Beautifully Shattered (The Beautifully Series Book 1) (54 page)

This
is my life.

My
dad is dead.

My
mom is dead.

Hadley
and I will die too if I don’t get us help.

As
much as it kills me that I have to shimmy over my dead mom, I have no
choice. It’s the only way out. I close my eyes as I do it. Every
cell in my body begs me to stop. I can barely breathe through the
pain, but I don’t give up. I can’t.

My
hand grazes the door handle and I shout in relief when I tumble to
the ground. I drag my body through the mud on my hands and knees. I
let out the scream I’ve been holding in. It hurts. The pain is
unbearable. I shut my eyes for a second when nausea hits. I try to
take deep breaths through my nostrils, but I can’t suck in any
oxygen. My chest is on fire.

I
panic. This is it. I’m going to die on the wet ground before I have
a chance to get help for Hadley. Each tiny breath feels like I have a
truck on top of my chest, constricting my airway.

I
can’t breathe.

I
can’t open my eyes.

The
pain is starting to drift away . . . like me.

I’m panting, I need
air. I try to stand, but my legs won’t obey. I rock myself back and
forth on the couch and struggle to suck in oxygen. I’m going to
suffocate. Dizzy, I’m vaguely aware that Liv has crunched down in
front of me. I breathe in time to her. It works. After a few more
deep breaths mimicking Liv, I’m finally able to breathe on my own.

I’m walking towards
the window before I realize that my legs are moving. I look out but I
don’t see anything. My mind is elsewhere. All I see is rain and
blinding lights. Something I shouldn’t be seeing since the sun is
shining.

“I’m sorry,” I
say.

“Why do you feel like
you have to apologize?”

I know she is hinting
at more. She knows that I’m not apologizing for my freak out even
though I feel like I should be. I’m saying sorry for so much more.

“For everything.”

“It wasn’t your
fault,” she says.

“Of course it was!
I’m the one responsible! If I wasn’t fighting with them, my dad
would have been paying attention! I said things that I can never take
back! I ruined everything. I killed them. I killed them. I killed
them.”

“You weren’t the
one who fled an accident. You weren’t the one who decided not to
call the police to inform them what happened.”

“I know!”

“Then why do you
blame yourself? You didn’t force that woman to drive away.”

“Emily.” I snap.
“The drivers name was Emily Hayes.”

Silence descends. Liv
waits until I unclench my fist before she continues.

“You’re not
Mother-Nature. You didn’t ask for the rain that night. You were mad
and expressed yourself. You said things you didn’t mean. They knew
how you really felt, they knew you loved them. You aren’t the cause
of the accident. You didn’t kill them.”

“I know,” I admit,
surprising us both.

I test that word over
and over again in my head, looking for doubt. There isn’t any.
I
didn’t kill them. I didn’t kill my parents. I didn’t kill my
little sister.
I chant those words over in my head till
they blend together. I feel lighter. I can breathe easily without the
guilt of killing my family hanging over my head.

Liv has a huge smile on
her face as if she can read my mind. The pain is still there, but
it’s a different pain from what’s been there for the last six
years. The pain I felt for blaming myself was all-consuming. I
couldn’t deal, so I shut everyone and everything out.

I don’t feel like
that anymore. The pain of knowing that they are never coming back is
there, but I am able to breathe. I don’t want to be that girl
anymore, that isn’t really here because she lost her family; I want
to be that girl who makes her parents proud.

I’ve been wanting
happiness for awhile now. I’ve been trying. I’ve been convincing
myself that I was happy, but I don’t think I truly was until now
with the weight of the guilt finally off my shoulders. I’m not
carrying that burden anymore. I can’t fight the smile that plays on
my lips.

“Acceptance.”

“What?” I ask,
confused.

“Acceptance. You’ve
reached acceptance, Addie. That’s what you’re feeling right now.”

I test the word out for
myself, “Acceptance.”

After gathering my
purse, I turn and give Liv a hug. I don’t say anything. She has
helped me so much. I don’t know where I would be without her. Yes I
do, I would still be pretending, most likely. Living without actually
breathing.

I walk out without
another word. I spot my brother in his usual seat waiting for me. He
stands as I approach him. I wrap my arms around him. My rock.

“Thank you for always
being here for me even when I try to push you away. I’m sorry that
I shut down and lost myself. You didn’t deserve that. You lost them
too and had to deal with losing me even though I was still here. I
love you Logan,” I say into his chest.

Logan is speechless. I
can see that he is trying to rein in his emotions.

“I know how much you
want to be here for me. But right now I need to be alone. I just have
to get my head on straight. I promise I will see you before you leave
tomorrow. Just . . . I . . .”

“You got it, baby
girl.” He kisses me on top of my head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I smile at him before I
leave. I walk around for what feels like hours, but I have no sense
of time. I wander the streets of New York without a destination. I
keep replaying the word “acceptance” in my head. Is it really
this easy? Am I just pretending or am I really better? I know I can’t
be that girl I was before the accident. I’m still me, though. Just
a different version of myself.

I’m going to continue
getting better for the four lives that were lost that night; my dad,
my mom, my little sister, and me. I died that night. They were able
to bring me back, but I lost something that I can never regain. That
piece of my soul, that has forever changed the person that I am, died
that night.

A laugh that I will
know anywhere snaps me back to reality. Please, please be wrong. I
know without a doubt that I’m not. I see a man’s back against a
brick wall while a leggy blonde sucks on his neck. I can’t see the
man’s face, but I don’t need to see it. I can tell from his
unruly hair, the muscles showing through his custom suit, who he is.
It’s Jax.

Glancing around, I
realize where I am. I’m standing a block away from Jax’s
apartment building. Of course I am. Where else would my legs carry
me?

I stand still, unable
to move or look away. I hear him tell me how much he loves me in my
mind while some blonde whispers in his ear, causing him to laugh and
shake his head. I want to scream at her to get her slutty hands off
him, but I don’t. I freeze, mouth open, while the man that I love
lets some tramp have her way with him in the middle of the sidewalk.

I thought the pain of
Jax’s rejection was the worst thing that he could do to me. Now I’m
not so sure. Seeing him with her floods the pain of losing him back
to the surface again. Instead of the heart-shattering pain from
before, I’m fucking furious. Especially when I see who the slutty
blonde is.

She’s the troll from
the bathroom who was considering dyeing her hair based on Jax’s
preferences. As if they can feel my staring at them, they both turn
their heads my way. The troll looks amused while Jax pales. Good.

Not needing to witness
what happens next, I turn around and run away. Jax shouts my name so
I run faster. I’m thankful that I wore flats instead of the wedges
I pulled out of my closet. The would have made my escape impossible.

I’m about to reach
the corner when I’m jerked to a stop. All my anger from not being
enough from Jax rises to the surface, and seeing him with the blonde
troll pushes me one step closer to losing it. All the pent up anger
from not being able to change what happened six years ago makes me
lose it. I take all of it out on Jax in the form of a slap.

He releases his tight
hold on my wrist as he stumbles back. I’m barely able to keep
myself from falling into him. My right hand burns from the force of
the blow. I’ve hit him before, but that was child’s play compared
to the slap he just received.

There’s an entire
imprint of my hand on his left cheek. Good.

“Don’t you EVER
fucking touch me again!” I shout.

“Wait, Ads!” he
yells after me.

I jump into a cab and
scream out my address at the poor driver. I apologize and pretend
like I’m not the crazy person he just saw smack some guy on the
street. I sigh in relief when the driver veers away right when Jax
tries to open the door. I don’t look back even though every part of
me begs me to turn around and ask the driver to stop.

I unlock my front door,
hurl my purse on the ground, and slam the door. I continue
visualizing the scene over and over again with the stupid melody of
him telling me I’m not enough. A sick torture that I can’t
escape. I need help. I need a friend right now. Without any thought,
I drop to the floor and dig through my purse for my phone. I ignore
all the missed messages and call the only person I can. She answers
on the first ring.

“Hello love!”
Harper sings into the phone.

Throat tight, I weakly
choke out, “Hi.”

“I’m on my way.
Keep the door unlocked,” Harper says before hanging up.

She doesn’t ask if I
want company. She knows I need her. I had a tiny second of doubt that
I shouldn’t have called her, that I should be strong enough on my
own, but I made the right choice. Needing someone else every once in
a while isn’t a bad thing. It doesn’t make me weak.

I desperately want to
change into something comfortable, but I can’t find the strength to
move. Today had been one hell of a day. I feel as if someone took a
metal bat to my head then realized that wasn’t doing enough damage
so they grabbed the biggest knife they could find and stabbed me
repeatedly in the chest.

Somehow I manage to
stumble my way to my balcony. I gulp in the cool night air. I should
run back inside for a sweater or a blanket, but I can’t. Instead I
collapse in one of my lounge chairs and wait for Harper.

It’s not long when I
hear her calling my name. I’m too tired to raise my voice. Even
though I’m emotionally drained to the point I feel like my head
will explode any second, my mind won’t shut off.

I see the blonde troll
making Jax laugh while he tells me I’m not enough. I relive the way
his eyes sparkled as he confessed his love for me. Then as if that’s
not enough, I see Hadley extending her headphones while the sound of
my dad’s head smashing into the window as I soundtrack that plays
over and over again. The images blur together until I can’t
decipher what I’m seeing.

“What happened,
Adalynn? Can you hear me?” Harper talks too fast, panicked.

All I can do is nod.
Well, I think I nod. My whole body quakes. Is it from the cold
outside or from the coldness inside of me? I’m vaguely aware that
Harper keeps talking, asking me more questions that I can’t answer.
All I hear is Hadley painfully saying my name one last time. Her last
word was my name.

She was the only one
besides Jax to call me Ads. I’ve never let anyone else call me
that, even before she died. She thought it was Jax picking on me when
we were younger, that’s why she started calling me Ads. To her
horror, it was only a nickname, a nickname that only Jax could use,
as he patiently told her. Too bad Hadley has always gotten her way
even with Jax. He couldn’t get her to stop calling me Ads. It
became their name for me.

When I heard Jax call
me Ads the first time in the hospital, I couldn’t breathe through
the pain. I would never hear my little sister call me that again, it
would only be Jax. As much as it hurt in the beginning, I couldn’t
tell him to stop. I think on some level he knew how much I needed it
even though I dreaded it. I needed a daily reminder of her that
wasn’t tainted from that night.

He gave me that.

I’m aware that Harper
has wrapped me in a blanket and is speaking on the phone. I can tell
that she’s frantic and all I can do is watch while my mind goes
round and round. Troll . . . Jax . . . car accident . . . Hadley. A
constant replay.

“She’s here, but
not. Her eyes are lifeless and she keeps saying Hadley over and over
again.”

Harper pauses to
listen. Normally I would care who’s on the other line, I think. I
can’t find the energy to care. Not tonight. Tonight I just want to
sleep even though it’s pointless. Sleep won’t be coming anytime
soon.

“No, I didn’t want
to worry him. Besides, something tells me she needs you right now.”

Another pause.