Rewriting Yesterday

by Wright, Candice

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Also by Candice Wright

  Follow Candice on Social Media

  Rewriting Yesterday Copyright © 2018 Candice Wright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licenced for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  For my children. Without you, this book would have been finished months ago.

  Acknowledgments

  Krys Janae- Cover designer- TakeCover designs

  Ella Medler- My fellow Brit and editor.

  Gina Wynn- Formatting

  Without you guys I would still be rocking in the corner. I lucked out with you three, thank you, truly.

  You, yes you reading these words right now. Thank you for taking a chance on my book. If you enjoy it, please leave a review.

  Prologue

  JOE

  Bombs, guns, knives… each as deadly as the next. Wars are waged and fought using these weapons in hope of destroying enemies. A shot to the head or a stab to the heart and you know that’s it, game over, but for me much less was necessary. It only took eight words spoken in a gentle voice tinged with pity to rip my world to shreds.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Taylor, you have lung cancer,” the doctor tells me from across the desk in a practised, even tone that I’m sure was perfected on hundreds of patients before me.

  Eight words to tell me that the enemy I faced was myself. I wonder if all the people that mocked and jeered me over the years, the ones convinced that there was something dark inside me, would feel vindicated in the knowledge that my body is eating away at itself from the inside out. I want to scream and smash the glasses off the doctor's face and demand he fix it. Fix me. I want to wrap my fists in his tie and pull until the life seeps out of him just so he knows what it feels like. He shifts awkwardly, like he knows what it is I’m thinking. I’m a big guy. My hair may be more silver than black as the unforgiving years wore away at me, but my body is as lean and strong as it was in my twenties. That thought brings me up short. I guess it's true what they say about looks being deceiving.

  “I am sorry, Mr Taylor. Nurse Peters is just outside the door. She will give you some additional information and schedule your next appointment. Do you have any questions?”

  I just shake my head. What is there to say? Why me? I’m sure that’s what most people want to know. Not me. I’m a bastard. I’m guessing this is just Karma catching up with me. I get up and ignore the condescending prick in front of me and head out into the corridor. A nurse is there, waiting for me, so I follow her into another room sparsely furnished with a grey old-school filing cabinet, a cheap mahogany wood-veneered desk and two mismatched chairs, one in front of and one behind the desk. I sit where she indicates, in the chair in front of the desk, and stare at the green exorcist-vomit coloured walls. Who the fuck thought that would be a good choice of colour?

  I listen in silence to her pen making an annoying scratching noise as she fills out some forms, books my next appointment and gives me a prescription for something or other. The quiet must unnerve her, as she starts to babble away, but I can’t focus on what she is saying. It’s all bullshit anyway. I stare at her, watching her thin chapped lips move as I tune her voice out. She has a rounded figure, large, barrel-like arms, and a full bust that is threatening to escape the confines of her pristine white uniform. The bottom half of her is obscured by the desk but it is easy to see that she isn’t exactly in great shape. Her grey hair is pulled back into a severe looking bun that is pulled so tight I’m wondering if it’s to try to lift the sag of her face. If that was her plan, she failed. Her face has more lines than a road map, easily making her ten or even twenty years older than me. The cruel part of me can’t help but wonder, why not her instead?

  “Can I call anyone for you?” she persists with a look of pity on her face. I don’t answer her but whatever she sees in my eyes makes her flinch slightly. Good.

  She stands and herds me towards the door, and I follow her in my continued silence, not trusting myself to speak without showering her with my venomous words. She leads me towards the end of the corridor and out into the bustle of the main reception area.

  “Contact us if you have any problems,” she tells me once we reach the exit before she spins on her heels and heads back the way we came. I freeze for a second and turn to look at her retreating form as she disappears within the crowd of the sick and weary, and wonder if she is for fucking real? Any problems? I’m dying. I would say that was a huge motherfucking problem.

  Shoving my way through the crowd of people entering, I make my way outside on autopilot and head towards the courtyard. The gloomy grey morning acts as the perfect backdrop to my turbulent thoughts. I tug at my black tie and look down at my expensive black Armani suit as I spot a bench to my right and sit before my legs give out. I look like I’m dressed for a funeral.

  I bark out a laugh that sounds every bit as bitter and twisted as I feel, but sitting here I realise with stark clarity that even if I did want the nurse to call someone for me, I have nobody. Nobody that would give a shit, not now, not after everything.

  I choke down a lump in my throat as I think of my son Caleb. Fuck, it was not supposed to go down like this. I was meant to have more time to mend the bridges I burnt as I strove to prove something to myself and everyone around me. Forgotten anniversaries and missed birthdays had me apologising and dripping in guilt as I started out with the best of intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions. I guess somewhere along the way I got lost and stopped feeling guilty as I pulled further and further away.

  Caleb may be twenty-three now but, in my head, it’s hard to let go of the image of the eleven-year-old boy who went from thinking I hung the moon to knowing I broke up his home. That’s how old he was when he found me sleeping with the maid. God, I’m such a fucking cliché.

  When his mother Patricia filed for divorce, it became messy and brutal. Caleb got caught in the middle and used as a weapon of mass destruction, both of us at war with each other, oblivious to the devastation we caused our boy. He dislikes his mother and her selfish, narcissistic ways but he hates me.

  I have no one to blame but myself. I worked my way up from nothing and amassed an empire so that my boy never had to know what it felt like to go hungry, so when he came to me to tell me he had enlisted I spewed words filled with
disappointment and resentment at him. I didn’t get my own way, so I lost my temper like a toddler, and now my son is out there somewhere fighting to protect his country thinking that he let me down. He didn’t let me down. I let him down, but my stupid fucking pride just let him walk away.

  I’m disappointed all right, but not with him. With myself. All those days and hours I spent in my office while I missed out on Caleb growing up and becoming a man were for nothing in the end. He chose his own path and I missed out on life. This thought has me barking out another laugh. Oh, the irony. It takes me dying to realise that I never really lived. What a waste of a life.

  A slender arm covered in a long-sleeved navy-blue sweatshirt moves into my field of vision and offers me a tissue. I take it, only now realising that I’m crying like a pussy. I keep my head down so that whoever they are isn’t witness to my loss of control.

  “I’m dying.” What the fuck? I’m just blurting this shit out now?

  Where did that come from? Guess my pity party has me telling total strangers my business now. They don’t speak for a minute, so I figure I’ve scared them off, but as I turn to look, a soft voice, barely above a whisper, answers.

  “How long do you have left?”

  I'm thrown for a minute, hating that question, despising the fact that I now have an expiration date like some piece of disregarded food that’s slowly rotting away. I’m no expert, but shouldn’t you offer your condolences or something, or does that happen when you are dead? When all the fake people who couldn’t stand you come out of the woodwork and pretend that they are devastated by your death. It’s all bullshit. All anybody gives a shit about is how much money you have left them. I turn to look at who spoke.

  Sitting next to me is a teenage girl of fifteen, maybe sixteen, years of age. She is on the thin side and dwarfed by a massive navy-blue hooded sweatshirt. The hood is pulled up over her head, which is tipped down, but her wild, curly jet-black hair is spilling out over the side of her face and obscuring her left eye. Her slim legs are covered with baggy grey jogging bottoms, and her feet, which barely reach the floor, are stuffed into an old, worn-out pair of white Converse trainers. Her arms are tucked close to her sides, with her hands inside the kangaroo pouch at the front of her jumper. I don’t know this girl and will likely never see her again so what’s the harm in telling her? I need to purge this shit somehow. I want someone to care.

  "Could be a year, could be five… nobody can say for sure." I’m aiming for nonchalance. Feeling vulnerable and unnerved is new to me and I refuse to show it. She nods like she expected that answer but otherwise remains still and quiet. I sit for the next few minutes trying to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do now when she speaks again.

  "Are you happy? I mean, were you, before you got the diagnosis?"

  The question causes a sharp pain in my chest. Such an odd thing to ask someone you don’t know. But what do I know about the social etiquette of talking to a dying stranger?

  I think about it for a while, but truthfully, I already know the answer.

  "I don't know if I even know what happy feels like anymore,” I tell her, and that might just be the most honest thing I’ve said in years.

  “I have spent so long just going through the motions, doing what I thought I should, shutting off emotions like remorse or guilt so that they didn’t interfere with my plans. Most of the time all I feel is numb or ambivalent. It’s been so long since anything else penetrated that I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel anymore. I’m shocked and angry—that much I do know—like I have wasted my whole life stressing about inconsequential shit, and for what? None of it means anything anymore. It was all for nothing in the end." I sigh and fiddle with my tie that's intent on choking me.

  "I get that but you're not dead yet. Stop talking like you are and do something about it. If you hate who you are or what you’ve become, then change it. Be the man you want to be instead of the one you’ve let yourself become. Your life may have an end-by date but what you do with it up till that moment is up to you.”

  I stare at this tiny waif of a girl in astonishment. Everything she says makes sense, and yet the fear I feel is like a physical entity chasing me down and nipping at my heels. I look away, shielding my reaction to her words. She carries on speaking, unaware of my inner struggle.

  "If it makes you feel any better, you will probably end up outliving me. I won't make it five years. I doubt I will make it to one."

  I whip my head round to look at her and gape in horror as she lifts her head up to make eye contact for the first time.

  I take in her split lip, bruised cheekbone and black eye that was previously hidden by her hair. I notice the way she holds her ribs when she speaks, and it dawns on me that I'm so wrapped up in my own problems that I didn't notice that this poor girl is hurt. I really am a fucking ass. This girl is like my Jiminy Cricket, making my conscience flare to life. Guilt, anger, resentment… hell, even my protective instincts are blazing. I have had my emotions stitched up tight for a long time, but this girl is pulling at my seams. I don’t even know what to say to her. A better man would know what to say. I do what I always do and make it all about me. Fuck, I’m a selfish prick.

  “I have lung cancer. The next time I come here it will be for chemotherapy.”

  My head spins, trying to process that this is now my new reality.

  "My mum has a boyfriend that likes to hurt me. The next time I come here it will probably be to the morgue. It's undecided if it will be him that puts me there or myself."

  Fuck me. Is this girl so alone that the only person she has to tell her story to is the sad pathetic stranger on the bench?

  There is something heart-breaking about the fact that we seem to have no one else except each other. Two broken people alone in a sea of faces, inexplicably linked through our sorrow and helplessness.

  I make a living out of telling people what to do, think and say but for the first time that I can remember, I'm speechless. I'm both shocked and awed by her ability to cut through the bullshit. She isn’t going to let me feel sorry for myself when she doesn’t have that luxury.

  I am afraid to die. She looks like she would welcome it. I’m the first to admit I stand out in a crowd; my size alone has people taking a second look, but it’s the expensive suits and the confidence that make people gravitate towards me. It’s all superficial as fuck but I thrive on the power it gives me. This girl looks like she works hard to be invisible, perfecting the art of blending in so that she remains unseen by her tormentors. The trouble is that she oozes innocence. She may as well be wearing a beacon saying "look at me". She may not see it, but I guarantee that’s what has the predators circling her. We are a contradiction, a paradox of light and dark, but we do have one thing in common. Our loneliness. Nothing is more isolating than being surrounded by people and feeling utterly alone.

  She looks at me with those big sad eyes that have seen and experienced far more than she should have at such an early age and I have the strangest urge to wrap my arms around her and tell her it will be okay even knowing it’s a lie and that it won’t be. Nothing will ever be okay again.

  "If I go in there they will patch me up and send me home by the end of the day. Sure, there might be someone new who tries to help, but they will hit a wall just like everyone else. I don't know how she does it—my mum, that is—but she manages to convince everyone that I'm a troublemaker, that these injuries are a result of falling in with a gang. Then she plays the frantically worried parent trying to get me help and they buy it every single time. She is a master manipulator. If it wasn't me she was talking about I would believe her, too."

  I finally understand with Technicolor clarity just how dire her situation is.

  "You spoke up before, didn't you, and they sent you back?" I ask her softly, feeling her despair beating against me as if it had wings.

  A lone tear escapes her eye, and it breaks my heart.

  "I'm a teen acting out, apparently, getting int
o trouble and telling lies for attention. I've run away before, but they always find me and send me back, justifying what a reckless delinquent I am to them. I have no other family and no friends. I'm out of options. I kept trying to get some help, and some people really did seem to care until their job was threatened. You know that saying, it's not what you know, it's who you know?” I nod even though she can’t see me with her head tipped down as she fiddles with her hands in her lap.

  “Well, my mom has dirt on all the big players in this town, and even though she is a piece of shit, she is a protected piece of shit. I just need to hold on for six months and then I'm gone. That's when I turn eighteen and they can't bring me back. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway, but the truth is, I’m just so tired. When you live like I do, always worried and scared, time stretches out endlessly. Seconds feel like hours and months feel like years. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to hold on at all."

  "Come home with me."

  It's out before I can even really think about the consequences of what I’m saying but I know it's the right thing to do.

  "I have a doctor on retainer that will be coming to see me anyway. I promise I won't hurt you. I just want to be your friend, and maybe you could be mine. I could really use one right now."