The Girl of Diamonds and Rust

Book 3

The Half Shell Series

Susan Ward

Copyright © 2015 Susan Ward

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1511412984

ISBN-13: 978-1511412988

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

“Maybe this is love. Protecting the part of yourself most important to you and knowing when to let go so that you can keep a small piece of that person alive and real in your heart.”~~Chrissie Parker

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

PREVIEW: THE GIRL IN THE COMFORTABLE QUIET

PREVIEW: BROKEN CROWN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PROLOGUE

January 1993

I wake to the sound of glass hitting glass.

I ease away from Alan and gaze up at him. It’s barely morning, and he’s wide awake, when Alan hardly ever wakes before noon. His posture tells me he’s been sitting there quite a while, drinking and watching me.

“You are not returning to Berkeley,” he snaps.

All drowsiness leaves my flesh in a nerve-popping jolt. I scoot away from Alan, dragging the sheets to cover me, rapidly searching his face, and then my heart drops to my knees because his eyes are hooded as they burn into me.

He says, “You still talk in your sleep. Do you know that?”

No, no, no! Why did he ask me that?

“I didn’t know that,” I whisper, sounding surprisingly calm even though every part of me is frantic and afraid.

He takes a long swallow of his drink. “Neil hasn’t mentioned it?”

Oh God! “I stopped seeing Neil.”

Those black eyes fix on me, unblinking. “When did you end it with him?”

My body chills and then heat rises on my cheeks. I try to stutter out a safe response and somehow manage to say nothing. His eyes lock on me again.

“When did you end it with Neil? Don’t lie to me, Chrissie.”

I sit up in the bed, struggling to meet his gaze directly, though the way he is staring at me makes it an unbearably painful thing.

“I would never lie to you. I ended it with Neil because I love you.”

He sets down his drink, running a hand through his hair. “Goddamn you, I ask you not to do it and you rip out my heart anyway,” he says through gritted teeth. “You won’t be straight with me even when I ask you to and yet you just answered me, Chrissie.”

The phone rings and it makes me jump and kicks up Alan’s temper. He reaches out and grabs the receiver.

“What?” he bites off into the phone. “I’m in Malibu. I’m taking a couple days downtime at the beach. No, I’m not discussing that.”

My stomach turns. I can hear Nia’s voice through the phone. I can’t make out the words, but everything inside me grows cold. I don’t know which is worse: how Nia sounds talking to Alan or that he let me hear them talk because he is angry with me and wants to get in a blow during our fight without even being focused on me.

“OK,” Alan says. “That’s fine. Tell them I’ve agreed to that.”

He hangs up the phone and I stare at him, shaking. “You’re such an asshole. Why do you have to be so mean when you’re angry?”

I scramble from the bed, go for my bag and rapidly start packing up my things.

“That’s it, Chrissie. Run. Give you an excuse to run, not to have to face anything in your life directly, and you take it. That is what you do, isn’t it, love?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I hiss.

Every line in his face tightens in extreme anger. “You ran off in New York, and you fucked up everything for both of us. You fucked up my life, too. You don’t have a right to get angry today.”

“It didn’t sound fucked up to me on the phone.”

“I haven’t lived with Nia since six months before I came to see you in Berkeley,” he says, almost inflectionless. “I have told you that, Chrissie. We’ve reached a settlement. I gave Nia everything she wanted so I can finally get out. That call was her bleeding me one last time before we sign the papers. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”

He holds me in an unrelenting stare and his gaze is brutally intense, shards of fury and despondency and hurt. It’s too much, from everything uncertain and dangling, to possible and disintegrating in a horrible, unimaginable way; slamming together, brutally, all at once.

I continue to pack, my body shaking so fiercely I can barely grab hold of my clothes and shove them in. “I’m not going to answer that. I think it’s better I don’t. I think I should leave before we both say things we’ll regret.”

His eyes harden and some still functioning part of my brain warns that I’ve just fucked up big time, as Alan calmly grabs his pants and pulls them into place.

“That’s how you want to deal with this?” He shakes his head, not bothering to even look at me. “You can leave if you want to, but if you do we’re over, Chrissie. Or you can come to the patio, and if you are honest with me I will listen and we’ll see where we go from there.”

With that, Alan walks away. I stare at the door and sink down on the bed. He’s angrier than I have ever seen him, so angry he’s quiet. I shouldn’t even try to talk to him. The way he is now, this could spin out of control in any direction.

Alan wants honesty. My inner voice reminds me of all the reasons why this is so important to Alan, of all the times people he has loved have lied to him, and warns me of how dangerous it will be for us both if I tell him everything about Neil.

The distraught look on his face as he left the bedroom shames me. I was so unkind to him in how I behaved in this…will he forgive me…will the truth be enough? I don’t know, and that scares the hell out of me and I am more afraid than I have been at any other moment in my life.

Somehow I manage to go to my duffel, pull out some sweats, and dress. I open the door. The house is quiet when I step into the hall, and it surprises me that it is. I don’t know what I expected, but not this heavy, waiting silence.

I go toward the wall of glass and I find Alan on the patio just as he said he would be. Then I slide open the door and step out.

After a minute or two, Alan pushes off the wall and stomps out his cigarette on the concrete. His jaw is clenching. His gaze shifts and his eyes lock on me.

“Even after this I’m not sure I want us over,” he says, sounding frustrated with himself, but he is pulsing with anger even more strongly than he was in the bedroom. “You didn’t answer me when I asked before. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”

I stare at him, the tightly held arrangement of his long body parts, and with aching despair I know I shouldn’t have come out here to try to talk him. We will both end up bloody, hating each other before this is through.

“We should wait to talk until you’re calmer.”

Alan’s eyes flash and widen. “Not today, Chrissie. That is the worst thing you could do for either of us. Walk out that door without answering every single question I have and we are over. That is the only thing I am positive of today.”

I stand frozen in place, searching his face. I can’t tell for certain if he means it, but I do know if I stay he will rip us to shreds. We don’t have a chance if I stay here.