by Amanda Heath
Get Even
Amanda Heath
Get Even
Copyright © 2015 by Amanda Heath
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
The use of artist and song titles throughout this book are done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
Cover:
Cover design by Robin Harper
Wicked by Design
Editing by Nicole Bailey ProofBeforeYouPublish
Formatting by Amanda Heath
He broke my heart.
She died.
He used me.
She made my world go round.
He tore me apart, put me back together and tore me up again.
She was the only person who truly loved me.
My mental state is…questionable. My life is in ruins. My heart is ripped to shreds and it’ll probably never be put back together again.
My twin sister, Sarah, passed away a few days ago. She was the sun in my sky, the grass between my toes and the light to my dark. I miss her so much. I don’t know if I can go on without her.
My ex-boyfriend, Tate, has come back into town for the funeral. I feel rage. I feel despair. I have violent urges. I have this need for revenge where he’s concerned.
My brother-in-law, Max, is acting…strange. I think he’s hiding something, something I don’t want to find out. He might be the glue though, the glue I need to hold me together.
My name is Farah and I want to get even for every single lie I’ve been told. I want to get even for all the things people have hidden from me. Mostly, I want to get even for this black hole my heart has been turned into.
Life is ugly and it’s unfair but yet it’s beautiful.
This is for anyone out there hurting from the loss of a loved one.
Table of contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Other books by author
One
Farah
I stare at Max, who is sitting on the other side of the waiting room. His brown eyes are bloodshot and the bags under them make it appear as if he got punched a few times. His chestnut hair is sticking up all over the place. I’ve watched him run his fingers through his hair no more than a hundred times since we’ve been sitting here.
Tears sit at the back of my eyes because I don’t have it in me to tell him. They sit at the back of my eyes because I refuse to believe what I felt. Though every part of me knows she’s gone.
I guess I’m waiting for the doctor to come in here and tell him. Tell him the love of his life is gone. That she died and they couldn’t bring her back.
All I can think about is their wedding day, how happy and in love they were. No other two people deserved to be together like they did. A love that beautiful and amazing? He might die when they tell him. Where will that leave Blake? I can’t raise him. What would I do with a three year old? I’m kidding myself; I would raise him like he was my own. I was in the room when he was born. I held him third and I’ve loved him since the second he came into this world.
God, this fucking hurts. I feel like if I moved right now my entire body would fall to pieces and there wouldn’t be anything left. I feel like someone ripped my soul out and split it in two. Maybe that is what happened. You might think I’m crazy but I did feel it. When she died I felt her leave this earth and it was all I could do to keep it inside.
I’m weak. I should tell Max, oh I should. I can’t, I just can’t.
“Farah?” Max says and I realize I’ve started crying rivers and rivers of tears. I’m breaking apart on the inside but somehow the outside has stayed together.
I don’t look up at him, I just stare at the floor feeling the tears run down my face, over my chin, tickling my neck and finally soaking into my shirt. I guess I sniffled and it alerted Max.
“She’s dead isn’t she?” he asks but I don’t answer. I just keep my eyes on the floor. “Answer me!” he shouts, getting up out of his chair.
I flinch and let out a sob. He approaches me and grabs my face, forcing me to look up at him. His brown eyes fill with tears and he knows.
It’s so fucking awful.
Watching him fall apart in front of me.
Tate should be here. Tate would know how to deal with this.
But he’s not here.
Tate is a piece of shit.
But I always knew that.
“Farah, please just say it,” Max mumbles, his face close to mine, his hands still on my face. “Tell me!” he shouts, shaking me a little.
His second outburst brings nurses to the room and I can hear them asking him to let me go, but I grip his wrists to keep him connected to me. He’s the only other person here who loves her like I do. I need him right here, to keep me from exploding from the inside.
We stare at each other and I let him know with my eyes that it’s true. That his beautiful wife died back there. She won’t ever walk out of this hospital. She won’t ever hold Blake again. She won’t kiss his boo-boos or tuck him in at night. She won’t watch him grow up, go to school, graduate, get married or have children of his own.
She is completely lost to us.
The doctor walks into the room then. The one who took her back to surgery. He is normally a tan person, but right now he’s as pale as a ghost. He clutches his medical cap in his hand, the blue material scrunched together. He doesn’t want to break our hearts, to tell us the truth. Something both of us already knows.
I let go of Max and he closes his eyes. Then he grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. He forces me over in front of the doctor, but he doesn’t let go of my hand. I know for the next couple of hours it’s going to be us keeping the other up while we fall apart inside.
“Mr. Spears…I…” He pauses and I see the sorrow in his kind blue eyes.
Max’s hand tightens around mine. “Just spit it out,” he states, all the pain in his voice making the nurses flinch.
“Sarah…she didn’t make it. There were a lot of complications.” He goes over the medical things that I don’t understand. I just know she bled out. Her OB/GYN told her she couldn’t have another child. They warned her it could mean her death, and she listened. You can’t count on condoms and birth control one hundred percent of the time. She refused to have an abortion and Max didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do.
Max lets go of my hand to smooth it over his tired face. “The baby?”
The doctor shakes his head.
Max then lets out all the feeling he has inside. His scream will haunt me forever. The sound of complete grief is more than I can take. I run out of the room, leaving him there. Max and I have never been that close. He was married to her and I had to put up with him because I could see how much she loved him.
I find a cool dark place to sit down and grieve. I cry and I cry, my body shaking hard with the shudders. I can’t seem to unclench my hand f
rom my shirt. The muscles are starting to hurt but I refuse to move.
That’s when she finds me. Her blonde hair falling in fat curls around her shoulders. Her hospital gown is bloody but the rounded stomach is no more. She crouches in front of me and I sob harder, something I didn’t think was possible.
“You’re not real,” I repeat over and over again. She isn’t here and her blue eyes are looking at me with sympathy.
“You’re not real.” I keep saying it but she doesn’t go away. I just wish she would go away. For a fleeting second I wonder where the baby girl is, but I know she went to heaven. She’s probably in the arms of my grandmother, getting sweet sounds sung to her until she falls asleep. She used to do that for her and me.
“You’re not real!” I scream and finally she blinks out. Then she isn’t there. I fall over onto the cold hospital tile floor and I cry.
I cry.
I cry.
The memories plague me when I only want peace. She always had a smile on her face. I don’t think there was a day in her life she wasn’t happy. We were so different yet we were inseparable. And we truly were. My friends were her friends and her friends were my friends. It wasn’t Mom who kissed my boo-boos. It was her. I would have kissed her boo-boos but she never got hurt. I was the one falling out of trees or falling down on the sidewalk. She wasn’t anything but strength and grace.
Even when we discovered boys didn’t have cooties and it was fun to kiss, we never separated. Not until Max. He’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but I resent him because his love took her away from me. I was still in her life but it wasn’t the same. She started her own family and I didn’t.
I tried, really I did. But Tate took those dreams from me. Much like he took everything else from me.
My grief slowly turns into anger. Rage. I want to find someone and beat the shit out of them. I can’t hold it in but instead of taking it out on the concrete wall I dig my phone out of my pocket. I dial his number praying to God that he answers but also hoping he doesn’t.
“Hey. You’ve reached Tate, just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you.” Then there’s a beep and I let it all out. Don’t feel sorry for him either, that piece of shit deserves it.
“This is Farah. I just wanted to let you know that Sarah and the baby died.” I pause on a sob because that fucking hurt to say. God the pain. I just want it to end. “I guess you were too busy to be here for your brother. Now he’s alone with this. I’m alone with this because you abandoned us.
“Before today, I didn’t hate you. I felt sorry for you because I knew your head is messed up. I knew that when I fell in love with you. Now though, I wish you dead. I wish you all the suffering in the world. You could have made this so much easier. You knew the risks, just like the rest of us.”
I pause, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. “I hate you Tate. Don’t ever come back or you’ll regret it.” Then I hang up the phone.
I don’t know how long I sit on the floor before I hear heavy boots coming down the hall. I peek around the corner and see my Pops coming towards me. The relief on his face is enough to make me bite my lip to keep in the sob.
“Little bird, you come out here. You got us all scared to death.” I flinch at the choice of his words but that’s Pops for you. He doesn’t censor his words. He says what he means and that’s that. I’ve been told I get that trait from him.
“Would it be easier if I died instead? Do you think anyone would miss me like they’ll miss her?” I know I sound crazy, stupid, ridiculous but I can’t help it.
Pops, with his long grey hair and blue eyes, is like a beacon in the storm. He used to anchor me when everything got to be too much. He’s never let me down and he’s always been there for me. “I think, little bird, that everyone would miss you just as much, if not more. You have a smart mouth and you keep us all grounded in reality. Sarah could never do that.” He groans as he bends down to my level. I really should have stood up. Pops is getting old.
“But I don’t have a husband and a son.” I could have but she was more suited for that. It’s funny how things turn out. We could have been the same person. We weren’t though. She was light and I was dark.
Pops smooths a hand over my cheek and I nuzzle against it. “Yeah, but you still would have left Sarah without her other half.”
That makes me angry. “What, like she did to me? She could have fixed all this.”
“You know she would never have gotten rid of that baby, no matter what. Sarah didn’t have it in her to hurt anyone.” Pops pulls me up off the ground and into his lap. I smell smoke and hay, and it comforts me a little.
I move my face against his chest, letting his clothes take some of my tears. “Yeah. That was what everyone loved most about her.”
“And what did you love the most about her?” he asks, knowing I wasn’t referring to myself in the “everyone”.
I press my face into his chest trying but failing to control the raging emotions in my body. I want to fall on the floor in tears but I also want to beat the shit out of something. Though I don’t want to, I answer him anyway. “She was my other half. She was my twin sister. I loved everything about her.” I close my eyes knowing it is useless but hoping it would stop even more tears. “I don’t have anyone without her. I’m alone because she’s the only person who understood me.”
My phone starts vibrating on the tile floor and I see his name. Then I turn away. I said all I’ve ever wanted to say to him. If he shows up here, he really will regret it. I’m grieving and I’m pissed off. He has no right to even grace us with his presence.
But I know he’ll show up. I said the one thing that would push him over the edge.
I hate you, Tate.
***
She’s back. I flinch when she appears in front of me. Her eyes are filled with sorrow. Their blue color just as bright as this morning when she woke up. Thirteen hours ago my twin sister Sarah was getting out of bed and getting ready for her day.
Little did she know, three hours later her water would break, three months ahead of time. The bleeding started shortly after. I had never been so scared in my life. She was bedridden for three months out of the six. She had just gotten well enough she could move around. She still wasn’t supposed to be moving a whole lot.
I had been staying with them, had been for weeks. I think I knew deep inside, in a place I hide all the things I don’t want to feel. I knew she wasn’t going to live through this baby. It was bad enough with Blake. She was sick the whole time, and then the cord fell out while she was in labor. It was touch and go there for a while.
I clutch Pops’ hand tightly and I pray she goes away. That blood-soaked gown making me remember all the blood on the kitchen floor while we were trying to get her out the door to go to the hospital. Blake had asked if it was ketchup. Luckily he’s not here today. My parents came to pick him up hours ago.
Sarah reaches her hand out and I cringe away from it. I know she isn’t real. I know I’m having a psychotic episode or something. I have to be. There’s no way I’m really seeing my sister’s ghost.
I’m crazy.
I’m crazy.
When we get to the waiting room I can her my mother sobbing. Nancy Gentry is not sober. She would rather go out in public without makeup than let someone hear her crying. That makes it even more real. She and Sarah were super close. Closer than I’ve ever been to Nancy. It was always Pops. Dad says it’s because I was born just as wild as Pops. I don’t know if that’s true but I am pretty uncivilized.
Sarah glides right by my elbow and peeks into the room. Her face pales and I watch fascinated as she grasps her gown hard with her bony hand. She has always had bony hands. It was one of the things that made her elegant. Not to mention her skinny ass and tall frame. The blonde hair didn’t help either. She was always wearing it up in a bun or some other silly up do. My hair is no longer blonde but it’s my natural color. I always wear it down; my fat curls crazy, wild and frizzy.
&nbs
p; Tears fall from her eyes and she runs into the room. Her mouth is open but I don’t hear anything. I guess it says something that she hasn’t talked to me. I wonder if I could even hear her. She stops in front of Max who is staring into space, slowly blinking like he can’t quite figure out why everyone is sad.
I don’t see Blake so I assume they got a sitter for him. Or he could be running around the hospital unsupervised. I doubt anyone would realize he was gone in this room.
I don’t think anymore as I make my way to Max. I sit down next to him and he immediately grabs my hand. I hold his and it’s not uncomfortable. I honestly feel closer to him than my sobbing mother and shell-shocked father. I lean over and put my head on Max’s shoulder. I look up at Sarah and she has a faint smile on her face. “You’re not real,” I whisper under my breath over and over again.
I tell her so many times that she isn’t real…
Then she blinks out and my heart wrenches in pain. I can’t breathe. I’m trying to hold it in.
I wish she would come back. I wish she would stay forever.
Max and I turn our heads when footsteps sound down the empty hall outside. It’s got to be three A.M. or earlier. This place is pretty dead.
Bad pun.
Bad pun.
Max’s parents enter the room and take everything in. Bill Spears is a sight to behold. Tall, built, with salt and pepper hair. His light brown eyes see everything. Tate looks so much like him; it hurts to look at Bill. I see everything I’ve seen in his son. The same closed off personality. Quiet, always silently watching his surroundings. He talks, but not always. Their eyes are both so fierce and hard. Only when they smile do you truly understand how gorgeous they are. Square jaw, sharp cheeks, chiseled nose and highbrow, they are both way too wild, too pretty.
Vivien Spears is another story. She isn’t Tate’s mother, only Max’s. Max is three years younger than Tate. Somewhere in there Tate’s mother left Bill and Bill met Vivien, only to marry her and then knock her up. Max and her have the same facial features but she’s a redhead and he has chestnut hair. She has green eyes and Max has his father’s light brown ones. Vivien is short and curvy, while Max is built like his father and Tate, only leaner, he doesn’t pack the muscles like the older Spears men.