Stay With You

STAY WITH YOU MELANIE SHAWN Stay With You by Melanie Shawn Melanie Shawn © 2023 All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn. This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older. Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns Book Design by Wildcat Dezigns Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing Rev. 1.1 Created with Vellum This book is dedicated to the real-life Lincoln (Linc). I met this sweet puppy on walks when I was writing this book at one of the darkest, hardest times of my life. He brightened up my days each and every time I saw him. He is just a bundle of love and healing, and I knew I had to put him in the book. So thank you Linc for bringing a smile to my face and for filling my broken heart with love and joy! Photo Credits: Linc’s beautiful mom Cherise If you want to follow the real-life Lincoln, you can on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lincolnlogsla/ CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Untitled Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Coming Soon About the Author Also by Melanie Shawn 1 Things can always get worse. That was the lesson Chrissy Caldwell had learned over the past year. Not all at once, of course. This was the type of lesson that was learned in stages. When she found out her husband had been having an affair, it crushed her. When her husband told her he was leaving her for his twenty-one-year-old assistant, she thought, this is it. This is as bad as it’s going to get. When her husband drained their bank accounts, moved out of the country, and hid his assets in off-shore banks so that he wouldn’t have to pay her child support or alimony, even though they had been married for sixteen years and she’d been a stay-at-home mom, she thought okay, okay this is it. This is rock bottom. But two months ago, when she learned that the home she’d owned for all of those sixteen years, where she’d brought each one of her babies home to from the hospital, where they’d taken their first steps, got their first teeth, and learned to ride their bikes in the front yard, was being foreclosed by the bank; it felt like a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Denial was not just a river in Egypt, she’d been living in it, but the day had finally come. She had to hand over the keys to the bank tomorrow morning; 47 Bluebird Lane was no longer her home. This was officially rock bottom. This home had been her dream house. It was where she’d envisioned her kids coming to when they came home from college. It had the kitchen where she’d imagined baking cookies with her grandkids. It had the fireplace where she was sure she’d take all of her kids’ graduation and prom pictures in front of. This was the house where her oldest, Fiona, had gotten her head stuck in the spindles of the stairs when she was five. Her second oldest and only son Connor had jumped off the roof and broken his arm when he was eight after watching Superman and thinking he could fly. Her third in line, Cassidy, ran into the back sliding door chasing a butterfly when she was four, resulting in a goose egg on her forehead that was featured in her kindergarten school pictures taken the next day. It was where her youngest, Kimber, had decided to surf down the stairs and ended up with four stitches. This house was filled with memories, and they weren’t all of injuries; those were just what came to mind as she looked around at the empty rooms—the empty walls. There’d been so many holidays, and birthday parties and every milestone of her kids’ lives had been lived in this house. Chrissy ran her hand down the coat closet doorframe where she’d etched all of their heights every year. Her friend Brynn’s husband Axel was a carpenter, and he’d recreated the same measurements on a frame in the house she’d grown up in and had inherited from her late Aunt Mae. The house they were moving to. She appreciated the gesture, but it wasn’t the same. When she felt tears threaten to pool in her eyes, she knew it was time to go. She’d been holding a whammy of a mental and emotional breakdown at bay for the past few months, and if the dam broke now, she wasn’t sure what it would flood. “Okay, guys, let’s go!” Chrissy called out from the entryway. Cassidy and Kimber, who were seven and five respectively and she referred to as ‘the littles’, ran in from the kitchen and giggled as they raced each other out to the driveway. Connor, who had been throwing a baseball against the dining room wall, followed behind his sisters tossing the ball in the air. Her oldest, Fiona, who had been upstairs in her room, quietly made her way down the