Shattered (Reflections Book 2)

by A. L. Woods

  “You just?” I interrupted, inclining my head in his direction.

  He buttoned his lips, looking every bit as pitiful as I was confident he felt. If it wasn’t for my bad fucking mood, I would have felt sorry for him.

  “Sean,” Trina prompted, her lips stretching into a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes, providing proof that she wanted to kill me.

  Adam tossed her a helpless look. I stepped toward him, watching as caution worked over his features. He was stiff under my touch when I clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll talk about it later, kid.” I squeezed him hard enough that I thought I heard his bones wheeze. Then again, that might have just been him remembering to breathe.

  I didn’t have time for Trina’s dating life or playing surrogate protective dad right now. I had other problems to deal with right now, and moderating her prospective boyfriends was not a fuck I was willing to give.

  “You’re an asshole,” Trina snarled when she reached my side, trailing after me as I headed for the open front door.

  “And you should know better than to shit where you sleep,” I retorted haughtily.

  “Nothing’s even happened yet.” Her breaths were hard and heavy as she followed me down the porch steps to the end of the circular driveway where Dougie was parked. “Besides, it worked out for Dougie and Penelope.”

  I tapered my eyes in her direction, my nostrils flaring. Like I needed the fucking reminder.

  “The operative word was yet, Trina, and don’t compare your shit to theirs.”

  She sulked at me, her arms folding across her chest. “You didn’t have to treat him that way.”

  I threw my head back with a laugh, my body tilting with the decline of the driveway as I approached where Dougie stood. The question in his green eyes shifted between Trina and I as he watched my sister pursuing me with unbridled restraint.

  “You completely humiliated him.”

  I waved her off. “He’ll be fine.” If that was the worst part of Adam’s day, I was envious.

  “You can’t just read people the riot act whenever you want to, Sean.” Trina’s footsteps ceased, the sound of mine alone crunching on the driveway as I maintained my pace. I heard her huff before her firm footsteps left her stomping all the way back to the house. I looked skyward, ignoring Dougie’s mirth from the foot of the driveway. Burying both of my hands in my tousled hair, a groan siphoned out of me. I didn’t have enough shit to deal with?

  I’d simultaneously managed to piss off my sister twice in four hours, and based on the furtive glances I kept giving my cellphone that remained devoid of any new calls or texts, I was starting to think my girlfriend had no intentions of ever telling me the truth. And why should I expect anything else from her? This shit was so ingrained in the culture of her background and her identity. It was beginning to seem like kids from her pocket of Southie learned about the value of lying before they even took their first steps, it was so innate.

  The unexpected curveball had been falling hopelessly in love with her. Blindly and unrequitedly in love, entirely and utterly fucked from both ends. I could stomach a lot of things: Raquel’s hesitation to say those three words back to me, her reticence to accept my invitation for her to move in with me well before it was appropriate to do so…shit, even her preference for soggy pancakes—an abomination in and of itself.

  But what I couldn’t tolerate was her proclivity to keep things from me.

  I had allowed her to believe that she had fooled me into buying her shit this morning by rolling into an easy game of jests with her and sexual insinuations in the hopes of unnerving her. I’d sensed a dissonance in her actions. She had done about as good a job at keeping my suspicions at bay for the last twenty-four hours as she had in attempting to conceal Cash’s hack job of a break-in. She had chased her dinner around her plate the night before, taking timed bites only when I was watching. She’d smiled at the appropriate times, laughed on cue, and slipped into easy conversation with Trina. I had to give the devil her due. If she were anyone else, I would have bought the act.

  But she wasn’t being herself, and that had my hackles up.

  The notion had nagged at me with a merciless cruelty and when I thought I could fuck a confession out of her, she had punishingly met me tit for tat. This wasn’t her first trip around the block, but I was the first person to have truly cared enough about her to want to know what the fuck was up. Initially, I thought it had been the stress about her apartment situation and believed that knowing she would still have shelter with me would have abated her worries—but it had become abundantly obvious that hadn’t been the crux of her anxiety at all. In fact, she had almost appeared hesitant to accept.

  So, I had changed my angle. The hopeful part of me believed that if I divulged pieces of myself to her, it would bolster her confidence to be forthcoming with whatever was turning her into a skittish and uneasy mess. I was running out of guesses here and was giving myself a massive head fuck. No matter how badly I wanted to push the envelope with her, I had made a promise to myself when I watched her pull out of the driveway that I wouldn’t.

  I wanted her to come to me on her own.

  “You just gonna stand there all day, princess, or are you going to help me?” The sound of Dougie’s voice was a welcome reprieve, like a cold glass of water on a humid summer day. I tossed him a wayward glance, catching the pained grimace on his face as he braced a steel load-bearing beam. “This shit’s heavier than a dead body.”

  “You would know that from experience?”

  “Peter Filch felt like he was nearly dead in third grade after I shoved him off that playground, so yeah.”

  “I can’t believe you’re still gloating about that,” I mocked. Dougie screwed his facial features together in a sneer. I moved to his side, grabbing the other end of the beam, following his lead up the snow-covered lawn.

  “So, what’s got your balls in a bunch?”

  “What?” I asked Dougie through clenched teeth as we cleared the steps, my biceps straining under the weight of the post. Two members of the crew rushed forward, lending us a hand as we carried the beam into where the new open concept living room and dining room now flowed into one another.

  Penelope’s exasperated sigh filled the room, drawing my attention to her as we set the beam to the ground near the temporary joist that was keeping the upper floor from crashing to the lower.

  “You’ve looked checked out all morning, Sean.” She trained her glacier-like stare on me.

  I tossed Dougie a meaningful look, jabbing a thumb in her direction. I wasn’t having this conversation in her presence. “Lose the accessory.”

  Penelope’s hand promptly swiped upside my head. I scowled at her, that pedigreed nose of hers tilting skyward, her mouth carving into a satisfied smile.

  “I am not an accoutrement.” She rested her palms with careful delicateness on the small swell that was developing in her middle. “I am the main ensemble.”

  “Can’t argue that, sweetheart.” Dougie chuckled, his mouth quirking into a grin that hedged toward the salacious.

  A blush registered on Penelope’s face, embarrassment crinkling in the corners of her eyes. She shot a knowing look in my direction. “Well? What’s got you looking like a total space cadet?”

  I sent a scowl in Dougie’s direction, and when he didn’t so much as bend a morsel in my favor, I conceded defeat with a breathy exhale. I was outnumbered.

  “Raquel’s up to something,” I conceded.

  “What do you mean?”

  I ran a hand over my face. “She’s being weird.”

  “Doesn’t sound out of the ordinary for that pain in the ass—ow!” Dougie nursed the side of his head where Penelope had clipped him. I snickered. The fucker thought he had gotten out free and clear because he was banging the punisher. “I was kidding,” he meekly amended.

  “Not funny,” she intoned dryly, swinging her stare back to me. “You were saying?”

  “She was fine for a few wee
ks, and then yesterday…she started acting odd.”

  “That’s not entirely out of character for her,” Penelope offered.

  “Wait, how is what you just said any different from what I said?” Dougie objected, his hand still clutching the side of his head.

  “Simple. I’m her best friend. Only I can provide that kind of unsolicited feedback.”

  “What the hell?” Dougie complained. Penelope sent him a look of warning, and he buttoned that shit up fast.

  “I need something a little bit more substantial to work with,” she continued, picking off a loose piece of flint from her coat.

  I turned my head, staring at a nondescript mark on the wall from across the room. “I told her about Francesca today.”

  “You did what?” Dougie barked, regarding me as though I’d just told him I had bet against the Patriots. “Are you out of your damn mind?”

  I scratched the back of my head. “She kind of indirectly asked, so I told her.”

  “Who is Francesca?” Penelope demanded, her foot tapping with impatience.

  Dougie jerked this thumb in my direction, a cheerless laugh leaving him. “The crazy bitch this dumb fuck almost proposed to.”

  “Wait, what?” Penelope’s voice had my head cocking to the right, the tone like a hammer to the brain. “You almost got engaged?”

  “Yeah.” I pressed the tips of my fingers into my eyes, wishing like hell I hadn’t said anything in Penelope’s presence. “Like, ten years ago.”

  “The broad was totally bat shit,” Dougie interjected, behaving like he was doing me a favor with that sobering account of my ex-girlfriend from what felt like a lifetime ago. “She got knocked up by some pencil dick and then tried to pass it off as his.”

  Penelope squinted, as if she was experiencing the onset of a headache, before Dougie prattled on.

  “If it wasn’t for Maria insisting on Francesca getting a paternity test, this one would have been playing daddy to somebody else’s kid.”

  Penelope didn’t so much as quirk a smile. If her face was a mood ring, I’d watched her shift from the safe confines of relaxed blue and happy violet, to the land of unsettled amber and anxious gray. “And you told Raquel?” she asked without looking at me.

  “Yeah.”

  She tugged at the hemline of her coat. “And she said?”

  What the fuck was her deal? Had she inhaled too much Chanel No. 5 this morning? I sniffed the air just for good measure. “That I had a life before her, and that she was fine with it.”

  I knew something was wrong when Penelope appeared to stop breathing. Her features screwed up some more, her eyes fixed to the floorboards like she was going over something in her head, the compressed air in her lungs tinting her cheeks red. Despite the banging sounds around us, I heard the whoosh of her exhaled breath and a murmured curse escape her that was as deafening as a locomotive.

  “What?” I pressed.

  She didn’t look at me. My heart jackknifed in my chest. She knew something. Penelope absolutely fucking knew something.

  Dougie’s laughter died, his focus solely on his beloved. “Penny?”

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice quivering. “I just need to make a call.” She took several steps backward before she fled the room. I shot after her like a quarterback, hot on her heels to intercept her touchdown.

  My palm closed around her bicep, spinning her around on the wedged heel of her expensive-looking boots. “What the fuck?”

  She averted my eyes, but when I elevated her chin with the crook of my finger, her expression confirmed my worst fears. Penelope didn’t fight out of my grasp, but her shoulders sagged and her body felt limp under my other hand. Her eyes glinted with worry, her mouth was a tight unreadable line.

  “Sean, ease up, man.” There was a threat in Dougie’s tone when he appeared in my peripheral, but I didn’t let go.

  “Penelope, do you know something?” Sweat broke across my spine, the fibers of my T-shirt sticking to the droplets. Dougie clapped a hand to my shoulder, but my mind barely registered the strength when he squeezed.

  Regret filled her blue stare just as Dougie’s hold on me slipped at the sight. “Ah, fuck,” he said as he stepped back.

  “I might.”

  I didn’t think Penelope’s voice was capable of sounding mousy, so soft that I almost would have thought she was being amenable. “It’s a theory. It’s…her pattern.”

  She sandwiched her fingers in her smooth hair, and my jaw rocked back and forth as I scrutinized her. Penelope was engaged in a standoff with herself that I wasn’t privy to.

  “Do you know where she is?” Why the fuck was I the one shaking now? “Can you tell me?”

  She shook her head, and I wanted to clobber her. My chest rose and fell with my rapid breaths, my eyes lidding as I took a second to collect myself.

  “Penelope, for fuck’s sake,” Dougie growled. “If you know something, just tell him.”

  She stared at me like she was confronting a loaded gun, her eyes apologetic as they filled with a deluge of tears that spilled over. I wasn’t sure if it was hormones or encumbering guilt.

  Dread sent that marble inside of me back into motion. I almost didn’t want to ask the question, but after a painfully protracted moment of silence, I did.

  “You think she’s with him, don’t you?”

  The deafening silence that followed gave me my answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Honesty is the best policy.

  I imagined those words were invented by blue bloods, the ones who were grooming their children on the ins and outs of tax evasion and paving their way into Harvard at the flash of a checkbook, all while appearing austere and donning imperious attitudes.

  It was a phrase meant to be ironic, or so I had come to believe.

  They weren’t words my parents used. Ma and Dad had been steadfast in their habit of hiding everything from everyone who wasn’t on a need-to-know basis, including each other. Honesty was relative, and depending on how you tried to dissect what you were doing. In my opinion, what I was doing wasn’t really lying.

  I just wasn’t being forthcoming with information regarding my true whereabouts this morning. As far as Sean was concerned, I was already seated at my desk at The Advocate, preparing for the mythical early morning meeting before I would promptly return to said desk, work through my lunch hour in an effort to meet our press deadlines, and be back at his place by five-thirty.

  All right, I guess that did make me deceptive. My foot pressed the gas pedal as if doing so would allow me to drive myself away from that epiphany, but the thought pursued me like air. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. The barren roads were still empty at this hour of the morning, tawny untilled fields stretching as far as the eye could see. The sun hung low, weaving itself between thick and fluffy clusters of clouds that were dense enough to suffocate the very life out of a person.

  For the last hour, I had tried to focus on just getting to my destination, but every so often, my mind traveled into unsafe territory: guilt. I should have just told Sean the truth. I didn’t have any meeting this morning. Not unless I felt like indulging Earl at this hour of the day as he prattled on about diversifying our revenue opportunity with the addition of coupons—a major source of contention between him and Karen, who rightly held the belief that coupons would cheapen the paper. It was about the only thing Karen and I had ever agreed on in years, but neither of us would ever want to admit that.

  A yawn ripped out of me as I rolled my neck, releasing the tension that sat in my vertebrae. I’d gotten next to no sleep. As the hours stretched on last night, I grappled with trying to find the slumber that evaded me in Sean’s king-sized bed. I had the covers pulled up to my chin, and his heavy arm draped around my middle. His breathing had been slow and even, his expression relaxed. I had felt hypocritical, watching him for what felt like hours through heavy lidded eyes, losing myself to the trance of the soft rise and fall of his chest with each
pull of breath. I considered waking him up several times to tell him about my plan, but something told me he would never understand.

  Who willingly walked into the lion’s den? Me.

  The idiot in the horror movie who had it coming.

  I should have told him the truth. Instead, I laid there, sleeping intermittently while girding myself for what was to come, all while trying to dissemble the guilt that was like acid in my veins. I thought for a moment this morning he had detected something was off, but in the throes of Trina’s upset, I had escaped his scrutiny unscathed.

  Despite my upbringing, I didn’t make a habit of being deceitful, not like this, but that shame pervaded. It sat like a stone beneath my belly button as I drove in silence, my spirit sinking deeper with each passing minute. Gravel kicked up as the wheels of the Camry moved with haste down the weathered roads.

  Cheltenham was like every other inconspicuous Podunk in Massachusetts—unassuming and forgettable. Snow-topped pine and barren trees lined the narrow grit-filled roads in tightly knitted patches, the deceivingly bright sun of December poking through whatever gaps the canopied trees permitted.

  My foot found the brake when I caught sight of the oversized sign in the distance that stood out like a sore thumb against the trees and roving fields. As the Camry edged closer, I could make out “Sharp’s Bar & Grill” spelled out in a Gothic Sans font. It was still partially lit, burnt bulbs disrupting the overall aesthetic of the sign, and yet, the sign disturbed the surrounding calm of nature and farmlands around it.

  The snow that kissed the parking lot of where the sign stood was unmarred, save for a few footprints before I pulled my car in, leaving deep tracks that disturbed the blanket of white. It was a miracle I’d found this place without getting lost. I’d never been here before, but I remembered hearing about it. And right now, my being here was my best chance of getting the answers I desperately needed.

  I just had to ignore my conscience until then. I flipped the sun visor down, catching my eyes in the small mirror. My conscience glowered back at me, its tsk of disappointment cutting the buzzing silence in my head. That was the very problem with mirrors. You couldn’t run from them, and they always told you the truth. I all but slapped the thing back into place, not needing the inner monologue of why this was a terrible fucking idea. I already knew it wasn’t my finest hour, and I didn’t need to remind myself of that. If I thought about this anymore, I’d chicken out, but I couldn’t—not when I felt I was this close to the truth.