Fractured Hope (Undone Series Book 4)

by Kristy Love

  I looked over at her house and it was dark; any sign of life was extinguished. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I wanted to reach her, to help her. I had my own problems, but I was more concerned with hers. I had no idea when I’d become this man, but here I was. I was concerned about someone else. I wasn’t pushing her away with verbal barbs.

  I took the cookies inside without bothering to open them. They always tasted better when we ate them together. I went to bed, determined to bridge the canyon that had been shoved between us.

  The next morning, I brewed a pot of coffee, then grabbed the cookies and headed over to Mia’s. I knocked on her door the best I could with full hands. After a few moments of silence, I wondered if she was gone. Maybe I’d missed her. I turned around and walked a few steps away.

  “Roman?” Mia said, her voice was small and kind of surprised. I turned back to her. She had circles under her eyes and her skin was pale again. All the color she’d gotten from being outside seemed to have vanished. She looked sickly. Her posture screamed of defeat.

  “Hey, I wondered if you wanted to share these cookies with me.”

  She pulled the neck of her sweater tighter. “Thanks, but I saved a few for myself.” She forced a smile. My heart felt like it was breaking—though that was impossible. It wasn’t whole to begin with.

  I held up the coffee pot. “I made coffee to go with them. Triple chocolate chunk cookies are best with a warm cup of coffee.” I forced my own smile. Why was this so important? I should walk away, but I couldn’t. In response, she held the door open and stepped back. I moved inside her house and walked into her kitchen, setting the coffee and cookies down on the table. Then I opened and closed her cabinets until I found the coffee mugs. I grabbed two and some cream and sugar and came back to the table. Mia stood behind her chair, her hands on the back of it, her eyes focused on the coffee pot. I set everything down and sat. I grabbed a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and placed a cookie on it, then poured myself some coffee. I acted as though nothing was strange about her behavior. That her vacant stare or her silence didn’t bother me.

  “What were you up to last night?” I asked, taking a bite of a cookie. As usual, her baking was phenomenal. Somehow, her cookies tasted as if she’d invented the recipe. She sat down and got herself a cookie and coffee before she answered.

  “Nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t it all seem pointless, Roman? The lives we’re leading? Don’t you ever just get . . . tired of it all?”

  “No.”

  “No? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  In truth, her words freaked me out a little. I felt as if we were at a fork in the road. I either handled this conversation the right way or I didn’t. I either kept this friendship or I didn’t. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Mia.”

  “We can’t really be friends, Roman. I’m too broken to be a true friend to you. I have nothing to offer you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means my life is a fucking mess.” Her hands yanked through her hair and her eyes were wild and wide. “I can’t afford to have hope. It’s too dangerous.” There was defeat in her eyes and I hated seeing it there. I hated that she couldn’t even feel a sliver of hope. Things must be really shitty for her if she felt having someone on her side was too risky. What all had happened to this girl to damage her this much? “My own brother didn’t want to be here for me. My own brother, Roman. What does that say about me?”

  “Just because things suck, doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. We can be there for each other.” Why was I fighting so hard to keep this girl as a friend when she was using so much energy to push me away?

  She shoved away from the table. “Never mind. This was stupid. It was stupid to think you’d understand.”

  “You’re damn right I don’t understand. How did we go from enjoying each other’s company to you wanting nothing to do with me?”

  “I think you should leave,” she said. She turned her back to me and walked down the hall toward the front door. I followed after her.

  “What is happening right now?”

  “Roman, my life . . . isn’t easy. It was nice for awhile, pretending that things could be okay, that I could have a . . . life, something that wasn’t caught up in all the bullshit surrounding me. But that’s not reality. My reality is much different than yours.”

  “So your life is the hard one? My life is just sunshine and rainbows?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and widened my stance. She wasn’t making sense. “It sure as hell sounds like it. You think you hold the market on complicated? On sad stories?”

  “Don’t be difficult.”

  “I’m not being difficult! I’m trying to get you to wake the hell up and realize that you’re being difficult.”

  “Difficult?” A spark went off inside her before quickly dying. “I’m not being difficult. I’m being honest. We have nothing between us.”

  “What in the hell sparked this? You aren’t making any sense.” She closed her eyes, as though my words caused her physical pain. “I’ve been alone for a long time, Mia. A long, long time. I don’t have friends. I don’t have family. I have no one. And for a long time, it didn’t matter. I didn’t need people around me. I was fine on my own. But I like having you around.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. Her eyes met mine, anger behind them. “You told me you were having drinks with friends last night. That’s not alone, Roman. That’s friendship.”

  “Guys from work. One of my coworkers got engaged and they gave me shit about never coming out with them so I gave in.”

  “You aren’t the type of guy who just gives in, Roman.”

  I ran a hand over my hair. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing. I don’t want you to say anything.”

  “So, this is it, huh? You hardly talk to me for weeks and now you’re telling me you don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “We weren’t dating. Move on with your life.”

  “Fuck that.” I opened her front door, then turned back to her. “I’m not fighting for someone who doesn’t fight for herself.”

  I stormed out of her house and over to mine. I had no idea what to do with myself, but I was pissed. I needed something to get this energy out. It had been almost a week since I mowed my lawn, or Mia’s, so I did that. The physical exertion was good; it helped distract me from Mia. I didn’t want to consider why it bothered me so much that she pushed me away, but it did. It bothered me a lot. I felt the loneliness she kept at bay creeping back in.

  I kept stealing glances at her house, but nothing. No Mia in the windows, no movement outside, nothing. I felt I’d lost a piece of her and I had no idea why or how.

  When I finished the yards, I went inside and got a shower. I couldn’t figure out any of this. Mia was a puzzle I couldn’t finish because I didn’t have all the pieces. She held them so far out of reach that I had no hope of finding them or figuring them out.

  Maybe it was better this way.

  I spent the rest of my day doing nothing of importance, my thoughts wrapped around Mia and what happened and why she was pushing me away all of a sudden.

  * * *

  The next morning, I opened my front door to go to the store and almost tripped over a container of cookies. It was the one I left on Mia’s table yesterday. Anger licked my insides as though it was a raging inferno. I picked up the container and jogged over to her front door, banging on the door. “Mia, open the damn door!” I continued pounding until I heard her opening the door. When she was in front of me, the same defeated expression on her face, I damn near exploded. “What in the hell, Mia? You tell me to leave, you tell me that any kind of friendship is pointless between us, and then you leave cookies on my step? Fucking cookies? What in the hell are you up to?”

  “You mowed my lawn again. I wanted to say thank you.” She avoided my eyes. I w
anted to shake her.

  “I don’t want your damn cookies, Mia. I want you to stop acting like this.” I shoved the cookies at her, though she didn’t reach to take them. She stood in front of me, her arms limp at her sides.

  “I’m not acting. It’s just pointless.”

  “What would make it less pointless? If we shared our sob stories over milk and cookies?”

  “I’m not asking for you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Her words were so flat, so devoid of emotion. It scared me. It scared me that I was losing her friendship and that she was losing herself.

  “Can I come in?” I asked, almost afraid to leave her alone. I wondered if David had any idea how she was acting. Was this the kind of situation I should notify him about? She stepped back and waved her arm behind her, signaling me inside. I went into her living room and sat on the couch. “What’s wrong, Mia? You’re concerning me.”

  She laughed, though it was bitter. She sat on the couch too and turned toward me. “Is this big, bad, asshole Roman telling me he’s worried about me? Does he actually care about something?”

  “You know I care about you.”

  “Do I? How exactly do I know that? Do I know it because you forced me to eat with you a few times because you thought I was bulimic? Or because you mow my lawn? How do I know you care about me and you aren’t just here because of my brother?”

  “I do care. I told you last night, you make me feel less alone.”

  She looked over toward the window, a faraway look in her eyes. “Funny. I’ve never felt more alone in my life.”

  I moved closer to her, taking her hands in mine. “I’m here for you, Mia. I am.”

  “Did you know I have a daughter?” she asked, her eyes coming to my face. Pain masked hers.

  “I assumed, given the pictures of her around the house.”

  “Of course. You’re too smart. No one can fool Roman,” she quipped, her words dripping with sarcasm. “Did you know she’s in the hospital? The only thing keeping her alive is a feeding tube.”

  My heart dropped. Suddenly so much about her made sense. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “You’re the only person in my life who didn’t know that.” she scoffed. The sound was bitter and forced. “I wanted to keep you separate from that, but I can’t. The fact that she’s in the hospital consumes every moment of my sorry life.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mia.” I took her hand in my own, squeezing it.

  “The doctors keep telling me there’s no hope. She won’t recover, and, if she does, she’ll be a vegetable. She’ll always need a feeding tube, she’ll need around-the-clock care.” Pain lanced my heart, hearing the hopelessness in her words. “They keep running tests and the results keep getting worse. There’s no activity. She stopped responding to all stimulus months ago.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ve had the option since the beginning to take her off life support, but I don’t know how. I don’t want her to live a life of nothing. I don’t want her to never run around again or be able to drink a milkshake. She was so full of life.” A tear escaped and she wiped it away. “But I don’t know how to end her life. I can’t do that. How does a mother choose to end her baby’s life? She’s breathing on her own, too. I can’t starve her to death, Roman.” Her eyes came to mine and the raw pain and torment behind them took my breath away. “I don’t know how to carry this around anymore. I can’t tell David because he’d flip out. No one knows quite how bad it is. Only me.”

  I pulled her into my chest, holding her close. She broke down, sobbing into my shirt. I rubbed my hand over her back as she cried. I closed my eyes, understanding all too clearly the pain of letting go. Sometimes it was impossible to let go. “Thank you for telling me.” My eyes found the many pictures of a little girl with ringlet curls in her hair. She seemed so full of life, so happy. Now she was hooked up to monitors and a feeding tube was keeping her alive. I couldn’t imagine that kind of helplessness.

  “I’ve been living in this limbo for so long. I don’t know how to keep doing it. I don’t know how to keep holding out hope for a miracle when it’s been so long since I’ve seen her eyes or heard her voice. It’s been over a year that she’s been in that hospital in that damned bed. And nothing changes. I hold her hand, I talk to her, I sing to her, I do everything I can to wake her and nothing changes. Not even a fluttering of her eyes or a change in her heart rate. Nothing.”

  I held her tighter, with no words to console her. The sobs that wracked her body got less frequent and she held me less tightly, but her head remained pressed against my chest. I liked having it there. I liked having her in my arms. When it seemed she’d calmed, I cleared my throat. “You know what I always find helps me when I’m upset?”

  She sat up and wiped the tears from her face. “What’s that?”

  “Cookies. Especially chocolate ones.”

  A small smile curled her lips and she stood, holding her hand out to me. We went into the kitchen and ate some cookies, avoiding all difficult conversation. I was glad, because I had no idea what I would do now.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mia

  “GIA, BABY. MAMA’S HERE.” I ran my fingers over her cheek before bending and giving her a kiss. She’d had more tests and they came back with the same results: nothing. There wasn’t activity; there wasn’t much hope. I fussed around her room, distracting myself as much as possible from the reality of the situation. I wasn’t sure how to handle this.

  I hummed as I moved around her room, picking up and moving various items she’d never use. There was a cup of water on the table with a straw in it. For some reason, I poured one every time I came in. I knew she couldn’t drink it, but I did it anyway. Every time. It was unconscious at this point. I moved the few stuffed animals I had in the room. I brought them in, hoping they’d bring her some comfort. But if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t her I was hoping to comfort. It was me. I could pretend for a few minutes that she was merely napping if I looked at the soft toys and blanket I brought her from home.

  Roman crossed my thoughts. He was great when I told him about Gia. I hadn’t expected to tell him any of that, but the weight of my reality was crushing me. I couldn’t pretend to be okay, not when it felt as if my life was imploding again. The words came out without much thought. He held me, actually held me. He didn’t offer false hope or promises that everything would be okay. He just comforted me by holding me. I felt more comfort in his solid arms and silence than I had in all the words and gestures people had been giving me for a year now.

  It was in that moment I knew Roman was dangerous. He was gruff and rude sometimes, but he had a big heart. I knew it from the time I saw him help the little girls who had fallen. I could fall for Roman if I let myself.

  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I didn’t have time for that. My heart could never belong to anyone again. I’d clearly chosen wrong before. I couldn’t risk it again. How could I ever rely on another person again?

  How could I give my heart away when it’d been torn to shreds? When it wasn’t whole and never would be?

  “Mia, it’s good to see you.” I turned and found David, standing there with his hands in his pockets. He used to be more like Roman. He was never as much of an ass as Roman, but he took charge. He spoke his mind. Now it was as if his personality had been ripped out of him.

  “Hi, David,” I said. Roxie stepped in behind him and rushed over to hug me.

  “Mia,” she breathed. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How are you guys?” They shared a look. I wondered what was about to happen.

  “We’re fine.” Roxie squeezed me and went to kiss Gia’s forehead.

  “It’s strange to see you together. Normally you only tag team me when you have something you want to say.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Roxie said. “We both had some time off and wanted to come in and see Gia. It’s just a bonus that you’re here as well.” I looked to David, though he didn’t move or meet my eyes.

 
“Something is going on.”

  “Nothing is going on,” David replied. He moved in and came closer to Gia.

  “Stop it,” I said. I glared at both of them. I was sick of being treated this way. I was sick of them acting as though I couldn’t handle real life. “Stop treating me like some fragile creature you have to tiptoe around. Tell me what you have to say.”

  They exchanged another look. Roxie sank down on the bed next to Gia, holding her hand. David moved around the bed and wrapped an arm around Roxie’s shoulders. It felt as if they were forming a united front against me. I backed up, not liking the look on their faces. “Mia, we have something to share with you,” David said. “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you, but you haven’t been around.”

  “So you decide to tell me whatever it is in the hospital?”

  “We just want to talk with you. We didn’t know how else to see you if you won’t answer your phone.”

  I nodded. I understood what he meant, but I feared what he had to say. Roxie looked apprehensive. David looked cautious and resigned. What were they going to tell me? “Okay.” Dread bubbled up into my throat.

  “Roxie’s pregnant.”

  I jerked back, as though his words had pierced me with a bullet. It felt as if I’d been shot. His words ripped apart my heart. My soul shattered. In a moment that should have been happy, all I could think was I’d never get that again. A baby. An announcement. Happy news. Those days were so far behind me. Any excitement or happiness I could have felt was sucked away by my pain and loneliness.

  What kind of heartless bitch was I? Couldn’t I be excited for my brother? He was finally going to be a father. Roxie was going to be a mother, an amazing mother. I was going to be an aunt. This should have been an exciting announcement. I should be hugging them, crying tears of joy. Instead, tears of sorrow pricked my eyes.