Free NEXT TO ME (A Love Happens Novel Book 1) by Jodi Watters Page B

lost, but instead what she’d never even had to begin with. Her marriage hadn’t been driven by dreams for a long, fulfilling life together, spent juggling children and work and laundry, along with bills that couldn’t always be paid. No, Ali’s ill-fated marriage had instead been filled with things like control and isolation, and abject resentment by both parties. The tears she’d cried that night on the beach were because she had so desperately wanted the hopes and dreams, along with the kids and the bills. Her mama always told her, if the foundation was strong, than hardship and happiness could co-exist. And that was what Ali signed up for the day she married Daniel Davis in a Fairfield County, Connecticut courthouse when she was twenty-two years old.
    When she should have been old enough—and smart enough—to know better.
    What did that say about her? That she could so easily be duped by a man? Raised in a loving and supportive home, Ali had never been told to shut up as a child. Never been told to look pretty and act happy. Never been told that when you broke the rules, you had to face the consequences, and that usually included an open-handed bitch slap that came from left field—a move Danny had down pat. Her mother was a tough old broad who didn’t take shit from her father or anybody else, for that matter. Anna May Ross was a God fearing woman who went to church every Sunday morning and cooked a hot meal for her husband every night. She’d always been firm but loving to her only child, until the day Ali had refused to listen to her wise advice and walked away from her parents to be with a man that her mother had somehow instinctively known was bad, even though she’d met him only once. Ali had never returned to her hometown, nor had she seen her parents again. She realized now why Danny had been so adamant she break ties with them. He knew her mother saw in him what Ali herself had yet to see.
    If her mother was standing in front of her right now, in this very room, she would look Ali straight in the eye and sternly say, “Listen up, Ali Ann. I didn’t raise you to think it’s okay for a man to treat you that way. Now you wipe your eyes and stand up straight. And you best clean up your house if you want a happy life.”
    Cleaning up your house was her mother’s way of saying get your mind right.
    “Well, Mama. I’m trying.” Ali whispered the words to the empty room, wishing she could simply pick up the phone and say it directly to her, the woman whom she had not spoken with since she’d blindly followed Danny to upstate New York six years ago, armed with her barely dry Bachelor’s degree in journalism, a second hand suitcase full of discount department store clothes, and a two-carat diamond engagement ring. Oh, and those dreams for a long and wonderful marriage.
    Her mama had been right, of course. Ali had figured it out for herself pretty damn quickly, too. But by then it was too late to go back. She was bound, by the law and her pride and her fear of Danny, and Ali hadn’t contacted her parents again after that night. The internet had been the one to tell her that her dad had died of cancer last year and that her mama was still living in the same house Ali had grown up in. Any female on the planet could tell you that the relationship between a mother and daughter was the single most fragile, and the most difficult, of all relationships. But no matter how old you grew or how strained that relationship became, deep down inside a girl’s heart, she always wanted her mama. Ali was no different. And one day she would go home to see her, and she prayed that day would come soon.
    When it was safe. When Danny wasn’t a threat. When Ali had her house clean.
    The sudden shadow moving in front of her glass doors sent her heartbeat skyrocketing and she jumped up from the sofa, banging her knee against the hard edge of the coffee table. A second later she recognized the large, broad shoulders, dark hair