The Invisible Thread

by Lisa Suzanne

  THE INVISIBLE THREAD

  The Unbreakable Thread Book Two

  ©2018 Lisa Suzanne

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher or author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law and except for excerpts used in reviews. If you would like to use any words from this book other than for review purposes, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher.

  Published in the United States of America by Books by LS, LLC.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters and events in this work are figments of the author’s imagination.

  Content Editing: It’s Your Story Content Editing

  Proofreading: Proofreading by Katie

  Cover Design: CT Cover Creations

  Cover Photograph: Eric Battershell

  Cover Model: Kaz van der Waard

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  BOOKS BY LISA SUZANNE

  THE UNBREAKABLE THREAD DUET

  THE POWER TO BREAK (Book One)

  THE INVISIBLE THREAD (Book Two)

  A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY SERIES

  A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY (Book One)

  ONLY EVER YOU (Book Two)

  CLEAN BREAK (Book Three)

  CLICK HERE FOR MORE

  DEDICATION

  To the one holding my thread and the sweet boy right in the middle.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART ONE (The Past)

  CHAPTER ONE (Maci)

  CHAPTER TWO (Ethan)

  CHAPTER THREE (Maci)

  CHAPTER FOUR (Maci)

  CHAPTER FIVE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER SIX (Maci)

  PART TWO (The Present)

  CHAPTER SEVEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER EIGHT (Maci)

  CHAPTER NINE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER ELEVEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER TWELVE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER NINETEEN (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (Maci)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (Ethan)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (Ethan)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (Maci)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (Maci)

  EPILOGUE

  PART ONE

  The Past

  If we forget the past, we’re destined to repeat it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MACI

  Winter 2002

  I hung up the phone with shaking hands. Some student who was manning the reception desk kept looking at me since I’d been hanging around the lobby for the last three hours, and now he couldn’t be more obvious that he was trying to look away as sobs racked my body and I stared out into the snowy night.

  My dad’s voice echoed in my head. “There’s been an accident...an accident...an accident. She’s gone...she’s gone...she’s gone.”

  Gone.

  But she couldn’t be gone.

  She was too young. Only forty-seven. She was in my corner—one of the only people who rooted for my wins every single time even if she doesn’t agree with how I go about getting them.

  She was comfort and home and love.

  She was mom.

  And she was gone.

  She’s gone. She’s gone.

  Ice filled my veins despite the blasting heat pouring out of the vent directly above my head.

  “She was hit head on. Probably never even saw it coming,” my dad told me. His voice was full of the facts—not warm and comforting, not in an I’ll be there for you sort of way. Nothing at all like the dad who’d assured me my mom was fine just a few hours earlier over this same phone as I stood in this same room.

  Because she wasn’t fine. She was dead. Nothing would ever be fine again.

  If only...

  If only I hadn’t chosen Michigan.

  If only I hadn’t switched to Chicago Valley Music School mid-sophomore year.

  If only I hadn’t wanted to change everything about who I was.

  If only Ethan Fuller had never made that comment about me.

  If only I’d never overheard it.

  If only all those things were true, my mom would still be alive.

  Instead, my dad instructed me to wait until daylight and then make the long trek home so I could help him plan her funeral.

  Her funeral.

  This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening.

  And yet...it was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ETHAN

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I blew out a breath as my mom confessed her newest sin to me. I was twenty-one and I was about to have a little brother or sister...right on the heels of my other sister born only six months earlier.

  I didn’t know how to react. Congratulations didn’t seem right—from her tone, she wasn’t excited about it. She was only thirty-seven, merely a teenager when she had me.

  “Is it Chad’s?” I asked, referring to my six-month-old half-sister Bianca’s dad.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I sighed. Chad was a real douche, and I couldn’t believe he knocked her up again. The cynical side of me had a theory it was because of me. If Chad was involved in my mom’s life, he had access to me. My mom didn’t hide the fact that her son’s band had just signed a deal with a major label and was going on tour with a huge band.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked. I didn’t have a ton of money in the bank, but what I did have I’d use to take care of her.

  I wasn’t totally sure she deserved it considering how she deprived me of everything I needed, but I didn’t have to be like her.

  “No, Ethan. We’ll manage.” It was her way of thanking me.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know.”

  Mark pointed to some paperwork on the table in front of me and I nodded before asking into the phone, “When are you due?”

  He furrowed his brow at me. “My mom,” I mouthed, pointing to the phone. He raised a brow but didn’t reply.

  “September.”

  “Jesus, you’re four months along already? Is that even safe for the baby since you just had Bianca?”

  “It’s fine.” I heard some yelling in the background. “I need to go. Take care of yourself.” She cut the call without an I love you like most moms would give their kids, but I didn’t dwell on it. We’d ne
ver been the I love you types, but it stood out to me so much more now that I was sharing a tour bus with Mark, whose mother called him every single day. He ended every single call with those three words. Well, four words: I love you, too. He always said it back to her because she said it first. I wasn’t totally convinced my mother actually did love me. I don’t know if she loved anyone, to be perfectly frank.

  “She’s pregnant again?” Mark asked when I hung up.

  I nodded and blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

  “Same guy?”

  I trained my eyes on the paperwork and picked up a few sheets so I didn’t have to look at my friend while we had this conversation. I didn’t want him to know how affected I was by the fact that my mother was bringing yet another child into this world when she could hardly care for herself. “Yeah.”

  “Need my parents to stop by and check on her?” he asked.

  “I appreciate the offer,” I said, “but she’d be too embarrassed. She said she’s fine, so I’ll take her at her word.”

  “Offer’s on the table,” Mark said, and that was the end of it.

  I appreciated his subject change as he showed me the mock-ups of some artwork for our next album. This was where I wanted to place my attention and my focus—not in the past and certainly not with my mother. The only good thing she ever did for me was give me Zoey. She managed to snag some Presidential scholarship offering her a full ride plus cash to a college in Atlanta, an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Things started looking up for the Fuller kids, and it didn’t take a genius to see the turnaround happened for both of us as soon as we got the fuck out of the home we grew up in.

  The drug den, as Zoey called it. Bought and paid for with drug money, the only gift my deadbeat father ever gave our family.

  I was proud of her for getting into Georgia State and I was proud of myself for moving out of that house the very second I turned eighteen. I hated leaving Zoey behind when I moved out, but she was always over at my place. I saw the way she looked at Mark—the way she had always looked at Mark—but he didn’t want to hurt my sister, a fact I appreciated in my friend.

  She’d been hurt enough just growing up the same way I did. We were both moving on with our lives as we did our best to let go of the ghosts of our past.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MACI

  I had to go shopping for a black dress. I was nineteen and I didn’t have a black dress that was appropriate to wear to my mother’s funeral.

  I’d never be able to wear it again, anyway, so I went to a resale shop. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford a newer, fancier dress. My dad would’ve given me his credit card if I’d have asked.

  But I didn’t ask because I didn’t want a new, fancy dress.

  I wanted a garment I could wear once and throw away. I didn’t want it hanging in my closet, taunting me as it reminded me of the day I stood in the cold in a cemetery and watched as they lowered my mother’s casket into the ground.

  As I stood in the middle of a rack of dresses in my size, I thought about where this all started.

  It was because of him. Ethan. I still thought of him. Often. I still thought about how his words set off a series of events that changed the course of my life, and as I looked at dresses to wear to my mother’s funeral, I thought about how this all went back to him.

  I wasn’t sweet little Dani Mayne anymore on the outside. I looked different. I even felt different. But on the inside, I still had that innocence about me despite my best efforts to eradicate it.

  As I stood in a resale shop, though, that was when that part of me died.

  That was the singular moment when I realized I had blackness inside of me. The innocence that once made up who I was must have been in that car with my mother because it sure as hell died with her.

  It might’ve been part of the process of grief, but I was suddenly assaulted with anger. It oozed in my veins and trickled into my cells. A fire of revenge lit in my belly.

  I’d get him back for this.

  I’d ruin him. I’d make him suffer. I’d cause him pain and grief.

  I wasn’t sure how, but I’d do it.

  The anger crashed into the fresh hell of losing my mother, and I crumbled to the ground as I broke down in the middle of a resale shop. I held my face in my hands as the reality of what I was doing here plunged into me. The tears I’d been holding back as I tried to be strong fell from my eyes in devastating waves.

  It was my fault I was even here. She shouldn’t have been on the roads. She was coming to see me because I had a solo to perform the next day. She came alone because my dad couldn’t miss work. If he was driving, maybe he would’ve been able to swerve.

  Or maybe I’d have lost him, too.

  I couldn’t think about that, couldn’t handle the loss of both my parents at the same time.

  But I already felt Dad pulling away. He was lost in grief and I was lost in disbelief.

  I felt someone’s arms around my shoulders as I sobbed on the floor of a resale shop. I didn’t look up to see who it was. I wouldn’t have been able to see through the steady stream of tears anyway. A stranger, perhaps, but the arms were comforting when I needed them.

  “Are you okay?” a male voice I didn’t recognize asked after he let me cry for a few minutes.

  “No,” I sobbed, my chest aching and my stomach in knots.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “No.” I tried to draw in a breath, but the sobs still ruled and only allowed me to choke on small puffs of air. I wiped beneath my eyes, willing myself to stop crying, and then I looked up at him. He might’ve been handsome. I’m not sure. I wasn’t in a place and time where I could judge that. “My mom died.” It was the first time I spoke the words that way aloud. I’d used euphemisms up until that point. She was in an accident or she didn’t make it or she passed away. The single word died was too final. Too hurtful.

  Too true.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” he said. He helped me stand.

  “I need a dress for the funeral.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling this person why I was here.

  “I can help you.” He flipped through the rack in front of me.

  “Do you work here?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but I saw you crying and I couldn’t just walk by without making sure you were okay. I’m Kai.”

  “I’d say it’s nice to meet you,” I said as I continued to try to regain control of my breath, “but I wish I wasn’t here.”

  He smiled sadly. “You want to talk about it?”

  “She was on her way to visit me at school two days ago. Head-on collision. The other driver died, too.”

  “Oh my God,” he said. “I lost my mom when I was a teenager. She was sick a long time. It didn’t make it any easier that we saw it coming, but at least we saw it coming.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I felt a strange connection to him. Maybe because we both experienced the loss of a mother. I paused, and then I added, “It’s my fault.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

  It’s Ethan’s fault. If he’d have never said those words...

  “Yes, it is. She was on her way to see me.”

  “So?” He shrugged. “I don’t mean this lightly, but you can’t stop destiny.”

  You can’t stop destiny.

  He pulled a dress off the rack and showed it to me. “How about this one?” It was all black, knee-length with long-sleeves. It was demure and unsexy and exactly what I was looking for.

  I grabbed the hanger from his hands. “Thank you,” I said. I hugged him, and he chuckled.

  “I promise this isn’t a line, but if you need someone to talk to who’s been through it—if you need someone to hold your hand at the funeral, here’s my number.” He handed me a business card and I glanced at it.

  Kai Soto

  Deejay

  “Thanks, deejay Kai,” I said. I wiped under my eyes one more time.

  “Hey, I’m living proof y
ou can make it to the other side.”

  I pressed my lips together in a non-smile and took my dress to the register. I paid the cashier, got in my car, and drove away. I didn’t shed a tear during the ten-minute drive home, and for the very first time since I heard my dad tell me the words two nights ago, I felt the first shred of hope that he was right—that eventually, I might just be okay.

  I was pulling into my driveway when I realized I didn’t even tell Kai my name. I should have called him to thank him for picking me up—literally—and for helping me with the dress. I should’ve thanked him for that tiny shred of hope I clung to the entire next day at the funeral. I should’ve let him know he had an impact on me—that one simple encounter of a stranger helping a crying stranger got me through the darkest days of my life.

  But since I never told him my name, I felt stupid even thinking about dialing his number.

  And in the aftermath, one thing stood clear to me.

  I’d find a way to get my revenge no matter the cost.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MACI

  “Thank you,” I said numbly as I dried the casserole dish Judy handed to me.

  Judy’s make-up was smeared from crying all day. She was my mom’s best friend. She lived a few houses down from us. She and her husband were recently divorced, and my mom held her hand through it all, but it was more than that. They were like two peas in a pod, and having her here was okay. It was almost comforting in a way. Almost like my mom would just walk into the room at any moment, laughing and smiling about some raunchy joke Judy shared with her.

  Why my dad chose to have the reception at our house, I’ll never understand. I just wanted to be alone. I just wanted to curl up under a blanket for a decade or so and come out when I was good and ready.

  It had been a long and painful day full of tears and regrets. I didn’t say goodbye to her. I refused to. She’d always be with me, in my head and in my heart. I was tired of people being around me, saying the things they thought would make me feel better when in reality the only thing that would help at all was to have her back.