Fall To Pieces: Broken #2 (The Broken Series) (3 page)

“Kyle,” she sighed, and I looked into those pale shattered gray eyes.

I guess it’s true what they say; when you have everything, you have everything to lose.

That quote never had a truer fucking meaning than my life right now.

My heart sank. I knew whatever she was about to say would be bad.

“If you care about me,” she mumbled, pausing as she inhaled a wobbly breath. “If you have ever cared about me, you will leave me be.”

“If you have ever cared about me?”

She didn’t know the half of the depth of my feelings for her, but if I told her how I felt now, she probably wouldn’t believe me, or worse; think I was lying to her.

I shook my head, and opened my mouth to respond, but she spoke first.

“I need to be on my own for a while. I need to make some decisions and I can’t think clearly around you. I need you to give me some space while I recover. Don’t come back here. Please.”

I was torn apart by her words.

Did she mean it? Was she testing my commitment to her?

I thought about it, and realized
, sadly, that she meant every word.

Lee didn’t play games. She was the most honest person I knew. If she said something, she meant it. But fuck did it hurt…

“I don’t want you to be alone on Christmas,” I said pathetically, holding back the tears. “Please don’t ask me to do this, princess.”

Truth be told, I didn’t want to be alone. Everything was slipping away from me, and I was using anything I could think of
, to get her to change her mind.

“Is this really what you want?” I asked when she didn’t answer me.

She closed her eyes, and slowly nodded.

Tears slid down her cheekbones and there was a finality to this picture that I couldn’t handle.

I jerked out of the chair, and paced the floor, unable to sit still any longer. I couldn’t breathe.

How was I supposed to make my legs walk out that door and leave her and my baby?

“How much time do you need?” I asked looking down at her.

Her body was tensed, her eyes closed.

“I don’t know.”

I went to her.

Leaning down, I clasped her face between both of my hands. “I’ll be here. When you are ready, you call me, I will be here.”

I kissed her lips, tasted the wetness of her salty tears on my lips. I pulled away too soon, afraid I would push her too far. “Do you understand me? I will be here waiting for you, when you’re ready to let me back in.”

CHAPTER ONE

Lee

I had a decision to make. I had many to make actually. The first and possibly most important one I had already made when I placed that phone call last night. I was now hoping it was a decision that wouldn’t come back to bite me in the butt.

I rubbed the skin covering my swollen stomach and sighed. I’d been through hell and back in the past six weeks, but I’d survived, and most importantly, so had the child growing in my womb.

“You got everything you need, Lee?”

I smiled, it was a weak one
, but it was all I could muster given the circumstances.

“Yes,” I replied zipping closed my duffel bag.

Mike Henderson stood in the doorway of my hospital room, tall, handsome and intimidating as hell, but offering me an escape; a temporary exit to this messed up life I had slipped into.

When I’d phoned him last night asking for a favor, it wasn’t to hurt his brother, or upset my friends. I’d just needed someone to talk to, someone who wasn’t bias and wouldn’t judge me on my poor decisions.

It hurt to think of the reasons why I was standing in a hospital room.

Losing the baby and losing Kyle all in the same night was something I didn’t like to think about, couldn’t think about.

It had been over six weeks since that night, the night my life and everything in it fell to pieces. I’d found out I was pregnant and then I wasn’t, and then I was again, all in a matter of hours.

Twins, the doctor had said. One had died, one survived. And the man I loved, the man I trusted more than anyone in this world
, had betrayed me.

For the sake of my sanity
, I locked away those feelings and thoughts in a box, in the darkest part of my mind, the same box I kept the memories of my father’s beatings, and the petrified feelings that had engulfed me on the night of my highschool prom, when Perry Franklin had tried to rape me.

Pretense was now my coping mechanism for carrying on, for surviving one day at a time.

So, for the past forty plus days, while I healed from the surgery and the medical team monitored my pregnancy, I’d closed off my feelings and tried to adjust to my new life.

I’d gotten a nasty infection after the surgery which had delayed my discharge by a couple of weeks, which had been a gift from god.

Well, the infection was gross and that had sucked, but the relief of having an extra few weeks before I’d to face my roommates-one roommate in particular- had sweetened the deal.

Dr. Ashcroft
had warned me of the different complications and infections the baby was vulnerable to because of my intrusive surgery, but was delighted with how I was progressing.

The baby was perfect, developing exactly as he should be.

I had been offered to join a therapeutic group for teenagers who were struggling to adapt to motherhood, but I’d declined.

I was grieving the baby I’d lost, not struggling to adapt to the one I had inside of me. This sense of despair would pass. I just needed to give it time. Not talk. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to move forward. I thought that was a pretty mature response to the U-turn my life had taken. I was allowed to be sad. No one was going to tell me I wasn’t.

I wasn’t upset about being pregnant, even though at my age, with my lack of qualifications and money, I should have been. Instead, I was excited, and terrified, in a good way, I think.

I had waited my whole life to have someone who I could love
, and would love me in return. The map of my life had shifted effortlessly, and was now focused entirely on the baby growing inside me.

Even If I could never have his father, I would have my baby. Yeah, I thought I was having a boy… that was my gut feeling.

Realistically, the thought of having this baby scared me to death, let alone having a boy.

How could I raise a boy? I knew nothing about boys. Look at the man whose child I was carrying, I sure didn’t know a thing about him.

I hadn’t’ seen Kyle since Christmas Day. For once in his life, he was doing what I asked him to do; leaving me alone and that depressed me deeply.

So much had changed; so many incidences and bad choices pushed me towards my decision to call Mike to collect me today.

I hadn’t told my roommates Derek Porter, or Camryn Frey, I was coming home today. I didn’t think my pride could take their pity, and I knew they would tell Kyle. They’d kinda have to considering the four of us shared a house-Kyles house.

It was bad enough I would be returning to his house, I didn’t want an audience when I walked through that door with my tail between my legs.

So, last night, when Cam came to visit I’d told her I had tests all day today so there was no need to visit.

Cam, Kyle and Derek were seniors at CU, and all three of them had classes on Friday, which gave me a few hours before I had to face them.

If I had any other option, I would run as fast and as far from that house as I could. But I was broke, and going home to my father was not something I could even begin to contemplate.

Daddy was recovering from a lifetime of alcohol abuse, and the thought of arriving home, nineteen and pregnant, wasn’t something that filled me with warm, fuzzy feelings. I had a pretty strong suspicion that my pregnancy would derail daddy’s sobriety, not to mention my fear of what he would do to me.
He had a nasty temper, and the man could flip as quick as a light switch.

No,
I was just going to have to save up as much money as I could before the baby was born, so I could get my own place.

Cam was my best friend
though, and I knew it should be her bringing me home. She was the one who had sat with me day in, day out, since I’d been hospitalized, well, her and Mike.

But I just couldn’t face her…She wouldn’t understand my calling Mike; in fact she would probably be furious. I understood why; Mike and Kyle were brothers, a lieu estranged ones.

Mike had played his part in the whole
‘make a fool out of Lee’
charade, but the difference was-and it was an important one-that Mike hadn’t lied, hadn’t hurt me, couldn’t hurt me. Not like Kyle had, or could.

Mike didn’t own any piece of my heart and I knew I could trust him. He was on my side, he had said as much wh
en he arrived at the hospital.

I had screamed my head off at him when he’d showed up, two days after I had the operation that removed my fallopian tube and my dead baby inside it.

I’d told Mike to leave…But he didn’t.

Unlike Kyle, Mike had stayed, and he’d taken everything I threw at him- and I had thrown a lot.

I’d had a lot of dark moments in the first two weeks; fear, doubt, anger, injustice were all potent emotions that had been swirling inside me at the start. When those feelings had lifted, a cloud of sadness took place. But Mike had stuck around on my worst days. And then he’d kept coming back.

He
’d told me he was sorry he didn’t tell me that he and Kyle were brothers, that the guilt was eating him. He’d said that he wished he’d warned me from the start, about Rachel, but to be fair, he hadn’t known I was involved with Kyle, until I was so deeply devoted, that even I had to admit, I probably wouldn’t have believed him.

Mike hadn’t known about Rachel’s trickery and had been horrified over the lies Rachel had spun Kyle.

I had been, too.

It wasn’t every day you met a girl
, who would go to the extremes of faking a pregnancy and hysterectomy, to secure a man for money.

God, I hated that bitch.

Rachel Grayson would forever be on my shit list.

I’d accepted Mike’s apology because he was my friend. He’d been my friend before I was ever involved with his brother. I accepted his comfort and friendship because I needed it. I needed one person in my life that was solely there for me.

As good as Cam was to me, and as nice as Derek was, they were Kyle’s friends too, and dragging them into the middle of this was unfair.

A tiny part of my conscience
, protested that I was using Mike, but I needed him right now. Mike was mine, not Kyle’s.

I had a lot to thank both Mike and Cam for. Even though they weren’t overly keen on each other, they had both spent a ridiculous amount of time over the past six weeks
, visiting me.

“You sure? Have you got some papers you need to sign?”  Mike asked
, interrupting my reverie.

“I just have to wait for the nurse to return with the papers,” I replied, tugging my overstretched t-shirt down over my thighs.

It was embarrassing as hell that my jeans didn’t tie.

I’d been wearing pajamas for the six weeks and hadn’t noticed how much extra weight I’d gained. But my clothes had. 

Earlier, when I was tying my jeans, I had a ‘fat moment,’ when they only zipped half way. They were catching on my butt and my widely spreading hips. And if my hips weren’t big enough before; they now seemed to be two inches on the wrong side of curvy.

The swell of my belly was prominent now, but it looked like I’d gained a few pounds of fat
, than the look of being five months pregnant.

Five months.

I still found it crazy to believe
, that I had sailed through more than three months of pregnancy without knowing. It was unsettling.

There was a knock on the door and I grimaced when a nurse rolled a wheelchair into my room.

“Are you ready to go home, Miss Bennett?”  She asked chirpily.

I zipped up my suitcase and smiled.

I wasn’t anywhere close to being ready, but I slapped on my brightest smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Secretly
, I was petrified.

The thought of facing Kyle, and the possibility of seeing Rachel again, made it hard to keep my breathing even. I didn’t want to face him.

Our last conversation had ended badly. But I had nowhere else to go, and not enough money in the bank to last me longer than a week or two in a motel. As for returning to work, the idea made me light headed.
I couldn’t escape him.

“This is so cool, Lee. Do you think they’ll let you keep this?” Mike asked, plopping himself into the chair and wheeling around the room.

It was hospital policy to leave in a wheelchair, completely unnecessary, but unavoidable.

“Why? Are you planning on needing one sometime in the future?” I asked, amused at the excitement on Mike’s face.

Men… 

“You will need one, and a surgeon to remove my foot from your intestine, if you don’t get up and let your girlfriend sit down,” said the unfamiliar nurse
, who was a leaning against the door, along with another lady I didn’t recognize.

I blushed and Mike jumped up from the chair, rolling his hand out lavishly in front of him, gesturing me to sit.

“I’m not his girlfriend,” I muttered as I sat down quickly.

Ignoring my correction, the nurse introduced herself as Mary, and the lady with her
, as one of the hospital administrators- a short, frazzled looking blonde named Lizzie, with an alarming amount of paperwork in her hands.

My palms trickled with sweat at the sight of all those forms she was clutching. I had no freaking clue how I was going to be able to pay for over a month’s worth of hospital bills.

I was about to ask if they had a payment plan, when Lizzie handed me two sheets of paper from the bundle.

“Now
, Miss Bennett, all I need from you is a couple of signatures. If you could sign under the patient signature line here and here, you’ll be good to go,” she said, dropping a pen on top of the rather intimidating forms in my lap.

I looked at her, confused, and back at the papers.

“What about my bill? Do you have a payment plan I can take on?” I asked, scrawling my signature under the printed version on one page, and then the other.

“No need. Your bill has been paid in advance.”

I snapped my head up to frown at her. “No, you must be confusing me with someone else; I haven’t made an advanced payment. I don’t have a credit card.”

Lizzie was confusing me with another patient, but the puzzled look on her face indicated that she thought that I was the confused one.

“No, there is no confusion, Miss Bennett,” she mused, flicking through her paperwork. “Yes, your bill has been covered in full by a Mr. Carter.” 

She handed me a form, and there it was, Kyle’s signature and credit card details. My heart fluttered in my chest a little as reality smacked me straight between the two eyes; he’d gone behind my back again.

Son of a bitch.

“That’s great,” Mike interrupted, taking the papers from me and handing them back, before clasping the handles of the wheelchair. “I’ll take her from here.”

*****