Pieces of Summer (A stand-alone novel)(67)

“This shouldn’t be me telling you this, but f*ck it. She’s getting careless, and someone has to tell you since you’re obviously f*cking her.”

My spine stiffens when I hear the bite to his tone, but it doesn’t sound like jealousy. Just frustration.

He glances around at all the nosy *s before gesturing for us to follow him outside. As soon as we get out to the parking lot and have privacy, he turns and faces us, as Blake takes my side.

“Mika suffered a major brain injury when she was eighteen.”

My breath gets painful as I try to digest that, and Blake leans against a car to the side as he exhales heavily.

“Damn,” Blake says quietly.

“Her mom pushed her off the second floor, and Mika landed on a coffee table. She miraculously survived without spinal injuries, but her head hit so hard it caused the brain to swell and bleed. They had to do emergency surgery, but the operating surgeon had been drinking that night. He didn’t tell anyone until it was too late and he almost killed her. Again, she escaped death and also managed to escape being paralyzed. Another doctor stepped in just in time to save her life, but the damage had been done, even though no one knew it immediately.”

I drop the tailgate on the back of the random truck behind me, and I sit down on it when my knees threaten to buckle.

“What happened?” I ask in a strained, regretful tone. Mika told me shit went bad, but I had no idea…

“Mika slipped into a coma for five weeks. When she woke up, she couldn’t speak, walk, or anything else. It took her a few months, but it all slowly started coming back to her, and she eventually remembered all the basics. Another blessing.”

He leans against another car, sighing as he crosses his arms over his chest.

“Unfortunately, no one realized then just how bad shit was. The more she remembered how to do, the more her mind started short circuiting on other things. Gradually, she sort of lost it. She’d had a small case of OCD before the accident, from what Aidan told me, but it started growing extreme. It was more than that though. Mika started having panic attacks when someone told her dates or times. She’d watch the clock—literally. If someone was a minute early or late, she’d have a meltdown, throwing tantrums and hitting herself. This progressed into cutting later on as the ‘pressure’ started building in her stomach. Before cutting, there was sex. And that… well, that was a whole other set of issues.”

My stomach roils, but I try to digest his words, processing everything slowly.

“It’s not OCD,” Hunter goes on. “People with severe OCD need routines. The disruption causes irrational agitation. Mika doesn’t need a routine. In fact, she needs the opposite. But she does have some OCD mannerisms.”

He runs a hand through his hair before continuing.

“What makes us rational? No one really knows. What makes us understand it’s ridiculous to throw a fit over something small?” Hunter asks, shrugging. “Whatever it is, Mika lost it. It got to be too much for Aidan. By that time, her dad had already had a stroke, and their mom had offed herself in a jail cell the same night she thought she killed her daughter. Aidan and Mika only had each other. Shit was bad. Worse than bad.”

He swallows like he’s staving off his emotion. My chest feels too heavy to even take a breath.

“She was seeing a doctor at the time who believed she’d had a psychotic break rather than anything wrong with her actual brain. Her symptoms individually fit certain diagnoses, but altogether, it was an unnamed phenomena. He wanted to study her to find all her triggers, and Aidan finally put her in his care at a psych hospital.”

A woman walks by, and Hunter waits until she passes completely before continuing, as though he’s unloading government secrets and is paranoid of someone overhearing. He pockets his hands before kicking a rock, staring at the ground as he continues.

“No dates. No times. Those are the major ones. Vagueness is key, and no contradictions or conflicting statements. After work means after work. Not after beers.”

It feels like I’m being punched in the stomach. This is my fault?

“I didn’t know,” I say quietly.

“I’m aware,” he sighs, looking back up. “She shouldn’t have gone this far off the reservation about a small confliction. She should have been able to write it out.”

“What does that mean?” Blake asks, feeling as lost and f*cking confused as I do.

“That man was a f*cking nightmare, but no one can deny Mika came out of that place different… able to cope. The best thing Dr. Kravitz did for Mika was find her an outlet. Too many variables are unpredictable, and for her to live as normal as possible, she needed a way to finish things and fix them when they conflicted. He helped her train her mind to turn reality into fantasy—so much so, that she actually became an author. When she fixes a scene in her head, she then turns it into a book. Every time. It gives her closure and control over a situation.”

No, I don’t get it. None of it makes sense to me, but Hunter seems to act like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I actually feel f*cking envious of him, because it feels like he knows her better than I do.

“Has she been writing at all?” he asks, staring at me.

“I don’t know,” I answer on a heavy breath. “I go to work, and she stays there.”