Shattered (Reflections Book 2)

by A. L. Woods

  The peace that permeated within me died like an extinguished candle before the wax even had an opportunity to really melt when I caught sight of the white Mercedes in the parking lot.

  They said bad shit came in threes.

  Drawing in a breath from a reserved well of strength I didn’t know I had, I kept my tone even and the onset of reignited worry out of my breathing. “I’m at work now, so I’ll talk to you later, okay?” My hold on the phone tightened as I trained my eyes on the one person I was considering mowing over with my car.

  “What should I tell Sean if he asks?”

  That Cash really is here now in the parking lot. No, no. I could handle this. He wouldn’t act foolish in a public setting.

  “That we’ll talk about it later.” As if detecting the weight of my glare, the asshole in the driver’s seat met my stare dead on, his expression dull. I reverse parked in front of him.

  “Every man’s favorite line,” Penelope laughed, completely oblivious. “I love you. Call me if you need me.”

  Say something, Raquel. Tell her. Tell her right now.

  “Yeah, you, too,” I forced out with a chuckle that I didn’t feel before clamping the phone shut.

  I collected myself before I climbed out of the car, my bag in tow. Cash scrambled to mirror my movements, his rangy frame straightening as he stumbled out of the Mercedes.

  “This is starting to turn into a bad habit,” I intoned, slamming my car door with enough force to make the whole thing rock.

  “Where you been, Cherry?” Cash’s eyes were haunted.

  I ignored his question by throwing him another. “Why are you here?”

  “You can’t answer a question with a question.” He stepped toward me. Instinct pushed me backward. The rejection had him laughing dryly.

  “I think I just did.” Impatience dripped from every word.

  He smirked. “So, it’s like that now?”

  “Now?” I folded my arms across my chest, looking at him through incredulous eyes. “You broke into my fucking apartment. Yeah, it’s like that ‘now’,” I snarled, creating air quotes with my fingers.

  Cash didn’t even try to deny it. He lifted his hands into a shrug, a chuckle vibrating in his chest. “And you haven’t been home since.” His blithe indifference made me want to knock him the fuck out. He had violated my privacy and space, destroyed my desk—the one material object he knew meant something me.

  And then he nearly left me with a bad head fuck by hiding my sister’s photo.

  I beelined past him. “You tell me how comfortable you feel sleeping with your door hanging on by a fiber, Cash.”

  “No one would fuck with you.” His hand came around my bicep, the connection setting off a chill that ran down my spine. I jerked my arm free from his grasp, glowering at him with knives for eyes. He glanced at his suspended hand, his grasp clinging to air. “I would have made sure of it.”

  “Don’t fucking touch me.”

  His green eyes flickered with warning that I was testing his boundaries, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass. “You knew exactly what you were doing by hiding that picture and destroying my desk.”

  Cash’s leg visibly bounced where he stood, his tone tight. “It got your attention, didn’t it?”

  “Your plan was to hurt me to get my attention, is that it?”

  His teeth clenched. “They’re just things.”

  “They’re my things. That was my desk. My photo.”

  The bounce in his leg ceased, his eyes practically pinning me in place. “You know better than to get attached to anything you could lose.”

  The veiled threat wasn’t wasted on me. I was slammed into the memory of finding my apartment in disarray, my things strewn everywhere. The panic that had pervaded me when I thought my sister’s photo had been taken. Sean consoling me, calming me down, then took me home with him and told me he was falling in love with me.

  And what had I done to thank him for that?

  My chin lifted, my fists balling at my sides. “Take your own advice, Cash,” I snapped. “I’m going to ask you again. Why are you here?”

  His smile turned cloying, but there was a dissonance between his eyes and his smile. “I’m not allowed to come see my girl?”

  “I haven’t been your girl for ten years.” My eyes glinted with anger. “You made fucking sure of that.”

  Cash threw his hands into the air, then let them drop to his sides. “Cherry, you gotta let that shit go. It was ten years ago, and I was a stupid kid,” he declared as he followed me to the door. He wasn’t a kid now—he was an overgrown stupid man-child, and that somehow made it worse.

  My hand reached for the handle, but instead of opening it, I turned to face him. “Nothing’s changed.” I gave him the once-over. “Do not bring your shit to my door. Just. Leave. Me. Alone.”

  He stared at me like I wasn’t serious, a goofy smile tilting his mouth. Was he actually waiting for me to pardon him? Biding his time for a smile to crack my anger, for the laughter to sweep through? For a concession? For me to forgive him like I had so many times before? It wasn’t coming. Not this time, and not ever again. He wasn’t any more deserving of my forgiveness than my ma was.

  Cash’s green eyes flashed with ire. That smile of his vanished, and in its place came the latent monster that rarely appeared.

  “Why were you in Cheltenham this morning?” The facade evaporated.

  Of course, I should have known that the snow wouldn’t have had the time to fill in the marks of my tires in the parking lot at Sharp’s before Dom sounded off the siren’s call of warning to him. Dom hadn’t liked my presence in his space any more than I liked Cash in mine.

  Payback was a bitch, and Cash was just about as done circling around me as I was done playing the role of his helpless victim. I wasn’t anyone’s prey anymore. I let the bitter laugh that clawed from my throat rip free.

  “None of your fucking business.” I turned my back to him, my hand reaching for the doorknob once more. I had managed to work the knob just enough that I caught the faintest whiff of printer ink before he pulled my hand away.

  My startled yelp carried over the parking lot when his hand clamped around my elbow, yanking me off of the steps. My body windmilled as he dragged me forward. I dug the heels of my boots into the concrete pathway, but it was no use; I couldn’t gain traction in the snow-laden pathway while still trying to recover the loss of my balance, my equilibrium shaken. The pressure of his grip set off a throb in my arm that permeated right through the tips of my fingers until a pulse formed there.

  “You’re hurting me. Let go!” I wrenched my arm free when he stopped by the side of the building. I staggered back, my hand clinging to the spot where he had gripped me. Even with my wearing a leather jacket, I knew he had left bruises…the kind I couldn’t lie my way through. I looked at him, utterly shell-shocked. “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  Cash’s shoulders were practically glued together, his eyes burning with something that—for the first time in my life—genuinely scared me.

  He asked the question again, this time with something guttural in his voice. “Why were you in Cheltenham this morning?”

  Why was he fixated on that detail? For someone who was so ‘concerned’ about where I was staying—why was he demanding to know why I had been in Cheltenham, too? Surely Dom must have told him the reason.

  My chin kicked upward, fists balled at my side, my teeth clenching until pain throbbed through my jaw. I wasn’t telling him fuck all. He was out of his damn mind if he thought I was going to put up with this shit from him, of all people. I shifted away from him to leave, but he grasped me around the middle, hoisting me off of the ground. My legs cut through the air, my feet soaring in front of me. There was nothing gentle about the way he set me back on my feet. He shoved me forward with both hands until my spine connected with the brick wall, a current of pain slicing through me as my feet finally touched solid ground once more.

  Cash’s hands
went to either side of my head, his face leveling with mine. This close up, I could see the dilation of his pupils that set off a sickening realization in my mind. The iridescent ring of green was nearly lost, the whites of his eyes growing bloodshot with each second that passed.

  The sinking feeling of familiarity swept through me as I grappled with the source of his erratic behavior. I swallowed the nervous lump that formed in my throat. How long had he been using again? The last time I’d seen him this way was a few years ago, and that evening had ended in a disaster. It was the night he picked a fight at O’Malley’s and beat Ronan’s son Connor within an inch of his life after learning someone had messed with his youngest sister, Meredith. He was under the impression it was Connor, since he was always hanging around her. Coke made Cash paranoid, it always did, and that night wasn’t an exception. Penelope and I weren’t expecting to see him burst through the door at O’Malley’s, nor toss a barstool in Connor’s direction. The bar erupted into shrieks, while Cash took advantage of a temporarily incapacitated Connor, only stopping when he was peeled off of him and tossed out.

  Ronan, of course, retaliated. Not immediately; that wasn’t his style. He let Cash sweat it out. Word traveled fast in Southie. Everyone knew what Cash did, and that he wasn’t straight when he’d done it.

  When Cash least expected, a messenger came looking for him. His only saving grace was that Ronan was from County Galway, just like his nan.

  He got off easy with a few broken fingers, a fractured rib, a dislocated kneecap, and a warning to stay off the sneachta—snow in Gaelic—and to never set foot in his bar again…never mind look in Connor’s or the O’Malley’s direction.

  I thought he was clean for a while. That he learned his lesson, that he kept Holly Jane in his mind, and recalled with painful clarity the severity of his injuries. But the way he looked at me now? I was wrong. He had learned nothing.

  He was still just Cash.

  My sister’s high made her irrational on her worst days, but she had been all of a hundred pounds soaking wet and three inches shorter than me. Cash was lean and long-limbed, but I was kidding myself if I thought that would be enough to keep him away from me.

  He was still a man, and our physiology didn’t lie. It would take more than a prayer in hell to keep him off of me if it came down to it; I would need to take every cheap shot in the book. I found my nerve to look at him dead on just as he invaded my space. His breath fanned my face as he dragged chafed knuckles that felt like sandpaper against my cheek. A bead of cold sweat rolled from my neck down the length of my spine. I needed to get myself out of this situation, and fast. Cash was a piece of work with an attitude problem when he was sober—but once the dopamine coursing through his veins right now dissipated? No one was impervious to its paranoia and aggression, especially someone as emotional as him.

  “Get away from me.” I turned my head, giving him my profile, holding my breath in hopes that he would listen to me for once in his damn life. There had been a lot of things I had put up from him on a good day over the years, but he’d crossed the line when he showed up high and aggressive at my place of business during waking hours.

  Even the mad had their limits.

  He didn’t move. He just stood there, with huge pupils and flared nostrils, flanking me with his arms. I braced my hands against his chest—his heartbeat felt irregular under my palms—and shoved him forward. Cash didn’t so much as wobble when I pushed against him; he was as heavy as ten-ton truck. Bastard may as well have been wearing concrete shoes that kept him weighted to the ground.

  My attempt at escaping his clutches only seemed to spur him on. Cash’s hands snapped to my wrists, pinning them roughly above my head. My blood pressure soared, my heart was kicking in my chest. I turned my cheek when he descended upon me.

  I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I was scared.

  My lids dropped for a beat of a second. “Cash, seriously. Let me go.” I checked my anxiety as I focused on a vagrant rock a few feet away. My eyes searched the span of the building, drawing on the technique from the coping mechanism Sean had taught me.

  “Or what, Cherry?” He nuzzled my jawline with the tip of his nose, his lips brushing a trail up to my earlobe. “No one’s coming to save you this time.”

  Save me? The words froze the fear inside of me that kicked my chest. I wasn’t some fucking damsel in distress. I had been beaten, I had been broken, but I was stronger than he would ever know. I saved me—not anyone else.

  His teeth grazed my earlobe, “This is how you like it now, isn’t it?”

  Nausea flanked me at the assault. I wasn’t his to handle. I wasn’t his anymore.

  Maybe I never had been.

  I looked deep inside of myself, looking for the sliver that must have loved this man once. Maybe when he was in that peculiar place between boyhood and manhood. Back when he wasn’t afraid of being run off by my dad, who threatened to tear him limb for limb. When he served as my escape when I needed it most. He had been the one to show me that I mattered, that I did matter to someone, to him…but it was Sean who had shown me that I needed to matter to me.

  I couldn’t say I had never been his, for I had. I had loved Cash once, when I was young and naive and held onto every word he offered me with bated breath and stars in my eyes. When he wasn’t consumed with the idea of being someone he wasn’t. When we had gone for late night drives with my feet propped on the dash of his car and his hand draped on my thigh—edging nervously toward the opening in the gap between my thigh and my shorts, but never moving forward—because he had respected my boundaries.

  He had seen me as a person back then. Not as the breakable object he held in his grasp now. Not as a thing that he could abuse and mistreat over and over again, all while assuming that I would never discover that I deserved better. We weren’t so different, he and I. We had experienced immense loss, the kind that nearly broke us. Our foundation for the world had been built in Southie, with people who had taught us to fend for ourselves, because that was the only person we could rely on—and right now? That was the truest thing I ever knew.

  “You told me once that I couldn’t escape who I am, do you remember that?” I asked in a breathless whisper.

  His roving wild eyes landed on me, a war brewing behind his greens as he met my browns, searching for something. “Yeah.”

  Shifting against the wall, I steadied myself. The friction of my movements against him aroused his attention, and like an idiot, he took the bait.

  “You were right.” I leaned forward, my mouth inches away from his. “I can’t escape who I am.” My heart thundered inside my chest just as he made his descent. His gaze was fixed on my lips, wanting and waiting for something that would never happen again: permission.

  “But neither can you,” I said, issuing the coup de grace in one murderous blow, adding, “You’re a pathetic piece of shit.” With that, I raised my knee with as much physical strength as I could conjure from the close proximity of our bodies, hoping like hell I landed on my target.

  He howled, his hands dropping mine. My knuckles scraped against the wall, but the pain barely registered in my mind over the bark of a cry he let out as he staggered backward, cupping himself.

  The suffering and anger that lit up in his eyes made me shiver, but I didn’t break away from my resolve. “You fucking bitch,” Cash sputtered, his body doubling over at the waist and grimacing in pain. He slammed his closed fist against the outside of his thigh, releasing a slurry of curses as he struggled to collect himself.

  “I will never forget where I come from, so do not make the stupid fucking mistake of underestimating me,” I punctuated, stabbing the air with my finger.

  He stumbled against the wall, bracing himself there with one arm, the other still clutched against his balls.

  I didn’t feel sorry for him, not even remotely. He had used subterfuge and guilt on me for the last time, and I was done. “Now, I’m going to ask you again—why are you he
re?”

  He bared his teeth at me. “Fuck you, Raquel.” He spit in my direction, punching his closed fist against the wall.

  “You want to know why I was in Cheltenham, and I want to know why you’re here. Now either you can tell me, or I’m going to make sure you can’t shove your dick into anything ever again.” He was already incapacitated and vulnerable, and I was feeling cocky. I genuinely believed that I could take him in his wounded state.

  “Try it, Cherry. I dare you.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Cash.” The lie slid out of me with so much force that I almost believed it myself.

  “You should be.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I will become your biggest nightmare if I have to.”

  I almost believed him…almost. I chortled, rolling my eyes.

  “You’re all hot air, Tobias. You talk a lot.” I stepped away from him, hoisting the strap of my bag onto my shoulder. “But I’m done listening. So, do me a favor, and fuck off.”

  When I was a kid, my father told me you never turned your back on anyone when you walked away from a fight. You made sure they were down, and they stayed down until you were out of their line of vision and they were out of yours. And if they didn’t stay down, you gave them a reason to, an incentive, a bodily injury so grotesque that the memory would haunt you forever.

  But I genuinely didn’t believe that Cash wasn’t capable of what he did next.

  He was on me like lightning to a metal pole in the middle of a field when I rounded the corner of the building to go inside. My body soared forward when he slammed directly into me, my palms bracing the impact. White-hot pain registered in my knees first, and I knew the denim had given away. I felt the warm rush of blood rising to the surface. My weight collapsed forward; the skin shredded on my palms. I turned them over to investigate the damage, a drumming setting off in my wrists as blood filled the white gouges of the scrapes in my palms.

  I almost forgot he was on top of me as I stared at the battle wounds and my father’s words resounded in my head. I couldn’t reconcile what was going on above me to what was going on internally. No, this wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. I had known Cash for a long time, and despite all of his faults and bravado and airs–he had never once gotten physical with me, ever.