Pieces of Summer (A stand-alone novel) (9 page)

Chapter 17

CHASE

Mom is passed out, and I turn her on her stomach as I always do… Just in case. At least he can’t hit her anymore. He’s too scared of what I’ll do to him. He spent four days in the hospital last time.

“That James kid is a menace,” is all the cops said to the doctor before I left the hospital that day. The doctor had checked my wrist, but he lied and told them there was no way I caused that damage to my old man because my wrist had been fractured for at least a week.

As soon as they’d left, he put my arm in a cast and told me I was tough as hell. Not to worry.

Now Dad is probably in a bar, boozing away all of our money. The electricity was cut off four days ago. If he knew I worked, he’d be stealing every dime of the money I have hidden away. He’d use it to gamble. Not pay our bills. Fortunately he stays too drunk to know where I am or what I’m doing.

Food stamps kept me from starving as a kid. Now I eat whatever leftovers are at the diner. Every dime I make goes toward a better future. A better future with Mika. She’s the only person to have ever looked at me and not be scared. She doesn’t give a damn about the rat hole I live in. She doesn’t give a fuck about my parents being shitty and disgusting.

My eyes glance over the words of her latest letter, letting her words bring me back into the light.

Chase,

I’m supposed to be doing homework, but all I can think about is you right now. I miss you. I love you. I can’t wait until summer is here again. Even more importantly, I can’t wait until graduation. I’ve put some pictures in the envelope. I had pictures of us developed from this past summer. It’s not much, but it’s something to hold onto. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Love,

Mika

My fingers trace over her face on the picture, and I can’t help but notice the way she’s staring up at me, looking at me like I’m something more. Something special. I never want to lose that.

All she cares about is me. Even her father likes me. He lets me be with her without telling her I’m not good enough. With Mika, I have a chance. I’ll treat her better than my dad ever treated my mom.

I’ll make sure she knows how much I love her every single day. She’ll never regret it.

Can’t get her out of my fucking head. Every time I close my eyes, forgotten memories resurface. Two days ago, my lips were on hers, her body was in my hands, and I managed to force myself to walk away.

“Why can’t you just be with her if she’s in Hayden anyway?” Blake asks.

I hate fucking tequila. I rarely drink liquor. It’s even rarer that I actually get drunk. My parents were both useless alcoholics who drowned themselves out of the world daily. Dad managed to hold down a job to support his habit. Mom got drunk and would screw whatever guy paid her twenty dollars just so she could get her next meth fix to go with her shot of liquor.

Getting drunk makes you forget, or it makes you bare your fucking soul or some shit. Unfortunately, the latter was my issue the other night, so now Blake knows everything.

“Because she needs to leave.” It doesn’t even sound like a good answer to me anymore. But Mika and I… There’s just too much history there, and I’d fall back into the trap of being someone else, getting lost in her like there’s hope for a happy ending. Then have it brutally ripped away from me when she realizes the same thing her father did all those years ago.

She’ll want more than I can ever give her. With Mika, there’s no chance of a no-strings relationship, or I’d fuck her just to get it out of my system. No. There’s no such thing as getting her out of my system—I’ve been trying for many fucking years.

With Mika, I’ll get consumed all over again. She’s like a fucking drug.

“I still wish I knew why she seems familiar,” Blake says idly.

“No idea. You didn’t move here until after she stopped coming.”

“It’s the eyes… Something about those eyes.”

“Can we please quit talking about her?” I groan. “This shit is getting hard enough to deal with without you constantly bringing her up.”

“I just think it’s shitty for you to put a ban on her from me and anyone else interested if you’re going to put your dick on a leash and keep it away from her.”

He’s goading me and I know it.

“Fuck off, Blake. I mean it. I’m sick of talking about—”

My words die on my tongue when the bane of my existence walks into my shop. Wearing a pair of cutoff shorts, cowboy boots, and a t-shirt, Mika smiles at Beth while running a hand through her silky dark hair. Blake looks at me with wide, amused eyes as I hold my breath.

It’d be nice if there was somewhere to hide right about now.

“Can I help you?” Beth asks her.

“They said next door that Blake was over here?”

Beth smirks and motions our way, and I give up hoping to resemble a statue when Mika’s eyes shift down the corridor to the back room, landing on us.

“Hello, gorgeous. Thought you were avoiding me,” Blake says while going to lean against the doorframe.

Mika’s smile falters, and her eyes lock onto mine in surprise. She apparently didn’t know this was my place. Shit.

After several silent minutes pass between us, I start feeling the old, familiar buzz beneath my skin, and every dirty thought imaginable crosses my mind. The look in her eyes shifts, and she tugs her lip between her teeth, as though she’s imagining the same thing. It makes it really hard to keep standing here instead of bending her over one of the chairs.

“You were looking for me?” Blake chimes in, smirking.

Mika blinks rapidly several times before turning to face Blake.

“Um. Yeah. I was wondering if you could… um… Oh! I mean, Hunter asked me to drop something off for you. He had to take an early flight out this morning because of a big business opportunity. Apparently you two are friends or something?”

“Yeah, I got fond of Skinny Jeans, even though he still looks ridiculous.”

Mika smiles nervously, and she hesitates. “I’ll just leave it here. It’s some kind of liquor you like or something.”

She sets a box down on the counter in front of Beth and practically sprints out.

Beth eyes me, and Blake turns to stare at me as well, grinning like the damn cat who ate the canary.

“What the fuck was that? I’m practically dripping wet just from feeling all the sexual tension between you two, and you two didn’t even have to speak,” Beth drawls.

Swallowing hard, I shrug, but I can’t find a way to answer.

“Her brother is gone too,” Blake says, still grinning at me. “Left yesterday. I checked his car myself before he left for the airport. Says he’ll be gone for a while, but he’ll be back. Seems intent on keeping a close eye on his baby sister. Even asked me to call him if anything seems off with her, but to keep my hands to my-fucking-self. His words. I don’t even know the guy.”

“They’re twins,” I say as though that explains his protectiveness, even though I don’t know why I say it. He wasn’t protective of her when they were growing up.

I shouldn’t be thinking about anything from the past, but I guess it’s better than thinking about Mika being alone in that house.

“Gonna storm tonight,” Beth adds, still watching me like I’m a science experiment that might bubble over at any moment.

“Heard it was going to be a rough one. Probably some power outages and such. Hope Mika isn’t scared of the dark,” Blake goes on.

I flip them both off just as my next appointment walks in. Fucking great. Now I really can’t stop thinking about her. Mika used to love the storms when I was there with her because it meant I’d be holding her against me all night.

The thunder scared her. Her parents… They just let us sleep together in the sunroom, curled up in each other’s arms on a blanket like we weren’t two kids feeling things too intense for our age.

I told her I loved her the first time during a storm. I also went down on her during a few storms to keep her mind off them.

Glancing down, I curse. Great. Now I’m going to have to ink a skull on a man’s arm while I’m sporting an obvious boner. This should be all over town by tomorrow morning.

Chapter 18

MIKA

“Thanks for making it stop,” Chase tells me, still trying to catch his breath after the nightmare.

“I’ll always be here. Always,” I promise him as he holds me against him. The lightning crashes, causing me to jump, and he chuckles as I burrow into his side.

“I’ll always be here too,” he says against my head, kissing it.

I grin like an idiot, but I sigh happily in his arms despite the raging storm that has cut all the power off.

“I love you,” I tell him, even though he never says it back.

“You know you’re the only person who has ever said that to me?” he asks, but it’s not a sad question. He states it so matter-of-factly. Even though it breaks my heart, I nod. It’s not like I haven’t figured that one out without having to be told.

Leaning up, I stare down into his eyes as he gazes up at me from the floor.

“I don’t just love you,” I confess, ignoring the shakiness in my voice. “I’m in love with you.”

His body tenses for a second, and I start to regret the words. But suddenly I’m being flipped onto my back and he comes down on top of me. At thirteen, I’ve just started realizing the new way my body responds to him, and heat floods through me, making me regret pajama pants instead of shorts when I start worrying about breaking out into a sweat.

His eyes study mine, and I don’t look away.

“I’m in love with you too, Mika. Have been. Always will be.”

The thunder claps, snapping me out of old memories, and I shrink against the couch, hearing it roar across the sky next. If I wouldn’t feel utterly ridiculous about it, I would cover my head with the blanket.

I forgot how nasty the summer storms could get here. Tree limbs slap the side of the house, sounding like claws slicing and trying to break in. Vivid images assault me… images of the trees actually growing claws. I’ll put that in one of my paranormal murder/mysteries.

Something pounds heavily against the door, and I squeal while cursing my inner girl.

Jumping up, I move to the door, peeking out the window. I’m met with a set of blue eyes that are staring into mine as the rain blows in on the porch. He’s soaked, and staring, and I go to war with the voice in my head that tells me to leave him out there.

Taking a deep, painful breath, I open the door, and rain blows inside before he gets in. I actually struggle to get the door shut against the wind, and he leans over me, pushing it closed with one hand beside my head.

I feel a drop of water fall on my shoulder just as a warm breath heats me through my hair. My entire body goes stiff as Chase stays close to my back. Too close.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper, staring at the door and ignoring the way his hand feels when it moves and comes to rest on my hip.

The front of his head rests against the back of my head, and I remain frozen. Why is he touching me?

“Storms scare you,” he says softly, as if that explains everything.

Pushing his hand away from my side, I turn to face him, leaning back against the door to distance our bodies.

He shifts back and clears his throat.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re here,” I say quietly.

His hair is soaked, and he shrugs while brushing some of the wet hair off his forehead.

“Your brother and Moose Knuckle are gone, and there’s a hell of a storm outside.”

Moose Knuckle?

He seems taller when he’s standing right in front of me, and I have to keep my head tilted back to see into his eyes. They’re not cold today. They look haunted and conflicted more than anything.

“So?”

He looks a little lost for some reason.

“So I didn’t want you to have to sit through it alone in case the—”

The lights die instantly as a wave of silence slips over the house, and he looks around before finishing his sentence.

“—power goes out. Looks like I guessed right.”

His eyes come back down to meet mine, and I take a step to the right. There’s still a little light outside that’s coming in through the windows, but that will be gone soon and it’ll be pitch black in here.

I don’t want to be alone in the storm with no power. Call me a baby, but this shit isn’t cool.

“You can stay. But you sit on a different piece of furniture and you can’t touch me.”

His lips twitch, and he pockets his hands.

“Got any flashlights?” he asks.

“I have four flashlights. I have zero batteries to go in them.”

He laughs under his breath.

“What happened to always stocking up on the necessities? You used to be a little crazy about having extra of everything.”

I tense, but he doesn’t notice as he pulls a candle off my table. I used to be a control freak. It’s a far cry from crazy. He hasn’t seen crazy.

Explaining to him that I can’t buy things in excess anymore isn’t an option. Running out of things happens often. Aidan will have to replace the batteries, because that’s something that seems to be a trigger for me. I can’t shop for very many things.

“Um… Things changed,” I mutter.

“So I’ve noticed.”

He turns back around, and his eyes move from my head to my toes in a slow, deliberate motion. I swallow the lump in my throat and head into the living room, tripping over one of my stray shoes in the way. Away from the windows, it’s a lot darker, and I fumble around to sit down.

Something clicks a few times, and I look over as Chase walks toward me with a lit candle in his hand.

“I have no matches and no lighters. How’d you do that?”

“Magic,” he gasps, then snickers under his breath when I roll my eyes. “I always have a knife and a lighter on hand. You used to collect matches. What happened to that?”

Again, with the past. I didn’t know I was collecting habits instead of just articles back then. Habits are compulsive behavior mechanisms that normal people can deal with. I miss being able to have habits.

He sits down on the chair across from me with nothing illuminating us but the lone candle.

“Things change, Chase. You didn’t have any tattoos or express any interest in them when I knew you. Now you’re covered in them and you work in a tattoo parlor.”

“I own it,” he says, flashing that boyish grin that I haven’t seen since I’ve been here.

A touch of pride hits my heart, and a surprised smile spreads across my face.

“You own it? That’s great.”

His grin only grows as he sits back in the seat, getting comfortable.

“Yeah. I moved to Nashville for a while and met some guys who owned their own place. They liked my art, and before I knew it, I was working to get my license. They took me under their wing, and I eventually moved back and opened my own place. It’s still fairly new, only a couple of years old, but it’s mine and it pays the bills.”

We’re glossing over the uncomfortable past we’re avoiding, and talking about the good things in life. Maybe this won’t be an unbearable storm after all.

“So you write? I tried to find your name, but couldn’t.”

I shift uncomfortably, but at the same time it gives me an oddly good feeling that he tried finding me. It felt like he wanted nothing to do with me.

“I use a pen name.”

“What is it?” he asks, seeming sincerely interested.

Wish he hadn’t asked that.

Sighing, I stand up and use the glimmer of light to find a book from the bookcase. Then I walk over and hand it to him. Our fingers touch briefly, but I ignore all the stir of emotions that one touch provokes as I withdraw my hand.

He studies the book for a second until his throat bobs.

“Mikayla Chase,” he says quietly.

“It’s a little weird, since I killed a Chase in my books twice.”

His eyes come up in surprise and a slow smile spreads over my lips, killing some of the embarrassment I’m suffering.

“You killed me?” he asks, amused.

“Yes. In some rather brutal ways, I might add. I also killed a James a few times.”

He snorts out a laugh while scrubbing his hand over his face.

“I would have kept on, but my publisher said it was time to kill someone who wasn’t a James or a Chase.”

“What did you do?” he asks, smirking.

“Switched to your middle name.”

He bursts out laughing, and my smile grows as he shakes his head and puts my book down beside him.

“Why murder/mystery?” he asks. “And why writing? I thought you wanted to be a doctor.”

Again with the doctor thing.

“I did want to be a doctor when I was like fifteen or something. Most kids do. Then they do the math on actually becoming a doctor—a surgeon, in my case—and realize it’s a lot of work with little guarantee you’ll do more good than harm.”

I deliberately skip over the reason I started writing. I’m not ready for that conversation.

He frowns as he runs his finger over his lips. I can’t take my eyes off that motion, watching with rapt attention as my thighs squeeze together. Wrong thought process.

“Your dad said you wanted to be a doctor. It’s one of the reasons I let you go, Mika. You couldn’t have gone to college if you had come here. The closest good college is at least four hours away.”

“Guess you should have asked me what I wanted,” I mumble.

“I knew what you wanted,” he sighs. “Me. Us. The damn bowling alley. But those were my dreams when I was stuck here. I didn’t want you stuck here with me and hating me like your mother hated your father.”

He doesn’t understand, and I can’t explain.

So my father told him I wanted to be a doctor? No doubt he included my mother’s lost dreams of being an actress, even though she couldn’t act for shit. She couldn’t even do real life, let alone act.

“Why did you do it? And why the fuck did you give it that awful name?” he asks, but he keeps his tone light as he smiles at me.

“Closure,” I say yet again, ignoring the name barb. Why does everyone hate the simple name? “It was unfinished. You know how much I hate that.”

His smile slips, and that sadness I once saw in his eyes when he was younger is suddenly there again, easy to see even with just the light of the candle.

“Did you come back because of me?” His voice is strained, as though that question is impossible for him to ask.

That’s not an easy question to answer.

“Yes, but not because I want you back. I came back to get what I needed… What you didn’t give me… A chance to move on. I live my life for me now, and I’ve made a lot of changes to make
me
better.”

He clears his throat and looks away.

“You hurt me, Chase. You really fucking hurt me. And I still held on to the memory of what we were for longer than was healthy,” I tell him honestly. “This was the last thing I needed to do in order to get… over it.”

I almost said
get better
.

Problem is, I still don’t feel like anything is resolved, and the nagging feeling is stronger than ever. My skin is crawling with the need for resolution… for finality. It’s like my head can’t digest the bowling alley is finished, and this chapter of my life should now be closed. I’ve typed
the end
on the manuscript, erased it, typed it again, erased it once more, and typed it again. Usually if I type
the end
, then I’m able to move on.

I get my closure through healthier means than I used to. I keep my life moving forward by turning the uncontrollable factors into controllable stories. It keeps me mostly normal.

“You love writing?” he asks me.

If I hadn’t found the ability to channel all my energy into writing, I’d still be stuck in that hell.

“It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I answer quietly.

“Would you have been a writer if you had stayed with me?” he asks, acting as though it’s not an easy question to release.

It’s something I’ve thought about for so long, even tried to work out the conclusion for the sake of my own closure. The truth is, I don’t know. Most likely, Chase would have gone doubly protective after… After the accident. It’s doubtful he would have allowed the measures taken that Aidan did. It’s possible I wouldn’t be a functioning person and he’d be caring for me, unable to live his own life.

“No,” I say quietly. “You did the right thing, Chase. We weren’t meant to be. You just did it the wrong way.”

None of that sounds right, but that’s life. It sucks you in, chews you up, and vomits you onto someone’s shoes. It’s grand, eh?

“Every time I tried to write a letter, it turned into a fucking love letter instead of one that said goodbye,” he grumbles, looking down. “I was a heartbroken kid who didn’t see any hope for myself, and yeah, I was bitter. I was also selfish and missed you, so I… I left it unfinished. In a way, I kept thinking your need to finish things would send you running back to me almost immediately. It didn’t.”