Pieces of Eight Read online

  Pieces of Eight

  The Mad Love Duet, Book Two

  Whitney Barbetti

  PIECES OF EIGHT

  The Mad Love Duet, Book 2

  By Whitney Barbetti

  Copyright 2018

  Cover photography by Alexander Kuzmin

  Cover design by Najla Qamber

  Editing by KP Curtiss, Lauren Lloyd

  Proofreading by:

  Christina Harris

  Amanda Maria

  Ginelle Blanch

  Epigraph poem used with permission by Kat Savage

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  Contents

  Author Note

  Epigraph

  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

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  More Books by Whitney Barbetti

  About the Author

  Author Note

  This novel, Pieces of Eight, is a sequel to Six Feet Under and is not meant to be read without reading Six Feet Under first. This novel is the continuation and conclusion of that story.

  I can’t shake this,

  can’t escape this,

  brittle bones aching,

  this sickness in me.

  I am more disease

  than flesh,

  more darkness

  than woman.

  I bartered sanity,

  traded one pain

  for another and

  I can’t stop this.

  I can feel it,

  every flick of my jaw,

  every lick of my lips,

  I can feel it, I can feel him.

  Kat Savage

  To everyone who took a chance on Six Feet Under.

  This book is dedicated to those who need to be reminded that broken things can heal.

  1

  December 2010

  He was gone. The space in which he’d occupied was clear. But his scent remained. The look in his eyes before he’d left me had imprinted on my skin, like a tattoo.

  It was as if I was haunted; everything had been the most beautiful and perfect illusion. And now, I was exorcised of it all. But the feeling, the heartache, the craving still existed.

  It’d taken me years to get away from drugs. I’d chased him instead. And now he was gone. And why did anything matter? What was the point?

  I fell back against the stiff pillow, staring at the drop ceiling above me. How many women had been in this room before? How many of them had left with a baby in their arms? How many had kicked the love of their life out, for good, in this room?

  This room had likely celebrated the beginning of life before, the welcoming of new, unspoiled blood into the world. But to me, this room was a funeral. For our baby. For us.

  A small, lone droplet of blood trickled down my arm as the knife fell from my hand. I barely registered its clatter to the floor. I couldn’t even be bothered to look where it’d fallen. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need it.

  A nurse entered and started at the foot of my bed. “Oh, you’re bleeding,” she said and scrunched up her nose. “Did your IV come out?”

  I stared beyond her, not really registering her at all. I didn’t look at her as she cleaned up the tiny trail of blood. When she bent over, I turned my head, knowing she’d soon hand me the knife.

  “Um,” she said, and it took everything in me to turn in her direction. To take in the confusion, the small bite of fear that flickered across her blue irises. “Did…” She didn’t know how to ask me.

  “Accident,” I said, but I wasn’t sure I’d actually articulated an intelligible sound. I was empty, my guts on the floor. There was nothing to bleed out, not when it’d been sucked from me.

  I didn’t know if she’d actually paid any attention to what I’d said, but she was blessedly gone, leaving me alone to rot in the bed. She hadn’t returned my knife.

  I was cold. I supposed it was the hollowing out that had done that. My heart didn’t beat the way it used to. Mira now was a woman untethered to the earth—like a forgotten balloon, let go to soar into the atmosphere, into nothingness.

  The lonely beep of the monitor signaling its time to check my blood pressure was the only sound I heard. Until I heard the triumphant cry of a baby and the exultant moan of a woman down the hall, rooms away from me. Saying hello in a language that was primal.

  A roar of excited voices rose louder than the mother’s cries.

  Never had I felt more alone. Even the intuitive act of breathing was work, especially when my chest shook, rattling my cries in a hollow body.

  I had to get back to San Francisco. To the only home I’d ever had, but not to the home I’d created with Six. I had to create my own place now, to give myself something I’d never had before.

  But first, I’d have to ask for help. The one person I didn’t want to ask. The person I knew would hold it over my head. My only other alternative was to ask Six, and I couldn’t do that.

  The awful thing was, I knew if I asked, he’d give it to me. He’d give and give unto me, even when I didn’t deserve it, because that was the kind of man I’d loved. The best of the best, the one who’d loved me at an eight when I didn’t deserve a one.

  And, ultimately, that was why I had to let him go. I loved him deeply, but I’d hurt him deeper than any love should hurt.

  If I had it in me, I’d let it roar from my throat the way the new mother down the hall had hollered during her final push. But I was empty, because of the choice I’d made.

  Pulling out my phone, I braced myself. The call to her wouldn’t be easy, especially when I was already nothing but a weeping wound, but she was my only shot out of here.

  Even as the phone rang, I wished she wouldn’t answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom.” The word didn’t fit in my mouth. “Mother.”

  “Mirabela.” She was already sighing. “Where are you?”

  It was as if she’d known I wasn’t in San Francisco. I briefly debated not telling her a word, but then remembered she’d have to know in order to help me. “Michigan.” I glanced at the hospital phone beside me. “A hospital in Detroit.”

  “Now why on earth are you all the way over there?”

  I pinched my eyes shut. “It was a mistake. I need to get home.” I held my breath as I waited for her answer, which didn’t come until my eye started twitching.

  “You need a flight then?”

  She sounded smug.

  “Yes, please.”

  “To Seattle?”
/>
  I congratulated myself on not telling her an immediate Fuck no in reaction. “San Francisco. Please.” I was humbled by this, by the big ask of my mother. I’d have to inherit a hundred I-told-you-sos over the death of my independence, but it was a small price to pay.

  “Why are you in a hospital?”

  I didn’t have to debate long on whether or not to tell her the truth. And I knew the answer she wanted, as fucked up as it was, so I gave it to her. “I almost died.” It was the truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. I could still very well die. A body couldn’t go on as empty as I was, could it?

  “Why am I not surprised?” My mother and I only differed in our consistency. She was always consistent when it came to an opportunity to rub it into my face, the complete and total fuck up I was. “What was it this time?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked her.

  “Of course not. Call it curiosity.”

  Only someone as callous and cold as my mother would be curious about the way her daughter tried to allegedly kill herself. “A knife.” It wasn’t a total lie, but it would be believable to her.

  She scoffed, and I could practically feel her spittle through the tiny holes of my receiver. “Naturally. And you failed, didn’t you?”

  In another lifetime, I might have succeeded just to spite her. We were woven from the same tattered cloth, my mother and me. She was better at disguise than I was, but I knew in some weird and inexplicable way, she envied me. For all my mother’s ineptitude as a young mother, she’d never tried to take her own life. Unless you counted the time she drove us off a bridge—which I counted as attempted murder, not suicide.

  “I did,” I told her, unable to put any feeling behind it. “So, can you get me home?”

  She made some sound in her throat, but I could hear the clack of her keyboard. “When are they kicking you out?”

  She thought I was in a psych ward, no doubt. “Tomorrow.” I glanced at my phone, noting that it was almost ten in the morning. “Today, I mean.” Even if I wasn’t actually released, it would only take a second to remove the IV. Nothing was holding me here anyway.

  “This evening all right?”

  I nearly sighed in relief but didn’t want to give her that much satisfaction. She’d be soaked in this particular favor for long to come as it was. “That’s great,” I told her, trying to force a little gratitude in my voice. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel gratitude for her getting me out. It was that every single thing required more effort than I possessed.

  A woman stepped into the room, accompanied by the nurse who’d left with my knife and both looked me over clinically. “I have to go,” I told my mother.

  “Shall I email you the ticket information I just purchased for you?” she asked. She was high as a fucking kite over the opportunity to rub this in. Asking my mom for favors was making a deal with the devil, and the price was a piece of my sanity.

  “Yes. Same email as always.”

  “Done. Make sure you make that flight. I’m not spending my money for nothing.”

  “Right. Thanks, mother,” I said, but my voice was robotic. I hung up and turned to the nurse and the woman beside her. “Hi.”

  “Hi Mirabela,” the woman said as if we were old friends. But we weren’t, because no friend of mine would use my full name like that without a death glare.

  “It’s Mira,” I corrected her. “But I don’t know who you are.”

  She folded her hands in front of her and approached my bed, eyes tracing my arms briefly before meeting my eyes. Based on the calmness she possessed, I knew right away that she was here to see if I was going to harm myself. More than I had already.

  If I thought it’d help, I would’ve stared down the nurse who’d summoned the shrink with daggers in my eyes. She was just doing her job—rationally I knew that. But a tiny pin prick was nothing.

  “Why don’t you leave us alone?” the shrink kindly asked the nurse, who ducked out like the shrink had screamed at her. Shrink Annabelle, as her name tag said, turned to me with warm brown eyes and graying eyebrows. “Hi Mira.” She looked at my eyes, probably judging whether or not I was high or deranged.

  For the first time since Six left, I felt my heart beat. Anxiousness, I knew. “What’s up, doc?” I asked, trying to keep myself calm, unaffected. This little evaluation wasn’t going to fuck up my plans to go home.

  “How are you doing?”

  I blinked blankly at her. “Have you read my chart?”

  “I’m sorry about the miscarriage.”

  She sounded sincere, but it was the word choice that rankled. “Right. It’s been a long night—morning. To be frank, I’m really fucking tired. I don’t know why that nurse called you in here, but I’m fine. F-I-N-E, fine,” I said, as if spelling a four-letter word would convince her of my sanity.

  “You might be feeling upset right now…” she began softly, and I had, once again, to work to keep my voice calm.

  “I got hurt in a car accident”—minor fib, but a necessary one—“and miscarried. I think being ‘upset’ is putting it mildly.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, but I really didn’t have it in me to convince her that I was A-OK. I wanted to call the nurse back in and tell her to pound sand. “You do look pretty beat up. It’s understandable that you’d be upset right now.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Look, I know the spiel. This isn’t my first time with a shrink.” I held my arms up for evidence, and to her credit, she didn’t blink once. “As you can probably surmise.”

  “I’m not here about your scars, as they all appear to have healed. I’m here about the injury to your arm, the fresh blood track.”

  Rolling my head back and forth, I said, “I get it. What do you need from me, in order for you to get out of here.”

  She adjusted her position, so she was sitting on the edge of my bed, putting us at eye level. “Well, I need to hear from you how it happened. And if your intentions are to cause harm to yourself or someone else.”

  “My intentions,” I said, dragging the word out, “are to get the hell out of this place and back home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  I blew out a frustrated breath. “San Francisco.”

  “Wow, so far away. What brings you here?”

  I could think of a dozen things I’d rather do than sit here and listen to Annabelle talk to me like I was a five-year-old recounting my weekend. “Came for the scenery. Now I’m ready to go home.”

  “Understandable, after the trauma you’ve suffered.”

  Running my hands through my hair so that I wouldn’t scratch my skin in her presence, I said, “Is this really necessary? The nurse stole my knife as it is. I have no desire to hurt myself. My only desire is to get the hell out of here and fly home.”

  “Do you have a flight booked?”

  “Yes, for tonight in fact.”

  “Okay.” This seemed to give her some assurance that I wasn’t about to bounce out of here and do something reckless. “Tell me, Mira, have you harmed yourself before?”

  I thought I was empty, but all that empty space was taken up by annoyance that would quickly turn into rage. “I’ve been in rehab before, I’ve sat in a dozen chairs while other shrinks attempted to dissect my brain. This isn’t my first rodeo,” I reiterated. “So, I appreciate the concern”—no I didn’t—“but I can assure you, I’m just fine. It was an accident. Which is why the knife was on the floor when that nurse found it. If it’s about the damn knife, she can keep it for all I care.” I was a black hole of fucks—unable to find one to give about the stupid knife, about the kind eyes of this shrink who would lock me up if I made the slightest mistake. I just wanted out, to lick my wounds in private.

  Annabelle examined me as best she could, without me shrinking away from her. This was a play I’d rehearsed a dozen times. I knew what needed to be done, to prove that I didn’t need to be evaluated further. I kept my face placid, my eyes clear despite the lack of sleep and emotional exhaustion.
r />   “Are you on any medication?”

  “No. And I’m not interested.” She bristled, and I licked my lips. “I have a handle on my emotions now, doc.”

  “It would be understandable that an incident like this one might push you a few steps backward.”

  “Well, at the moment, I’m not moving forward or backward. You’re in my bed, so I’m really not going anywhere.”

  She gave me a polite smile, but it didn’t reach her brown eyes. She was still assessing. I’d passed sobriety tests for cops before—even when I was definitely not sober—but this was another animal entirely. She was looking for the fractures, so I’d have to hold my shit together as best I could, despite the way I was frayed at the edges, on the brink of collapse. I squeezed my hands into fists to still them and met her stare with one of my own as she looked over me.

  After what felt like a hundred heartbeats, she leaned away and stood. “I hope that if you decide—a day, a week, a month from now—that you need help, you seek someone out. Sometimes these things don’t hit us until well after the fact.”

  I wanted to thank her for giving me little hope that I’d hit the bottom. No, there was a drop-off coming for me, when I least expected it, according to Dr. Annabelle. I hadn’t hit the worst of it. Not yet.

  2

  The plane touched down, rattling my bones, but still wasn’t enough to wake me from the nightmare that had plagued me since leaving Michigan.