The Ocean Between Us (A Southern Heroes Novel Book 1)

by Michelle Heard

  Feeling hot, I grab hold of my shirt and drag it over my head. I’m in desperate need of a cold shower. I’m sure I’ll feel better then.

  The basin jumps and wobbles in front of me as I reach for my toothbrush. My stomach rolls and I freeze, waiting to see what my stomach decides.

  “You’re gonna fall and hurt yourself.”

  He’s still here? Fuck my life.

  Aiden slips his arm around my waist which makes the world stop tipping to the side.

  “It feels soooo good when you touch me,” I admit in my drunken state.

  I never knew it could feel this amazing being touched by someone. I only knew what it felt like to be abused by my mother. Just thinking of her makes my stomach roll with nausea.

  “I need to brush my teeth.”

  I want to cry because I feel so bloody awful, but first I need to get rid of the taste of alcohol and clean myself up. I’ll deal with the embarrassment once I feel human again.

  “Let’s do that then.”

  I feel his chest pressing against my back as his arms come around me. Damn, that feels good. I want to lean back and close my eyes for a second.

  “No, Emma.” My eyes snap open, and I blink a couple of times. “Brush your teeth,” he whispers right by my ear.

  I reach for the jumping items. The basin rushes toward me as I grab for it, and it makes my stomach lurch. When I try to squirt some toothpaste on the brush, I get it all over my hand.

  “Crap, it won’t stay still,” I mutter. I shake my hand to get the toothpaste off.

  “Let me get that for you,” he says. With his arms caging me in, he takes hold of my hands to steady them.

  “You’re so nice,” I whisper.

  I’m so not making a great first impression. I think I’ve done just about everything possible to put off Aiden for good.

  Finally, I get the toothbrush in my mouth and scrub and spit for a full minute before I rinse. I repeat the action another two times, but I can’t get rid of the bitter taste on my tongue.

  As I reach for the mouthwash, I feel Aiden’s fingers brush down the length of my back.

  “Fuck, Emma. What happened to you?”

  Opening the bottle of mouthwash, I mumble, “I got drunk. Alcohol is poison from the lowest level of hell.”

  I rinse a few times, and I’m about to start drinking the rest when Aiden takes the bottle from me.

  “You’re minty enough. Let’s get you in bed.”

  “Can I shower first?” I pull a face as I fight the urge to lie down right where I’m standing so I can sleep.

  Leaning back against Aiden, I close my eyes until the smell of alcohol wafts up my nostrils again.

  I stink like Mom.

  “I need to shower. I need to get her off me,” I whisper as I move towards the shower. I manage to open the taps and then stumble under the cold spray, clothes and all.

  I rest my forehead against the tiles while I unzip my jeans. Struggling to shove them down my legs, the wet fabric gets stuck around my knees, and I almost lose my balance.

  Strong hands take hold of my hips, and then I hear, “You can’t even stand, babe.”

  I close my eyes as my chest tightens. It sounds nothing like when my mother calls me babes.

  He turns me around and helps me to step out of the jeans. Opening my eyes, I watch as drops run down his face. His eyes have darkened to charcoal as they start at my legs and travel back up to my face.

  The tingles are back, spreading through my body, and it feels intoxicating.

  I want to feel the way he made me feel in the car. I don’t want to think. I want to lose myself again until there’s only that maddening rush inside me. I’ve never felt as alive as I did at that moment while we were kissing.

  I take in his wet clothes. Damn, he looks delicious. I reach for the hem of his shirt and tug it up.

  “You’re wet, Aiden.”

  Duh… like he didn’t know that already.

  It’s all my alcohol-drenched mind can come up with as an excuse to get under his clothes. He feels hot and silky wet beneath my fingertips. I get lost as I take in the ink covering his skin. As I glance up, he pins me with those penetrating grays of his.

  I still want tonight to happen so very badly, but I’ll have to leave if I go through with it. There’s no way I can share a flat with him. I swallow hard as I try to gather my thoughts so the words won’t come out all jumbled.

  Aiden leans closer and presses me lightly back against the tiles. The words get lost in my throat as I tighten my hold on his shirt. I’ve never wanted a man so much before. I want his touch everywhere on my body. I just want to lose myself in him and feel good for one night.

  “Be careful what you ask of me, Emma. I’m tryin’ really hard here.”

  He moves in even closer to me until I can feel the heat from his body against my cooling skin. Heart pounding, I push his shirt up, until he has no other choice but to let it slip over his head.

  Holy crap.

  This man is a work of art. He’s all hard muscle and ink. My abdomen clenches until I feel it in my core. I bite my cheek to keep myself from saying something embarrassing.

  My eyes zero in on his right arm and chest, both inked with some sort of tribal design. I follow the pattern from his shoulder over his chest, and woven into the design is the head of an eagle. I swallow and reach for him - for the eagle as my lips pull into a smile.

  Tracing the outline of the tattoo, I know there’s no way I can just use Aiden for one night.

  The water stops, and as my body starts to shiver, Aiden wraps a towel around me. Somehow, the bed appears before me, and I watch it for a second as the world spins around me.

  Damn, never in my life has a bed looked so good. Dropping the towel, I struggle out of the wet underwear. Once I’m in my pajamas, I climb under the covers and lie as still as I can. The world continues to whirl around me which only makes the nausea worse.

  “Drink this.”

  Peeling my eyes open, I see Aiden holding a glass out to me. With shaky hands, I take the water and tablets from him and quickly swallow it down.

  “Why are you so nice to me? I haven’t been nice to you,” I groan as he places the glass next to the bed.

  When Aiden sits down next to me, I rest my head against his chest. It’s a shame he’s not the one. Got all drunk, but I didn’t manage to lose my virginity. So much for killing two birds with one stone.

  “I’m sorry I got drunk. I think you would’ve liked the sober me,” I whisper as I snuggle closer to him. “Why is it such a hard thing to lose? I’m going to die one. I’m going to be the only one left on the bloody planet,” I ramble drowsily.

  “Sleep now.” That’s all he says while his fingers softly caress my back.

  CHAPTER 5

  EMMA

  With every second that ticks by, I just know I’m going to be in more trouble, but I can’t bring myself to leave the safety of my room. She started drinking earlier than usual which means nothing good for me.

  People define abuse as being physical violence, and nine out of ten times it is by a man. Abuse. Few people would call what Mom does to me abuse. Dad sure doesn’t care.

  She sees herself as the head of the house, and Dad is too much of a wimp to stand up to her. You do everything she says or else she’ll make you pay with her cruel words. Her tongue is sharper than any double-edged sword.

  Some days she’ll just make you pay because she’s had too much to drink. That’s usually Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I stay in my room on those days. I only leave it when I really have to. And I have to now. I need to pee so badly.

  I open the door enough to listen. I can’t hear her, so I make my run for the toilet. It’s on my way back that she catches me.

  “Emma.” She never slurs. She doesn’t get slurry when she’s had too much to drink. She doesn’t pass out. She’s not one of those drunks.

  With a sense of dread washing over me, I walk to the living room. I just need to b
e quick. Do what she wants and get back to my room. Don’t make eye contact.

  She’s sitting in her favorite chair between the two couches. Light from the TV breaks the darkness. She looks like a nasty old hag perched on her throne.

  “Babes.”

  My stomach drops at hearing the word. When she calls me that, it means there’s a speech coming.

  “Fill my drink. Half ice, half wine.”

  Like she has to remind me after all these years, but she does, every single day. She kids herself into thinking the ice thins out the wine.

  I do as she says and fill her glass, hating myself for doing it. I’m enabling her addiction. If I don’t, I’ll be in more trouble. According to Mom, she doesn’t have a problem.

  I place the glass down on the table next to her, so I don’t have to hand it to her. Touching her is something I try to avoid at all costs. It makes me feel dirty. It disgusts me just to think about touching her hand.

  “Sit, babes,” she starts, and my insides knot up with fear. “Sit with Mommy.”

  She’s not my bloody Mommy! I want to scream the words at her red, drunken, glazed-over eyes. But instead, I sit and look down at my folded hands. I look down so she won’t see the repulsed look on my face.

  “You’re going to be a failure, babes.”

  I sigh. Really slow of course. It’s more like a deep breath. If she catches me being disrespectful in any way, it will undoubtedly be the end of my pitiful existence.

  “You’re so beautiful, but if you don’t study harder, you’ll fail. Look at how well your brother is doing. He got the brains, and you got the beauty. You both got my fancy genes.”

  I don’t feel beautiful. I feel stupid, and it’s all because of her. She is common, and no amount of money can change that fact. She looks down on others, but behind closed doors, she is nothing but common rubbish. It saddens me to think this of my own mother, but it’s the awful truth.

  “You’re mine, and you’re beautiful.”

  There’s the reason I don’t feel beautiful. To me, she is the ugliest person alive. Alcohol has made her ugly. I can see it eating away at her skin, the wrinkles starting early, the darkness in her eyes.

  “You’re going to fail. You can’t go around wasting your time on things like friends, dating, and those pathetic books you read.” This is her way of telling me not to even dare bring a friend home. Not that I would. I’d be too embarrassed.

  Her voice starts to grow angry, and this is where she doesn’t make sense anymore. She always falls off the bus.

  “I was so pretty when I was your age.”

  My heart starts to thump faster in my chest, and I say what I know she wants to hear. Anything to make her stop. “Mom’s still pretty. None of the other kids have such a pretty mom.”

  I hear her sigh and then the rattle of ice as she takes a sip.

  “You’re so lucky,” she says, and dread starts to spin its web around me. “You have me. It was hard growing up with your grandfather. He used to beat the shit out of your grandmother. Blood all over the walls.” I don’t know if this is the truth. My gran never says anything bad about my grandfather. He died when I was thirteen. All I know of him was that he drank – brandy, straight from the bottle.

  “Oh, those were good times. He’d bring food home from the restaurant-” She stops, and I know she’s waiting for me to look up. Her beady eyes stare hard at me, dropping to my waist, then back up to my face. “You must be careful what you eat, babes. You don’t want to go getting all chunky like your dad’s side. They’re all hips and bum.” Then she smiles, a watery smile, as she refers to my biological father whom I have no memory of.

  “You’re so beautiful, just like me.” She reaches for my hand and I know I must keep still.

  I swallow hard as I watch her hand creep closer, but horrified, I watch my own move to avoid her touch.

  Crap! Crap! Crap!

  What have I done? Why did I move?

  Terror washes hot through my body. She’s going to flay me with that tongue of hers.

  Her eyes harden as her mouth sets in a grim line. “You don’t want me to touch you?” Her voice drips with rage.

  Fear ripples over me, tightening its hold on my chest, and I dare a glance at her. Her eyes are usually brown, but when she gets like this, they go black. Black and hard and hateful.

  She hates me. I know she does because no mother that loves her daughter would do this to her. She’s spiteful and malicious because she only puts me down, never my brother. Never the perfect one.

  “No, Mom… I mean, yes… I mean… Mom can touch me,” I ramble as panic sets hard in the pit of my stomach.

  “Do I repulse you?” Her voice dips even lower, and her eyes start to gleam as they become little slits.

  “No, Mom.” I’ll have to work hard to defuse her, or I’m going to sit here until tomorrow morning, listening to her wail on about what a horrible daughter I am.

  “I love Mom.” I try to avoid saying the word ‘you.’ She really tears into me then. It’s disrespectful to her. She comes from an Afrikaans family where you’re taught that you don’t ‘you’ and ‘your’ your parents and elders.

  “Please, hold my hand.” I reach for her with a trembling hand, trying not to show disgust on my face.

  She yanks away and downs half her glass of wine.

  “I can’t believe this!” she wails. “My own daughter finds me repulsive. I sacrifice my life for you. I give you a roof over your head. I give you food, and…” I cringe back, “this is how you repay me? I only want the best for you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” That’s all I can do now until she stops.

  “You’re selfish!”

  “I am. I’ll do better. I’m sorry, Mom,” I say the empty words which mean nothing to me.

  Dad comes around the corner and looks from Mom to me. If only he’ll stop her, but he never does. He just goes back into the room to go watch his stupid TV shows in there, choosing to ignore what’s happening in his own home.

  “You’re going to be just like your father if you don’t get your act together.”

  Again, she means my biological father. The one who left us before I could walk. The one who didn’t want me either. This one, my stepfather, adopted us, and he’s not much more of a man than my biological father was.

  “No, I won’t.” I swallow the bile down. “I’ll be like Mom.”

  “You just read those books, that’s all you do,” she goes on. “You’re throwing your life away. Life is hard, babes.” She leans over and hisses in my face. Her stinking breath wafts over me, sticking to my skin. “And without me, you won’t make it. Ever.”

  She sits back, her chin wobbling. Crap, not the tears.

  I have to hold her. It’s the only way to calm her down. I get up and move to her, my body feeling rigid. It feels as if every muscle is fighting me, wanting to run the other way. I reach out to her, my arms like rubber. I hug her to my chest, and another wave of disgust wells up in me, threatening to squeeze the last bit of life from my body. The smell of her greasy hair makes my stomach turn. The clamminess of her alcohol-drenched skin sticks to my hands.

  I go numb.

  No, I’m lying. I do feel something. I feel sick. To. My. Stomach. Sick.

  “I’m nothing without Mom. I won’t make it without Mom. Ever. Please hold me, Mom. Don’t let me go.”

  I hate myself the most. I hate myself so much.

  I can still taste the horrid words on my tongue.

  Arms tighten around me, and I stiffen. A voice whispers right next to my ear, and it’s not Mom’s voice.

  She’s not here.

  “It’s okay, Emma. It’s just a dream.”

  Opening my eyes, I’m afraid I’ll see my mother, and it won’t just be a nightmare but my reality.

  The first thing I see is a swirl of black ink. I pull back slightly so I can follow the trail of ink down from Aiden’s shoulder to his chest.

  “An eagle,” I whisper as I reach ou
t to touch him. I expect to wake up any second, but instead, he feels warm beneath my fingers. I trace the outline of the eagle until my eyes drift shut again.

  I wake up with a heavy weight on top of my chest, and I feel… Hell, I’m not so sure how I feel.

  I try to move and freeze, my eyes snapping open. My heart rate shoots through the ceiling, right out of the flat, leaving me to deal with the guy draped over me.

  Every time I breathe, his head lifts, and I feel him brushing against my breast. I stop breathing until eventually, I can’t hold my breath any longer, and it rushes from me, making a mortifyingly loud whooshing sound.

  I struggle to piece last night together, but it’s all a bit of a blur. Slowly, I remember going to a bar, the weird Amazonian woman whose name I can’t remember, and the drinks.

  Oh hell, the drinks.

  It all comes back like a tidal wave.

  My face turns furnace hot, remembering how I grabbed Aiden, kissed him, and then practically begged him to sleep with me.

  The vomiting.

  The shower. Ugh… the shower. I want to die all over again.

  The memories keep coming. They’re merciless in their assault. The ones of how I tried to undress the poor guy have me dying of embarrassment all over again. He must think I’m some cheap skank.

  When he pulls me closer to him, and his breath warms my nipple through the thin material of my top, I can’t stop the words from bursting over my dry lips.

  “Bloody hell!”

  He sits up as I dart off the bed. The first thing I see as my feet touch the floor is my wet underwear.

  “Oh, bloody hell!”

  I have no words for what I’ve done. I didn’t think I’d feel this bad the next morning.

  I dare a glance in his direction, and it’s the worst thing I could’ve done because he looks devastatingly hot where he’s sitting on my bed with his tousled hair and chiseled bare chest.

  “We didn’t have sex if that is the reason for all the bloody hells,” he says, his voice gruff with sleep, which only makes him sound downright inferno hot.

  He moves to get up, and I all but run to grab the wet underwear off the floor. I can feel my cheeks flaming up again.