The Pieces that Built Me Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Amber Lacie

  Gray Publishing Edition

  COPYRIGHT © 2018

  Cover Art: Bookend Design

  Editing and Formatting: Gray Publishing Services

  Warning: This book contains explicit content including scenes of sexual nature. Intended for mature audiences.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, or other status is entirely coincidental.

  eBooks are not transferrable. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever known, not known or hereafter invented, or stored in any storage or retrieval system, is forbidden and punishable by the fullest extent of the law without written permission of the author.

  There are so many people I want to thank. To list them all would be a book in itself. Rather than ramble on for pages on end, I would like to thank a special group. To my unicorn group, you support me daily and push me to keep going, even when I have tossed in the towel, thank you. You are beautiful, rare, magical, and most of all, loyal.

  To the new reader picking up this book and taking a chance with my story, enjoy!

  To my family, I love you even when you are driving me insane, don’t change.

  To those who are looking for a few feels with their romance, I hope you find them within these pages.

  To that one person, may karma’s door smack you on your ass on the way out.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Other Books by Amber Lacie

  About Amber Lacie

  If I could have cured the world from disease, healing the sick, and saving those who needed more than the world could offer, I would have started with you…

  One of my favorite memories as a child was the first night I can remember that Daniel was upset. Daddy was down the hall, sound asleep in his favorite chair, his snoring echoing down the hallway as I tiptoed into Daniel’s room. It was late, but not late enough for him to be asleep. I knew I would find him awake, flipping through the pages in a comic book with a flashlight under his chin—waiting for me. It was our routine. Every night our dad would tuck us into to bed, promising tomorrow would be better. Daniel and I would wait for him to fall asleep and then we would find one another. We would take turns, searching the other out in the darkness that fell upon the house each night. We were inseparable.

  “Arlington, what are you doing?” The light from Daniel’s flashlight blinded my eyes for a split second before he placed it back under his chin.

  “Shhh.” Holding my finger to my lips, I hushed him. “Daddy’s asleep.”

  “I know that. I can hear him snoring. Why are you in my room?”

  Ignoring the annoyance in his voice, I stepped farther into his room. “The same reason you came in mine last night.”

  “He should just let us share a room. He’s stupid. This is stupid. I hate these new rules. Why can’t we go back to having the same room?” Holding up his covers, he motioned for me join him. My feet slipped into his bed and I curled up with my favorite doll next to him.

  “Daddy says we’re too old now.”

  Daniel looked down at me as I looked up into my mirrored reflection. If it weren’t for my long auburn hair, and the fact that I was a girl, I would look identical to my twin brother. Even our freckles were in the same spot. Our dark brown eyes stared at one another in the darkness. He didn’t say anything else that night. He didn’t need to. I knew every piece of him. I knew his thoughts, his feelings…I knew everything—at least I thought I did.

  He was upset, but I thought it was just about our rooms being separate. Squeezing his hand, I fell asleep next to him, sharing a worn pillow and thin blanket between the two of us. What I didn’t realize was how deeply he was hurt.

  When you’re ten years old the world feels big, but you don’t realize just how big it is. I thought I had an idea of what cruelty it held when, Lilly, our mom, I use this term loosely, left us the day after our fifth birthday. Daniel and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating our breakfast. Everything was normal, until our mom came into the room carrying two cream-colored suitcases, one in each hand. She never looked at Daniel. Her eyes remained on me.

  An eerie smile graced her face as she sniffed, in an attempt to make it look as though she was crying. “Arlington, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I have to go. We’ve all known for a while this was never going to work. I can’t be a mom—it’s just not something I can do. I wish I could say I loved you enough to stay, but the truth is…I’m sorry. I have to go.” She blew me a kiss and then she was gone. Our worlds were turned upside down in a matter of seconds.

  I never understood why she took the time to try and explain herself to a five-year-old. None of it made sense to me. Lilly was a horrible mother. A mom doesn’t come around only on birthdays. They love you. They take care of you. Lilly was anything, but a mother. When she did show up, she would tell us stories of the trips she’s been on, bragging about whatever poor soul she’s currently sucking the life out of. She never stayed with them long. I’m not sure what they saw in her. When she was around she would vie for my attention, completely ignoring Daniel. I realized too late in life, it was just to placate my father. The more she vied for my attention, the longer he would allow her to stay.

  As we got older she came around less and less. Eventually she gave up on trying to seek my attention, and solely sought out my dad. She would wait for him to finish off a pack of beer and then lure him into his room. A couple days later she would sneak out, when no one was looking. My dad, of course, would blame us for her sudden departure. After a day or two, everything would go back to normal, or at least, back to our normal.

  Daniel would go to school, and my dad would work in the shop all day, fixing motorcycles. I would spend my time juggling housework, our finances, preparing all our meals, and somewhere in that mess I would find the time to do my homework. It was our version of normalcy.

  The night after I snuck into Daniel’s room, I tried to sneak in again. Though, I didn’t make it. My dad was waiting for me in the hallway. His rough, calloused hands grabbed me and led me back to my room. Tears fell down my face, knowing I couldn’t reach my brother. He had been acting strange all week, and I knew if I could just get him to talk to me I could figure it out.

  My dad was never an angry man towards me. He never swore, never raised his voice, or had a foul thing to say against me. He was different with Daniel. That night, after he tucked me into bed, I could hear him screaming at my brother.

  My heart shattered as I lay in my bed, alone in the dark, knowing I was the only person who could help him. I waited for hours until I finally heard the snores echoing down the hallway. Slipping on my tattered housecoat on, I carefully tiptoed to
Daniel’s room, and pushed the door open.

  “Just go.” His voice shook as he tried to hide his tears, but I knew better.

  “Daniel, I love you. Come in my room. We’ll be quiet. Daddy won’t know.” Sniffling, I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. I didn’t understand why my dad wanted us separated, and it wouldn’t be until later in life that I would see everything for how it truly was. At that moment, I was a ten-year-old little girl just trying to comfort her brother.

  Softly padding my feet across the room, I sat down on his bed, taking his flashlight into my hands. My fingers pressed a button and the light scattered across the room; I could see his eyes were puffy and red from crying. When I tried to get a better look at him, he tried to hide his face with his hands.

  “You and me, we’re the same. You cry, I cry. You bleed, I bleed. Remember?” I tried to convince him to look at me by repeating the same words he told me every time I fell or got hurt.

  Grabbing my hand, he took the flashlight from me. “He hates me.”

  “Who? Daddy? No, he loves you.”

  “Arlington, we aren’t the same. Mom loved you. She hated me. She never wanted anything to do with me––it’s always about you. Dad told me why she left.”

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I asked him the only question I could come up with. “Why?”

  “Because of me, but I don’t understand it. Arlo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He said we looked like her, but you sounded like her. He said I reminded him of what he had lost. How is that my fault? I don’t think I look anything like mom.”

  “You don’t. She has blonde hair and we have brown, like dads.”

  “Do you think he’d like me better if I looked different? If I was different.”

  What does someone say to a question like that? For being so young, I tried my best. “I think he’s just angry. I think he just drinks too much sometimes. If you looked different, you wouldn’t look like me, and I don’t think I would like that.”

  I couldn’t hear exactly what my dad had said to Daniel that night. Maybe I did, and my mind blocked it out. All I know is, after that night, Daniel was different. No matter how big his smile was, there was always a frown hiding in the corner of his mouth. It never left. After a while, it just became a part of him, and I accepted it as who he was.

  The years moved slowly along in our small Chicago suburb. I continued to take on more responsibilities and excel in school, while my brother’s grades slipped. He was having a hard time controlling his anger, and by the time we were seniors in high school, Daniel had already been in three fights; one resulting in a broken wrist. He didn’t care if he won, or who it was with, I think he just wanted to hit something. After he got his cast off, the fighting stopped. I hoped it was a sign that he would stop everything. It wasn’t.

  At night, he would sneak out. He didn’t get caught every time, but when he did, my dad would spend the next two days or so screaming at him, reminding him of why he was never going to amount to anything. I would spend the same amount of time trying to remind my brother that I loved him, while trying to calm my dad down. Sometimes, I felt like a parent trying to separate them. The problem was that I was not a parent––I was a child.

  Dad ran a mechanic shop out of the garage. When we were younger, he focused mainly on small engine repair, but over the years his love of motorcycles grew, along with the perfection of his skill. While he fixed the bikes, the rest of the responsibility fell on my brother and me. I would take care of payments, while Daniel oversaw the ordering of the parts. I had no idea what was what, I simply knew how much was in the bank and what we needed to pay.

  Daniel and I would walk home from school and toss our backpacks on the front porch steps before running straight into the shop to see what my dad was building. He would acknowledge my brother with a grunt and start spouting out a list of tools he needed. As soon as his eyes would fall on me, he would stop whatever he was doing to check on me.

  “Princess, do you and your brother have homework to finish? I don’t want any more letters from the school.” The wrinkles around his eyes would stretch to his forehead, spreading like cracks in broken glass whenever he would ask us a question. It was like his entire face was trying to portray the concern he had for us, or at least for me. I’m not sure if it was because my dad was too busy, or maybe he really didn’t care, but keeping Daniel in line had become my responsibility.

  “I already finished. Daniel has some algebra to work on, but I’ll help him in a little bit. What are you working on?” Kicking dust up with my shoes as I walked, I plopped myself down on a barstool across from the bike my dad was working on.

  “Arlo, are you blind? That’s a 1950 Indian Chief Black Hawk with a four-stroke v-twin engine. It has a telescopic fork suspension in the front and a plunger in the rear.” The shock in Daniel’s voice dripped with annoyance.

  I don’t know why he expected me to pick up on those kinds of things. To me they were all motorcycles. They were loud and fast. I was more interested in the people who dropped them off. Most of them wore leather jackets with weird badges on them, and their arms were almost always sporting tattoos. They looked dangerous and I found it intriguing. I always wondered what kind of stories they had to tell, but I never asked.

  “It’s a bike. They are all bikes.” I rolled my eyes.

  “No, that’s a bike,” Daniel said, pointing to my bicycle tucked against the wall. “This is a motorcycle.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Um, one has an engine and is capable of reaching insane speeds. The other has a basket on the front, so you can stop and pick flowers you find along the side of the road.”

  Shaking his head, Daniel grabbed a wrench and made himself comfortable next to my dad on the floor, where they ended up working on the bike for most of the night. If I were lucky, they would join me for dinner.

  Most nights, I cooked and left the food on top of the stove for them, and I had no problem doing it. I just wasn’t going to wait on them hand and foot. They knew where the microwave was.

  That was our life. Everything was normal––to a certain point.

  I was standing in front of my floor length mirror looking myself over from head to toe. The red and white skirt seemed a little too short on me, but then again, maybe that’s how it was supposed to be worn. It didn’t matter if I was uncomfortable in it––I had made the varsity cheer squad. Straightening the matching red scrunchy in my hair, I reached down to tie the laces on my new white trainers. This was my last year of highschool and it was going to break or make my popularity. My mind was on nothing else. When I looked back up into the mirror, my heart fell a little bit in my chest.

  Daniel was standing in the doorway of my room. His worn-out jeans were almost as tattered as the flannel tied around his waist. Raking his hands through his long dark hair, he tilted his head to the side, as if to question my very existence.

  Feeling defensive, I tossed my words at him, “Can I help you with something?”

  Swinging the keys around on his finger, he gave me a familiar smile, full of mischief. “Nope. I’m driving today. Dad gave me the keys to the truck.”

  “You can’t keep stealing his keys.”

  “I didn’t. I told him ‘his princess’ didn’t want to walk to school in her new shoes. We wouldn’t want you to mess up your pretty outfit, now would we?”

  Guilt prickled against my skin as I looked down at Daniel’s shoes. A Converse knock-off brand adorned his long feet. The black canvas had faded into a grey, highlighting the fraying of material along the laces. We didn’t have a lot of money with the shop taking a big hit in sales over the summer. When I mentioned trying out for cheerleading, and the cost, my dad said we would make it work somehow. I’d like to say that if I had known Daniel would have been pushed even farther into the background, I wouldn’t have tried out, but that would be a lie. I was too selfish to care. I was tired of being an adult when I should have been enjoy
ing my friends. It was the first time I put myself before anyone else. But, because of my choices, my brother was standing before me in worn out clothes, while I shined like a diamond.

  Knowing I should say something, but not knowing what, I stammered, “Daniel…I—”

  “Arlo, it’s nothing. I’m fine. It’s all-good over here. Come on, I want to meet Brenden before first bell. He has a guitar I want to look at.”

  “Another guitar? You already have two. It’s a waste of money.”

  “Says you. I like when I play. It’s my escape.” His eyes darkened for a split second before brightening back up. I wish his eyes would stay bright all the time.

  Following Daniel down the stairs, I grabbed my purse and my backpack off the chair by the front door. Our dad was already in the shop working on a new project. With a quick wave of my hand, I said goodbye and hopped into the truck. Daniel sneered, jumped in the truck, and peeled out of the driveway, kicking up some loose gravel behind us.

  “You know he’s going to lecture you later.” Pulling my lipstick out of my purse, I applied a fresh coat while glancing over my face in the side-view mirror.

  “And you know I don’t care, so why even bring it up?”

  “Because I love you. I don’t like seeing you in trouble.” I said the words to the window instead of to him. They were loud enough for him to hear, but low enough they didn’t need a response.

  The school buzzed with people moving in and out of the doors. Daniel parked in the back of the lot and we made our way towards the school. At the entrance to the gym, Brenden caught us, his lips curling into a smile as he looked me over. I didn’t know what it was about him, but he always made me feel uncomfortable.

  “Morning, Arlington.”

  “Brenden.” It was the only acknowledgment he would get from me. I’ll just wait with Daniel for a few minutes until I see one of my friends, then I’ll jump ship and sail away with my new company. My eyes eagerly searched the crowd when something caught my attention.