Fall To Pieces: Broken #2 (The Broken Series) Read online

  Copyright 2014 by Chloe Walsh

  All Rights Reserved.

  The right of Chloe Walsh to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction. All name, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Chloe Walsh

  Fall To Pieces

  The Broken Series #2

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Acknowledgements

  “The world is dark and I am the darkest element.

  My heart, my soul, my inner being and core…

  Everything is dark. I can’t break into the light.

  There is only one thing, one piece of brightness,

  in this inescapable pit of despair.

  That light has a name. His name is Kyle Carter.”

  PROLOGUE

  Lee

  I woke from my most disturbing nightmare yet, slick with sweat to a pitch black room. The memories of lying on the bathroom floor bleeding, the knowledge of what I’d lost from my body invaded my thoughts.

  I gasped for air and felt around my nightstand until my fingers found the switch for the lamp.

  Flicking on the light, my mind reverted to my nightmare once again and I automatically grasped at my stomach.

  I was fine. I needed to relax.

  But I couldn’t go back to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered the blood. I thought of the baby I would never hold in my arms.

  I saw the shattered look in those steel blue eyes I had become so accustomed to looking at. Kyle…

  I was lost.

  I felt as if I’d been cut apart and shredded. I doubted I could put myself back together again.

  I was heartbroken, I was grieving and I was excited all rolled into a complicated flurry of emotions, swarming my mind, piercing my soul.

  I wasn’t sure if I should be happy. I didn’t know if I did feel it. And then I felt guilty for not feeling happy.

  I was so confused.

  Grabbing the cell phone from my nightstand, I checked the time.

  Six thirty am. It was officially Christmas Day.

  This year would top the list of worst Christmases. I would be spending my nineteenth Christmas in a hospital, pregnant and alone.

  Cam had left her phone with me before leaving the hospital last night, with strict orders to call Derek’s phone if I needed anything. I wouldn’t call them though. They had done more than enough. I was alone in this now. It was the way it had to be.

  “Princess?”

  I froze.

  That word. That one torturous endearment had my heart catapulting around in my chest and my head swinging in the direction of the door of my hospital room.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered.

  Kyle closed the door behind him and walked slowly toward me.

  I couldn’t help but stare at him.

  I looked at him differently now, not just because he had ripped my heart out of my chest, but because part of him was growing inside of me.

  “I heard you crying from outside the door. I was worried, baby.”

  He pulled a plastic chair close to my bed and sat down. “How are you feeling?” He sounded nervous.

  His eyes roamed from my eyes to my stomach. I pulled the blankets around myself self-consciously.

  “Confused,” I replied.

  Confusion was my most potent emotion, especially now, with him here.

  Kyle shuddered and bowed his head for a moment. “Yeah, I can understand why. Are you feeling okay, physically? Are you sore?”

  I didn’t think I’d ever feel ‘okay’ again.

  I nodded and peered up at him.

  He looked tired, no he looked shattered. I guessed he mirrored how I felt.

  His blue eyes were bloodshot, from lack of sleep or crying; I couldn’t be sure which.

  The pale blue hoodie he wore was creased, his jaw dusted with a light layer of stubble, which was strange because Kyle always kept himself clean shaven.

  His faded jeans were the same he had on the night of the party. I knew because I’d watched him slip them on, moments before he left me.

  “Why are you here?” I asked quietly. “I told you to go.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “I did leave, but I couldn’t stay away. I’ve been outside your door all night, baby. I can explain everything. If you just give me a chance, it’s not what you think.”

  I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to hear his explanation. I knew what he would say.

  He would try and worm his way out of what he’d done again. There wasn’t a damn thing he could say to me this time, that would make it okay.

  Nothing could fix this.

  Kyle had left me to be with Rachel. And I really didn’t know why I was so surprised. God knows, I’d had enough warnings.

  Cam, Mike, hell, even Rachel herself, had warned me not to get involved with Kyle Carter. I should have listened. If I had, I wouldn’t be lying here.

  It hurt to think of Kyle in the same city as his evil ex-girlfriend, let alone together, doing god knows what, while I was miscarrying one of our babies on his bathroom floor.

  Kyle took my silence as a means to speak. “I need to tell you about what happened two years ago with Rachel. You need to know all of the facts so we can move forward.”

  I flinched at the sound of her name on his tongue.

  “I don’t want to hear this, Kyle…”

  “You will hear this; you need to know the truth, all of it.”

  The truth couldn’t help me now. I was too broken. I was being torn apart and about to fall to pieces.

  Kyle straightened in his seat.

  Taking a deep breath, he spoke. “I was seeing Rachel in my sophomore year at college. It was nothing serious, just a couple of dates. We’d only had...”

  His voice trailed off and he sighed before continuing in a gruff tone. “Been intimate once, I had no plans to pursue anything. I was barely twenty and enjoyed the life I had without complicating things.”

  I watched his face as he spoke. It was obvious he was trying to give me a cleaner version of events.

  “When my grandfather died, I stayed at his house in Denver, while his attorneys organized legal matters. I hadn’t seen Rachel since school had broken up for the holidays, and I didn’t care. She wasn’t a priority to me, just another girl.

  “I decided to crash at my grandfather’s house after the will reading. It was two nights before Christmas and it was snowing. I didn’t f
eel like driving home, didn’t want to deal with Cam and Derek’s sympathy.”

  He shifted in the chair, his mind clearly reverting back to the night.

  “When I got to the house, Rachel was in the kitchen, having sex with my brother.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath.

  I did not expect that. My traitorous heart spiked for him.

  He shook his head and rubbed his hand across his face, as the memory of that night clearly played out in his mind.

  “Apparently, it had been going on for months,” Kyle said. “So, technically, she was cheating on him, not me.”

  “What happened?” I couldn’t help but be interested.

  No wonder Kyle had issues. He’d been screwed over so badly in his life.

  It didn’t excuse the way he’d treated me, by any stretch of the imagination, but I could understand a little better.

  Kyle sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I was pissed, Lee. Very fucking pissed. There was a lot of screaming and accusations thrown about. I was hurt and betrayed by my brother. I hate my father, but my brother had been the one person I got along with in the family. I felt like I’d been duped.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I left. After my brother threw seven kinds of shit at me for ‘fucking his girl and stealing his inheritance,’ I got the fuck out of there.”

  He paused to look at me. “Rachel followed me, got into my car. I was so angry. I told her to get the hell out, but she wouldn’t. So, I drove off like a lunatic.

  “I was trying to scare her into getting out of the car. She didn’t have her belt on, and I was going too fast. I ran a red light.”

  He shivered and rolled his shoulders. “We collided with a truck. The impact was on the passenger side. She was hurt bad, Lee, had to have emergency surgery.”

  Kyle was quiet for a moment. The next words he spoke were little more than a strangled whisper.

  “You remember, I told you my mom died when I was three?”

  I nodded in confusion.

  “Yes, from a drug overdose. That’s why you ended up in foster care. Why? What does your mom have to do with Rachel?”

  Kyle nodded his head slowly. “Nothing and everything. Drugs were a contributing factor to my mom’s death, but she died in a car accident.”

  I struggled to keep my face void of emotion. I could see this was clearly painful for Kyle.

  Kyle frowned. “A car accident she purposefully orchestrated to end her life.”

  I sat up suddenly.

  The poker face I was wearing slipped away, as my heart bled out for him.

  “Oh, my god, Kyle….”

  I cupped my hand across my mouth, afraid to say too much, or worse, cry. If I started crying again, I was afraid I’d never stop.

  Kyle smiled, but it was more of a grimace. “Oh, wait; you haven’t heard the best part yet.”

  I frowned at him, not understanding how any of this could be interpreted as funny.

  His eyes moved from mine, focusing on the wall behind my head. “I was in the car when she did it.”

  I couldn’t comprehend what he was saying.

  This was too much to take, in one night. He’d been in the car his mom had crashed the night she died? Did that mean she had tried to kill Kyle along with herself? My god, he was only three years old at the time.

  “Yeah,” Kyle said quietly, interpreting where my thoughts had gone. “She tried to take us both out that night. I guess she fucked up though, since I’m sitting here.”

  He laughed humorlessly. “Although, if she’d had just jacked me up with a tenth of the shit she injected herself with daily, she could have finished the job.”

  I didn’t know whether to hit him or hug him.

  His mom had almost taken his life, in her attempt to commit suicide and he was talking about it as if it wasn’t the huge deal that it was.

  It frightened me that he could talk about such a terrible haunting experience without an ounce of emotion in his voice.

  The only hint of how he felt was when I looked in his eyes. Those sparkling blue eyes were troubled, clouded with such a deep sadness.

  I reached across and held his hand. It was all I could do. I guessed we had more in common than I’d originally thought. We both had some seriously dysfunctional parents.

  I knew Kyle’s dad was an ass. He’d been a married man when he impregnated Kyle’s then sixteen year old mother, before abandoning her pregnant and broke.

  Kyle had grown up in foster care, and had been shoved from pillar to post, all while his father had been living it up, courtesy of his family’s hotel empire.

  If it wasn’t for Kyle’s paternal grandfather somehow finding him when he was twelve, and later leaving Kyle his entire fortune, Kyle’s life would have turned out a whole lot different to now.

  But his mom…How did someone get over something like that?

  By pushing people away and never letting anyone get too close…

  “So, you’re telling me this because the accident you had with Rachel brought back bad memories for you?”

  I wasn’t stupid and clearly read where this admission was going. Kyle wanted me to understand why his and Rachel’s car accident had affected him.

  He squeezed my hand tightly. “Yes and no. These are the things I should have explained months ago. And I’m so sorry for that, baby, but you have to know that you’re the only person I’ve spoken about my mom to, since I was a kid.”

  I squeezed his hand back. I knew Kyle found it hard to open up. It didn’t matter much at this point in our relationship. He was right about that. This conversation should have happened months ago.

  “I was a wreck after the accident. My head was completely messed up. The guilt, the memories…”

  He inhaled sharply before continuing. “When I was finally allowed to see Rachel, after the surgery, she told me she lost my baby.”

  “She was pregnant?” I asked, astounded with the sudden irony of our predicament. I pulled myself up, listening intently now. “With your baby?”

  My blood ran cold at the thought and I dropped his hand as I stared at him bewildered.

  “That’s what she told me,” Kyle said grimly. “Convenient, considering my grandfather had just left me a fortune. She played the baby card; I was young and fell for it. I guess I was her meal ticket.”

  I flinched and he noticed. Is that how he felt about me? Did he think I tricked him?

  He took my hand, covering it with both of his, as he leaned towards me.

  “She was playing me, Lee; well both of us, me for kicks and my brother for what she could get. I guess she put her eggs in the wrong basket. She’d assumed my father, or my brother would inherit everything.”

  He sighed, shaking his head as he recaptured my hand. “I can’t blame her for thinking that. Who would have bet money on me inheriting everything? Shit, even I questioned my grandfather’s motives.”

  “Maybe it was his way of apologizing to you for his poor excuse of a son.” I slipped my free hand over my mouth.

  I shouldn’t have said that.

  “Maybe.” Kyle smiled softly, looking down at our joined hands.

  I was enjoying the way he stroked the back of my hand with his thumb far too much.

  I pulled my hand away.

  He frowned but didn’t question me.

  Instead, he continued, delving into the darkest parts of his past; the past he’d blocked me out of for too long. “She told me the impact from the wreck had damaged her, that she’d had a hysterectomy. I didn’t question it. I was too absorbed in my guilt. It was so close to home, you know? I’d ruined my mother’s life and then… I thought I had killed Rachel’s baby and any chances of her having another. I felt so fucking guilty, Lee. I thought I’d destroyed her, ruined her whole life.”

  He looked at my face, his piercing blue eyes capturing me, pulling me in.

  I was stupefied.

  “None of it was true?”

  He shook his head. “It was a
ll lies. There was never any baby, and even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been mine. I used protection with her. I always use protection.”

  Not always.

  He hadn’t used protection the first time we’d slept together. The night I’d given him my virginity and he, in return, had given me rejection issues and a seriously bruised heart.

  God, I was so stupid. I should have known that night; I should have walked away from him, instead of going back and forth with him for months.

  “It was Rachel’s vindictive attempt at holding onto the affluent future she had planned in her head,” Kyle continued. “She had surgery on her spleen, princess, nothing else.

  “She knew I wasn’t serious about her, so she laid the guilt trip on me, forcing me into submission, using my guilt as a means to trap me into the fucked up relationship you’ve seen over the past six months.”

  It was hard to hold onto my anger when I look at the pained expression in his face.

  His voice had a tint of desperation, as if he was begging me to understand.

  I wanted to…But I just couldn’t.

  He sighed heavily. “At the time, I would have promised her anything she wanted. I thought I’d ruined her life, giving up my freedom seemed the only redeemable thing to do. So, when she started crying about how no man would want a barren wife, I’d promised her I would stick by her.

  “I agreed to an arrangement, that when the time came for me to settle down…I would, with her.

  “You have to remember, I wasn’t born into the life of affluence either. I didn’t understand what I was getting myself involved in when I met her. I didn’t grow up encountering gold-diggers. I was green and she knew it. I felt I owed her so I made that promise. I didn’t love her; I didn’t expect to love anyone. I never anticipated you walking into my life last summer and turning it inside out.”

  Mike?

  My mind was stuck on that one name. I couldn’t believe this.

  “Mike is your brother?”

  Kyle nodded, looking puzzled. “Yeah, I thought you knew that?”

  No, I didn’t. Because he didn’t tell me, he never told me anything. This was another prime example of Kyle blocking me out.