Pieces of Me

by Walker, Shiloh

  Pieces of Me

  Shiloh Walker

  Copyright

  Initial Copyright © 2017 Shiloh Walker

  Cover: Shiloh Walker

  Image: Anastasia_vish | Bigstock

  Cover Text & Design: Picmonkey

  Editing by Pamela Campbell & Kathryn Flaherty

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people.

  Please note that if you purchased this from an auction site or blog, it’s stolen property. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Your support is what makes it possible for authors to continue to provide the stories you enjoy.

  Dedication

  To my editor, Pam…loved working with you again. To Kathryn, who put her things aside to work on this.

  To all the women who’ve had to fight monsters. You’re stronger than you know.

  To my family. Always. I thank God for you.

  Chapter One

  I woke with a scream echoing in my ears.

  It was one a.m. but the lights shone, bright as day, in my room.

  Being in the dark was enough to terrify me. Cowering in the middle of my bed, I drew my knees to my chest and shivered.

  “I’m free.” I drew in a breath, let it out. “I’m free.”

  The sound of my voice grounded me, a little.

  “I’m free.”

  It took several minutes of breathing, of talking to myself before I no longer felt as if the nightmare was going to overwhelm me. Longer still before I was willing to uncurl from the protective ball I’d curled into as the echoes of the dream washed over me.

  I got out, I told myself. I got away. He doesn’t control me anymore. I’m not just a thing.

  Carefully, feeling like I might break, I got out of bed and padded into the bathroom.

  “You’re you,” I said. My voice was rougher than it had once been, husky. A guy at a bar had told me it was sexy as fucking hell—those had been his words.

  I wish I could appreciate the compliment. But my sexy-as-fucking-hell voice had happened because I’d spent too much time trapped in a very real hell and I’d screamed until I’d damaged my vocal cords.

  Hard to appreciate having a phone-sex kind of voice when that’s what it took to get it.

  Still, at least I can talk now. I stared at my pale reflection and spoke again. “You’re you. You’re Shadow. And you got away.”

  I was no longer the nothing, the nobody he’d made me. I was no longer just a silent scream in the dark, and that was what mattered.

  Because the dregs of the dream still clung to me, I stripped out of my clothes and climbed into the shower, turning the water on as hot as I could tolerate. Standing under the spray until the water started to chill, I let it wash away the stain of the dream as I continued my morning mantra.

  I’m me. I can leave my home. I can go shopping. I can go to the beach.

  “He isn’t here to stop me.”

  Outside, the sun was starting to edge up over the horizon and the fist of terror began to ease. Daytime was always better. I was too old to be afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t going to feel shame over that small thing.

  I had too many other things to be ashamed of.

  Wrapping a towel around myself, I used another to dry my hair and moved to stand in front of the mirror. The reflection staring back at me looked like an urchin—a wet, bedraggled one.

  I turned away from the reflection and grabbed my robe. I’d get coffee. I’d get to work. I’d make myself forget…for a little while.

  And I’d pretend it was enough.

  It wouldn’t be, though.

  Nothing was ever enough.

  There are times in my life when I look back over the years and it’s as if I’m watching a film of somebody else’s life.

  My life seemed to stop when I was twenty. It just…stopped and some other stranger took over. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a headstone, complete with my name.

  Here lies Shadow Grace Harper…her life stopped at age 20.

  My name truly is Shadow. My mother loved the TV show Dark Shadows, but the name Barnabas didn’t really suit a baby girl and none of the female cast had really appealed. But she liked Shadow Grace and my dad indulged her. Always.

  He indulged her, spoiled me. Then, when I was sixteen, they both left me, stolen in a car crash when a tired truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.

  I was sent to live with an aunt who barely tolerated my existence.

  It wasn’t all that terribly bad. I didn’t like her, she didn’t like me, but we managed to coexist right up until I turned eighteen. Then I left that tired, gray house behind, heading for the quiet, bucolic charm of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, buying one of the charming old mansions and settling in for what I’d hoped to be the life of an artist.

  Life changed a few months later when I realized so many of the kids my age were going off to school. It was too late for me to try to get in anywhere, so I’d spent that year having fun and doing all the things I hadn’t been able to do with my aunt, while getting ready to start college a bit later.

  At nineteen, I started college—attending the University of Massachusetts. I kept the Pawley’s Island house, letting a realtor talk me into renting it out as a vacation property while I was in school, because sooner or later, I’d come back there. I loved Pawley’s Island, loved the laziness of the place, loved the sunrises on the beach, the people. Everything about it, really.

  But I had college to worry about and my plans had been to pursue…something artsy.

  That had been my plan. Something artsy.

  At nineteen, with more money than sense, it had been a viable goal in my mind. I’d get a degree and maybe I’d spend my life painting or teaching. Or maybe I’d just find a way to be happy.

  Could that be a life’s goal? A job? Being happy? Finding a way not to be lonely, the way I had been ever since my parents died?

  I didn’t know. I no longer understood that girl, but then again, she died a long time ago.

  It was at UMass that I met and fell in love with a handsome, sophisticated older man. I was twenty when I met Stefan Stockman. He was fifteen years older than me and he was the beginning of the end for the girl I’d been—that silly, foolish Shadow Grace Harper. After a whirlwind courtship that lasted less than six months, we married.

  I hadn’t even turned twenty-one.

  We were still on our honeymoon when the change started. It was slow, it was subtle…and it was terrifying. Shadow wasn’t a suitable name for his wife, so naturally I became Grace. The loud, boisterous laugh wasn’t suitable, so naturally, I learned to laugh quietly, behind my hand…and then I just stopped laughing at all.

  Naturally. It all happened naturally.

  And naturally, in my mind, it’s easier to view it all as something that just happened to somebody else. As a movie. Something that I can view as just somebody’s bad dream, not something that happened to me.

  The movie ended when I was twenty-five and I woke up in the hospital, just a few short hours after I stumbled out of the basement of a house I didn’t recognize, freed, oddly enough, by a freak tornado that had killed eight people. It killed eight people, but it saved me.

  Yet
another thing to be ashamed of—the storm killed eight people, shattered the lives of others.

  But it freed me. I was so pathetically grateful for it.

  Sitting at the table, lost in memories, I sketched, unaware of what I was even drawing until I was done.

  When I finished, I found myself staring at a picture of me—my own face. Only it wasn’t right. My face no longer looked like my own, yet another sign of how completely gone that girl was.

  After spending months in hell, after being beaten multiple times, plastic surgery had been required to fix the damage. My right cheekbone had been broken and healed badly. Swelling and an infection inside my sinuses had required another surgery, and my nose, also the recipient of several hard blows, needed repair as well.

  The last beating had fractured my jaw and I had scars on my body.

  I don’t even know where many of the scars came from.

  Memories of those months are vague and some are gone completely.

  That is another thing I am grateful for—I don’t want to remember any of that time. Even losing a few memories is a blessing.

  I studied my altered face and the dream came back to me.

  I’d tried to leave.

  That was what had set him off.

  I’d tried to leave and he came after me, dragged me back…and practically threw me away, locking me away someplace so dark, so desolate, nobody had even heard my screams.

  The phone rang, making me jump.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, darling.”

  I smiled at the sound of his voice. Only Seth could call me and immediately make me smile. “You better not flirt with me. Marla will get jealous.”

  “Marla is standing right here. And she says ‘hi, honey’.” Seth imitated his girlfriend’s New Jersey accent almost perfectly, drawing another smile from me.

  “Tell her I said ‘hi’ back. What are you up to?”

  “We’re driving up to Myrtle Beach tonight…going to hit a bar or two, get drunk. Ride the Ferris wheel. Come with.”

  A pang of longing went through me. “No.”

  “Come on, babe…come with us. Have fun. We’ll go to the beach.”

  “I can go to the beach here and it’s a lot quieter. Also, there was another shark sighting near Myrtle Beach. I don’t think so.” Sharks weren’t what scared me. I’d faced much worse things than sharks. But I wasn’t going to tell him that I couldn’t handle being in a crowd, unaware of who could be there, who might be watching me.

  “If any sharks come near you, I’ll chase them off,” he promised.

  “No, Seth.”

  He sighed. “Sooner or later, I’m going to get you off Pawley’s Island. You need to learn to have fun again, babe.”

  “I do have fun. Every other Thursday, for movie night.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes and agreed on a movie for the following day—Thursday, movie night—and then he hung up. After I lowered the phone back to the table, I reached out and traced a finger down the line of my sketched, slightly imperfect jaw.

  I wished I had the courage to go with him.

  I wished I wasn’t so afraid.

  But my ex-husband was still out there.

  And worse…he knew where I lived.

  I sat at the table and looked outside.

  When I saw the man sitting on the steps of the house diagonal to mine, I eased back and tried to pretend I hadn’t seen him.

  He’d seen me, though. I knew he had. After all, he was being paid to sit there and watch and wait. Paid to spy on me.

  It was like having my ex-husband there, staring at me, watching me.

  A silent reminder. You’ll never be free of me…

  I ran away from him once, but he just found another way to torment me. That fear of him still haunts me, controls me. He still haunts me, controls me.

  He still watches me and I know it, even though I left Boston and moved back to Pawley’s Island. I had money…a lot of it. A fact that probably pissed off my ex-husband. If he could have controlled that money, he could have maybe controlled me, kept me from leaving.

  The money was from my parents, a trust fund that had been left for me after their deaths. He was rich himself, but the money I’d inherited once I turned twenty-five made his net worth look…paltry. He hadn’t realized that I’d only get yearly lump sums until I was twenty-five. Then I’d receive the bulk of it.

  I’d foolishly let him know about the inheritance that would be mine, but he hadn’t clued into the deal about the lump sums until later.

  If I could figure out how to do it, maybe that money would buy my freedom. Sometimes I fantasized about trying to hire somebody to kill him, but I never followed through.

  Other times I thought about buying myself a new life somewhere, a new name.

  I had the money.

  I’d researched how.

  I might even work up the courage to do it.

  Nibbling on my thumbnail, I stared around the edge of the curtain at the man paid to spy on me. He sipped his coffee and stared back. It didn’t even seem to bother him that he was making my life hell.

  Turning my back on him, I shut him out of my mind. At least I tried.

  “Find something else to do,” I told myself. Find another way to get back at him—not the man on the porch. But him. My ex-husband. The man who still sought to control me.

  Almost everything I did was some sort of small, subtle rebellion.

  Coming back to Pawley’s Island, cutting my hair, even the clothes I wore.

  I was running out of new ideas, but even walking barefoot to the beach that was just beyond my porch was something that would have made him furious. That was what I would do, I decided. I’d go to the beach.

  I’d pulled on a long flowing skirt and a tank top. Another one of my small rebellions. I looked like a modern day hippy, my short, choppy hair already disheveled from the ever-present breeze. I’d tied a bandana around my wrist. Once I settled down to work on my sketches, I’d need it to keep my hair back, but for now, I loved the feel of the wind.

  With my bag over my shoulder, I headed out the back door. I didn’t know how long it would take my shadow to find me. Sooner or later, when I didn’t show up through a window, he’d come looking, but for a little while, I was untethered.

  There was coffee in a thermos and I munched on toast as I walked. Gulls circled overhead and a few came down to land close by, hoping I’d toss down my meager breakfast. They could hope as much as they wanted. They weren’t getting my toast.

  My phone beeped just as I reached the table at the very edge of my property, right before it gave way to sand. It wasn’t quite ten but others were already hitting the beach and as I pulled out my phone, I studied everybody, distrust as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.

  After I’d assured myself that none of them were my ex, I looked at my phone screen. Instinctively, a smile curled my lips.

  It was Seth, or rather a picture.

  He and Marla were standing by one of the kiosks that rented out movies and he was pretending to gag himself while Marla fanned herself with the chosen movie.

  I laughed and texted him back.

  Don’t watch it without me.

  The best thing that had happened since I’d left Boston had been meeting Seth, the hottest, most intense man I’d ever met. When he knocked on my door, he’d terrified me. He’d been with another equally hot man—his lover at the time—and I’d been so scared I’d barely been able to vocalize two words.

  They’d known it, too.

  But Seth had refused to leave, insisting that he had something important to tell me. In the end, he’d asked if I could at least meet him at the little coffee shop in town.

  I’d agreed.

  He’d told me that I had to promise to be there, otherwise, he’d just come back and knock, and sing very badly, until I agreed to talk to him.

  I’ve learned over the years that Seth does sing very badly indeed.

  I als
o learned that his lover, Tony, would have been just fine if I hadn’t met them at the coffee shop.

  Seth, though, was a tattooed, tarnished knight, always looking for somebody in distress.

  He had a record—petty theft and other issues that had landed him in jail for a year—but he was trying to turn his life around, going to school, paying bills. He explained all of that upfront, while I sat there, confused and not quite following. Then he told me that my ex-husband had approached him.

  The pieces clicked and fell together as he explained that my ex had tried to bribe him to watch me.

  He lived in the house just across from mine and it would have been a perfect plan, except Seth wasn’t an asshole.

  My heart had knocked against my ribs the entire time and I’d waited, terrified of what he was going to say, even though a part of me already knew. I’d already seen one of the neighbors who was either really into fruit, or just too fixated on me, because he showed up every time I was at the fruit stand to buy more mangos for the smoothies I’d gotten addicted to.

  My ex-husband was having people watch me.

  Seth had been willing to testify. We called the cops.

  Cops came by to talk to Seth a few days later, then drove off.

  When I asked him what happened, he refused to tell me.

  But I knew it had something to do with my ex.

  I’m surprised Seth’s still my friend.

  Tony isn’t. They fought for weeks and less than three months after that, Tony moved out.

  He met Marla a few months later and they’ve been together ever since. I think he’s seriously in love with her. He had grinned at me when I saw them together and told me, “I never did see the point in tying myself down on anything. I go both ways.”

  It had made me laugh, even as I wished I could be more like that. I do nothing but tie myself down. To my fear, to the memories. To my husband’s controlling nature.