Pieces of My Heart (24 page)

I had to find another solution. That’s what I did. I took problems and I solved them. I always had. Whether it was how to cook a meal without any ingredients, or how to pick my drunken mother up at a bar without a license, or how to pay bills without any money, I always found a way.

I’d just have to do it again. And again.
And again
.

No matter how many problems I solved, that weight was never going to go away. It was beginning to wear me down.

Stripping off my coat, I fished in the closet for a hanger. The dumb metal hook caught on another and frustration swelled
.
Why did
everything
have to be so friggin’ difficult? With an aggravated shout, I tore the hanger free and watched with dismay as it sailed across the foyer.

“Jade? Is that you?”             

Crap
. I hadn’t realized Mrs. Parks was home. Caulder must not have taken her out to dinner after all. She emerged from the living room with a book dangling from her fingers, which she set down the minute she saw me.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” Feeling like an even bigger fool, I reclaimed the hanger and stuffed it into my coat sleeves.

“Honey, if something’s bothering you, you know you can talk to me about it.”

“I know. It’s just—” I pressed my lips together and shut my eyes, determined not to cry in front of her. Drawing in a deep breath, I ground the words out between my teeth. “I lost my job today.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment and I knew she was considering her words. “I’m sure there are other coffee houses where—”

“It’s not the
job
I care about.” I hated that dumb job. “It’s . . . it’s the paycheck. Without it, I . . .” Without it,
I
would be just fine thanks to the Parks, but . . . “My mom . . . She can’t . . .”

Pay her rent. Or bills. Or buy food. She was going to lose everything.

My lip began to quiver and I bit down on it hard. Dammit. Tears wouldn’t fix anything.

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing for you to worry about. Your mom’s heat, electric, cable, her debt, all of it has been paid. And her rent is covered until the end of the year. Okay?”

“What?” My brain was still processing all of this, but the rest of my body seemed to understand. My hands started to tremble. “How? Why?”

“I took care of it. Because we love you. And you love her.” 

I felt that weight shift. It wasn’t gone, but it was shared. Lighter.
Bearable
. I gasped as relief hit me so hard it physically hurt. I could suddenly breathe, but I couldn’t all at the same time. Like I’d gone from suffocating to having too much air. It was taken care of? All of it? Everything? There was nothing left to worry about?

“I . . .” I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even catch my breath. All I could do was surrender to the relief and let the tears come.

Mrs. Parks gathered me in her arms and I clung tightly to her. The shining example of what a mother
should
be like. And for a very selfish moment, I wished she were mine. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay, now.”

“What are you doing to her, Mom?” Warmth filled Caulder’s voice as I felt his heat draw near to my back.

“I’m hugging my girl. You wait your turn,” she chastised lightly, and I only cried harder.

Her girl
. She called me
hers.
Maybe she
was
mine
after all.

Maybe they both were.

Twenty Four

Stretching my arms above my head, I heard my shoulder pop. Jeez, I was eighteen going on eighty. The dreary gray weather outside my window was good for one thing and one thing only. Sleep. Something I’d had an abundance of if the clock on the bedside table was to be believed.

Caulder had sacrificed his manhood to watch one of his mother’s ‘girlie romance movies’ with me, but I hadn’t made it halfway through before I was sound asleep on the couch. That had been around nine-thirty. It was now almost eleven. I couldn’t even remember coming up to bed.

Thirteen-and-a-half hours of sleep doesn’t do the body as much good as you’d think. My head felt heavy, my body ached, and my internal clock had fallen off the wall, entirely. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to run around and get myself moving, or bury my head deeper in the pillow and shut my eyes.

The house was unusually quiet. I generally woke to the sound of the shower running, or footsteps in the hall, or someone shouting about breakfast. Sounds of home. Sounds of family. Sounds of life. Sounds I loved. But this morning, it was dead quiet.

A chill wrapped around my arms the minute I threw back the covers, making me grateful for the thick carpeting beneath my bare feet as I shrugged into one of Mrs. Parks’ old robes. Coffee was the first step on the journey back to the land of the living, but first there were some things I needed to take care of. Like an epic case of morning breath.

Securing the sash around my waist, I shuffled into the bathroom and flipped on the heat fan. If I designed a house, those babies would come standard in every last room. Warm air circulated down from the ceiling, helping to thaw my bones as I ran one brush over my teeth and another through my hair.

I’d stood up to my mother. Over a week later and I still couldn’t believe it. I’d gone toe-to-toe with her and not backed down for the first time ever. Yes, I still planned to give her money. And yes, I was well aware of what most of that money would be spent on. I was an enabler. I’d learned about them in seventh grade health class and I’d known since that day what my role was in my mother’s life. It hadn’t changed the fact, but I was finally taking steps to correct it. I only hoped I had the strength to follow through. Each day that passed without a word from her, my resolve crumbled just a little bit more.

The temptation to never leave that room again was real. So warm and cozy. It wouldn’t be an inconvenience to anyone if I just hibernated in there until spring, would it?

Sighing, I tugged open the door and got slapped with confusion. I’d been so out of it, I hadn’t even noticed Kiernan’s bedroom door, standing open across the hall.

“Cal?” He was hunched on the edge of Kiernan’s bed, staring blankly at the floor.

The sheets were still a knotted mess, but the laundry had all been collected. The sneakers were gone. And all of Kiernan’s books were stacked neatly on his desk. There were boxes lying empty on the floor.

“What are you doing in here?”

Caulder slowly tipped his head toward me and blinked. He just blinked. He looked . . . stunned.

“Are you okay?”

His eyes slid over our surroundings without really taking any of it in. “I thought it was time. You stood up to the ghosts haunting you. I thought maybe if I . . . Maybe Mom could . . .”

“Hey.” I sidestepped one box and climbed over another to reach him, moving with caution as thought approaching a wild animal. He looked ready to . . . something. “There’s no rush. I’m sure—”

Caulder shifted and my gaze latched onto the item dangling from his fingers.

“I was going through some of Kiernan’s books and I found this.” His eyes dropped to the notebook before returning to mine, filled with apology. “I didn’t mean to read it. I was just going to give it back to you. But I . . .”

“It’s okay.” I was proud of the fact that the lie came out smoothly. The thought of anyone reading my work, especially
that
work, made me want to puke.

“This is what your life would have been like? With him?”

“Maybe.” I eased onto the mattress beside him. “Maybe not. I don’t know. It’s a work of fiction, Cal.”

His fingers drifted almost reverently across the cover of the notebook that looked well-worn though Kiernan had only had it a couple weeks before he died. “You . . . you named your son after me?”

“That was all Kiernan. His first choice. He insisted. You were his hero, Cal.”

Caulder curled into himself as though he’d taken a punch to the gut.
“No. I wasn't. I couldn't be. I—”

“No. Cal, no. You can't do this to yourself. There was nothing anyone could do to help him.”

“Not even his damn
hero
.” Raw, bitter pain laced his words and cracked my heart.

Pages fluttered as the book fell to the floor and I slid my hand into his. “I know how you feel. I felt the same way. Kiernan did so much for me and I couldn’t . . .”

“Angel.”

Biting back the pain, I forced more conviction into my words than I really felt. “But that wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t
your
fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

I gave him a moment to digest that, allowing myself a chance to take in everything around me. The scent—the
feel
—of Kiernan wasn’t as strong as before. I didn’t see him in every detail. Didn’t get bogged down in the weight of the memories.

“That almost makes it worse.” Caulder’s fingers clenched painfully around mine, but I doubted he had any idea what he was doing. “There’s no one to . . .”

“Blame?”
Caulder’s eyes flicked up to me. He looked almost surprised that I understood. But I knew exactly what he meant. “No one to
hate
?”

Slowly, he nodded. 

“So it just stays there, trapped inside. Rotting you to the core.”

“Jade . . .” He swallowed, thickly. “I can't . . . I can't get rid of it. I can't stop
feeling
it.”

“I know.”

A swift shake of his head sent dark locks tumbling into his troubled eyes. “I don’t want you to know.”

I knew that, too. Caulder wanted to take on all of this horrible pain and own it himself just so that no one else had to suffer it. But he couldn’t. He was barely surviving his own.

He carried his heartache like a boulder on his back. And not only his, but mine, and his mother’s. He took them all on himself and juggled them. The weight of all our worlds resting squarely on those broad shoulders of his. But even with all that muscle and strength he wasn’t strong enough to bear that kind of burden. Not alone.

“Everyone needs help, sometimes. You taught me that. And you taught me that it’s okay.” Sliding from the edge of the bed, I dropped to my knees beside his legs, so I could look up into his face. Make him see me. Make him hear me. “It’s
okay
, Cal. You don’t have to be strong all the time. You may have been Kiernan’s hero. And mine. But that doesn’t make you Superman. This can wait.” I waved my hand over the empty boxes and stacks of books. “It’s not time, yet. And when it is . . . we’ll do it together. Okay?”

He stared down at me for a long time before his free hand cupped the back of my head, urging me upward. I went willingly and welcomed the familiar heat that swamped my body every time his lips were on mine.
The pain I carried with me constantly . . . It wasn’t erased, but it felt lessened. As though he were draining it from me. Or, more like, filling me up. That gaping hole inside of me, he was pouring into it. Making me feel less hollow, less empty. And I drew on it, hungrily. Drew on
him
. Desperate to let him fill that void.

Cal tore his lips from mine when I began growing restless, but he didn’t let me go. Holding me still, he pressed his forehead to mine and gave us both some time to recover. I felt the brush of his lashes against my skin and found myself falling into his eyes. The deep blue seas that had been roiling with emotion had calmed.

“
You
, Angel, are
my
hero.”

“Well, it’s about time you let me borrow that cape of yours.”

A watery smile curved his lips as his fingertips lightly traced my cheeks and chin. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

Tipping my face into his caress, I sighed. “I could always stand to hear it again.”

Bringing his face back down to mine, he ran his lips along the same path his fingers had just taken before hovering over mine. “You always will.”

I didn’t wait for him to come to me this time. Pressing up on my knees, I closed the space between us and pressed my lips to his.

***

I was lounging on the couch in the media room—standing guard over the television so that Caulder wouldn’t be tempted to use it instead of his computer to finish his latest assignment—flipping through the first book in a sci-fi series he swore by when I heard the doorbell ring. I’d only ever heard it ring from the outside before. For people who seemed to know everyone, the Parks didn’t appear to have many close friends. It was louder than I expected.

Curiosity joined forces with boredom to fuel me off the couch and out into the foyer where raised voices nearly sent me scampering back to safety. Avoiding confrontation was an ingrained response, but something about Caulder’s rigid stance called to me.

“No. You absolutely cannot see her. I don’t know what the hell you and Marjorie said to her at the gala, but—”

“Cal?” I peeked over his shoulder and was stunned to see the gorgeous blonde I’d met at the hospital fundraiser standing on the front porch in jeans and a fur-lined jacket. “Beth? What are you doing here?”

“She was just leaving.” Caulder started to shut the door, but Beth’s hand shot out, slapping against the stained wood.

“Wait! Please, Jade? I just want to speak with you for a second.”

“I think you’ve done enough of that.” Cal used his foot to nudge the door, avoiding the use of his full weight to keep from hurting her, despite his obvious displeasure at having her there.

It was that displeasure that allowed me to react in a way not fueled by jealousy. “Cal, wait.”

“Angel, you don’t have to do this.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged because I honestly didn’t understand why myself. “I do.”

He relented with an exasperated sigh I’d grown used to hearing from him, standing with his back against the wall behind the door, arms folded over his chest. My big, bad bodyguard. I had to squash a smile before opening the door again.

Stone-faced, I looked at the girl who had helped prey on my self-doubt the last time we’d spoken. I didn’t know what she could possibly have left to say, but I knew with Caulder by my side, I could stand to hear it. “What is it you want to say to me?”

“Thank you for hearing me out.” Beth stood on the stone steps, wringing her hands together. “I know you probably don’t want to hear anything I have to say, but . . .” Taking a deep breath, she lifted her eyes to mine. “I’m sorry. About the other night. About Marjorie. About all of it. I was . . . petty. And jealous. And . . .” I got the impression this visit hadn’t been well thought out as she struggled to find the right words. I’d been there myself, so I gave her the time she needed to say whatever it was she’d come to say. “I’m
sorry
. I know it doesn’t make it better, but I’m leaving. I’m going to Italy for six months. And I thought it was something I should tell you before I left. That’s all. That’s all I wanted to say.”

She waited a beat and when it became clear I had nothing to say to her, she headed back to her car.

I tried. I really did. I wanted to hold on to that righteous anger. Use it to punish her. To make her feel a little of the shame she’d exposed me to. Maybe make her think twice before doing it to someone else. But in the end . . . I couldn’t.

“Beth!”

She turned, her golden hair spilling like sunbeams over her shoulder. My teeth swept over my lower lip and clamped down. I had to pry them open to get the words out.

“It’s okay.” I didn’t know her. I didn’t know what kind of person she was. One bad night didn’t make her a bad person. I didn’t know if my refusal to forgive was something that would bother her. But I
did
know it was something that would bother
me
. “I hope you have a nice trip.”

A smile brightened her face and there was a flounce to her step that hadn’t been there before as she rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel. I watched her drive away, quietly marveling at her freedom. How it must feel to be going to Italy . . . to be going
anywhere
. To leave this place behind.

When she was out of sight, I turned back, intent on returning to the story I was begrudgingly getting sucked into, but Caulder’s hands fitted around my jaw, thumbs pressing gently beneath my chin until my face tipped upward and all I could see was him.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” The words sounded accusatory, but they were belittled by the warmth radiating from his smile.

“What?”