Kamikaze Heart

by Craze, Chelle C.

  Kamikaze Heart

  Chelle C. Craze

  Kamikaze Heart © 2019 Chelle C. Craze

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Kamikaze Heart 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 author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/ use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.

  Otherwise, hold on and enjoy the ride, you crazed lunatics!

  Editing by: Paige Maroney Smith

  Proofreading by: Paige Maroney Smith

  Cover by: Chelle C. Craze

  Formatted by: Dez Purington with Pretty in Ink Creations

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Introduction

  Synopsis

  1. Trinity

  2. Trinity

  3. Trinity

  4. Trinity

  5. Eli

  6. Trinity

  7. Eli

  8. Trinity

  9. Eli

  10. Trinity

  11. Eli

  12. Eli

  13. Trinity

  14. Eli

  15. Eli

  16. Trinity

  17. Trinity

  18. Eli

  19. Eli

  20. Trinity

  21. Eli

  22. Trinity

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I dedicate this book to anyone struggling to hold the weight of the world. Let yourself find forgiveness. At times, our surroundings can be more than overbearing. Trust me, I know. But, I promise your day will come and you’ll get the chance to release your own floating apology into the atmosphere.

  Introduction

  Kamikaze Heart

  Cupid’s Aim Book One

  Blackwell Bayou Series Book 2.5

  Chelle C. Craze

  Synopsis

  Kamikaze Heart

  A heart could only withstand so much abuse before embracing the wreckage.

  When the flames of heartache declared war, I was defenseless to the ambush. Unforeseen tragedy ripped me apart and I was imprisoned by the guilt. To survive, I ran.

  It was then I met him, but I wasn’t ready. It didn’t matter, though. Hearts were reckless and selfish all on their own.

  Consequences aside, I was forced to shed a piece of my armor and head into battle.

  1

  Trinity

  As I pulled up to the perimeter gate, I fetched my ID from the compartment to the left of the steering wheel. I wrapped my fingers around the magnetized clip on the back, snapping it a few times, waiting my turn to stop at the shack. I was not sure who was in the vehicle in front of me, probably a new officer. Working at one of the few men’s maximum security prisons over the past few years, I had seen more than my share of officers come and go from this place. It was not for everyone. Honestly, I was not sure it was for me, but I liked the people I worked with and the structure of it all. I had spent my fair share of time exploring other nursing jobs during clinicals, but being a corrections nurse was the highest paying position in the area. The pay alone was the direct motivation for me to apply here.

  After handing Corporal Lilly my ID, he glanced at it, but we both knew he didn’t follow procedure and ensure it was actually me in the picture. He and I had been co-workers since I started, and he was one of my best friends at the facility.

  “Have a good one, Trin.” He nodded in delight, and a smile flashed on his lips. It was really hard to gauge where his thoughts were at any given time. He had three kids and a pregnant wife at home, and from talking with him during pill pass, I knew that was a heavy weight to carry. Of course, he wished he didn’t have to work the graveyard shift and wanted nothing more than to be home with them. Most of us would rather be at home than here. It was not a bad place to work, if you could get past the actual fact of who surrounded us. Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. You name it, they were probably incarcerated here for one reason or another. There were the scarce few that I honestly believed when they said they were innocent and were charged unjustly, but there weren’t many. My opinion of any of the inmates did not matter, though. I wasn’t here to judge them. I was here to give them medical care, and that was what I told myself in the hard moments, which were plentiful in this line of work.

  It was without question I would prefer to be home in bed snuggled up to my fiancé, Roland, than being at work tonight. We didn’t get to truly celebrate our engagement two weeks ago. I had only had two nights off since then, and we worked opposite shifts. I worked night shift here, and he was a geography teacher at Red County High School. Tonight would have been the perfect night to call off, considering it was Friday and he would be off tomorrow. The only thing driving me right now was knowing after tonight I was not scheduled to work again for two weeks. It was chance that our engagement fell right before my requested vacation off work. Maybe Roland planned it this way. I really had no idea. He had made sure to keep the details of our engagement and what followed cryptic, but it was special. I knew that.

  He and my best friend, Olivia, were really the only connections I had outside the walls of the confinement of these cement prison walls. I wasn’t an orphan. I had a family that loved me, but I hadn’t spoken to them in years. It was too painful to, so I just didn’t. It made me a jerk, but it was easier this way.

  Other than my fiancé and best friend, my family worked here. Once you had been here so long, you became institutionalized right along with the inmates. People who hadn’t been in this type of work did not understand why you jumped to conclusions and everyone was immediately on your radar. Everyone had secrets and was guilty in one form or another. But, what set the rest of the world apart from the people incarcerated here was, they got caught. The rest of us had not yet.

  “Thanks, Lilly.” I smiled, waving at him with my ID holder in my cupped hand and one of the IDs flew across my console, sailing somewhere into the passenger floorboard. “Seriously?” I murmured under my breath, taking my foot off the brake after putting the car into park. As I bent down to pick up the second ID, he laughed, and I flipped him off as soon as my second picture ID was in my palm. “Screw you.” I laughed with him.

  “I’m not man enough,” he joked, waving me on and lifting the long perimeter gate with the lever on the control panel inside the shack with him. The two of us joked a lot. It helped us forget all of the doom that surrounded us and allowed the time to pass quicker.

  It was required for security reasons for all of us to have two IDs, but the purpose was also a little grim. One was left at the front desk in case there was a problem, such as a riot. In that event or any other emergency, everyone on the property could be accounted for, and the rescue team knew who to look for, but it wasn’t always accurate. Sometimes, people forgot their ID at the end of their shift and there were extras, appearing as there were more people ther
e than there really were.

  My stomach rumbled as I dropped my ID onto the front desk and C.O. Wood turned the knob on the control panel to unlock the door in front of me.

  I claimed my place in the line, waiting to clock in behind a mixture of medical staff and officers. As soon as it was my turn, I blew warm air onto my hands, trying to warm them so the time clock would read my fingerprints. As usual, it took the machine a couple of times to recognize my prints. One of the newer officers behind me in line huffed impatiently, and I glared at him from my peripherals. With that attitude, he would not last long. Working here was similar to being in the military. It was a hurry-up-and-wait type of place. Like any other well-oiled machine, this place depended on all the gears to function, and I was one of the more relevant gears, whether he liked it or not.

  Deciding not to say something I would regret, I walked away from him and through another locked door once granted access. Immediately emptying the contents of my pockets and placing my bag onto the conveyer belt of the scan line, I strolled through the tall rectangle metal detector. It came as no surprise when it sounded. I usually forgot something when I took everything out of my scrub pockets. Nursing uniforms had so many pockets for things to be forgotten in, so it was an easy mistake. If I was not paying attention, I typically forgot one thing or another, absentmindedly letting the thoughts racing through my head distract me.

  I stepped forward, and as the officer ran the metal detecting wand over my stomach it churned, but this time, pain accompanied the noise. His eyes widened in response, and mine clamped together as I gritted my teeth, trying my best to deal with the increasing pain.

  “You all right?” he asked, momentarily pausing his search for whatever metal was still on me.

  “I’m not sure,” I truthfully answered him, holding my stomach, and my fingers graced the outline of my keychain in the front pocket of my uniform.

  Pushing through the pain, I mustered a forced smile and plucked the keychain out, dangling the keys in front of him. He set them on top of my bag, and a small laugh bubbled out of his lips as he shook his head. Everyone knew I could be a little forgetful.

  “I hope you feel better,” he said with concern filling his otherwise smooth composure. He finished his search after I released my stomach and stretched my arms outward for him to run the wand underneath them.

  “Thanks,” I answered, grabbing my belongings from the opposite side of the conveyer belt that I had put them on minutes before. Tossing all of the stuff into my bag and flipping the strap over my shoulder, I waited at the breezeway for one of the officers in the central control station to buzz me through the doors.

  After a quick stop to show my ID to the officer in central, I traveled the slender hallway and then grabbed the door leading into the medical unit. The door hummed as they turned the knob on their control panel to grant me passage into the unit. Once again, pain shot through my stomach, and a loud noise roared from deep inside. This time it wasn’t something that I could ignore. I was going to vomit.

  As quickly as humanly possible, I slapped my palms against the unoccupied desktop of the medical front officer’s desk and pushed my body up onto its smooth surface, kicking my legs around and dropping my bag onto the floor beside the office chair. Kay, the nurse I was relieving, made brief eye contact with me. I rushed past her, covering my mouth to try to keep everything inside of my stomach long enough to make it to the one and only bathroom in medical.

  I did not waste time to stop and clock in as I ran past the time clock and through the office portion of the unit and to the bathroom. Thankfully, no one was in the bathroom, and I flew into the small space lightning quick, tossing the door closed behind me, not having time or caring to lock it. My knees crashed against the cool, smooth, gray floor, and I vomited into the water. My head pounded forcefully as soon as the water splashed, and the tiny space spun around me. This. Was. Not. Good.

  I never missed work and absolutely did not go home once I was here until the end of my shift, but I didn’t see how I was going to make it for at least a twelve-hour shift. It could be longer, and usually was, but I never knew what to expect when I came into work.

  Kay knocked on the door. “Are you going to make it?” she asked as her voice wavered with anticipation.

  “Ugh,” I managed to grunt, not sure if I was capable of forming words currently.

  My hand weakly dangled on the silver flush lever, and I rested my forehead on the opposing arm slung on the seat of the toilet. I didn’t want to think of how many germs I was up close and personal with at the moment, but I did and quickly sat up to get away from the toilet.

  After a quick flush, I tried to stand and fell back down to the floor, dizziness getting the better of me. “Shoot,” my lips spat out, while my back bounced off the square metal trashcan behind me.

  The door handle wiggled, and Kay announced herself, “I’m coming in, so I hope you’re decent.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, resting my face against the cold concrete wall.

  “Girl, you are burning up. How long have you had a fever?” she questioned me, bending down to hold the back of her hand to my forehead, and shook her head.

  “Didn’t know I had one.”

  “Well, you do,” she announced as her eyes widened in disbelief.

  “Great.”

  “You can’t work like this,” she directly spoke to me. She was in full nurse mode, curling her arm around me and helping me to a standing position. “I’ll call Erza and see who we can get to come in to relieve me. Do you think you could drive yourself home?”

  I gave her a little nod in response, not wanting to risk speech right then in fear I would vomit all over her new pink and black paisley scrubs.

  She helped me get my bag and walked me out to my car after giving Billy, the other nightshift nurse, a quick update.

  “I’m good, really, Kay. I swear.”

  “Sure, you are, but frankly, we don’t need everyone here getting the shit you have. I love you, but take your ass home.” She kidded with me toward the end of her statement, eyeing me once we were at my car.

  “Fine.” I accepted defeat, unlocking my car, and climbed into the cab. “What a way to start my vacation,” I said in disgust, rolling my eyes and starting my engine.

  She waved, lighting a cigarette, and slowly walked to the designated smoking area that had been coined “the smoke shack” long before I was hired.

  “Hope you feel better,” she shouted over the noise of the car’s engine.

  “Thanks.” I waved a little too hard, and my stomach flipped in protest of the movement.

  If there were a positive aspect to any of this, I would get to spend one extra day with Roland, even if I was sick.

  2

  Trinity

  Pulling up our driveway, I wanted nothing more than to chug a bottle of anti-nausea medicine and then climb into bed. Olivia’s bright green Volkswagen caught my eye as I put my car into park, but only because I didn’t know she and Roland were hanging out tonight. It was not a rare thing for them to do. They both shared a love for something I had absolutely no interest in at all. Football.

  I shrugged my shoulders and locked my door. My fingers squeezed my key ring as the urge to vomit again crept into my body. My mouth filled with wetness, and I couldn’t stop myself from spilling the contents of my stomach right onto our gorgeous rosebush Roland planted to the right of our front door.

  My arm braced the weight of my body on the facing surrounding the red panel door. I blew out a long breath and prayed I had the strength to make it into the kitchen and find some type of medicine to help me feel better. Currently, I was considering death as a possibility of relief, so anything would be better than that alternative.

  Roland and Olivia sitting on the couch with the TV blaring as they cussed the play the referee just made was what would probably greet me, but no lights were on in there. In fact, the house lingered with an uneasy silence of emptiness. Gathering my bearings, I went on th
e search for them, checking the entertainment room, the kitchen, and the dining room. Nothing. I just needed to find some trace of them being here. Worry whizzed through my bones, and the thought that something horrible happened to them resonated in my mind.

  Olivia’s laughter filled my ears, and relief washed over me. It was momentarily, though, because each stair that drew me closer to our bedroom stole a fraction of it. There was no logical reason for them to be in there. Alone. I was jumping to conclusions. I had to be. Maybe she asked to borrow the house, and Roland was at the pub watching a game. It would not be the first time for this. She had brought several guys here after a date. She wanted the security of knowing one of the two of us would arrive eventually, just in case the guy was a creep, or worse. She used her spare key privileges to the max, but I didn’t care. It was what best friends were for, right?

  After checking all the other rooms upstairs, the spare bedroom and bathroom, I paused before entering our bedroom, leaning my ear to the cool wooden surface of the door. My lips curled in repulsion. One of us really needed to clean the dust off it. That would be me, of course. Roland hadn’t dusted a thing in this entire house. Ever.

  “You’re so fucking hot. Damn, you feel amazing,” Roland moaned, all of my concerns about our dirty door leaving my thought process. The lowest pit of my stomach throbbed with repugnance, and it wasn’t from the virus or whatever made me vomit. Betrayal bounded into the awareness of my veins and slammed the door shut to the love that drove me to wake up each day.