by P. Dangelico
A Million Different Ways To Lose You
Book II of the Horn Duet
P. Dangelico
Contents
Also by P. Dangelico
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
A Million Different Ways To Lose You (A Horn Novel, Book II)
Copyright © 2016 by P. Dangelico
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations
www.pdangelico.com
Mailing List– new releases and promotional sales only.
ISBN: 978-1-5323-0674-7
To everyone that read and reviewed my first book, thank you. Without you this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Now come in, get comfortable, let me tell you a story…
Also by P. Dangelico
Romantic Suspense
A Million Different Ways (A Horn Novel Book 1)
A Million Different Ways To Lose You ( A Horn Novel Book 2)
Spinoff Stand Alone Novel
Cold, Hard Winters
Romantic Comedy
Hard To Love Series
Wrecking Ball (Release Date- January 19, 2017)
Sledgehammer (spring 2017)
Bulldozer (summer 2017)
Moon Over Malibu Series
Babymaker
Heartbreaker
Prologue
Houston, Texas 1985
A high-pitched wail woke him out of a dead sleep. Sebastian sat up abruptly, his Spiderman pajamas tangling with the bed linens. One at a time his eyes cracked open to find the room cloaked in absolute black. Someone had turned off his nightlight. That was the first sign that something was wrong.
All at once his heart was hammering inside his chest so hard it hurt, so fast butterflies filled his stomach. It didn’t take long for his fertile imagination to run wild. Out of the darkness he thought he saw a claw reach out for him and his palms began to sweat. Gripping the sheet even tighter, he pulled it up to his chin.
That old familiar feeling was back. Loneliness. He was always alone, with no one to chase the monsters away for him. Sebastian knew what he had to do then, what he always did when he got scared.
He became Spiderman.
Spiders were the coolest. Spiders were small enough to hide, and some of them were even dangerous. Mr. Miller, his third grade teacher, said that the venom of a black widow spider is fifteen times stronger than that of a rattle snake. They were real things. Unlike Superman, who was fake ‘cause Sebastian never met any man that was nice, and strong, and liked kids.
A second more pronounced wail interrupted the silence. His mother’s voice…he recognized it instantly. Without a second thought to those monsters, Sebastian jumped out of bed. Small, bare feet carried him as fast as they could down the endless hallway, headed straight for the shaft of light that filtered onto the carpet. Once he reached the edge, though, they stopped abruptly. They stopped because Sebastian was more scared of what awaited him inside that room than he was of the monsters lurking in the dark.
Spiderman doesn’t get scared, he reminded himself. Spiderman doesn’t need anyone. Gathering every drop of courage he possessed, Sebastian slowly stepped into the doorway.
Diana Horn lay face down on her sprawling California king sized bed, small mewling sounds and hiccups emanating from her prone body. Her vintage, red Halston dress was ripped and her long, champagne blonde hair spilled over the side of the mattress in soft waves. Sebastian’s stomach clenched painfully.
“Momma?” he called out, his voice barely audible.
At the sound of a whisper thin voice, Diana slowly lifted her face off the mattress. If there was ever a hot mess it was this woman. Tracks of tears melted down her face, stained black from the heavy eye make-up she’d worn that evening. Her lipstick was bleeding right off the edge of lips worthy of the front cover of Vogue magazine.
A boy stood before her, shifting nervously from foot to foot. She stared blankly at him while her alcohol fogged mind struggled to identify the child. As recognition hit her, so did a fresh set of tears.
“Scout? What are you doin’ up, baby?” she slurred, the words tripping over her sloppy tongue.
“I heard you cryin’.”
Reaching out, she clasped Sebastian’s wrist and pulled him closer, close enough that Sebastian could smell the familiar stench of wine on her breath, coming off of her skin and her pretty hair.
“My beautiful baby boy,” she mewled and batted her fake eyelashes. Another round of sobs followed.
“Are you okay?”
With the heel of her hand, Diana swiped at the dampness on her cheeks, the makeup smearing across her face. “Oh baby, what does that even mean?” Her son returned a confused scowl. “I’m fine,” she said, waving a hand at him dismissively.
“I gotta go back to bed, or Santa won’t come tonight,” Sebastian mumbled.
“Santa? You still believe in that old fool,” she chuckled, the sound ringing of bitterness. “There’s no Santa. He’s not real. Like love––” she scoffed. “That ‘aint real either, baby.”
Clumsily, she dragged herself into a sitting position and grabbed the bottle of Haute Brion Blanc off the nightstand. For a moment, solemn amber eyes made her pause, though the moment passed just as quickly. Then, after giving her son a weak smile that didn’t reach her eyes, she tipped the bottle up to her full lips and took a long, slow gulp.
Sebastian’s wide, worried gaze followed the track of wine that dribbled out of the corner of her mouth and snaked down her chin.
“Promise me something, Scout,” she pleaded, her long red nails digging into the boy’s slim shoulder. “Promise me you won’t ever love nobody but me, ‘kay, baby?” Her suddenly determined gaze bored into Sebastian’s.
“Okay,” he replied in a small voice.
Pacified, a flimsy smile spread across her face. “I knew I could count on you.”
Clutching the bottle of wine, Diana rose off the bed and staggered around precariously on her St. Laurent heels. Back and forth she swayed, her coltish legs as weak as her character. In an attempt to reach the back zipper of her dress she jerked dangerously forward.
“You should learn that now, Scout. Loving anybody other than your Momma will only bring you pain. Don’t trust nobody. They’ll only disappoint you.”
The four inch heel of her shoe caught in the hem of the dress. Slow to react, she stumbled forward and crashed onto her knees. The bottle of wine bounced as it landed on the ground. The remains of the rare vintage poured onto the carpet, soaking Sebast
ian’s bare feet.
A horrible noise rose up from deep within his mother’s chest. Horror stricken, Sebastian watched as she began to gag and choke. The liquid contents of Diana’s stomach poured onto the antique Persian that had been purchased at Sotheby’s for a record sum, onto her eight year old son’s Spiderman pj’s.
“Momma!” Sebastian screamed. “Momma!” His voice rose higher and higher as a puddle of bloody vomit slowly spread around his mother’s inanimate body like a scene out of a Hitchcock movie.
Downstairs, a bloodcurdling scream jarred Ruth White out of one of the most peaceful nights of sleep she’d ever had. Unfortunately this was nothing new. Her employer was a spoiled, overemotional creature. She should know, she’d raised Diana since infancy.
Grabbing her powder blue, terry robe, Ruth went to investigate whatever it was that woke her. She was angry enough to spit nails, and rightfully so. How many times had she cleaned up Diana’s mess? How many times! And on Christmas Eve, no less. Mumbling to herself, she walked as fast as her bad hip would allow up the grand staircase to her employer’s bedroom.
Her voice uncharacteristically loud, Ruth shouted from halfway down the hall, “Diana! I am telling you, I’ve had it––”
The rest of the sentence got caught in her throat as soon as she stepped into the bedroom. The oxygen left her lungs in an hurry and the brown skin on her angular face grew taut.
Diana Horn lay face down on the floor––as still as a death. Standing in a pool of blood, Sebastian was shaking his mother limp shoulders. Ruth’s tip-tilted dark eyes shifted to the bedside table where she discovered it littered with empty prescription bottles.
“Lucius!” she shouted. To her right, a young black man ran down the hallway towards her. “Lucius, call 911! Hurry!”
Chapter One
Geneva, Switzerland 2012
Peaceful was the dark, the numbness seductive, stealing away any desire I may have had to return to reality. It was as if my body knew that it needed time to gather strength for what was coming. Time, that is, having become an entirely abstract concept. The consequence of which was that I remained suspended in between two worlds for what seemed like forever. Yet even in the dark, the memory of Sebastian, of the baby, called to me…a far away lighthouse in a storm, beckoning me home.
“She looks so small. Trop petit,” a voice whispered. A woman’s voice. I caught every other word, my mind struggling to keep up. My eyes felt clamped shut by a vise while a heavy fatigue pressed down on the rest of me. It threatened to drag me under by the ankles if I didn’t resist. “The poor, poor girl.”
The voice teased my memory. Synapses fired and connected. In a sudden flash it all came back to me. Mrs. Arnaud. “I brought some of the raspberry tarts she likes. The sooner we get her home, the sooner she can recover.”
“When is she coming home?” said a woman with a clipped British accent. Charlotte.
“Not for a while.”
I knew that voice. I’d know that voice anywhere––the pronounced rasp a balm to my battered soul. The abject despair saturating those four words, however, was a different matter altogether. The guilt it spawned raked its sharp claws across my conscience.
I was in no shape to deal with whatever had caused that soul wrenching despair. So I let go. I relaxed my grip on consciousness once again and let the darkness carry me away to a place where nothing could hurt me, where pain and guilt didn’t exist.
Shortly after I awoke in the hospital for the first time, bruised and in pain although relieved to know Sebastian had somehow found me, a routine began. Every time I opened my eyes for the twenty or so minutes of lucidity I was granted each day, I found Sebastian holding vigil in the same hard, uncompromising chair. I said very little and he said nothing at all. It felt like the words were being stored up for a showdown at a later date.
Reaching up, I felt around and discovered my head swathed in cotton gauze. The persistent ache in my head made it impossible to focus. I could’ve sworn there was a steel vise wrapped around my skull and that the devil himself was tightening the screws.
“Twenty-two stitches,” a deep, raspy voice informed me.
My eyes crept open slowly, painfully, a shaft of light searing my eyeballs. Following the sound of the familiar voice, I found Sebastian seated in his favorite chair. He was bent forward, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped in a single fist. His tailored white shirt was wrinkled and his shirtsleeves rolled up, the sinuous muscles of his forearms taut with energy nourished by too much caffeine and not enough sleep. His grey slacks were rumpled. His expression, though, was not rumpled. It was perfectly smooth in fact, stone cold and relentless.
“Did they shave my head?”
“Yes.”
The lack of feeling in his reply killed the smile growing on my face. “Oh well, I needed a haircut anyway.”
Apathy stared back at me. There was zero amusement in his expression, not even a twitch of his lips.
“We need to talk before I disappear again.”
He jerked back, every muscle in his body tensing. My careless words inadvertently cracked the surface of his deliberate ruse. And then I caught it, the pain and anger hiding under the thin shell of his calm exterior––a truckload of it.
“Disappear?”
“I meant fall asleep.” I reached for his hands and felt him flinch when I made contact. The concern, now jumping off his face, made me feel bad about teasing him. The apology was on my lips when two knocks coming from the open doorway caused both our heads to turn.
Wearing a warm smile, Dr. Rossetti walked over to the side of my bed and patted my shoulder, the bones of which, now that I realized, were protruding in a frightening manner. “I’m glad to see you looking brighter. You’ve been in and out for about three weeks.”
My gaze slid over to Sebastian and stopped short when I found his head hanging down, his attention fixed on the floor. I followed the tense line of his shoulder down his arm, to the knuckles that were mottled with anxiety. His fist tightened and the tendons on the back of his hands popped up.
Dr. Rossetti exhaled heavily. Something about it pulled at me, warranting my immediate attention. My focus snapped back to her. The air grew heavy, an ominous foreboding lurking in the corners of the room. When it began to circle the bed the realization crashed down on me.
“There isn’t any way to say this gently, Vera. You suffered a miscarriage.”
It took me a minute to process her words, each one spelled out individually in my mind. And as the words coalesced, something inside of me extinguished…died with it. There was no despair, no anger––no feeling whatsoever. All that remained was a great desert as empty and barren as the Sahara, littered with the bleached bones of nascent hopes and dreams I didn’t even know I possessed until that very moment.
My face was a placidly numb mask as I turned and met the turmoil evident on Sebastian’s. He reached out and grabbed my hand. Lacing his fingers in between mine, he squeezed much too tightly for it to be comforting.
“I performed a D and C,” she informed me, tempering the ever-present note of authority in her voice. “Both ovaries looked fine. You’ll have no problem conceiving again.”
My gaze jerked back to her. A terror, the dimensions of which I couldn’t even begin to comprehend, spiked through the smothering blanket of detachment for a fleeting moment. I pushed it down and locked it away, the reaction automatic; the same one I always had when dealing with heart shattering truths I didn’t want to face.
Reading my expression, she quickly added, “More importantly you experienced significant blunt force trauma to the brain. There was enough swelling that we thought it best to keep you in a coma for forty-eight hours.”
“Coma?” The word escaped me as a mere whisper.
“I’m afraid so.” Dr. Rossetti softened the professional mask she always wore. “What was the last thing you remember?”
A knot formed in my stomach at the sudden recollection. I couldn’t
look at Sebastian as I spoke. “Blood…running through the woods and…blood.”
Sighing deeply, Dr Rossetti continued. “It seems your memory is largely intact. Might have some holes here and there, but those should close up quickly.” Her focus shifted to Sebastian briefly, then swung back to me. “You were very lucky.”
I thought I heard a note of censure in her voice. However, when I looked up, all I found on her face was sympathy. More likely the bottomless guilt that had begun to seep into my bloodstream was coloring my perception.
“When can I leave the hospital?” A sudden, urgent need to be gone from the antiseptic smell and the white tiles reflecting the florescent lighting made me speak more harshly than I intended. The persistent ache in my head didn’t help either.
“You’ve recuperated remarkably well, faster than I had anticipated…let’s play it by ear. It wouldn’t be out of the question for you to go home in the next couple of days, predicated on the promise that you will remain on bed rest for at least another week.” My expression must’ve been less than convincing because she continued. “You can’t push yourself.”
“I know.” I would have said anything to ensure her cooperation. Still, she knew I was appeasing her. The polite smile she gave me conveyed her thoughts on the matter perfectly.
As I watched her walk out, a twinge of panic grew larger inside my chest. I was suddenly scared of being alone with the man I loved, scared of his censure, of his concern, of all the words that hadn’t been said yet. The door swung shut behind her and the silence in the room immediately became as dense as quicksand, threatening to suffocate me by slow inches if something didn’t give.
I turned back towards Sebastian and found the object of my affection staring back at me with what could only be described as concerned wariness. If I didn’t know better I would say he looked almost scared of me, guarding himself, one step removed from actually being there. I couldn’t stand to see it…and I couldn’t hold his gaze.