Fall to Pieces: A story about addiction and love Read online

  Fall to Pieces

  Shari J. Ryan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chance

  Chapter 2

  August

  Chapter 3

  Chance

  Chapter 4

  August

  Chapter 5

  Chance

  Chapter 6

  August

  Chapter 7

  Chance

  Chapter 8

  August

  Chapter 9

  Chance

  Chapter 10

  August

  Chapter 11

  Chance

  Chapter 12

  August

  Chapter 13

  Chance

  Chapter 14

  August

  Chapter 15

  Chance

  Chapter 16

  August

  Chapter 17

  Chance

  Chapter 18

  August

  Chapter 19

  Chance

  Chapter 20

  August

  Chapter 21

  Chance

  Chapter 22

  August

  Chapter 23

  Chance

  Chapter 24

  August

  Chapter 25

  Chance

  Chapter 26

  August

  Chapter 27

  Chance

  Chapter 28

  August

  Chapter 29

  Chance

  Chapter 30

  August

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  August

  Epilogue Part I

  Chance

  Epilogue Part II

  August

  Bonus

  Take a peek at a preview from one of my bestselling series

  About the Author

  Also By Shari J. Ryan

  Acknowledgments

  FALL TO PIECES

  * * *

  SHARI J. RYAN

  * * *

  Copyright © 2020 by Shari J. Ryan

  * * *

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  * * *

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  * * *

  Edited by: Cindy Dimpfl

  * * *

  Cover Photographer:

  Reggie Deanching - R+M Photography

  Models:

  Cody Smith and Elizabeth Babcock

  Chapter One

  Chance

  The antique brass bell on the door clangs, greeting another patron into this somber-lit muggy bar that has been rotting on the corner of Smith Street for the last hundred years. I don’t know why, but the damp stone walls and sticky-film-covered hardwoods make for a good local hot spot in town.

  Out of habit, I peer over my shoulder at every person who strolls through the door. It’s usually the same crowd every day, but occasionally a new face will wander inside. He or she instantly becomes the focus of everyone’s attention.

  My brows furrow as I observe a petite brunette with a blunt-cut bob walk inside. Compared to the rest of us here, she appears a little too polished with her business-casual attire to walk into this rundown, hole-in-the-wall bar, especially alone at night.

  This girl has a mysterious look in her eyes, and her rigid stature highlights a sense of confidence. She didn’t accidentally stumble upon this bar. There is an obvious purpose as she falls heavily down onto a bar stool.

  Despite my desire to find out who she is and why someone like her would choose this bar of all bars, I’m not looking to be the idiot who approaches her. I’m sure she must have a boyfriend hiding in the shadows just waiting for someone to say hi to her. I’m certain someone will.

  “Sorry, hey, bro. It’s slammed tonight. How was your day?” Luke, my buddy and owner of this joint, places my drink down on a coaster before spinning around to tend to his next order.

  “No worries, man. My day wasn’t bad. How about you?” I talk loud enough so he can hear me while racing down the length of the bar. I’m used to having conversations with him while he circles around shaking drinks, popping bottle caps, and scribbling down food orders on a notepad. He’s a pro at multitasking.

  “It was quiet until an hour ago. Now, I don’t know what’s going on here. You’d expect I was offering free booze.”

  “Are you?” I joke back.

  Luke shakes his head and grunts. “Definitely not. I’ve got your burger cookin’ in the back. It shouldn’t be too long.”

  “Thanks a bunch.” I’m starving and thankful I don’t have to sit through a bunch of orders. It’s always nice to have the perk of being friends with the owner. Perks, it seems this new girl would like in on. She’s drumming her pink-tinted fingernails against the bar-top and her knee is bouncing a mile a minute.

  After tossing two beers to the other side of the bar, Luke notices the girl sitting a few seats down, staring at him with evident impatience.

  “What can I get for you, miss?”

  The girl scans the back shelf as if searching for the perfect bottle of liquor. Either that or she doesn’t know what she wants. “I’ll have a glass of whiskey,” she states, her words razor sharp.

  “What kind of whiskey are you in the mood for?” Luke asks. It isn’t a question he has to ask often. Most people know what they want and how they want it when they order here.

  “Surprise me,” the girl says with a shrug.

  I catch the look in Luke’s eye as he turns for the shelf of bottles behind him. He’s wondering what she’s doing here too. Women don’t typically seem pulled to this place even if they do like whiskey—all whiskey, without preference. Luke grabs the bottle of Jim Beam, the weakest of his whiskeys, and pours a splash into a glass.

  “Maybe you’ll enjoy this one, young lady,” he says, setting the drink down in front of her. Luke sends another questioning look in my direction. I can assume he’s wondering why she didn’t stop him from pouring the Jim Beam. It isn’t a first choice around here.

  The girl raises the glass to her nose and draws in a whiff. Her ears flinch back, and her small nose scrunches. Only connoisseurs smell their whiskey before consuming the shit. It isn’t a rose, and she most unquestionably is unfamiliar with the taste of whiskey.

  Snow White purses her lips and presses them to the glass before taking a quick taste, just enough to wet her tongue. Another rookie mistake—just drink the damn shit. She sniffles as she places the glass back down on her coaster. “It’s good, thank you,” she says to Luke. I wasn’t expecting to hear that response.

  Luke gives her a quick wink and grabs the bottle of Jim Beam to fill more of her glass. “I can add a little water to it if you’d like,” he offers to her.

  “Water?” She reacts like he offered to add something vile. “Charming, but I don’t need water.”

  “Whiskey lovers sometimes add a bit of water to bring out the taste. I wasn’t sure what kind of whiskey drinker you are, but one should never presume, right?” Luke isn’t one to beat around the bush with his patrons.

  The girl lifts a brow at Luke, seeming to question his facts.

  I should stop staring before I become the weak idiot who approaches this chick tonight. She could be meeting someone; a tough guy and needs to look the pa
rt. That might make more sense than a pretty little thing walking in here like she isn’t concerned about being in a bar full of rowdy, drunken assholes.

  “One more, please. Something different this time,” she says along with the sound of her glass clinking against the bar.

  Again, I tell myself to stop looking over, but I’m curious why she’s asking for more when she still has a full glass sitting in front of her. My head falls to the side for a moment as I notice that the glass is empty. It’s hardly been a minute since Luke placed the contents down in front of her. Damn. There is no way she inhaled that—not with the look I saw on her face after she took the first sip.

  “Are you sure about that, miss?” Luke asks.

  I wince on behalf of Luke because in the few minutes I’ve studied this girl, I can assume she won’t take kindly to someone second-guessing a decision she made.

  “Yes, I’m certain,” she says, gritting through her perky peach lips.

  Stress lines cut into Luke’s forehead as he tends to a bottle of Swift Texas Whiskey and pours the girl another glass. Luke will hold a tab if he feels a patron has had too much to drink, but after knowing the man as long as I have, I’m presuming he wants to know why this girl is sitting here, drinking whiskey like it’s a glass of water she just found in the middle of a desert.

  “What’s your story?” Luke asks her. I wonder how Luke keeps track of the information he inherits. He’s a good man, always asking people about their troubles, taking them in, digesting the long drawn out stories that could be shortened to a few sentences. He’s good at giving them a listening ear they often need. I’m not sure I could do what he does. He’s obviously going for sainthood.

  “I don’t have a story,” the girl says.

  Luke directs his attention to the glass he’s drying, giving the girl a minute in case she changes her mind. “I see, but everyone’s got a story, don’t they?”

  “No,” she says. “Not everyone. In fact, I just finished a story. It was a horrible, miserable plot in the worst book I’ve ever read. In fact, the story was so bad, no one else should ever read it.”

  “Okay then. I can respect that. Do you at least have a name?” he asks.

  She glares at him for a minute in between her long drawn out sip of the remaining whiskey in her glass. “Do you ask the name of every woman who sits down at your bar?”

  “Well, yes I do. And the fellas too,” he argues. “Let me introduce you to a few of the regulars. That’s Dill.” He points to the guy sitting two seats down from me. “That’s Phillip.” He nods toward the guy on the opposite end of the bar. “And that there is Chance.” Luke gestures to me, and I drop my head, avoiding eye contact. I don’t want her to think I’ve been tuning in to the conversation this whole time. “Oh, and I’m Luke.”

  The girl pulls in a sharp breath and presses her lips together into a hint of a smile. “Okay, Luke,” she drones. “Well, I’m August, but we still aren’t friends.”

  Luke lifts his palms up in defense. I know he meant nothing bad by his attempt at small talk. “Understood. I’ll just carry on over here, and you—” Luke twists his lips to the side and nods his head in a circle, “just do whatever it is you’re doing over there.”

  No one ever turns down a friendly smile like Luke’s. The guy makes more in tips than the techies in the high-rise buildings downtown. I’ve told him a time or two he should take it up a notch and get his behind over to a bar that is friendlier to women. Between his good looks and charm, he’d make more cash somewhere else. Though, I doubt his wife would be too fond of that idea—money or no money.

  “Dude, what is happening?” Luke utters, leaning the palms of his hands on the bar-top in front of me. “Did you hear all that?” He’s being quiet, but I’m not entirely inconspicuous. I get the feeling Miss August is giving us a lethal look, but I don’t want to look over and catch any part of that.

  “Yeah, something crawled up her skirt,” I mumble beneath my breath.

  “Chicks don’t come into this place. I don’t remember the last time I served one. Do you?”

  I’m here every night, so I should remember just as well. “Nope, I don’t recall the last time a dame walked in through that door.”

  “You look like you had a rough one today. You sure you had a good day?” Luke asks, grabbing a rag from his back pocket to clean up the smudge in front of me.

  Luke and I are the same age, went to high school together, and started working on a housing development project down the street to build up a suburban community within the city. When that ended, I kept up with construction, and he landed a job here at Kenny’s Whiskey Bar. He eventually bought the place from the old man he worked for, and after all this time, I finally see how our decisions affected us. I look like I’m rounding forty, and he still has his baby flubber cheeks with doll-like dimples. Luke doesn’t give a shit about his looks, though. He’s never had a reason to care. Annabelle Bloomer snatched Luke up during senior year of high school, and they’ve been together ever since.

  “The humidity was high today. The roofing project at Dunn's house was rough.”

  “Damn, I don’t miss that crap,” Luke says.

  Maybe I picked the wrong job. Hell, I’d settle down with a wife and kids if I worked in a bar too. “Yeah, it never changes. That’s for damn sure.”

  “Saw you checking that chick out, August. Want me to get her number for you?” Luke jiggles his brows and pinches a toothpick between his lips.

  “Are you crazy, man? She’d probably pull a pistol on you just for asking.”

  “Probably,” Luke says. “I love ya like a brother, but not that much.”

  “No offense taken,” I say, taking a peanut from the straw basket next to me.

  “Funny, Chance. Real funny.”

  Another local walks on in through the front door and Luke straightens his posture to greet the guy which offers me another minute to study the scene at the other end. With an elbow propped up on the bar, August leans the side of her head into her fist while she scrolls through her phone with the other hand.

  This girl is so out of place here with her long flowery skirt and white shirt hanging off the sides of her shoulders.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I can’t help blinking a few times before I realize August is gawking at me, demanding an answer.

  I hold my hand up in the form of an apology. “I—I ah was watching for the guy to step out of the bathroom so I can take a leak. Is that okay with you?”

  August cups her hand over her mouth. She has long, slender fingers, and wearing too many rings, but not one of them is a wedding band. I guess I can scratch off the assumption of a cheating husband from the list of possibilities. “I’m so sorry. Chance, is it? I apologize.”

  “No worries, hun. Sorry for interrupting you.”

  August twists around in her seat and takes a handful of trail mix while fixing her eyes on the TV above the shelves of liquor bottles.

  There’s a surprising trait. She accepts being wrong ... even though she isn’t.

  When the bathroom empties, I fulfill my fib by walking past her as if I didn’t know she was still sitting a few seats down from me. If I glance at the bar mirror, I might see her looking at me, but I won’t risk our eyes making contact.

  I take my time in the men’s room, but not too much time. When I step out, I watch August polish off the rest of her whiskey, slap the glass down on the bar, and strut off toward the door as if she knows something about the world I might die to discover.

  Chapter Two

  August

  One Week Ago

  I’ve seen horrible things, like a doped-up mother dropping her unsuspecting child off at a shelter for homeless children. I’ve seen the aftermath of an abused child, a child who doesn’t know when or if they’ll see their parents again. I know what to expect when I go to work each day; a house full of children will be excited to see me for my shift, but I won’t be able to hug them or let them hug me beca
use it’s against the rules. I won’t be able to console them when they’re missing a parent and I can’t tell them their life will be okay. Yet, someone needs to take care of these poor children, and that person is me.

  After leaving the group home yesterday, my only plan was to go back to my place, hit the pavement for a two-mile run, cook up an easy tuna casserole for dinner, and binge watch whatever shows pop up on the trending feed of Netflix.

  When I approached the main entrance to my apartment, I reached into my pocket for the keys, scraping my fingertips along the ridged edge of the pointed teeth. A pain dug into my stomach, unexplained, without warning. I wondered if my lunch was bad, but I had a turkey sandwich each day this week, and I had been fine the days before. I swung open the glass door, skipped by the mailboxes, promising to return to my bills later, and jogged up the three flights of stairs. I broke more than a few sweats on the way, but mostly because of the nagging pain in my stomach which is getting worse by the minute.

  I figured Keegan was home, since he only works until four most days. In fact, I don’t recall a time he wasn’t home when I got out of work, so I twisted the doorknob and gave it a shove, but there was no give. I took my keys back out of my pocket and struggled to find the right one before another round of pain rolled through my stomach. I unlocked the door and rushed inside, dropping my bags by the coat hook next to our entryway closet. “Keegan?” I called out. Our apartment isn’t large, but we opted for the studio plus a bedroom layout, so he couldn’t be out of hearing range. I figured he could be in the bathroom or taking a nap. “Babe?”