by Chloe Walsh
Pocketful of Shame
Book Two
Chloe Walsh
The right of Chloe Walsh to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system – without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Published by Chloe Walsh
Copyright 2014 by Chloe Walsh
All Rights Reserved. ©
Pocketful of Shame
Pocket #2,
First published, May 2019
All rights reserved. ©
Cover designed by Sarah @ Opium House Creatives.
Edited by Aleesha Davis.
Proofread by: Brooke Bowen Hebert.
Formatting by: Tammy @ Graphics Shed.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The author acknowledges all songs titles, song lyrics, film titles, film characters, trademarked statuses, brands, mentioned in this book are the property of, and belong to, their respective owners. The publication/ use of these trademarks is not authorized/ associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Chloe Walsh is in no way affiliated with any of the brands, songs, musicians or artists mentioned in this book.
All rights reserved ©
For Pamela Price, an original clover and a true inspiration.
Author's Note
Pocketful of Shame is the second in a four-book series and contains a cliffhanger ending.
Because of its explicit sexual content, mature themes, triggers, and bad language, it is suitable for readers of 18+.
Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure.
I hope you enjoy the next stage in Sketch and Romi's story.
Lots of love,
Chlo xxx
Series in order:
Pocketful of Blame
Pocketful of Shame
Pocketful of You
Pocketful of Us
Contents
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Chloe Walsh
Playlist for Pocketful of Shame
Chapter One
Romi
Don't you think it's strange that we live here?
Why Pocketful?
Come on, Romi, think.
Open your eyes, babe…
Chris Capaldi's voice continued to haunt me long after the doctors sedated me, catapulting me into a semi-state of awareness, and making my body pliable against my wishes. My brain couldn’t move beyond those words, that one specific question he asked me the night he died. I didn’t know why we lived in Pocketful, but Chris was right. It was strange. I'd never thought about it before that night, but couldn’t stop now.
Drowsy and disorientated, I fell in and out of sleep during the transport process to the facility in Texas, unable to take in my surroundings, unable to feel at all. Every time I came to, another dose of drugs was flushed through my system, and so the haze continued.
Time passed in a numb wave of blankness as I was moved from one hospital to another, one state to the next. I couldn’t take anything in, not the doctors or nurses speaking to me, not the pain in my chest, or the fear I knew I should be feeling. Everything inside of me was void.
Minutes drifted into hours, possibly days, and I didn’t care. The only voice that was a constant in my thoughts belonged to Chris. The only face that fought through the haze of my mind belonged to Sketch. Weirdly enough, a Natalie Merchant song continued to echo through my mind; My Skin. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop replaying that song in my head, or how I even remembered the lyrics through the jumbled mess of my thoughts, but it was there, playing loudly, over and over like a broken record, reminding me of everything that was just out of reach. Reminding me of my feelings. Reminding me of Sketch. Haunting me.
When I did wake, it was to a foreign room, unfamiliar faces, and another round of medication. Too disheartened to question the pills being prodded between my lips, I swallowed them down like the good girl I was, and allowed the darkness to cloak me in an unsettled state of sleep.
This was my pattern, my routine, for the next several hours, days, weeks? I couldn’t tell anymore and it didn’t matter. Strapped to a bed in Tully House, the so-called rehabilitation center that was supposed to have the miraculous cure for my fucked-up mental state, I stewed in my depression.
These people couldn’t fix me. They wouldn’t know where to start. I wasn’t sick. I was broken. No amount of therapy or medication could absolve me of my memories, of the impending threat echoing just beyond the walls of Tully House. The moment I allowed my mind to remember that night at the restaurant, it was like a dam burst inside of me, smothering me, overwhelming me with broken memories of information that felt information, urgent.
You're in danger…
If they find out you know…
When the drugs wore off, I mapped out a list of the people who had wronged me. In my mind, I plotted my revenge. There was something inside of me that demanded I fight back. It was something that sounded an awful lot like Chris's voice. Protect my brother, he'd begged me. Well, I was done. So fucking done. Protecting Sketch Capaldi had landed me in a fresh new hell with my hands bound and my hope non-existent. No more.
I was happiest when I was fed more pills. I didn’t care what they were. They kept the constant thoughts and memories away. Kept my brain from attacking itself, and I was glad. I didn’t want to think, to feel, to remember. I welcomed the numbness, the feeling of nothing.
What did I have to wake up to? A dead boyfriend and a vengeful ex-best friend? A father who bailed on me when I needed him most? A vindictive stepmother-to-be? A chip on my shoulder and a target on my back? And questions; more questions than I could ever possibly answer. And a life that was so far from the one I had anticipated that it made it hard to breathe.
No, I didn’t want to wake up to that.
In the corner of the room, a radio was playing softly. The station the nurse had selected was playing Jess Glynne's Take Me Home. I absorbed the lyrics like crack to my soul, keeping my eyes clen
ched shut as I listened dutifully to every single word that drifted from the little speaker.
I didn’t know how long it had been since my last influx of meds but I felt different, more clear-minded than I had in days, and it was disconcerting. I wasn’t sure if I liked this version of me. Awareness wasn't my friend right now, not when my thoughts were too painful to contemplate. My eyelids felt sticky and damp and I presumed that was because of the sheer number of tears that had escaped me since those men came to take me from the hospital in Lake Charles. I knew that I was in Texas now, a whole state away from my problems, but that wasn't a good thing.
Because I was isolated.
Because Sketch was isolated.
Forget about him, Romi, you did your best.
Don’t you dare forget about him.
Shut the hell up!
The sound of a magazine being flicked open and pages roughly smacking against each other filled my ears and caused me to grimace. Furious with the noise for distracting me from the song on the radio, I clenched my jaw so tight that my molars protested against the move. Pulling on my wrists, I found I was still bound to the plush mattress beneath me. My feet were the same. I was tied down like an animal.
A rare and sporadic swell of undiluted rage coursed through me, so potent that I knew in my heart that my relationship with my father had been fractured beyond repair. I could never forgive him for doing this. These people had cracked something critically important inside of me and I had lost contact with the part of my humanity that offered forgiveness.
For a moment, I wondered if this was how Sketch had felt when he was little; locked away from the rest of the world, trapped in a state of confusion. Then I swiftly pushed the thoughts from my mind. I didn’t want to feel sorry for him anymore. I was tired of having sympathy for a person who had made it his life's mission to destroy me.
I thought about that day in the hospital when I'd finally gotten through to him, or at least I thought I had. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I had seen something in his eyes, something that reminded me of a person I used to know. Again, I pushed the thought away, knowing that it wouldn’t do me an ounce of good in the long run.
Sketch would always be the same. He didn’t change easily. He had a very one-track mind. He believed what he believed and he made no apologies for it.
I still wanted one, though.
I wanted an apology.
I wanted the fucking word!
"Stop screaming, honey," a strange voice said from close by. "It won't do you any good, and I'll have to sedate you again."
Startled, I swung my head to look at the nurse sitting in a chair at my bedside. I hadn't realized I'd been screaming. The high-pitched keening noise that had been overriding the song was coming from me, I realized.
I snapped my mouth shut, attempting to quieten down, but my chest continued to convulse. Blinking rapidly, I tried to see through my tears, but everything was blurry. I needed to wipe the gunk from my eyes. I needed to get up. I needed to leave.
"Stop, Ramona," she instructed firmly. "You'll cut your wrists again."
How? I wanted to scream. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me.
When I didn’t stop whatever I was supposedly doing, she leaned over my bed and placed her hands on my shackled wrists. "Just calm down."
"Help me," I managed to strangle out. "Please…help me help him."
"Help who, honey?" she asked as she released her hold on my wrists and reached for a syringe.
"Him," I cried out hoarsely, shaking my head when she leaned over me with a needle aimed at my neck. "Nothing in Pocketful," I began to pant, my dry lips cracking from exertion, "is what it seems."
"Shh. It's okay. You're going to be just fine."
"No, you don’t understand –"
A pricking sensation to my neck caused my words to slur and my eyelids to flutter. Twisting my head to the side, I leaned heavily against the pillow and stared out the window, watching as a pair of familiar, striking blue eyes stared back at me from the other side of the glass.
"Run," I mumbled drowsily, quickly losing control of my limbs, as a wave of darkness threatened to pull me under. "Hide."
Chapter Two
Sketch
"You know what, maybe I should drive us back to the motel," Presley said when we climbed into my truck. "It's been a long day and, well, you're looking a little irate there, Sketch."
Irate was an understatement for how I was feeling. Romi was locked away in a private room, surrounded by 24/7 supervision. She had been there for the past four days, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help. I couldn't handle it. I couldn’t put the mental image of the girl I used to know and the girl I saw in the bed together. It was like two different people. Her eyes… they weren't even the right color. I had no idea what drugs were flushing through her veins, but her pupils were so dilated that I could hardly see those whiskey colored irises I adored.
She lay on that bed and stared, mind blank, heart bleak. Everything seemed so vacant inside of her. A surge of guilt swelled up inside of me because I knew I was responsible for this. A huge chunk of her downfall was on me.
Fuck.
What I hated most was the fact that I was still mad at her. I shouldn’t be, but I couldn't get past the ten months of lies and secrets. The ten months of inner turmoil. And the twelve months before than when she dated my brother…
"It's been four days," I growled, slamming the driver's door shut and ramming my key into the ignition. "How much longer do you propose we leave her in there?" Cranking the engine, I tore out of the parking lot and into the evening traffic. "You better have a plan, because I'm telling you right here and now, Quinton, that I'm not gonna stand back and watch that happen again."
"You know, for a guy whose brother was killed in a car wreck less than a year ago, you sure like to take risks behind the wheel," he stated, pulling on his seatbelt so tightly I had no doubt he was restricting his airways. "No wonder they call you reckless."
"My brother wasn't killed in a car wreck," I reminded him, tightening my hold on the wheel as I swerved through traffic, narrowly avoiding a Chevy pickup. The owner blew the horn at me and I flipped the dick off, in no mood for pleasantries. "Chris was murdered and you'll be next if you don’t shut the fuck up and tell me the turn-off for the motel."
"Question." He held up a finger, expression smug, and I rolled my eyes. "How do you expect me to direct you without speaking?"
"Pres," I warned, just about done with his bullshit. I had been holed up in Houston with my brother's best friend for four days too many and I was growing beyond agitated. Quinton Presley might be a genius, but he was annoying as hell. "Why can't you just –"
"Be normal?" he cut in, sounding amused. "Sounds painstakingly unimpressive, don’t you think?"
"No," I countered, gritting my teeth. "Normal sounds like heaven right about now."
"Liar." Reaching into his faithful bookbag, he retrieved a packet of peanut M&Ms. "Besides," he continued, popping a brown one into his mouth. "I wouldn’t be on this trip, effectively saving your beloved Ramona from the clutches of her evil daddy's dirty money, if I was, as you so-aptly put it, normal." He choked out a soft laugh and shook his head. "Hell to the no. If my level of common sense mirrored my intelligence quotient, I would be safely tucked far, far away from your crazy fucking families." He sighed dramatically. "Alas, I am loyal to a fault." He glanced sideways at me. "No doubt it will be my downfall."
I frowned. "Dirty money?"
Presley snorted. "Well, yes, Simba, his dirty money. Don't tell me you think men as powerful as Cal and your father got to where they are in life without dipping their toes in murky waters?"
"No, I don’t think that, and stop calling me Simba," I snapped, tightening my hand around the wheel until my knuckles turned white. "Don’t ever fucking call me that again."
"Sure thing," he replied, munching happily on his M&Ms like he didn’t have a care in the wor
ld. He did. We all did. "Whatever you say, buddy."
"I'm not your buddy, Quinton," I growled. "We're not friends, so don’t do that."
"Do what?"
"Try to substitute Chris with me," I bit out. "You've been doing it since we got on the road Monday night. I'm nothing like him, the whole town knows that, and if you try, you'll only end up disappointed."
"Good grief." He let out a whistle. "That damn chip on your shoulder must be weighing you down something fierce." Turning in his seat, he gave me his full attention. "We were friends once, too, or have you forgotten that?"
"No," I corrected with a growl. "You were Chris's friend. I have my own damn friends."
"Teammates and people who don’t know a thing about you?" he shot back. "Ah, yes, I can see the attraction of surrounding yourself with strangers. They don’t know the real you so they can't hurt you when they leave, or worse, are taken from you." He smiled sadly. "Gotta say, you've built some mighty fine walls around that broken heart of yours, Sketch. Hell, I don’t blame you. Given your tumultuous start in life, I'd be wary of affection, too. It's human survival in its most primal form."