Falling to Pieces (19 page)

“It’s okay. He took off. Not long after my diagnosis. Said he couldn’t handle it. Told us all how sorry he was, and then . . . he just left.”

I couldn’t believe it. How could someone do that to their family? A family already going through something so terrible? “That’s awful.”

“It was worst for my mom, I think. She really loved him, you know? And he left her alone. With a sick kid.”

“Kiernan, you’re not—”

“I know. She’s never once acted like I was a burden, but I can see the way all of this is affecting her. Cal’s doing the best he can to fill the role, be there for everyone. It’s just not fair. To either of them. That’s why we moved back here. My mom’s originally from this town and she needed the support. I guess I can thank my dad for sending me back to you, at least.”

There was a long stretch of silence where Kiernan
lay beside me, playing idly with my hair, lost in his thoughts, before he looked at me with determination burning in his eyes.

“Jade? Can we be real for a minute?”

“Real?” No, I wasn’t ready to be real with him. Reality sucked. I liked
whatever fantasyland it was we were living in much better.

He must have
felt my hesitation because Kiernan’s whole face softened even as his eyes took on a pleading that I couldn’t deny. “Just for a minute? I need to talk to you.”

Screwing up my courage, I forced a smile. “What do you think we’ve been doing?”

“Defying reality. And,
Jade . . . There is nothing I love more than imagining a future with you. Full of laughter, and happiness, and kids, and grandkids, and growing old together, but . . . we both know that’s not where this is headed.”

The sting of reality bit deep and I felt tears welling in my eyes, useless to stop them. “Kiernan—”

“Don’t.” His fingers fell gently over my lips, silencing me. “I know you don’t want to, but I need you to hear this.
I don’t want to be like my father. I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“Kiernan, you are
nothing
like him.”

“I want all of those things for you, Jade. I want the joy, and the love, and the family, and the white picket fence, and all of it.
Even if I can’t be the one to give it to you. I want you to be happy. And I never, ever want you to feel guilty about it. Do you understand me? I want you to have whatever makes you happy in this life. Okay? I need to know you understand that.”

He waited for my forced nod and then grinned at me.

“And, so you know, as soon as the kids are out of the house, I’m totally getting a Camaro.”

Just like that, the moment was over. We were back to ‘defying reality’. I huffed a laugh, wiping tears from my face. “What color?”

Kiernan looked at me as though I’d grown a second head. “Is that really a question? Yellow, of course. With racing stripes.”

“So, you want Bumblebee.”

“Hell yeah, but I’ll settle for a yellow Camaro.”

“With racing stripes.” I used what little energy I still possessed to return his smile.

“Can’t forget those.” Kiernan tucked me close to his side, wrapping an arm around my waist and dropping his chin on the top of my head. “I love you.”

It was one of those rare, fleeting perfect moments. The kind you want to bottle up and save forever. So I shut my eyes and burrowed deeper into his chest, determined to commit every last detail to memory. The soft material of his shirt, the fresh scent of his skin, the warmth of his arms, and the acute ache deep in my chest.
“I love you, too.”

Twenty

Tick.

Tick. Tick.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Time was something I’d never really considered before. Sure, I’d stressed about being late, but I’d never contemplated the idea of actually running out of it. I was young enough that time still felt infinite. But it wasn’t.
My eyes had been opened, the blissful ignorance of youth swept away, leaving behind the cold, hard facts of life. We all had our set amount and when it was up, that was it. There was no flipping the hour glass over again. And Kiernan’s hourglass was nearly empty.

Each tick of that clock was another second. Another second gone. Another second Kiernan would never get back. Another second closer to the inevitable. My broken heart beat in rhythm with that stupid
clock, cracking a little wider with each tick.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

It was a relentless kind of torture
, until, finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Climbing precariously onto the ratty old couch, I could see myself in its reflective face. I could see the selfish, petty . . . God, I thought I had problems? And I’d laid them all on Kiernan. Dumped them right in his lap like he couldn’t possibly have any of his own. And he’d taken them all on. Every last one. And now . . . Now, he’d shared his with me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to help him.

The
friggin’ thing was nailed to the wall, hung there long before we ever moved in, and required all of my strength to tear it free. A few good tugs later, I dropped to the cushions with it in my hands, but it wasn't enough. It continued to taunt me.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Mocking me
from my lap. Daring me to do something about it. Challenging me to put an end to the relentless countdown.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

My distraught image stared back at me
from the glass, trembling in my shaky grasp. I couldn't stand the sight of it. I couldn't stand the sound. The knowledge. The truth. All of it was just too much.

The clock left my hands, soaring across the room without any conscious effort on my part. I watched it shatter against the wall, raining glass across the floor, but still it refused to grant me peace.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

My feet carried me across broken glass without registering its painful bite until I knelt over the merciless timepiece. With a screa
m I didn't recognize as my own—one that barely even sounded human—I brought my fists down. Again and again I pounded out my pain with each ruthless
tick
. Blow for blow until finally the clock surrendered.

I found no relief in my victory, though. Only a deeper kind of hurt. The
ticking
continued, this time inside my head. Each second feeling like a torturous eternity and yet passing in a flash. Lost and gone forever.

I buried my head in my hands and tried to remember how to breathe. I couldn't. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I couldn't function beyond the pain tearing me apart.

Stumbling blindly through my tears, I somehow made it to my mother’s bedroom door.
The forbidden zone
. I wasn’t to set foot inside. It was another unspoken rule. One that I’d only dared break a handful of times while she was out of the house. Now I was desperate enough to break it with her right inside because I needed her. I needed my mother, dammit.

Piles of boxes lined every wall, stuffed to overflowing with clothes, papers, and who knew what else. Decades old newspapers and magazines were stacked here, there, and
everywhere. A dark form lay sprawled over the rumpled covers on her bed.

“Mom?” I gasped, staggering sideways into the doorframe as dark spots filled my vision and I tried to force air into my screaming lungs. “
Mom
!”

Nothing. No response. She was out cold, completely oblivious to the fact that her daughter needed her. “Mom . . . P-please . . . I need h-h-help. Mom?”

It was a lost cause. A marching band could have paraded through that room and she wouldn’t have woken. But the saddest part was, even if she had, I wasn’t sure she’d have done anything more than kick me out.

The steel band wrapped around my chest synched tighter and I nearly choked on my next breath.
I couldn't do this. I couldn't survive this. I couldn't. Not on my own. I needed help. I needed . . .

Dropping to my knees, I crawled the distance to my room and
snatched my cell from the nightstand, collapsing across my mattress. It took three attempts to dial the right number, but it finally began to ring. He answered on the second ring and I knew immediately that I'd woken him up. And that he didn't care.

"Jade?"
Caulder's voice was scratchy, but the concern was clear. "What's wrong?"

"I . . . can't . . ." Speaking without air was more difficult than I'd imagined.

"What? What happened? You can't
what
, Jade?"

"Breathe." I choked it out and he needed no more.

"Okay."
Caulder sounded wide awake now and I heard the distant creak of a mattress. "Slow and steady." His voice muffled for a moment, as though he were speaking through some kind of material, and then returned. "Inhale . . . Exhale . . . Just breathe. I know it hurts. Just breathe through it, Jade. Are you at home?"

"Yes," I gasped, trying to do as he instructed.

"Is anyone else there with you?"

"My-my mother's . . ." Inhale. "Passed . . ." Exhale. "Out." Short, shallow breaths sawed in and out of my lungs.

"I'm on my way. Just keep breathing. I'm on my way."

It was easier said than done. My lungs clamped shut, the lump in my throat effectively sealing off my airway. Inside my aching chest my heart raced a mile a minute. And the pressure. Oh, God, the pressure. It felt like my heart was going to explode with it. I’d heard heat attacks described that way, but I couldn’t be having a heart attack. Could I? Why not? Because seventeen-year-olds didn’t have heart attacks? Because seventeen-year-olds didn’t die? That was bullshit, though, wasn’t it?

I don’t know how long I lay there, clutching my chest and fearing my imminent demise before I heard him calling out to me. “Jade? Jade, where the hell are you?”

It sounded like his voice was coming from under water, barely recognizable, but I knew who it was. The moment my bedroom door crashed open, I knew who I’d see standing there.
But the panic in his eyes was entirely unexpected.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” Scooping me up with more ease than should be humanly possible,
Caulder positioned his back against the wall before settling me in his lap on the bed. The nagging thought that this should feel strange or uncomfortable was lost beneath the flurry of other emotions whipping through me—namely fear. “You’re okay.”

“I think . . . I’m having . . .
a h-heart attack.”

“You’re not having a heart attack.” His hand soothed up and down my heaving back, calming my raging pulse by degrees. “I know it feels that way, but you’re alright. It’s just a panic attack. It’s completely normal. Just breathe.
Breathe for me. Put your hand on my chest.”

It took all the strength I possessed to move. I felt we
aker than I ever had in my life—weaker than the time I’d had to fight off a brutal flu in third grade with no medicine—but I managed to do as he asked. Beneath my palm, his heart beat like a herd of elephants, but his breathing was slow and steady.

“There you go. Now concentrate on my breathing.” His chest rose on a deep breath and held a moment before deflating. Again. And again. “You do it. Copy me. Just like me,
Jade. In.” He took a deep breath and I tried to do the same. “And out.” His chest sank as I felt a puff of air escape my lips. “Keep going. In.”

He kept at it for I don’t know how long. It felt like years as my breathing slowly began to slow to match his. With the control he gave me, my head stopped spinning and the pressure eased.

“There you go. That’s better.”

I was still seated in his lap with zero inclination to move a single muscle. “How did you know?”

“That it was a panic attack?” I nodded and Caulder took one more deep breath, this one I doubted was for my benefit. “I’ve had one or two, myself.”

“And someone talked you through them?”

“Not exactly. Now, where are you hurt?"

Hurt?
Everywhere. I hurt everywhere, but if he’d experienced what I’d just experienced, he already knew that.

"There's blood all over your face and in your hair, Angel. Where'd it come from?"

Blood?
Why would my face be bleeding? Self-awareness drew out the sting and I realized it wasn't my face at all. Peeling open my clenched fists, I displayed the bloody mess of my palms between us. Shards of glass still protruded from the shredded skin.

"Jade . . ."
Caulder's eyes cut to mine, swimming with sadness I hadn't meant to put there.

"I didn't mean to."

"I know. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

My legs still felt wobbly as
Caulder led me across the hall to the bathroom. Knocking the toilet lid shut, I flopped down with about as much grace as a bull in a china shop while he rooted through the medicine cabinet.

“Do you have any gauze?”

“Actually, I think we do.” I wracked my brain for where I might have seen the stuff. It had been sitting in there for ages. “Try the top drawer under the sink.”

He did, and voila. Armed with gauze, a washcloth, and my mother’s tweezers,
Caulder crouched at my feet. “Let me see.”

I unveiled my tattered palms again and he set to work, carefully extracting each tiny shard of glass. I watched him work, but if he felt me staring, he gave no sign of it, focused solely on the task in front of him. A reminder that his mother was a nurse flashed through my mind, and I wondered if he planned to follow in her footsteps.

“I didn’t see any peroxide.” My thought to ask him about nursing was blindsided by that random statement.

“Huh?”

“In your cabinet. Do you have any?”

“Peroxide?” I wasn’t even sure exactly what that was. “No.”

Caulder’s eyes lifted to mine as he tossed the last shard of glass in the waste basket. “It’s an antiseptic.”

“We don’t have anything like that.”

The news earned me a sigh as he reached for the washcloth. “Then we’re going to have to clean them up as best we can and keep them covered. You don’t want to get an infection.”

Considering we had no insurance
of any kind, no, I most definitely did
not
want that. He set to work again, gently cleansing my hands until no trace of blood was left. They were quite the mess, however. Long, jagged slashes sliced through most of my skin. A few still oozed a little blood.

“They don’t look too deep. You shouldn’t need stitches, but keep this on and rewrap them every morning.” He told me all of this while wrapping
my hands in a layer of gauze that set the throbbing sting to a constant, subtle burn. "So how’d you do this to yourself, anyway?"

There was no use lying, he'd already seen me at my worst. "Got in a fight with a clock."

He nodded like the crazy made perfect sense
to him. "I put my fist through a wall. Not quite as symbolic, but it did the trick. And broke my hand in two places. Mom was pissed. Yelled at me the whole way to the hospital and the entire time we sat in the waiting room. I kept waiting for her to lose her voice."

Caulder
smiled at the memory and I could just see it—Mrs. Parks pulling her hair out over her eldest's self-destructive actions—and despite everything, I found the strength to smile back at him.

“Thanks, Cal.” I pushed off the toilet, prepared to balance myself on the sink if my legs gave out, as
Caulder gathered up his supplies. The moment I was upright a sharp pain tore up both legs.

"I saw that.” By ‘that’ I could only assume he meant the look of intense pain no doubt plastered all over my face. “Where else are you hurt?"

With a defeated sigh, I sank back onto the toilet lid and lifted my feet. I couldn't see them, but from the way
Caulder winced, I guessed they looked about as good as my hands.

“You don’t do anything halfway, do you?” He reached for the washcloth and dabbed at my soles, while I tried my best not to wiggle and giggle like a two-year-old. “Hold still.” He shook his head
with feigned annoyance, but a faint smile played on his lips. “They don’t look too bad. I'm gonna wrap them up just to keep the blood off your sheets for tonight, but by morning they should be alright. Maybe just wear a second pair of socks for some extra cushioning. And don't go running any marathons."

Propping my heel up on his knee, he carefully wrapped each foot until I felt like some kind of freaking mummy. I intended to argue when
Caulder scooped me up off the toilet, but one look shut that thought right up. He carried me across the hall, where he deposited me in my bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin before taking a seat on the edge of the mattress.