Pieces of Summer (A stand-alone novel) (20 page)

After beers. After work. After. After. After.

The pressure gets too harsh, building up to be too agonizing as I crawl toward the scissors off to the side, needing to release the pressure. Needing the other pain. Needing the other pain to make the unwanted pain go away.

My heartrate feels like it’s hammering against my chest, striking with enough force to punch through the skin. I have to save it. I have to save it. I have to…

The first slice breaks some of the fuzz, and a high fills me as the pain travels up and releases the other pain. The pressure eases, but it tries to build again. Reaching over, I cut another strip, watching as the red spills across my stomach, feeling more of the pressure slowly slip away.

Breath fills my lungs as my head falls back, and white specks flutter through my eyes. So good. It’s the right pain. It’s the good kind.

Another cut. Another streak of red.

“You know you can’t take her out of my care. It’d be a disruption!” Dr. Kravitz yells at Aidan.

“Fuck you and the disruption. Read the fucking paper. It’s signed by a judge. I’m taking her home!”

“She wants to be here.”

“No, she doesn’t. She just wants to be better, and all you’re doing is making her worse. You’re torturing her.”

Another cut.

“It’s all in your mind,” Dr. Kravitz says as I scream, restrained to the bed. “The pressure isn’t real.”

“It is. It hurts. Make it stop. Cut it. Just cut it and let it out! Please!”

“It’s not real, Mika. Play the story out in your head. Finish it. Let it work the way you need it to. Get control.”

Another cut.

“Her heartrate is too high. Someone call an ambulance,” a woman yells.

“No! She can do this. She just has to get control.”

“Dr. Kravitz, she needs a hospital!”

Another cut.

“Stop! No!”

“Tell me a time, Mika. Tell me a time to be here. I might show up early or I might show up late. You have to break past this barrier. It’s the biggest trigger.”

“No. No times. Please no. Please don’t. I can’t do it again. It gets worse.”

Another cut.

Another.

Another.

Another.

Chapter 38

CHASE

The second Blake told me he was having a drink with Moose Knuckle because he just got back into town, I knew it was time to get some answers. Yeah, it’s shady as shit, but I don’t care.

We’re at the bar in the bowling alley, and I’m staring over at the lone bald eagle near the entryway.

Hunter and Blake act like they’ve been best friends for years, but I have a reason for being here, and I’m impatient.

“What’s up with Mika?” I blurt out. In my head, it had more finesse than that.

Hunter’s drink pauses in front of his lips, and he slowly shifts his gaze toward me.

“What about her?” he asks warily, lowering his drink as he studies me.

Blake’s eyebrows knit together like he’s confused.

“When I knew Mika, she loved numbers. She kept a strict schedule, and she was a major control freak. Now… things are different. What happened?”

He shifts uncomfortably, and Blake studies him.

“Not my shit to tell. If Mika wants you to know, she’ll tell you herself.”

“I want to be with Mika, but she’s holding back,” I explain, trying not to feel like a prying bastard.

He looks down like he’s sad or something. Before he says anything else, I look up as something moving toward us quickly draws my attention.

Aidan.

Shit.

He looks furious, but he stops just in front of us, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Should have known I’d find you at a bar. Just two in town to search for the James boy,” he growls.

It doesn’t even faze me. I’ve heard a hell of a lot worse.

“Look, I get why you hate me, but—”

“No, you don’t fucking get it!” he yells, drawing everyone’s attention.

Hunter jumps up and gets in front of me when it looks like Aidan is about to lunge. Blake looks wary, slowly standing off the stool. I stand up as well, trying to figure out why Aidan looks like a rabid beast right now.

“Then explain it to me,” I tell him coldly, ignoring all the nosy eyes on us.

“Stay the fuck away from her. She’s not some chick you can reel in and cast out. She doesn’t work like that. Mika is a full-time commitment. What the hell did you do to her today?”

He’s not making a damn bit of sense.

“Nothing. I kissed her bye and went to work.”

His brow furrows for a second, but he still looks like he’s ready to punch me.

“Something happened,” he snarls. “What did you do? She was upset.”

I grab my keys immediately from the counter and sprint outside, but Aidan is in front of me before I reach my truck, shoving me hard.

“Answer me!” he roars.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I warn him.

Hunter is back between us, and so is Blake, who is holding me back as Aidan seethes at me for no fucking reason.

“What did you say to her? Did you text her? Was that you? I know it was. I could tell by the way she immediately went to her laptop. What happened?”

“Nothing happened! All I said was that I was having some beers and I’d see her after. I was trying to get Hunter to give me some insight into Mika, because I can tell something is going on that she’s not telling me.”

More confusion crosses his features, and a bit of his color pales.

“Did you tell her you’d see her at a certain time?”

The hell?!

“No. She doesn’t like exact times or even real estimates.”

He visibly relaxes, confusing me more.

“After beers
is
a real estimate,” he states, pausing to study me. “Why did you text her?” he asks, looking at me like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

“Because I told her this morning that I’d see her after work. Then I decided to speak to Hunter since he was back in town, so I was letting her know about the change in plans.”

More of his color pales… In fact, all the color drains from his face.

“You said you’d see her after work. Then told her you’d see her after drinks instead?”

I nod, and Hunter curses as the both of them take off running, racing away like something is seriously wrong.

“The fuck is going on?” I roar.

“I’ll get her!” Hunter yells to Aidan.

“She’s probably breaking shit. Watch your head,” Aidan yells back.

“Don’t worry about me,” Hunter calls back without even turning around.

“What the hell is wrong?” I snap.

Aidan points at me right as I reach his car, and he growls his next words. “You’re what’s fucking wrong. You gave her conflicting times, and you have no fucking clue how bad that is. Especially because it’s
you.
She’s too invested, which makes her unnaturally irrational even for a normal person. It’s dangerous for her now.”

This sounds so fucking crazy, but he ducks into his car as Hunter speeds out of the parking lot in his.

Blake stands beside me as Aidan squeals out, driving like a madman.

“What in the crazy hell just happened?” he asks.

“I have no clue,” I say in complete shock.

Turning around, I stalk to my truck and sling open the door. Blake climbs in on the passenger side, and I drive faster than necessary to Mika’s house. As soon as we pull up, my heart slaps my stomach.

Hunter is running out, but what has me failing to move is the fact Mika is a bloody mess in his arms. Aidan is rushing out to open the back door of Hunter’s car, and I watch like I’ve been taken out of my body and forced to see her through a screen.

“Fucking hell,” Blake gasps, leaping out of the truck.

I can’t move. Nothing is working.

I watch helplessly as Hunter slides into the backseat, clutching Mika to him as her eyes stay shut. Her entire body is limp, and her mouth is hanging open. All of her color is gone, except for the color of blood staining her all over.

Blake is yelling something, and they’re yelling back, but it all sounds like distant echoes. Then suddenly Blake is in front of me, shoving me over in the truck as he takes the wheel. I shift into the passenger seat as my heart thuds against my throat.

“What happened?” I ask hoarsely.

He doesn’t answer at first as he wheels out in reverse and slings us around, driving behind the fast car with flashers on in front of us.

“I don’t know,” he finally says.

Chapter 39

CHASE

By the time we reach the hospital, we’ve long lost sight of the speedster car Aidan drove. My shock has faded, and a full-blown panic has me bursting out of the passenger door and rushing into the ER before Blake even gets the truck fully stopped.

I stagger to a halt, searching over the heads, seeking a familiar face, and finally spot Hunter. Blood is staining the white shirt he has on, and his knee is bouncing up and down as he stares vacantly at the floor.

When I reach him, he looks up, then he cuts his eyes away. My heart sinks to my stomach, and I try to go through the doors, only to realize they’re locked.

“Sir, you can’t go back there,” a woman says calmly from behind a glass window. “Not unless you’re family. Who are you here to see?”

“I’m her boyfriend. Mikayla Dalton. She just went back,” I say through strain, feeling my hands shaking.

The woman frowns, but she walks away. When she comes back, she shakes her head.

“Sorry, her brother is back with her right now. Only one person is allowed back there at a time. Have a seat out here, and I’ll let him know you want to be kept updated.”

My legs collapse, and I slide down the wall behind me until I’m sitting in the floor. There was so much blood, and I can’t even get back there to her when she needs me.

Chapter 40

CHASE

After what feels like forever, I go to lower myself by Hunter. Blake is sitting on the other side of him, but Hunter hasn’t spoken since we got here.

“What happened?” I finally manage to ask.

Hunter looks up with wet eyes, and he curses before wiping away a tear and clearing his throat.

“She cut herself up,” he says quietly. “Again.”

My breath gets trapped in my throat, as Blake lets out a strangled sound. All those scars on her stomach…

“She did that to herself?” Blake asks quietly.

Hunter just nods, staring at nothing in particular.

“Why the hell would you leave her alone if she does that sort of thing?” Blake asks while I work to wrap my head around everything, trying and failing to make it all make sense.

“She hasn’t done anything like this in seven years. Aidan is hating himself enough right now as it is. We knew she’d be agitated and possibly break some shit after we found out about what happened, but never expected her to do that. I’m guessing she’s been breaking too many rules lately, and this was just something that got out of control.”

“The fuck kind of rules are you talking about?” I ask, still so damn lost. “She cut herself up because I changed what time I was coming over there?”

He nods absently, still seeming a thousand miles away. Blowing out a long breath, he leans back and scrubs his face with his hands.

“This shouldn’t be me telling you this, but fuck it. She’s getting careless, and someone has to tell you since you’re obviously fucking her.”

My spine stiffens when I hear the bite to his tone, but it doesn’t sound like jealousy. Just frustration.

He glances around at all the nosy assholes before gesturing for us to follow him outside. As soon as we get out to the parking lot and have privacy, he turns and faces us, as Blake takes my side.

“Mika suffered a major brain injury when she was eighteen.”

My breath gets painful as I try to digest that, and Blake leans against a car to the side as he exhales heavily.

“Damn,” Blake says quietly.

“Her mom pushed her off the second floor, and Mika landed on a coffee table. She miraculously survived without spinal injuries, but her head hit so hard it caused the brain to swell and bleed. They had to do emergency surgery, but the operating surgeon had been drinking that night. He didn’t tell anyone until it was too late and he almost killed her. Again, she escaped death and also managed to escape being paralyzed. Another doctor stepped in just in time to save her life, but the damage had been done, even though no one knew it immediately.”

I drop the tailgate on the back of the random truck behind me, and I sit down on it when my knees threaten to buckle.

“What happened?” I ask in a strained, regretful tone. Mika told me shit went bad, but I had no idea…

“Mika slipped into a coma for five weeks. When she woke up, she couldn’t speak, walk, or anything else. It took her a few months, but it all slowly started coming back to her, and she eventually remembered all the basics. Another blessing.”

He leans against another car, sighing as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“Unfortunately, no one realized then just how bad shit was. The more she remembered how to do, the more her mind started short circuiting on other things. Gradually, she sort of lost it. She’d had a small case of OCD before the accident, from what Aidan told me, but it started growing extreme. It was more than that though. Mika started having panic attacks when someone told her dates or times. She’d watch the clock—literally. If someone was a minute early or late, she’d have a meltdown, throwing tantrums and hitting herself. This progressed into cutting later on as the ‘pressure’ started building in her stomach. Before cutting, there was sex. And that… well, that was a whole other set of issues.”

My stomach roils, but I try to digest his words, processing everything slowly.

“It’s not OCD,” Hunter goes on. “People with severe OCD need routines. The disruption causes irrational agitation. Mika doesn’t need a routine. In fact, she needs the opposite. But she does have some OCD mannerisms.”

He runs a hand through his hair before continuing.

“What makes us rational? No one really knows. What makes us understand it’s ridiculous to throw a fit over something small?” Hunter asks, shrugging. “Whatever it is, Mika lost it. It got to be too much for Aidan. By that time, her dad had already had a stroke, and their mom had offed herself in a jail cell the same night she thought she killed her daughter. Aidan and Mika only had each other. Shit was bad. Worse than bad.”

He swallows like he’s staving off his emotion. My chest feels too heavy to even take a breath.

“She was seeing a doctor at the time who believed she’d had a psychotic break rather than anything wrong with her actual brain. Her symptoms individually fit certain diagnoses, but altogether, it was an unnamed phenomena. He wanted to study her to find all her triggers, and Aidan finally put her in his care at a psych hospital.”

A woman walks by, and Hunter waits until she passes completely before continuing, as though he’s unloading government secrets and is paranoid of someone overhearing. He pockets his hands before kicking a rock, staring at the ground as he continues.

“No dates. No times. Those are the major ones. Vagueness is key, and no contradictions or conflicting statements. After work means after work. Not after beers.”

It feels like I’m being punched in the stomach. This is my fault?

“I didn’t know,” I say quietly.

“I’m aware,” he sighs, looking back up. “She shouldn’t have gone this far off the reservation about a small confliction. She should have been able to write it out.”

“What does that mean?” Blake asks, feeling as lost and fucking confused as I do.

“That man was a fucking nightmare, but no one can deny Mika came out of that place different… able to cope. The best thing Dr. Kravitz did for Mika was find her an outlet. Too many variables are unpredictable, and for her to live as normal as possible, she needed a way to finish things and fix them when they conflicted. He helped her train her mind to turn reality into fantasy—so much so, that she actually became an author. When she fixes a scene in her head, she then turns it into a book. Every time. It gives her closure and control over a situation.”

No, I don’t get it. None of it makes sense to me, but Hunter seems to act like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I actually feel fucking envious of him, because it feels like he knows her better than I do.

“Has she been writing at all?” he asks, staring at me.

“I don’t know,” I answer on a heavy breath. “I go to work, and she stays there.”

He nods absently, shifting his gaze toward the hospital. His eyes widen, and he mutters, “Fuck.”

Just as I turn my head to look over my shoulder, something hard collides with my face with enough force to knock me off the tailgate I’m on. I hit the ground so hard that my breath is forced out of my lungs, and I spin over just in time to dodge a heavy boot that was aimed at the back of my head.

“Aidan, don’t!” Hunter yells just as I get to my feet, wiping blood from my mouth as Hunter struggles to hold back a seething Aidan.

His eyes are reddened from tears, his mouth is twisted in anguish, and he’s frantically shoving at Hunter to get him out of the way.

“This is his fault! Let me the fuck go!” Aidan roars, as Blake goes to help Hunter hold him back.

“He didn’t know, man. He had no clue. You can’t blame—”

“I can blame him! He always fucking breaks her. I told him to stay away!”

His words end on a choked sound, as his struggles turn ragged, and he stumbles back, landing against the side of a car as though he needs it for support. The fight leaves him as he clutches his face.

“Is she okay?” I ask, which draws his hands away as fury sinks into his features again.

“Fuck you. Get out of here. I don’t want you around when she wakes up. She’s had her break, so she’ll be
fine
as long as you’re not around.”

My jaw grinds, and Blake immediately darts out to put his hands on my chest like he’s worried I’m about to destroy Aidan.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Is she okay?” Hunter asks him, since Aidan refused to give me a direct answer.

“Yeah. She’s fine. Stitches all over her stomach like she’s Frankenstein’s toy again, but she’s fine,” he says bitterly.

I sway on my feet, feeling relief hit me, along with a flurry of other emotions that all seem to clash against each other.

“He’s been with her since we left!” Aidan grinds out, glaring over at Hunter. “Three fucking weeks.”

Hunter nods. “They’re… more than just friends. A little over two weeks have had intimacy.”

Aidan’s jaw clenches, and that murderous look flings back to me.

“Two weeks? It’s amazing she hasn’t snapped before now. What if we hadn’t been here?” he yells.

My neck cracks to the side as I work hard to rein in my temper.

“Hunter told me what’s going on. I didn’t fucking know. Now I do. It won’t happen again,” I say calmly, trying to remember that killing him would be a bad way to stay on Mika’s good side, and I want to be here when she wakes up without her kicking me out.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he asks, stepping forward. Hunter puts a hand on his chest again, as though he’s prepared to restrain him. “You are her biggest damn weakness. You’re the reason she came back. That motherfucking bowling alley is bullshit. She just wanted to relive her best days, and I don’t give a damn what she says. That’s the real truth. You! All because of you.”

I swallow against the knot in my throat as tears fill up in his eyes. He looks exhausted and drained, as though the world is suddenly collapsing on his shoulders.

“I failed her once. Never again. I’ll never let this happen again,” he says on a choked sob, then clears his throat.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Hunter groans.

Aidan cuts his eyes to him. “Yes it was. I told Mika to deal with Mom. I wanted to move out as badly as she did, but it was too much fucking drama for me. I was always letting Mika do the dirty work while I sat back and chilled. I’m the one who told her to tell Mom we were leaving that night. I knew there’d be a fight. I knew it would be ugly. I just… I never fucking expected…” His words trail off, and he seals his lips when the strain of the guilt makes him fight to keep his tone.

He clears his throat again and wipes at his eyes. No one says a word.

Finally, he looks over at the hospital, staring vacantly at the busy entrance of the ER before speaking again.

“I failed her more than once. I sent her to that fucking sadistic son of a bitch. He pushed her limits daily, intentionally hit her triggers. It was psychological torture disguised as therapy. And Mika wouldn’t leave because she didn’t want to be a burden on me. Three years. She stayed in there for three fucking years, endured all that pain daily just to keep me from having to be saddled with her.”

He drops back and slides down the car as his tears start falling, and I watch as he sobs into his hands. I’ve never seen someone break down so thoroughly, and I end up having to sit back down as I watch, feeling nothing but guilty.

I lost Mika because I gave her up. I pushed her away to make her life better. And she went through this alone. I only wanted her life to be free and happy. I never… I never thought her life would be worse.

“They had to sedate her and restrain her to the bed all the time because she’d lose it,” he whispers through the strain. “They’d push her limits, and she’d lose it. She stayed in hell because I put her there, and she didn’t want to be a problem for me.”

Everything… This all feels like my fucking fault.

“She’d have never been able to be with you,” Hunter tells me randomly, causing me to snap my head up. I feel something wet slide down my face, and I realize it’s a stray tear.

I wipe it away and clear my throat.

“Their mother was on some pills their uncle hooked her up with, and she was drinking on top of that. She refused to let them leave. Mika would have been in that hallway and in front of that bannister no matter what went down between you two,” he says on a sigh. “This isn’t on
anyone
standing out here right now, so both of you stop trying to claim the guilt.”

I never said anything, but apparently guilt is written on my face.

“You need to go,” Aidan says quietly, looking up at me.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying. I realize I have to make some changes, but—”

He snorts loudly, almost snarling, and he glares up at me.

“Some
changes? You’d have to make lifestyle changes galore. You think you know what to do? There’s literally a whole fucking book on Mika. Yeah. That sadistic son of a bitch wrote a book on her case. Mika unknowingly signed a waver to get the free treatment from him and his legion of sociopaths. They can’t use her last name, but so fucking what. He had a bestseller from her pain during those three years of trials. The bastard even took credit for the success she’s had since her ‘recovery,’ if that’s what you want to call it.”