Shattered Copyright © 2019 by Cora York. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by Cora York
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cora York
Visit my website at www.corayork.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: October 2019
SHATTERED
Alpha Men of Shady Peaks Book 2
Cora York
Forever from First Sight
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One
Montana
Ten months, two days, twelve hours, and fifteen minutes since I last had a drink.
One minute and zero seconds since I last thought about getting shit-faced, black-out, don’t-remember-a-damn-thing drunk, but I wouldn’t give in to the craving. I’d clawed my way out of hell, and I wasn’t going back.
When I reached Lookout Point, I stopped to admire the Smokies in their full summer glory. When Blake Shelton sang about God’s Country, he must have been singing about Tennessee. Living here was like living in a postcard that not only changed with the passing seasons but every day.
Stopping for a few minutes to take in the view had become part of my daily routine. Halfway between the main ranch house and my cabin, I would stick in my earbuds, jack up the volume, and Google my name.
I didn’t search for myself because I was narcissistic or self-obsessed, not at all. If I had to put a name on it, I would have said I was a masochist because I relished reading all the horrible things people wrote about me online. It was an itch I could never fully scratch, but scratching it felt oh, so good. The hate-filled comments and articles confirmed I was all the things my mom had called me:
Useless.
Worthless.
Pointless piece of piss.
Over two million hits came back when I typed in Montana Chambers Meltdown. The backlash was still in full effect. Radio stations still refused to play my music. Ex-fans still made videos of themselves ripping up my posters. And gossip sites still speculated about my whereabouts. Most said I was in a mental facility.
At the grand old age of twenty-six, my career was over. I was nothing but a washed-up singer, and I had no one but myself to blame.
I deserved every single bit of vicious vitriol thrown my way, and I could confirm, Karma was indeed a bitch. How did the saying go? Be nice to people on the way up because you’ll meet them on the way down. Those people were now gleefully kicking me where it hurt.
From my early teens, I’d been chemically dependent on liquor. Not sure how I managed to hide it for so long. Perhaps I was as good an actress as I was a singer, and I was one hell of a singer.
No matter how much I craved the buzz of whiskey fizzing through my veins, I wouldn’t succumb to the devil on my shoulder who constantly whispered that one little drink wouldn’t hurt. Except it would hurt, and it would never just be one little drink.
Every day my body and brain were a battleground for the sober angel on one shoulder and the drunk devil on the other.
I’d stay strong, and I’d stay sober. But now that Tricia and Jonah were in Nashville for the month visiting their grandbaby, I worried I’d fall off the wagon and end up trampled into the dirt. She said I’d be fine and since there were no tourists staying this summer, no one would bother me.
After a wildfire had claimed some of the higher up cabins not long after I’d arrived, Tricia had shut down the dude ranch. At the time, she’d been heartbroken, but now I didn’t think she minded because she couldn’t stand being away from her first grandchild. I wouldn’t be surprised if she and Jonah sold off the property and moved to Nashville permanently.
Despite our differences of opinion on everything from the color of the sky to how someone should make biscuits and gravy, I would miss Tricia and our sparring matches. Going back and forth with her always brightened my day. I was sure she worked on her comebacks because sometimes I wanted to congratulate her on how mean and bitchy she got.
My all-time favorites were from the day she caught me staring at the bottle of whiskey I kept on my kitchen table as a reminder of how far I’d come.
I’d had a shit storm of a day and was seconds away from pouring every last drop down my throat. I’d told her I wasn’t going to drink anything, that I was using it to test my willpower. She said I was as windy as a bag of old farts and that I was lying like a rug. She wasn’t wrong.
Tricia acted like she just about tolerated me, but I suspected that maybe, just maybe, there was a little affection hidden somewhere beneath her sun-leathered skin.
I was an imposition, and she hated the damage I’d done to her son’s heart. Hurting Colt the way I had wasn’t one of my proudest moments, but not once had she betrayed me or let the wolves know where I was hiding.
Ever since I’d ripped up the posters the little girls had painstakingly made for me last year, the paparazzi
