie when she said, “You might be into jazz for all I know.” She’d known a little about him and his band before he’d come into her life, but since he’d become a regular in her group sessions, she’d done quite a bit of research. She knew damn good and well that he was a heavy metal lover just like she was. She thought she’d read that his favorite band was Suicide Silence. So she didn’t think he was inviting her to a jazz concert…but one never knew.

  He started laughing. “Yeah…I look like the jazz type, don’t I?” He unfolded another chair and set it down. “Actually, I respect the hell out of jazz. But you’re right. Not a jazz band. Metal. Their name is Pretty Little Lies. Have you heard of them?”

  “No. But I don’t get out much.”

  “Well, we can change that.”

  She switched on the coffee pot and then turned around to face Ethan. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Yeah, I kind of gathered that from previous conversations. I want to make you a deal, though.”

  She couldn’t resist, even though she knew it was the worst idea ever. “And that would be?”

  He set down the last chair and walked over to her. “We just go as friends…you know, to have fun. No pressure. Nothing at stake. Just two music lovers going to enjoy a band.”

  Her eyes searched his. She couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or just shining her on, but he was irresistible to her. She sighed. “Okay, all right. And then do you promise to stop bugging me?”

  “Bugging you? I’m bugging you?”

  She smiled. “You know what I mean.”

  He smirked. “Maybe.” He knew he had to move quickly. “So can I get your number before people come in so we can work out the details tomorrow morning?”

  Against her better judgment, she gave him her cell number, and he added it to his phone. He’d just stuck his phone back in his pocket when the next person arrived for group. He winked and took his seat and damned if she didn’t find herself distracted for the rest of the night.

  BOOKS BY JADE C. JAMISON

  Stating His Case

  Fabric of Night

  Worst Mother

  MADversary

  Then Kiss Me

  Old House

  TANGLED WEB SERIES

  1 Tangled Web: A Steamy Heavy Metal Novella

  2 Everything But

  BULLET SERIES

  1 Bullet: An Epic Rock Star Novel

  2 Rock Bottom

  NICKI SOSEBEE SERIES

  1 Got the Life

  2 Dead

  3 No Place to Hide

  4 Right Now

  5 One More Time

  6 Lost

  7 Innocent Bystander

  8 Blind

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2013 by Jade C. Jamison

  Cover image © iStockphoto

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Characters and names of real persons who appear in the book are used fictitiously.

  Visit Jade’s website:

  http://www.jadecjamison.com

  Follow Jade on Twitter:

  http://twitter.com/@JadeCJamison

  Send Jade an email:

  jadecjamison@gmail.com

  Like Jade on Facebook:

  http://facebook.com/JadeCJamison

  There are so many blogs I feel gratitude for, too many to name, and I’m afraid I’d forget a name or two if I tried to name them all. That said, there is one blog I feel really helped Bullet, the first book of this series, get noticed. It had a good buzz beforehand, but this blog encouraged me to have a blog tour and then hosted it for me, getting it lots more exposure than it would have had without their help. In this blog are three wonderful women I am proud to call friends, and I dedicate Ethan’s book to them…

  Shh Mom’s Reading

  Kim Box Person

  Denise Milano Sprung

  Christine Bezdenejnih Estevez

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Epilogue

  More information

  Also by Jade C. Jamison

  Author’s Note

  One of my friends (also a member of my Street Team), affectionately known as Lolly, alerted me to the Japanese practice of kintsugi (also known as kintuskuroi). Kintsugi is the practice of repairing broken pottery by filling the cracks with gold or silver. The pottery afterward is strikingly beautiful. Here’s what Lolly told me: “Ethan is probably more beautiful now after being broken & his heart repaired !!!”

  As Ethan�
��s storyteller, I think Lolly is absolutely right. I hope you too think Ethan is now stronger and beautiful for having gone through what he has.

  Prologue

  HEY, YOU. YEAH, you. Wipe that fucking look off your face. I know you think you know me. Like everyone on this whole goddamn planet, you hate my ass. I realize I deserve part of it, but you’ve only heard Valerie’s side of the story.

  Wait a second…before you go off on me, hollering and screaming about what a rat bastard I am, all I ask is that you hear me out. You only know me from the press. That’s it. You know me from interviews—not just mine, but ones from my bandmates and my ex-wife too. You might even presume to know me because you’ve seen me onstage once or twice. You’ve heard other people talking. Yeah, and you’ve heard what Valerie has to say. But I’ll tell you one thing—you don’t know shit about me. Probably the only person who really knows me is Brad…and even he doesn’t know everything.

  Am I a real shithead who doesn’t deserve to be listened to? Maybe. If you like having a target for your hate and anger, then you won’t want to continue. I know it’s easier to have a black-and-white picture. Gray isn’t always easy to process. But guess what, folks? I’m deep in the gray…and, if you’ll take a few moments to learn more about me, you might find it a little harder to judge me.

  But I leave that up to you.

  Chapter One

  JENNA MCCORMICK RAN her long, slender fingers through her auburn hair. She was trying to focus on the words of the man everyone called Jay Bird. He was reed thin—although Jenna could tell he’d gained weight since she’d last seen him. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, but he’d lived a hard life, especially during the last five years. His hairline was receding and he had lines on his forehead. He hadn’t shaved in two or three days. Jenna noticed, though, that he looked good, better than ever.

  They were talking about triggers. “Stress, you know? That’s mine,” he said.

  Jenna felt her green eyes narrow and she leaned forward in her chair. She was glad she could phone in her performance, because her mind just wasn’t with it tonight. “Jay, stress is a trigger for everyone, and you can’t completely avoid stress. Can you instead figure out specifically what makes you run back? Is there a specific stressor that does it?”

  He didn’t ask what she meant, because he knew. He’d been coming to the Thursday night drug and alcohol support group for three months now, faithfully. He started answering her and, while she was able to process his words, she wasn’t fully engaged. No, tonight she was thinking about her own sordid past with alcohol. She had never been addicted to it, but she came from an alcoholic family. Both her parents had been alcoholics, and—after leaving her home—she first spent years trying to heal herself, and then she studied dependence in college before becoming an addiction counselor.

  So tonight, discussing triggers was an important topic for the folks in group to discuss, but—since she’d never fully identified her own triggers—it made her mind wander as she tried to discover what they were. She wasn’t an addict, but her behaviors—while tempered—were those of a child from an alcoholic family. She’d run for years and buried the pain. She’d sublimated it and tried gaining acceptance from unsavory people. But she knew she didn’t want to be like her parents and fought against her nature. College had been her way out, but her baser nature still played on the dark side. It wasn’t until her last boyfriend that she’d decided she needed healing for herself as well…once and for all.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until times like these—when she was probing her clients, pressing them for details and asking them to dig deep—that she felt comfortable enough exploring her own past and behaviors. She couldn’t discuss them with these folks, though. She was here for them, not herself. She had the errant thought that she really needed to start seeing her shrink again when Jay managed to grab her attention.

  “I don’t know why it stresses me out so bad, but it does.”

  Oh, shit. What was he talking about? What did he say stressed him out? She tried to focus, pulling into her subconscious, the part that would have been listening to him while her conscious mind had been worrying over her own issues. She remembered he’d started talking about his girlfriend. Yeah, that was it. And she’d start harping on him about bills. That led to worry over finances…yep, that was it. Money woes. A typical stressor. But she knew for Jay it led back to his childhood—his divorced mom working as a bartender, not earning much money, getting by however she could. They’d moved a lot, and his mom had done a few questionable things to keep him clothed with a roof over his head. Food stamps weren’t daunting; the guys his mom had dated were. So having the money problems today was bad enough but add his screeching girlfriend, and he just couldn’t take it.

  Yeah…Jenna could relate to childhood problems making it hard to deal as an adult. Then she took a deep breath. Tonight was not about her. It was about Jay and the other eight people in the room (another fact that concerned her, because there should have been more people there, but now was not the time to dwell on that either).

  Fortunately, her clients in the room were used to moments of silence from her. She’d often take her time arranging her words so that they were gentle yet firm. She would spend time considering and pondering what she would say, and they were accustomed to that. So she’d leaned over, resting her elbow on her knee and propping her chin on her fist. She’d been able to use that time to figure out what Jay had said and how she would respond, and no one would be the wiser. “Okay, Jay…so you’ve discovered one of your triggers. That’s the first step to healing. Did you give in?”

  He wiped sweat off his brow. “No.”

  She smiled and nodded. “That’s good.” She took a deep breath. “So what have we talked about?”

  He shook his head. “Well…I can’t really avoid my girlfriend or money problems, can I?”

  “That’s true.” She sat up in her chair. “Do you think you should just live in a homeless shelter and be lonely?” He grinned. “Of course not. But maybe you can ask your girlfriend to go easy on you when it comes to money matters. And maybe you can take a budgeting class or talk to a financial counselor so you can maybe get a handle on your money problems. Both of you could do it together. I guarantee feeling in control of your money would help.”

  He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

  The overweight middle-aged man next to him said, “I’d kick the bitch out on her ass. Women ain’t worth the hassle.”

  Her youngest client—a twenty-year-old kid—said, “They never are.”

  Like he’d know. Veronica, the woman sitting next to the kid, said, “Hey, enough woman bashing. It just so happens to be one of my damn triggers, you assholes.”

  The three men got silent, and Jay had a sheepish look on his face. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

  Jenna cleared her throat. She could see the clock on the wall—they had five minutes left. “Bottom line, folks…you can’t just categorize anyone. You have to look at people as individuals, and even then…well, you don’t see the whole story. You’re only judging by what you see on the outside. You’re often just seeing the tip of the iceberg.” Or, in her case, they were seeing her carefully honed persona, the parts of her she didn’t mind them seeing. They didn’t know the real her, and the only reason why she had a good handle on any of them was because they’d opened themselves up for her to examine. They had trusted her, and she had to treat that trust with kid gloves. Damned if she too was going to become a trigger.

  “Now…back to Jay. This week, I’d really like for you to look for alternate ways to deal with money stress and your girlfriend. You know those are triggers for you, so you need to come up with a plan for how you’ll handle it. Even if you get your budget completely under control and you feel like you can take anything, what happens when your water heater goes out the day after your car dies and that’s after you just dropped all that money on a swamp cooler because you’re sick and tired of the heat in the summer? I hate to remind you o
f this, Jay, but life throws curve balls like that, and you have to be prepared. So…you have some homework. I want you to give this some thought. Tell me your plan.” She looked around the room. Everyone tonight had had a chance to speak, but she always liked to end the evening with a suggestion for everyone and give them a positive thought. “If the rest of you haven’t considered that thought as well, then you also have homework. Once you’ve identified your triggers, you’ve got to go a step further. If you can, just avoid the situation entirely. For instance, if I know my friends are going to have a party with alcohol and I just can’t be around it, then I politely turn down the invitation. True friends will understand. If I know walking down a certain street will remind me of getting high, then I don’t walk down that street.

  “Sounds simple, right? And it is. But it takes willpower sometimes, and guys, guess what? I know you’ve all got nerves of steel. You’ve pulled yourselves up from the depths and survived. You guys are stronger than steel, and don’t let yourself believe otherwise.

  “But what if you can’t avoid it? Your cousin’s getting married and you’re the maid of honor. You know there will be champagne. So how do you deal with it? Well, you come up with a plan. We’ve talked about this before. You guys know the drill. But I also want you to think about seeking additional help. Sometimes there are other things going on that you just need a little more help with—mental and psychological issues that are best conquered with the help of a professional. You catch my drift?” Jenna blinked twice, realizing that a lot of her spiel that evening was aimed at herself. “Anyway, guys, be healthy. Stay safe. Keep your eye on the prize. And…”

  They all looked around the room. They were ready to say the phrase they often said at the end of their meetings. “Call your sponsor if you need someone to talk to so you can make it through.”