Pieces of Camden (Hole-Hearted #1) Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Yessi Smith

  All rights reserved.

  Poem by j.r. rogue printed with permission

  Visit my website at www.yessismith.com

  Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creation

  Editor and Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  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 for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9971199-1-6

  This book is dedicated to Jill Sava and Madelyn Valle. I couldn’t do this without either of you.

  To Lee Casey, who was the first to love Camden and always pushes me to be better.

  And Mary, who never fails to show her endless love and support. Our friendship means the world to me.

  Contents

  j.r. rogue

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I’m not afraid

  to carry some of my past

  on this skin.

  the dirt is as real

  as the beauty,

  and I have trouble

  separating

  which nights

  had one,

  the other,

  or both

  now

  anyways.

  —J.R. ROGUE

  PROLOGUE

  No one hears a child’s cry. The sounds of screaming and breaking glass in a sorrow-filled house go unnoticed by neighbors too preoccupied with their own lives. The silent fear is all-consuming until even leaving your room brings on a terror that makes the boogeyman look friendly.

  They hear the laughter though, the lies that fall so easily from my lips. Feigned feelings are far more welcome than the emptiness that embodies me.

  You don’t know my name, but you’ve heard my story countless times before. That of an abused child. An unloved little boy. Ignored by society.

  I am more than my story though. More than the doubt, the guilt, the hurt.

  Because of her. She saved me, so I did the only thing I could do when my dad called Yanelys a whore. I fought back, wanting to right all the wrongs of today. Wanting to wash away her sorrow and cleanse myself of her shame filled eyes.

  Screams bar the walls of my bedroom. They’re mine, my mom’s and every other child who has fallen victim to their parent’s hot anger.

  My dad pounds his fists into my face, my stomach, my back. Blood spills, pain spreads. I crouch into a cocoon, the hatred of my dad pouring over my beaten body like hot lava.

  “So, you’re a man now, huh!” my dad shouts. “Twelve years old and you have a girl between your legs!”

  “It’s not like that,” I whimper, because it wasn’t.

  Everyone thought it was, and I let them, not wanting any of our classmates or teachers to see where my dad had stabbed me this morning. Yanelys had simply been trying to clean up his mess when our PE coach walked in on us in the bathroom. Yanelys went along with the assumptions because that’s what she does. She looks out for me. She protects me and I let her because I’m a coward. A stupid, selfish, coward.

  But today, I stood up to my dad and while I don’t regret it, I wish I’d had one last chance to tell Yanelys how much I love her.

  “Where’s your little whore of a friend?” my dad barks.

  From the floor, I push at him, wanting him to take back the ugly words he said about my best friend. Vicious laughter falls from his lips and he kicks me repeatedly. My gut, my head, my legs. Everywhere, all at once.

  I breathe in the slow burn of my dad’s increasing anger and bursts of violence. Dizzy, my mind grows foggy and I follow the delirium until I no longer feel my dad’s fists raining over my body. My eyes roll to the back of my head and I picture Yanelys’s smiling face. I reach for her hand, knowing she’ll always hold on.

  ONE

  CAMDEN

  Worn shoes and tattered clothes are a direct contradiction to how I carry myself. Even when the smell rolling off my body turns my empty stomach, I keep my shoulders square and my head held high. Not that it matters. No one looks directly at me anyway.

  I see myself though—the vision of broken glass bleeding on humanity —but I won’t succumb to the hunched figure of a tired man. Society doesn’t see the fragility of my grief or my desperation for help.

  No, what they see is the reality I’ve painted for them. A cold thin figure with sunburned skin and the pitiless smile I grant them if they look in my direction. Wincing, they turn away to look at anything but me.

  I’m worse than invisible. At least the invisible can’t be seen.

  Me? I’m an outcast. Deplorable by definition. Unworthy. Unapproachable.

  Twenty-four years old and completely alone.

  My only human contact comes from rushed figures pushing past me as I walk on the sidewalk to make my way home from work.

  Home. The word itself is laughable. As if I have a home.

  I have a place where I stay. A couch I sleep on. But no actual home to speak of.

  There are days though, days like today, when I don’t want the company of my old pastor. When I don’t want a couch or a bed or even a corner to sleep in.

  I just want myself. My eternal silence where all there is to hear is the crushing of every broken dream I’ve had since youth.

  The North Carolina rain complements my damp mood, so it’s only fitting for me to be outdoors for a while. Unemployed from a job I never really needed. A martyr made to survive off scraps because of a dignity I can’t be stripped of. It’s all I have because they took away everything else. I don’t know what I did to piss Karma off, but she’s an unforgiving bitch. Relentless in delivering her punishments to me.

  In my worn shoes and tattered clothes, I lie down on the concrete ground outside of an abandoned building and let the sky’s tears fall on my face. The cold rain makes my teeth chatter as lightning flashes above me.

  A lifetime ago, I felt the gentle caress of a palm on my cheek. And, damn it to hell, I want it back. I want her back. The familiarity of her touch. The lull of her voice. Her eyes that could see past every mask I wore, as well as the answers to questions she never asked. All of the broken promises I uttered in desperation, fully aware I could never keep them.

  Her warmth soothed me, m
ade me whole.

  Yanelys.

  I met Yanelys when we were eight years old. She was my beginning, the reason I started living, and I always thought she’d be there until the end.

  From the moment I met her, her brown eyes became my constant. When my parents fought, I’d quietly creep out of my bedroom window and into her bedroom, knowing she’d keep her window unlocked in case I needed her. When the police arrested my parents and took me away, her parents gave me a home after my social worker had deemed them fit as my guardians. And when we were teenagers living under the same roof, I’d sneak into her room and crawl into her bed, needing her strength to hold me together.

  The only time we were away from each other was when I’d lived in a group home. This happened before we lived together, before I knew what it meant to have a family, when my heart still teetered on the edges of dejection. My life at the group home wasn’t optimal, but it was safe, which somehow made everything worse.

  I was twelve years old and away from my best friend, my safety blanket, who knew all my secrets and kept her promise to never expose them—until she felt she no longer had a choice.

  I never held that betrayal against her. Even on the longest nights on a hard, lumpy bed, I’d count my blessings with every inhale and exhale. I was alive because of her. My dad would have beaten me to death if she hadn’t told someone.

  The day she’d told her parents, her dad had shown up at my house and held my parents at gunpoint while Yanelys and her mom broke into my bedroom through the window. They stayed with me until the police and ambulance arrived. That night, I thought God had finally seen me. I was safe.

  But then the police took me away. Sure, no one hurt me while I was at the group home, and Yanelys and her parents would come visit me, but it wasn’t the same. Split-second decisions to seek out Yanelys’s comfort when I couldn’t cope were a thing of the past.

  And there was so much I couldn’t cope with back then.

  There’s still so much I can’t cope with.

  Starting with Yanelys’s tears.

  She was the one who pieced me together when I was nothing more than a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces.

  And I was the one who tore us apart, ripping my heart straight out of my chest in the process.

  It’s okay though. Without her, I have no use for a heart anyway.

  Forced or not, it was my decision, my doing.

  My consequences.

  There was never any coming back from that decision. I knew it the minute I walked away from her. I felt the ache in my bones with the emptiness she left behind.

  With my back arched, I can reach into the back pocket of my jeans and take out my wallet, knowing exactly where I’ll find Yanelys’s old high school picture.

  It’s worn, far worse than my clothes, with the edges wrinkled and torn. My callous fingers touch her face, tracing her full lips with my finger. Her light-brown eyes look back at me, reminding me of the carefree young woman I fell in love with. Her smile isn’t just permanently fixed in the picture but inside of my soul as well.

  The memory of her smile dulls the ache in my chest, a poor substitute for the relief her presence used to bring me. The passion we shared made me feel like I could conquer everything, including myself. It was the same passion, the same irrepressible demons within me, that made me leave. Every time she smiled at me, touched me, breathed the same air as me, my heart would threaten to break through its cage to not just love her but to let her know of that love.

  But I wasn’t a fairy tale. And, news flash, the beast never turns into a prince.

  My scars run deeper than mere flesh wounds. They’re a part of my soul, having seared themselves into the fiber of who and what I am.

  When the rain stops, I put away Yanelys’s picture, touching the outline of her dirty-blonde hair, and I stand up from the hard floor to make my way inside the vacant building. Shoulders hunched to keep me warm, I am now the vision of the tired, lonely man I’ve become. After I find a room and huddle in the corner, I close my eyes and allow the loud thunder to lull me to sleep.

  I don’t think of Yanelys or the job that I lost. I don’t think about where my tomorrows will lead me. I only think of the rain hitting the rooftop like a million heartbeats.

  Searing heat. The crackle of wood splintering and collapsing. The heaviness of the air choking my lungs. I wake up to a nightmare.

  An all-encompassing fire flares and leaps in all directions. Orange embers twirl in a fiery dance while clouds of dark smoke wind itself around the room I’m staying in, making it difficult for me to see, let alone breathe.

  I hack out a cough, waving my hand in front of my face in a futile attempt to identify what’s ahead of me.

  Smoke. Fire. Hell. That’s all there is.

  From a distance, sirens grow louder as the firefighters race toward me and the burning building, but the idea of them entering the building is ludicrous. An abandoned building where only squatters stay. No one worth risking a life for. No one worth saving.

  With my shirt clamped over my mouth and nose, I run, not knowing if I’m running toward safety or more danger. But running’s better than sitting and waiting for death.

  A wall of heat meets my desperate escape, threatening to burn my lungs before the fire even touches my skin.

  Falling to my knees, saliva drips from my mouth onto the floor. My body weeps at the blazing storm nearing me, the weight of the smoke settling in the silent corners of defeat. My frantic heart roars, refusing to give up, as darkness clings to me, threatening me with the truth.

  The fire’s too big, too wild. And I know…the fire will devour me, and all they’ll find of me will be ashes.

  Finally, I’ll be set free.

  TWO

  YANELYS

  NINE YEARS OLD

  Yanelys Sanchez + Camden Riley = 4-ever

  I scribble that all over the outside of my journal until every inch is covered in our names. When Camden walks into my room, I show him my work, and he nods, a stray strand of his dark hair falling over his forehead and into one of his bright blue eyes.

  Camden isn’t just my best friend. He’s also the boy I’m going to marry. My parents think I’m silly for thinking these thoughts, but my heart knows. And Camden…well, he doesn’t like the idea of getting married—to anyone, not just me. He thinks people come to hate each other when they get married, but I know that’s not how it works. I promise him, that’s not how it works.

  His parents hate each other because they’re hateful people. They probably hate the sun for shining too brightly or the night sky for being too dark.

  Hateful, mean, horrible people.

  Not at all like Camden, who lets happiness in, even when he’s in his darkest place.

  I hate his parents. More, I hate that I can’t protect him and that he won’t let me. I know his secrets. Sharing them and his pain is one of the things that brought us close to each other. It also made us grow up faster than the other nine-year-olds we know.

  No matter how old we are right now, I know my feelings are real and that we’ll always be together.

  “Do you ever think about running away?” I ask him. My attention goes to the inside of my journal that details my everyday life, mostly with Camden.

  “I used to.”

  I don’t look up, but I feel him shrug his shoulders.

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “I met you.” His voice is calm, confident, but he shuffles his feet, his uncertainty bouncing between us.

  “I’d run away with you.” I look up from my journal into his unsmiling face and wring my hands together on my lap, anticipating his reply.

  “Your parents would find you.” Camden’s matter-of-fact tone makes my heart hurt.

  “We could go somewhere they’d never find me.”

  “Your parents love you.” He flinches on the word love, as if it were a bad word that left a sour taste in his mouth. “They’ll always find you.”

  “That’s true.”
It’s my turn to shrug my shoulders.

  I want him to believe me, to know I’d do anything for him, but the words stick in my throat. Instead, I lean my body over my desk to scribble on my journal, but my eyes stay trained on Camden.

  “I love you, Cam, which means I’ll always find you, too.”

  Camden exhales a loud breath, his nose whistling in the process. “One day, I’ll leave, Yan,” he says, his eyes looking away from me and toward a future I can’t see. A future he doesn’t want me to see. “When I do, no one will find me.”

  “I will.” Turning, I cup his chin with my hand, making him look at me, but after a short second, his eyes dart to the corner of my room.

  “I’ll make it so that even I can’t find me.” Defiantly, he folds his arms over his chest and continues to look away from me.

  “I’ll always find you.”

  He opens his mouth to answer, probably another smart retort, but stops when his cell phone chirps. The angry ring drains him of the will to speak. I know that look, and I know what it means.

  “Will you come over tonight?” I ask him, knowing I’ll leave the window to my bedroom open regardless of his answer.

  “Yeah,” he breathes.

  He’s still not looking at me, but I see the dread building behind his eyes, and just once, I wish I could save him.

  “You really think we could do it?” he asks.

  Immediately knowing what he’s talking about, my heart fills with fear. Not for myself or for Camden. But for my parents and the idea of them waking up one morning to find me missing. I’d do it for Camden though. To keep him safe. To keep him with me.

  “Sure.” I smile.

  “Then, you’re stupider than me.” He walks out of my room without even looking at me or acknowledging the tears suddenly falling down my face.

  I’m not stupid, I think, balling my hands into tight fists. I’m just a girl desperately in love with a boy who’s hurting more than I can bear.

  After dinner, I take a quick shower and brush my teeth. I do it all without argument because I’m ready to go to bed. I’m ready to wait for Camden to sneak into my bedroom and lie with me in bed.