Five Ways to Fall (Ten Tiny Breaths, #4)
by K.A. Tucker
Prologue
Is it just me?
Or does everyone have a moment of “crazy” in their life—when raw emotion runs over your common sense like an eighteen-wheeler, compelling you to do and say things that make others stare in shock and shake their heads at you, wondering why you’re acting so foolishly, why you won’t just let go, why you can’t see the truth.
Only, you don’t care what they think or say because this is your life and this is your heart that has been swallowed.
That’s what Jared did.
He swallowed my heart whole and then let my unwanted remains simply . . . fall.
Perhaps I’m being a tad melodramatic. Perhaps, when I figure out how to pick myself back up again, I’ll laugh at all of this.
Until then . . . my remains will be here, lying in a pile of rejection.
Again.
~Reese
Chapter 1
REESE
I’ve never seen that look on Daddy’s face before.
He’s had it since he walked back from the pay phone. “Go on, now,” he urges, his gruff voice cracking. “Go on inside.”
“But . . . why?” I whine, casting wary eyes at the quiet truck-stop diner, empty but for a man with a hairy Santa beard.
Daddy rests his hand on the steering wheel and turns his body to face me. “Reesie, baby.” I don’t like his tone. It’s that serious one that makes my bottom lip wobble. “I need you to go back inside, sit back down in our booth, and ask that nice waitress for another piece of that pecan pie you like so much,” he says slowly, evenly.
I swallow back my tears. “Alone?”
His face tightens, like he’s mad. “Only for a little bit.”
“And then you’ll come in?”
He squeezes his eyes shut and I’m afraid I just made him really angry, but . . . I’ve never gone anywhere alone. I’m only five. “Remember that Daddy loves you, baby girl. Now go on.”
Stifling back a sob, I slide along the old bench seat and push the heavy old Ford truck door open.
“Reesie,” Daddy calls out as my red shoes hit the sidewalk.
Turning, I see his hand wiping at something on his cheek before he gives me a wink and a smile. The truck door makes a loud bang as I swing it tight. Holding my breath, I climb the steps and push as hard as I can against the diner door, the jangle of the bell ringing in my ears. I dart across the black-and-white checkered floor and climb into our booth—the one we were sitting in before Daddy called Mommy; it still has our dishes on the table—just in time to see the taillights of Daddy’s truck disappear.
When the nice waitress with the big hair comes by, I tell her my daddy will be here soon and I order that piece of chocolate pecan pie with a please and thank you. I sit in that booth and gobble it up, thinking how lucky I am to get two pieces in one night.
And I wait.
With my chin resting on my palm, tucked into the corner of the booth, I stare out that window, watching for the familiar blue truck to reappear, checking the door every time that bell jangles. When the nice policeman sits down across from me and asks me where my daddy is, I tell him he’ll be here soon.
There’s no kind policeman to comfort me now. No nice lady bringing me a piece of chocolate pecan pie to combat the sourness in my mouth. But at least this time I wasn’t abandoned.
I’m reminded of that the second I see my stepfather’s face through the small glass window in the door.
His salt-and-pepper hair is more salt than pepper and he’s gained at least ten pounds around his waist since I last saw him—nine years ago—but there’s no mistaking Jack Warner. I don’t think he recognizes me, though. The way his steely blue eyes wander over my violet hair . . . my piercings . . . the giant “Jared” tattoo that coils around my right shoulder, I think he’s wondering if the police officer led him into the wrong room.
I’m lucky that I’m even in a room this time. Normally they throw you into a holding cell or make you sit in an uncomfortable chair next to a drunk named Seth who stinks of malt scotch and body odor. I’m pretty sure the female arresting officer felt sorry for me. By the lethal glare she threw at Jared and Caroline as I was escorted out of Lina’s apartment, past their apartment door, on my way to the cruiser, the officer wasn’t impressed with what she’d heard of the situation.
She didn’t hear it from me, of course. Growing up around lawyers, I’ve learned not to say a word to the police without one present. It was my best friend and next-door neighbor, Lina, who declared that the apartment I trashed earlier today is still technically mine—even if my name isn’t on the lease—and that they should be arresting the thieving, heartless bitch who stole my husband.
Unfortunately, I’m the only one sitting here now.
I hold my breath as I watch Jack take a seat, adjusting his slightly rumpled suit jacket on his large frame as he tries to get comfortable in the hard plastic chair. It’s ironic—in this moment, it feels like he’s both an integral part of my childhood and a complete stranger.
I can’t believe I called him.
I can’t believe he actually came.
With a heavy sigh, he finally murmurs, “Reese’s Pieces.” He’s looking down at me the same way he did when I got caught rearranging the letters of a Baptist church sign to read something no nine-year-old girl—or twenty-year-old, for that matter—should have in her vocabulary. Despite the severe strain in our once close relationship, warmth immediately spreads through my chest. I haven’t heard that nickname in years. “So . . . destruction of private property?”