If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (54 page)

I stare at the screen, taking in all of the information. You’d think this would be empowering, finally knowing what’s wrong with me. But it’s terrifying, because it makes this real. After reading about it for the past half hour, I haven’t seen that there is a cure. Treatment, therapy, something about integration, which makes no freakin’ sense. Apparently I’m lucky though, there’s only one “alter.” That’s what Cal is, an “alter.” I suppose it could be worse, Cal could be a woman, and my
husband
could have shown up today. I think of his message, and how he joked about it, knowing I had no clue what he was talking about. This guy is a prick. Hopefully he’s the only one, but who knows? I try not to think about what all this means. It’s kind of landed on my doorstep this morning, literally.

My head weighs a thousand pounds. I want to wake up, run from this, for it to only be a nightmare. My life has gone from finally getting on track, to straight to hell in a matter of minutes. I wonder who else knows and watched me blindly go through life without knowing the truth. Dexter obviously knew, but the real act of betrayal is my parents’ lies. I never trusted Dexter, but them―how could they do something like this?

I hear tires screech outside and see the white Audi pulling off. She’s gone. Maybe for good. She had no clue what was going on. This Cal guy has screwed us both over. If I was that girl, I’d walk away and leave this mess behind. If he’s anything like I think he is, she’s lucky. Nothing tying her to this mess, but if that’s the case, Jenna should leave too. She’s not tied to me. We’re only engaged.

Are we engaged? Can you even get engaged while married to someone else?
Married. I’m married? No,
Cal’s
married. That sounds even more ridiculous than me being married. I’m Cal, or Cal is me? It’s a bad math equation. How is it possible for him to have a whole relationship, and manage to get engaged
and
married while this was happening? I should have some recollection of her. Well I did, kind of, but nothing concrete, no memories, just familiarity.

The emotion that poured off that girl when she saw me. She looked at me like I was her world. She was devastated when I didn’t know who she was. He couldn’t have had time to have a relationship like that. How could he forge a connection with someone that intense when he could disappear at any moment? They couldn’t have been in love.

Fix this, or there will be hell to pay.

And who is he to threaten me? How am I supposed to fix this? I didn’t even know about any of this until today. He’s the one who ruined
my
life! The part that sucks about this the most is there’s nothing I can do. I’m powerless. How can I marry Jenna and not know when this guy will show up? I don’t know anything about him. Can I take his threat seriously? What if I marry Jenna one day, and wake up as this guy the next? She doesn’t deserve that.

I look under my bed and pull out calendars I used to keep before my blackouts stopped two years ago, when I started tracking the time I lost. I have four years worth, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. I used to keep track of how many days I didn’t remember. I look over them all, counting. Twelve days one month, 16 the next. Seven, ten, eighteen, twenty two, I total them all together. Out of four years, I was aware of what I was doing for 750 days. A little more than half of the time frame. That’s a hell of a lot of time for this Cal guy to do a lot of damage to my life, and build his own.

A burning starts in my throat and spreads to my chest. I grab the calendars, and start ripping them up, and throw them across the room. I see pictures of me with my parents, with Jenna, and with friends throughout the years. I grab them and throw them, too. This isn’t my life. How can it be my life, when I don’t own it? When someone can take it over at any second without me having any say?

“Christopher,” my mom says, her expression is horrified as she stands in the doorway, looking at me in the middle of the room I’ve just trashed. I’m about to be 28 years old, and I still have a room in my parents’ house. I look at her, her face partially covered with her hands. My dad joins her soon after and takes a deep breath.

“Son, what’s wrong?” he asks cautiously like he’s afraid to hear the answer. I let out an angry laugh.

“Dissociative-Identity-Disorder,” I say pointedly, and watch their expressions change from shocked to guilty.

“We can explain. Come, come downstairs so we can talk about this,” my dad says.

“What’s there to talk about? How fucked up my life is? That I’m sharing it with some asshole, and you hid it from me?”

“Don’t use that language with us!” my dad says, seemingly offended.

“Why not, Dad? Is that too Cal-like?” I shout at them. Cal had no problem dropping f-bombs in the message he left me.

“Son, we know you’re upset,” my mom interjects.

“Upset doesn’t explain this. My life has been a lie. I don’t have a life!”

“You have a life. You, you’re the real person. He’s—”

“Is that right? Because he has the wife? I’m pretty sure he has friends, and a house. He at least knew what was going on, and according to him, I’m ruining
his
life. He knows a hell of a lot more about everything than I do!” I shout, and there’s silence.

“How could you not tell me this was happening?” I say, my anger turning to exasperation.

“We thought we were protecting you. We didn’t want to burden you.”

“Huh, how do you think I’m feeling now?” I laugh with disdain.

“We’re so sorry, Christopher,” my mom says, tears falling from her eyes. She can save them now.

“We thought it would make things worse,” my dad says incidentally. Like hiding the fact that I have another person inside of me was trivial. Some sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isn’t a big deal.

“How?! How could you think that was best? How could you think that me not knowing there’s this jerk-off running around, screwing people, and getting married, was best for me?!” I ask, letting out a disbelieving laugh. They looked dumbfounded.

“You let me think that I was having blackouts and amnesia, a normal side effect of some made-up neurological disorder. How could you do this to me?” Now I’m shouting, because I want to make sure they are hearing me.

“We were going to tell you,” my dad finally answers.

“When? Because this has obviously been going on for years. Why now? Oh, because I could possibly get arrested for being a polygamist?” I shout.

“That’s enough!” my father says, authority dripping from his voice. My chest is heaving, but I try to calm down. I see the tears covering my mom’s face, and hearing her soft whimpers from her covered mouth breaks my heart.

“Don’t you dare think for a minute this has been easy for us. You don’t think we wanted to tell you? You don’t think we wanted this guy to disappear? Trust me he’s not any fun to deal with! The day we met him was one of the worst days of our lives,” my dad says, his voice stern but yielding.

“Not telling you was one of the most difficult decisions we have ever made. We thought we were doing what was best for you. Clearly we see that we were wrong now,” he continues.

“You have to know we didn’t do this to hurt or deliberately deceive you. You have to know that, Chris. We thought that it would be easier for you not to know, until we knew you were in a good place to deal with this. We didn’t know what would happen if we told you,” my mom explains timidly.

“We couldn’t see what good would come from telling you,” my dad interjects.

“The doctors pretty much told us that there was no cure for this. Intensive therapy could make you
one
with this guy. Trust me he isn’t anyone you need to be ‘one’ with. Why tell you this if there was nothing we could do about it? It was just going to make you worried and stressed out of your mind,” my dad says defensively.

“When you came back after my diagnosis, we were going to tell you. By that time, we knew about Lauren and saw that Cal was doing things that would eventually affect you,” my mom sighs.

“But you were being so strong for me while I was sick. It seemed like too much. As time went on, things got better for both of us, we thought. We hoped that maybe there wasn’t a
problem
anymore,” my mom says, her voice returning to normal.

“Everything has been going so well. We were selfish to revel in the normalcy of life,” my dad says.

“When you told us yesterday that you were marrying Jenna, we knew we had to say something. We were just trying to figure out the best way,” my mom adds.

I let out a deep breath and hold my head. I know that they didn’t have cruel intentions. I know that all of this time they’ve had to have been going through hell, too. I sit down on my bed, and rest my head in my hands.

“What do I do? Where do I go from here?” I ask the people who helped me make every major decision in my life. My mom lets out a deep sigh.

“Th—there’s something else we have to tell you, son,” my mom says reluctantly.

“You need another one of these.” Lisa pours another shot of Tequila in my glass, and I down it before finishing the rest of my story. The room hasn’t started spinning yet, but my head is.

“Right when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they tell me not only did this jerk-off marry someone, but he got her pregnant too, which makes
me
the father.” I laugh, staring at the empty glass. I don’t usually drink much, but before telling her this story, I told her to pull out the bottle first. Her eyes are wider than they’ve been since I started the story of my life over the past twenty-four hours.

“Whoa, I was going to say this was your last shot, but I think whiskey is in order.” She disappears behind the bar. She replaces my empty glass with the brown liquid from her bottle; it’s the kind my dad pulls out on special occasions. I lift my glass feeling a wide, goofy smile on my face.

“To me being a father!” I say sarcastically, and she bursts into laughter.

“You are the father!” she says with fake enthusiasm. We laugh, clinking our glasses together. The good thing about alcohol is everything that sucks in your life seems hilarious. The sting of the whiskey burns five times worse than the Tequila. I usually only have a beer or two. But tonight, each drink causes each problem I picked up today to disappear.

“I wish I could have been there to see the look on Jenna’s face when your wife showed up,” she says with a giggle. I shake my head. I wish they got along better, since Lisa is my best friend and all, but that’s the least of my problems now.

“She’s not my wife, I think?” I defend myself.

“Technically you and this Cal guy are the same person,” she whispers as if she’s telling me a secret. “So that makes her your wife.” She slaps me on the shoulder. I frown at her. “The good thing, though, is tomorrow you’re going to be way too hungover to care about any of this.” She cackles, and suddenly my body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I was sitting upright on the couch but now I’m either lying down or the room has turned sideways.

“What about after tomorrow?” I hear myself starting to slur.

“Ask sober Lisa, drunk Lisa is going to bed,” she giggles as she shifts off the couch. She makes her way to turn off the light before she stumbles to her room. I turn myself on my back and watch the ceiling fan turn. It’s spinning so fast, I could have sworn it was brown, but now it’s black. I look around, and I’m not on Lisa’s couch anymore, but in this huge bed with black sheets. It’s daylight, and sun is shining in on my face. I stretch my arms outward and feel warm skin. I look down and see my hand on a thigh that’s barely covered with the sheet. My eyes trail up the body, and I freeze when I see the girl’s face from earlier. Her eyes are still closed, but her pink, plump lips curve into a seductive smile.

“Stay with me,” she purrs in my ear, her hand trailing up my naked leg. Oh shit! I try to move, but I’m stuck. Her eyes are still closed, but now she’s climbed on top of me. I’ll make it worth your while,” she continues. She smells so good, and she’s starting to kiss my neck as her hand grabs my...

“Christopher, get up!” My eyes open, and my dad is standing next to the sofa, where I vaguely remember falling asleep.
Was I just dreaming?
It seemed more real than any dream I’ve ever had. I can still feel her lips on me, the smell of her hair, how warm her skin was. I start to sit up but I can’t. Gravity wants my head right here on the sofa. Ugh, my stomach feels like I’m on a roller coaster.

“You think getting drunk is going to solve your problems?” My dad’s voice is loud, and feels like a hammer to my head. He puts his arm around me, pulling my weight up so I’m now in a sitting position

“Where am I?” I ask, unsure. I honestly have no idea until I recognize that ugly blanket Lisa made in high school, and realize I’m still at her house

“Ugh, my head,” I groan. My dad forces a cup of coffee into my hand.

“This, what you’re doing, is not going to be your answer,” my dad says gruffly. I lift the cup to my mouth, but before I can even drink it, the smell makes my stomach churn, and I set it down.

“We’re in a bad situation. Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. But if you become a self-pitying drunk, it will be,” he says sharply, “and whether we like it or not, you’re a father now, so we’re going to have to figure this thing out with this woman. Sooner rather than later.”