My Life as an Album (Books 1-4)

by LJ Evans

  She answered.

  “She’s fucking gone,” I yelled into the phone.

  Silence.

  “PJ. She’s been taken by that fucker!” I tried to breathe. Tried for a calm that I wasn’t feeling.

  “Mr. Carmen?” The officer finally got a clue who I was.

  “Seth. Yes. She’s fucking gone.”

  “Maybe you need to back up and explain why you think she isn’t just out getting groceries.”

  I didn’t have the patience for this. I was going to put a hole through something. I slammed my hand on the roof. Keith came up and took the phone from my hand.

  I paced with my hands on the back of my neck as Keith tried to tell the officer what we’d found. When he hung up, he was quiet.

  “What did she say?” Locke was the one to shout it out first.

  “They’re sending a patrol car to us. She said maybe PJ was picked up by a Good Samaritan who brought her down the hill.”

  “She wouldn’t have left her phone or that damn piece of shit,” I hissed.

  Locke nodded.

  “Officer Tate is heading to Michael’s house to see if he’s there.”

  I headed for my car.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t just stand here. I’m going to see if I can find her down the road.”

  “Seth!”

  But I was in the car and shifting like crazy down the hill without responding.

  The hill ended and turned into a suburbia before ending at the freeway. You weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. My phone rang, and I didn’t look, I just answered it.

  “Bella?”

  “It’s Liv.”

  “Have they…” I actually had to hold back the tears that were ready to spew down my face at her voice tight with emotion. Guilt. Anger. Fear. They all raged through me in equal measure.

  “They’re taking her to the hospital.”

  Relief coursed through me first. They’d found you. Then a whole new dread rolled over me. The fucking hospital. Images flooded my head. Images of me carrying my mom’s slack body down three flights of stairs. Images of a smashed bottle. The smell of Jack Daniels and the pain that flashed down my side as my skin was slashed. The feel of me slamming my drunk father into the brick wall and hearing his head crack.

  “Where?”

  She told me and I took off. I don’t know if I hung up or said goodbye. I didn’t care. I don’t remember driving. I don’t remember parking. Locke said I parked the car outside the ER doors with the keys still in it, and that Keith moved it for me when they showed up minutes after me.

  Officer Tate was already there. She told me they had taken you in to do a CT scan and MRI. You weren’t conscious.

  I was choked with fear and memories.

  “What?” I couldn’t even complete it. I couldn’t even ask.

  She took pity on me. “Someone called it in. A woman, zip-tied, opened a trunk and rolled herself out of the car in front of them on Sunset.”

  You’d fucking jumped out of a moving car.

  I slammed my hand into the wall, and even Tate jumped. But she waved off the nurse that looked over. She put a hand on my arm, and even though I wanted to shrug her off, I didn’t. She was a cop.

  “Let’s sit down.”

  “Did you catch the shithead?”

  She shook her head, and I wanted to slam my fist into something again, but I just pinched my palm so that the pain would help me focus. That old habit from my youth had come back to me so naturally these days.

  “We have a make and model, but there were no plates. If it was Michael, it wasn’t the car that’s registered to him.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  She didn’t need to respond. Proof. Goddamn proof. At least with my shit-for-brains father there had been plenty of proof. But he’d still been released from prison six years into his fifteen-year sentence.

  Life wasn’t fuckin’ fair. Did I really need to be reminded of that yet again?

  Locke and Keith walked in. Locke put a hand on my shoulder, said something. I just shook him off, leaned against the wall, and stared down the corridor, waiting for the doctor to come back. To tell me you were going to be okay.

  Keith tried to hand me a coffee. I just glared at him. He just shrugged and sat down next to Locke. Locke had his head buried in his hands. It looked like he was shaking. Crying. I don’t know.

  The doors swung open, and a man in scrubs walked out. “Patterson’s family?”

  For a whole two seconds I couldn’t figure out who he was talking about even though I know your real name. Because you are my Bella. Or PJ. Never Patterson. Patterson was the name he had used.

  Locke stood behind me. One of us must have nodded, but none of us spoke.

  “She’s going to be okay,” he started.

  The words flooded through me so fast and so hard that it felt like a rush of alcohol to my brain.

  “She’s lucky. Concussion. Some scrapes and a gash on her head that might need some cosmetic surgery, but nothing serious. She has some broken bones in her left hand. They’ll need to cast it. For now, we’ve given her some pain meds. We’ll want to keep her at least overnight.”

  “Is she awake?” Locke asked.

  He nodded. “Come on, I’ll take you back.”

  More relief rushed through me. You were awake. We followed the doctor to a room they’d rolled you into. You looked so tiny in the hospital bed, swathed in bandages. Your left hand was covered in them, laying on top of the blankets, and there was another bandage covering your forehead.

  You looked at me with blurry eyes. I don’t remember moving. I just remember that I was holding you against me as best as I could while you cried. From shock and fear and relief. I was surprised as hell to find tears falling from my own face, mixing with yours. I can’t remember a time I cried in my life. Not one. Like I told you in the last letter. I’ve never cried. Not over my mom. Not over Cam. Never.

  You looked up and touched my wet face with your good hand, and I saw fear and pain and sadness in your anime eyes. I kissed your lips gently, tasting your tears and fear and the cleaner they’d used to clean your beautiful face. Your face that would now have a scar. I wanted to kick something. You didn’t need any visible scars. You already had too many hidden inside.

  “Bella,” I choked out, trying to tell you how fucking glad I was to see you. How fucking scared I’d been.

  Locke approached the other side of your bed. I forgot he was there. I just glared at him as he wrapped you in his own arms, and you cried more.

  “Shhh,” he soothed. “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”

  “Jus?” You finally spoke. And I hated even then that it was your brother’s name and not mine because I’m a messed-up asshole.

  “He’s on his way,” Locke said.

  You started to cry again, closing your eyes as you tried to stop the onslaught of tears. Eventually, you calmed down some. I hadn’t ever let your hand go, your good one. I kissed the palm and watched your face even though your beautiful eyes were still firmly shut.

  “Did someone find the Caterpillar?” you asked through those closed eyes.

  “Yes,” I spit out. Because even though it had been found, there was no way I was letting you get back in that piece of garbage even if I had to push it off a cliff myself.

  Officer Tate approached the bed.

  “PJ?” You finally opened your eyes for her, but you just nodded.

  “I know you may not be up for it, but we need to get a general idea of what happened. We need to know how much evidence we need to collect…” She paused, and I immediately understood.

  They needed to collect DNA off of you. Off your body. My heart constricted. What had he done to you?

  “I’m so tired,” you said as your eyes drooped shut again, and I looked with concern to the nurse who had never left the room even though we’d swarme
d it.

  She smiled reassuringly. “It’s normal. You’re on some pretty hefty pain killers. Go ahead and sleep, darlin’. The questions will wait.”

  Tate didn’t seem happy with this, but there wasn’t much she could do unless she wanted to go through me to force your eyes back open.

  Keith pulled a chair up next to the bed for me, and I just nodded thanks. Seemed hard to imagine I used to want to pound his face in. I sank into the chair, but wouldn’t let go of your good hand. I was rubbing it with my thumb.

  Your eyes flickered open at me for a half a second and then back shut as the medicine and exhaustion hauled you under. I couldn’t help panicking that you’d never wake up again.

  I leaned toward you and whispered in your ear. “Don’t ever leave me again. I won’t survive without you.”

  I’m not sure you heard it. It didn’t matter. It was the truth. You know that’s all I know how to tell. The truth. Or nothing at all. And now that you have left, I’m not sure I’m surviving it. The only thing that gets me through every day is knowing that you’re alive out there, doing whatever the hell it is you think you need to do before you can come home.

  Locke sat down in the other chair by the door. None of us were leaving you. It made me think of the last time I’d been in a hospital in this much pain. Then, it had been physical. There had been no one in the room with me. Not for almost a whole day. Then my abuela had shown up, fussing over me while my abuelo stood at the door with his cowboy hat in his hand like he just didn’t know what to say.

  But I wasn’t good at being fussed over back then. Instead, I’d bellowed at her. She’d kept her hurt close to her chest, but she’d backed off. My abuelo had put his arm around her and hugged her. The doctor had said that I could have the wounds on my side removed by a plastic surgeon. That there wouldn’t need to be any permanent scars.

  But they were permanent, weren’t they? They were scars that I took out on you, and Justice, and the whole goddamn situation. But Bella, the scar you would have dug in me if you’d left this world that day…that scar would have been far worse than the visible scar my dumbass father left or the invisible scar my mother left. That scar would have ripped me in two.

  You are ripping me in two anyway. Out there. Without me. I’m hoping that you are finding the piece of yourself you think is missing. The only piece I’m missing is the piece you took with you. I’m hoping that you’ll bring it back someday so that I can feel whole again. So that I can solder us together into something that everyone will see as art instead of just broken.

  PJ After Letter Nine

  EVERYBODY’S BROKEN

  “It’s okay to feel a little broken,

  Everybody’s broken…

  It’s just life.”

  -Bon Jovi & Falcon

  Laying the letter on the table, PJ Googles Kintsugi as a way of keeping her thoughts away from that awful day. To keep herself from spiraling into a panic attack.

  She hadn’t spent much time on Japanese art in school. She’d focused on ancient and American art. She vaguely remembers something about Kintsugi, but when the images come up, they are startling and magnificent in a way she knows she never connected with before.

  The pieces are shattered and then made whole with gold and silver. She reads an article on the art of Kintsugi and how it is tied to the philosophy of wabi-sabi which is embracing the flawed or imperfect.

  Kintsugi highlights the cracks in an object as if the cracks are simply an event in the object’s life rather than being the object’s end of life. Highlighting the break, rather than hiding it, makes it beautiful.

  PJ thinks about Seth. How his scars internally and externally make him into this tough and handsome human being. How his wear and tear has made him into this person who can not only forge art with his hands and heart, but can see the magnificence in other torn souls and cherish it. He’d seen the magnificence in her. Cherished it. And she’d walked away.

  She feels the tears flow down her cheeks again. And with the tears comes the horror of that day all over. The day he’d just written about. It had been one of her most awful days. Almost worse than the day her parents had died.

  She wonders, if she hadn’t run away… If the Caterpillar hadn’t broken down… Maybe none of it would have happened.

  But she knows that isn’t true. He would have come for her sooner or later. It just happened to be then.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  He must have followed her to Dylan’s. He must have been waiting for her to leave. She doesn’t know if the Caterpillar broke down on its own, or if he helped it along, but he must have known it would happen because he’d been ready for it.

  When the engine started to smoke, she pulled over. She got out of the car, phone in hand, and went to check the engine. The biggest mistake was leaving the engine running. As if she—the complete car novice she was—would be able to tell what was wrong. The noise of the Bug’s engine cut out the noise of his car pulling up.

  The next thing she knew, she had a black bag over her head and a muscled arm choking her. She dropped her phone in shock. But then her body went into defense mode. She slammed her stiletto heel into the top of his foot, and he grunted in pain, but didn’t let go. Instead, he tightened the grip on her neck. She couldn’t breathe. The bag. His arm. It was suffocating her. There was a smell in the bag. Medicinal.

  She tried not to panic. Panicking wouldn’t help her escape.

  He licked her neck where the bag ended and his arm started. “Don’t fight it, Patterson.”

  His voice was muffled through the bag and her adrenaline, but she knew who it was. She shuddered. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t do any of that with the bag and his arm. She struggled again, trying to get her arms up, but they were wrapped tight in his grip. She tried to kick again, but this time he was prepared and just lifted her off the ground like she was nothing. This caused the arm at her neck to choke her more, and she gagged.

  He licked her a second time.

  “You taste like peaches and cream. Don’t fight it. It’s my turn. I’ve waited a long time for this. We’ll have you out of here before He-Man can show up and stop us.”

  And then she’d lost consciousness.

  When she came to, her ankles and wrists were bound together, and she was lying in a dark, tight space. But the hood was off her face, and she could breathe. She took a huge breath just to be sure that it was true.

  The rough carpet beneath her smelled like gasoline, and she was moving. She realized she was in a trunk. Her heart pounded, tears springing to her eyes. She was trapped. She didn’t want to scream. She didn’t want him to know she was awake.

  She had to think. She tried to move her ankles and wrists again. Zip ties or something equally snug held them, digging into the sensitive skin.

  Her eyes slowly adjusted to the space. She tried to calm her erratic breathing. Tried simply to concentrate on what was around her to help her out of that terrifying place. That’s when she saw it: the safety latch. Either he hadn’t expected her to come to so soon, or he’d been a moron and forgotten about the child safety latch.

  She rolled and tried to reach it.

  Arms bound behind her, she couldn’t see where she was pulling, but she kept at it and kept at it until, finally, her fingers hit the plastic, but they slipped off.

  She gritted her teeth as pain from the movement flowed through her, and tried again. This time she held on and heard the satisfying sound of the trunk lock clicking.

  The light blinded her as the trunk popped open, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care that they were moving. She was getting out of the car. She pulled herself to a sitting position, back to the edge of the trunk. She could feel the car slowing. He’d seen the trunk open. She didn’t have much time, and without a thought, except of getting away, she flung herself backwards out of the car.

  She hit the pavement on her bound hands, back, and rear end. Pain searing
through her at the same time as the air was knocked out of her. Then her head bounced against the pavement, and that was all she remembered.

  Eventually, the light and the agony from her head and her arm reeled her back in. The lights in her eyes had been almost as excruciating as her arm. “Welcome back, Patterson,” someone had said. She’d been frightened at first, thinking she was back with him. No one called her Patterson.

  But then she saw the hospital garb and the nurses, and she couldn’t help the sob of relief that tore from her.

  “You’re okay, sugar. You’re safe now.”

  And then she’d passed out again.

  When she’d come to once more, she was in a hospital room with the same nurse hovering nearby. She asked if PJ was in pain, and PJ had just nodded. Because she was. Her hand. Her face. Her head. Pain everywhere. But also relief. She wasn’t with him.

  When Seth had come into the room, her heart had soared. She’d wanted to leap from the bed and hug him tightly to her. The fear in his eyes when he approached told her so much more than he planned. When he’d choked out that, “Bella,” it was all she needed to know. He loved her, and she was safe. She was with him.

  Like when she was a hurt toddler, and wouldn’t cry until her mom was holding her, that’s exactly what happened. Once Seth had her in his arms, she broke down into sobs, crying until there wasn’t much left inside her drained body. Then after Locke hugged her and she’d cried more, she fell asleep again. She’d been so unbearably tired.

  When she woke up next, it was to angry voices. She turned and saw Seth slamming Justice up against the wall, his arm at Justice’s neck like her attacker had had her. Justice turning blue. Liv panicking.

  “Seth!” PJ croaked out through dry lips and a throat that felt like she’d swallowed a wall of salt water.

  He turned and looked at her, but his anger was palpable, burning from him like its own being. Surging through the room.

  “Seth! Let him go!” she’d whispered. And he had. Justice pushed him hard in the chest as Seth’s arm relaxed, and they would have been back at it again if Liv hadn’t stepped between them with the baby.