Pieces Of You: Pieces Duet Book 1, page 8
“Her time’s not up,” Dean interjects.
Holden growls. “I’m not having her out here working alone—or with you. She doesn’t know what tools to use or how to use them.”
That’s… kind of true. I’ve shown that I’m a fast learner, but I still need his guidance. I don’t think I realized until right this moment how much attention Holden’s paid to the details of our interactions.
“Come on,” he says, tugging on my sleeve and practically dragging me toward the house, leaving Dean behind. We make it to the laundry room, where he shuts the door after us and turns on the faucet, filling the room with the sound of water hitting cast iron.
Without a word, Holden takes one of my hands in both of his and slowly removes my gloves. It’s such a contrast to the first time he put them on me. Back then, he’d been rough, annoyed with my stubbornness to accept his help, and now—now his touch is gentle, intimate almost. His demeanor, however, is the opposite. I glance up at him through my lashes, notice the tightness in his jaw, the straight line formed on his lips, and the angry slashes marring his brow. He’s so close; I can feel his body heat radiating from him, the warmth of it floating across my flesh, making my heart pound to an irregular beat.
“You don’t have to go with him,” he says, his voice low as his eyes meet mine.
“I don’t mind.”
Shaking his head, he takes a tiny step back. “And I don’t mind fighting your battles for you, but—”
“Is that what you’re doing?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says with a sigh, and I can feel his anger through his inflection. “But your reaction to him was fucking visceral, Jamie, and I don’t like the fact that you’re about to be trapped in his car with no way out.” He digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone, tapping it a few times before handing it to me. “Put your number in there.” It’s an order, and I comply, then hand it back to him.
“I’m going to text you, so you have mine, and if at any stage you feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable, I want you to call me. I’ll drop whatever—”
I kiss him.
On my toes, hands flat on his stomach…
My mouth is on his…
And I’m kissing him.
And then I’m not.
“I’m sorry,” I rush out, shoving him out of the way to get to the sink. I scrub my hands, my mind, my heart clean of all the tarnished pieces of me. I shouldn’t have let my emotions drive me, but he was standing there, only inches away, and he was protecting me. And while I’d spent my entire life being protected, it was always during the vicious storm. Never before and never after.
“Jamie,” he says, and I don’t look up.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat.
“Jamie,” he says again, reaching around me to switch off the water. I stare at my hands and nowhere else.
Large fingers curl around my waist, and he turns me to him.
I shut my eyes tight, too afraid to see his face.
Even when he’s the one kissing me.
14
Jamie
I wait until the warning bell goes off before going to my locker the following day, which I’m aware is entirely lame. But the truth is, I’m scared.
I don’t want to face Holden.
Or Dean.
Yesterday, just as Holden placed his mouth on mine, the laundry door opened, and Dean was there. He saw what he saw, but he said nothing as he watched us pull apart. And he remained silent the entire drive to my house.
I’ve been trying to convince myself that I don’t care about any of it.
Only I do.
I’m grateful that the locker bay is mostly empty when I arrive, and I rush to throw in my bag and grab what books I need. When I slam the locker shut, I jump back a step, my hand to my heart at the sight of Holden leaning casually against his. “Question,” he says, and he’s smiling the kind of smile that, no doubt, makes girls stupid. I may be one of those girls. It’s yet to be determined.
“You’re going to be late to class,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “What’s with the mood rings?”
“What?” I almost laugh at how ridiculous the interaction is. Yesterday, his tongue was just parting my lips when Dean interrupted. And now… now he’s asking about my jewelry? I look down at my hands, at the four large rings on my fingers, just so I don’t have to look at him. Because looking at him reminds me of the way his body felt against mine, first with the hug, and then with the kiss. He was so solid against me, and last night, I went to bed thinking about it. About him. About how strong he is… and how that strength had the power to destroy me.
“Is it so you can warn people about what mood you’re about to grace them with?” he cracks, pulling me back to reality. “Because you might need to walk around with a giant neon sign to explain what the colors mean.”
“I don’t think it would help,” I tell him, letting my shoulders relax in his presence. I splay my fingers out between us. “See? They’re all different colors, anyway.”
His eyebrows dip as he inspects them. “So, what’s the point?”
I let out a breath, the sudden anguish tainting the smile I’d worn only seconds ago. “I wish I knew.”
“All right, I’m off,” I say through the most dramatic yawn in the history of yawns. It’s 11:30 p.m., a half-hour since my shift should’ve ended.
“Thanks for hanging back,” Zeke says, handing me a twenty for the extra time. Zeke owns the truck stop diner named after him and is always super generous when it comes to paying me—and feeding me.
It was almost four years ago that Mom and I randomly popped in for a bottomless coffee that we both inhaled like junkies into our bloodstream. Caffeine, at that point, had become Mom’s new addiction—a new bad habit to replace the ones she was trying to kick.
We’d been driving around for weeks by then, and we had no real destination in mind. We slept in the car whenever we needed to rest and drove when Mom got restless. Whimsically, we referred to that time in our lives as a Girl’s Trip.
In reality, we were running away.
Our first visit here, we hung around for five hours before Zeke asked us if we needed help with anything else. Those were his exact words. Help. And I could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew we were desperate for something. We just didn’t know what. He offered us both jobs, Mom on the floor and me in the back, and so we stayed and found a cozy little trailer nearby that we soon called home. The job didn’t last long for my mom. Just like all the other potentially good things in her life, Mom’s “bad habit” found a way to ruin it. In the end, once she was gone, I kept my job, and Zeke, so he says, kept me in his prayers.
It seemed that during the few months Mom was able to work here, Zeke had found a soft spot for the woman he affectionally called Darl, a play on her real name.
When she died, I caught Zeke by the dumpsters out back and asked him if he ever felt the urge to ask my mom out on a date. From what I knew about Zeke, he’d never been married, never even been in a serious relationship. The diner was his baby, and he spent almost every second of every day there. He stood taller when I asked, his ever-present ball cap on backward, covering his dark hair. After adjusting the sleeves of his flannel shirt, he shook his head, a puff of cigarette smoke emitting from his lips, and said, “Nah, your ma’s a sweet lady, but she’s one you admire from afar.”
“Why not close up?” I’d asked him.
He smiled, but it was so, so sad, and I’ll never forget what he said next. “Because when you look too closely at anything, you always see the cracks. And your mother was nothing but imperfections.”
I hated him at that moment.
And I’d forgiven him the next.
Because he was right, and it made me wonder how people saw me.
While I got my name from my father, I’d gotten all my looks from my mother. But there was one thing that differentiated us. She was shattered into pieces from years and years of abuse, and I… I was just beginning to crack from the weight of the world on my shoulders.
“Do me a favor?” Zeke says now, motioning to the kitchen exit. “Take out the trash before you go?”
“You got it, boss.” Hands occupied holding multiple trash bags, I shove the door open with my back. The cool night air fills my lungs the second I step outside, and I make it two steps toward the dumpsters before I freeze in my tracks. I guess of everyone from my past that could show up in a dark alley to accost me, Dean’s the lesser of two evils. I’m not even surprised he’s here, at the exact place we met all those months ago. He’d pulled in behind the truck stop to empty his bladder, and I’d literally busted him with his dick out. I could tell he was embarrassed, and it was, by far, the least embarrassing thing I could’ve caught anyone lurking back here doing, so I cracked a joke. “Bathroom’s for paying customers only.”
He laughed and replied, “Looks like I’ll be getting a coffee to go.”
He got a coffee, but he didn’t go. And even though I was working in the back, he waited for my shift to be over, and then he asked for my number.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
But now? Now… I’m annoyed. And that annoyance comes out of me in a disbelieving laugh.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asks, hands shoved in his pockets as he makes his way over to me. Behind him, I can see his truck parked, headlights on low, engine still running.
“Nothing. It’s just the last thing Zeke said to me was to take out the trash,” I tell him, moving to the dumpsters. “Who knew the trash was already waiting for me out here.”
He takes the bags from me and effortlessly throws them into the dumpster. “I always did like your smart mouth, Jamie.”
“Really?” I cross my arms, shielding myself from him. “Pretty sure you liked all the other things I did with my mouth, but okay.”
“Does Holden like it, too?”
“I don’t know.” I turn around, walk away. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Jamie!” he calls out, grabbing my elbow and spinning me to him. “Are you and he…?”
I raise a single eyebrow.
“Holden isn’t right for you,” he says, followed by a groan because he knows how hypocritical he sounds right now. “Just be careful, okay?”
I scoff so loud it echoes through the surrounding darkness. “You got some big ass balls to be saying that to me.” I mock contemplation. “But then again, I’ve seen your balls, and they’re nothing to write home about.”
Even with the little light around us, I can see his jaw working. “When did you become so...” he trails off, his eyes narrowing.
“Jaded?” I ask. “Cynical? Pessimistic? Contemptuous? Pick a word, Dean. Any word!”
“Cruel,” he answers after a beat, shaking his head. “You weren’t like this when we were together.”
“You just answered your own damn question,” I mumble, spinning on my heels again. My phone alerts me to a text, the sound slicing through the silence. I’m momentarily surprised because my phone never goes off anymore. I’ve kept it solely for the alarm. When I slip it out of my back pocket and check the notification, I see that it’s a text from Holden.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Dean asks, voice low. He almost sounds hurt. As if he has the right.
I don’t respond. I just keep walking.
“At least let me give you a ride home, okay?” he urges.
I can hear his footsteps nearing. “No.”
“Why not?”
I’m so done with these games. So over this bullshit. I turn around so quickly, I almost knock into him. “Do you know that you’ve never once said sorry to me?” I hate the way the evidence of my heartbreak comes out in the wavering of my words.
“I tried, Jamie! When you showed up at school, I tried to talk to you, and you wouldn’t even hear me out.”
“School?” I ask, dipping my head forward so my ear’s closer to him, because what the fuck am I even hearing right now? “High school, right? Not the college you told me you went to.”
His eyes drift shut and snap open a moment later. “I didn’t want…” he trails off.
I laugh—bitter and full of disdain. “You didn’t want me involved in your actual life, so you fed me lies. Lies upon lies upon fucking lies. Like when you told me you loved me? Was that a lie?”
“No,” he’s quick to answer.
I almost believe him.
Almost.
“You had three weeks! From the moment we broke up until I saw you at school. Three weeks, Dean! And you never once—”
“I couldn’t,” he cuts in. “I was too ashamed over what I’d done to you.”
I shake my head, fighting back the liquid heat burning behind my eyes. “Shame? You don’t get to have that emotion. In this scenario, I own shame!”
His lips press tight, a mannerism I’m all too familiar with. He’s thinking of the right thing to say or do next, but nothing will ever be enough. Nothing. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not! You’re just sorry you got caught.”
“I am sorry,” he repeats, stepping closer and tentatively reaching for me.
I take a step back.
After a defeated sigh, he says, “I wasn’t lying when I told you I love you, Jamie. I do.” He takes a breath. “Please, just give me another chance.”
“I DID!” I scream. And then I lose it. Completely. I break apart in front of the only person in the world I allowed to see my cracks, see every damaged piece of me. “I gave you a chance!” I shout. “Even after your girlfriend came knocking on my door, looking for her boyfriend, I gave you a fucking chance! And I told you, Dean! I told you to choose. Her or me. And who did you choose?” His silence does nothing to placate my anger, and so I shove him. Hard. “Who did you choose?” I cry, pushing him again.
“We both know what happened,” he grinds out, trying to keep his balance.
“Say it!” I demand. “I want to hear you say the words!”
“Why?” He sounds as exhausted as I feel.
I tell him the truth. Every pathetic, heartbreaking piece of it. “So I can stop fucking loving you!”
It’s strange—how a few simple words screamed into the void can give clarity to the haziness I’d been living in.
Dean broke my heart. A heart he knew was barely beating. And it wasn’t just about our so-called feelings for each other. It was about me—about my inability to trust, to care, to love. He knew all the parts of me I’d never breathed a word to anyone else before. And he urged me to confide in him, to reveal all my secrets, my shame, my torment… and then he took all those things from me, along with my fragile heart, and he severed them into
tiny,
irreparable
pieces.
“Say it,” I beg, my voice barely audible over the pounding in my eardrums. “Please.”
He gives me what I want. What I need. “I chose her.”
15
Jamie
When my mother died, there was no funeral.
No big goodbye.
No shock.
No tears.
One minute she was there, and the next, she was gone.
It was 3 a.m.
I don’t know why I wait until the same time to check the message from Holden. After my run-in with Dean, I’d come home, and I did something I rarely allow myself to do: I cried. And I’m not sure what I was crying for or about. I just… felt like I needed to cry. So I did. There were tears and snot and a lot of sobbing into the paper napkins I steal from work. It was a whole experience. One I don’t plan on repeating anytime soon.
And now, reading Holden’s text, I kind of wish I hadn’t read it at all.
Holden: So… what’s with the mood rings?
I take a while to come up with a response—one with enough truth that it can be defined as a solid answer. After I hit send, I crawl into bed, and I let the day’s exhaustion consume me. I fall into a deep sleep and dream about stupid mood rings.
The day after Mom died, I found the box beneath the sink with the card addressed to me. There were no words to accompany the card—just my name. The box was filled with dozens of the mood rings I’d grown up watching her wear, alternating between them every few days, sometimes every few hours. They were all cheap, the type that stained your fingers green.
My mom had loved the movie My Girl, and the rings were an homage to that love. It was kind of sad, in a way, because if she thought about, really thought about it, Vada’s stupid mood ring was the reason Thomas J went into that forest in the first place, and we all know what happened to him.
But she had loved those rings, treasured them. Because they were the only things she owned that was hers and hers alone, and so she protected them.
Almost as much as she protected me.
There are still remnants of her existence in the place I tried so hard to make our home. Her bed was the first thing I got rid of, followed by her clothes and then everything else. One by one, I took them all to the field behind the trailer park, ignoring the looks of the other residents.
And then I set every single piece of her memory ablaze.
It wasn’t until that very moment, as the heat from the flames floated across my cheeks that I realized I was officially an orphan.
And then I smiled. Not because she was dead. But because for the first time in years, I was no longer my mother’s keeper.
16
Holden
Jamie: They were my mom’s. They’re the only pieces of her I want to hold on to.
The reply to my text came through just after 3 a.m., and it was the first thing I looked for when I woke up.
I try to make sense of it through my morning brain fog, but I can’t. And so I read the words, over and over, and every time I do, they lose more and more meaning.
The truth is, I don’t even know where to put that piece of the puzzle.
