I lift my eyebrows and bite my lip, adjusting the purse strap on my shoulder. The floor is black and white tile, the appliances all stainless steel. There is a dishwasher, and my lips lift on their own because I’ve never had one.
I can feel Claire eyeing me as I move farther into the place, down the hallway. A bathroom is to the left and a bedroom to the right. I peek in, thinking I really have no need for two bedrooms. I go farther to the back, passing a closet before I step into the master bedroom.
Walking over to the window, I see the fire escape that I noticed outside. I slide the window up and place my foot on the other side. Humidity flattens my hair and glosses my face, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I look up at the vast sky. The stars might be visible from here, and with that single thought, I turn around to Claire and say, “I’ll take it.”
“Great!” she says. “Let’s go do the paperwork.” I follow her out, and we make our way back to the office. “Just have a seat right there.” She points to the empty chair in front of her desk and places her soda on top. She gathers a few forms after she is seated and slides them to me. “So, I just need your work information right here.”
Shit.
“Um, I don’t have a job right now, but I have the cash to pay the first and last months’ rent and to get me by for a few months.” I open my purse and pull out a wad of cash, tossing it onto her desk.
Her eyes grow big. “Damn girl, did you rob a bank?”
I look from her to the cash. “No. I worked for every bit of that.”
She doesn’t know me. She has no idea where I came from and how hard I fought to get here. Every bruise, every god-awful encounter with that man… My eyes stare at the green paper before me. I stomached it all to ensure I’d have enough cash to get me here.
She looks at me and bites the inside of her cheek. “How old are you?” she asks.
I narrow my eyes and tilt my head, wondering the same about her. She can’t be any older than me and look at what all she has. A nice job working in this place. She’s gorgeous and seems to have all her ducks in a row at such a young age.
My insides are obscured with lacerations and my skin has scars to prove it.
I didn’t come from rainbows and sunshine.
“I’m eighteen.”
Her brows lift.
Is she surprised?
Do I look older?
I feel older.
Mentally, you are.
“So am I,” she says. Her auburn eyes go back to the money. “I haven’t been working here long. My dad got me the job. He knows the manager.”
I’m not sure why she feels the need to tell me this. Maybe she can sense what I’m feeling.
Small and out of place.
Out of my league with all of this.
“I’m telling you this because I can see the way you’re looking at me. Like I’ve got everything figured out. I don’t. I don’t believe anyone truly does.”
I’m shocked at her honesty. I look over her face for a moment longer than I probably should, but I find it necessary.
I see what I didn’t before in her eyes.
She’s an old soul. Older than her time, just like me.
I like her and I feel bad for judging her when I know nothing about her either.
She looks past me at the door before standing. I watch her walk to it and close it behind her. She makes her way back around in heels and a pencil skirt. “I’m not supposed to do this, but I hate this job anyway.” She sits back down and gives me a smile.
I don’t return it. Too worried about how this is going to go. I need this place. This is the beginning of everything for me.
“I’ll figure out something with the paperwork.”
My eyes grow wide in utter shock.
Why would she do this for me? Risk her job? I don’t understand it.
“You have to promise me you aren’t going to screw me over.”
“I promise,” I say to her. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding her head.
“Okay?” I question, making sure I heard her correctly.
“Yeah. Now let’s count out all this damn money you’ve got. I swear I thought stripper first.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, I laugh. The sound is strange coming from my throat. Like rough air pushing up from my lungs. It lightens my chest, like it’s been sitting there all this time waiting to release.
I should laugh more often
And right now, I feel like I will.
__________
Lucy is patting her neck with a towel when I walk out. Squinting my eyes up at the beaming sun and its pressing heat, I smile. It’s hot, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I now have my own place.
I have a home.
“Well, how did that one go?” Lucy asks.
I hold up my key and give it a jingle.
She nods. “Good job, kid.”
“Thanks for your help, Lucy.”
“Sure thing.” She opens the car door. “I tell ya, menopause is no joke, and this damn Georgia heat makes me feel like I’m burning in Hell.”
I smirk at her as I plop down on the springless seats in her car. The thing comes to life when she cranks it and my eyes go to the cracked dashboard. Well, I’ve got my own place. Now what? I need things. A bed, a sofa? Some plates?
Shit, I don’t know. I need everything.
“I ain’t getting any younger here, girl. Spit it out.”
I turn to her with a lifted lip. “Can you take me to get a bed?”
She laughs. “If you got the money, let’s go.” She fists the gear shifter and the car bounces into drive. I’m floating on air as we cruise down the streets of Atlanta and not just because of the Oldsmobile. How far I’ve come in such a short time.
Oh, how far I will go.
“I got this.”
Lucy gives me a puzzled expression, but I see it when she recognizes what I mean. “You do, kid. You got this.”
Chapter Three
Kathrine
Present day
I’ve imagined this moment more than a thousand times since the day she left me.
How could a mom do that to her only child?
How could she be so cruel to leave me with someone like him?
I have no idea why I came here now. What was I hoping to accomplish? I feel all I’ve done is rip off a scab that took years to heal. This house should be condemned and then burned to the fucking ground along with all the horrible memories inside of it.
My stepdad is with the worms, and as far as I’m concerned, she is, too.
I narrow my eyes at her.
Why is she here?
I walk to the door and open it.
“Kathrine?” my mama questions with wide eyes.
I don’t say anything as she stands there looking like she’s seen a ghost.
Yeah, I feel the same.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” she says, shaking her head.
Is she happy, or just surprised?
Because I’m neither.
She studies me. “You’re all grown up.” She rubs her fingers over her shirt.
I can’t take my eyes off of her.
Time hasn’t been kind.
Proof of her smoking habit covers the skin above her lip. Deep lines web out from russet eyes and her hair has thinned. There’s more gray now than dirty blonde, and the pounds she’s gained must be heavier than the weight she put on my shoulders when she walked out of this door and left me.
Serves her right.
A tiny speck of glee flows through my soul, like dust in the summer light.
I’m happy she looks like shit.
So many emotions run through my mind at once, but the one that stands out the most…the one I’ve held on to since the day I realized she wasn’t coming back?
Anger.
Pure, hot anger.
But hurt is a close second.
The two em
otions blend, but anger sweeps over hurt like lava rolling over beach sand.
It consumes and doesn’t apologize.
I’m not over any of this. Madness makes my hands shake.
Hers go into her pockets and she looks to the ground. “I got the news he passed away a few days ago.” She looks up and I notice her take a few more steps. “Always thought he’d go sooner.” She laughs nervously.
With a tilted head, I study her as she pulls a hand from her pocket with a cigarette pack now in it. She opens the top and removes one before bringing it to her lips and striking her lighter. It’s lightly drizzling so she cups the end.
She breathes in deeply, filling her lungs with toxic smoke. She looks up at me and licks her chapped lips after she removes the cigarette. It glows red between her fingers.
Fingers that used to tie my shoes.
“Did you get out?” she asks me.
I look from her hand to her eyes, almost trance-like.
“Yes,” I say so calmly it scares me. I feel as though I’m outside of my body watching this scene play out.
She nods and takes another hit from her smoke. “Good,” she says, releasing it from her chest. The
lines above her lip deepen when she does this, and the wind blows her silver-gray hair across her face. She moves it behind her ear.
The filing cabinet in my mind opens, and I mentally skim through the filing tabs until I land on hers.
Opening it, I go to the section that reads questions for when she ever or if she ever comes back.
“Hey, Bethany, where did you go?” I use her name because at this very moment, I realize she doesn’t deserve the title Mom.
Just because you give birth doesn’t mean you’re a mother.
A mother stays and how I’ve always referred to her as that makes my stomach physically turn.
She looks at me for a moment before her sight goes back to the porch. She shakes her head. “He never fixed that, did he? I was constantly terrified it would fall on one of us and kill us dead.” She scoffs. “That son of a bitch,” she mumbles.
“Answer me,” I demand, holding on to the door for strength.
She looks back to me and lifts her chin slightly. “What does it matter where I went?”
I step out onto the porch, aware it could fall any moment. “What do you mean, what does it matter?” I ask disbelievingly, feeling the cold drizzle of light rain on my face. I make it to the rail of the steps and descend. “I was eight years old. I was your only child and you left me here.”
She turns her body toward the road and hits her smoke again. “I’m aware of how old you were.”
I’m staggered at her indifference.
My eyes are wild, dancing around the snow-covered ground. I try to wrap my head around this situation.
I’m back at my childhood home.
My stepdad who abused me is dead.
My mother who abandoned me when I was a child is standing right in front of me acting as if I should be the one apologizing.
I’m truly baffled.
How did I come from this person?
My anger is so alive I can feel it buzzing through my nervous system.
I could kill her.
I could pick up a shovel and smack her in the back of the head and no one would find her for days. But I’m not a murderer. I’m not coldblooded like she appears to be. Closed-off and cruel.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
She looks back to me, startled at my proximity. Her eyes go to the house behind me. She sniffs and brings the cigarette to her mouth. Cold air mixes with gray toxins and I step back to keep it from going in my face.
“Closure?” she says in a question.
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
I shake my head and look to the ground. Anger fades and hurt takes over. I like anger better, because hurt is too heavy.
“He raped me. Did you know that? That your husband raped me?”
Her eyes jerk to mine, and for the first time I see a person inside of the heartless shell. “I wish you wouldn’t call me Bethany. I am your mom.”
I laugh coldly. “Mom? You didn’t earn that title.”
I turn back to the house. “He hit me and made sure to tell me every day that I was worthless and undeserving of anyone’s love.” Laying my sight back on her, I see the shake in her fingers as she breathes in nicotine.
I point at her. “You left me with that.”
She closes her eyes and brings her closed fist to her mouth as she stumbles back, the car catching her fall. Her hand hits the side of her door as she tries to get a grip. The smoke falls from her fingers and her whole body starts to shake, but she keeps upright. I guess the truth is too heavy for her to hold.
Her body physically tries to go to the ground.
I take a step closer. Surprisingly, I don’t yell. My voice is eerily calm, as if I’m making sure she’s hearing every single syllable. “You are the reason I’m so fucked up. Why I have issues with trust and love. Why I can’t open up to people who care about me.” I point to the house. “You are the reason for everything that happened to me in there.” I take a deep breath. “And you ask why it matters?” I laugh, but there’s zero humor. I can’t believe this whole goddamn situation. Tears cloud my vision and I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her voice brittle.
She’s sorry. My heart freezes like the cold rain kissing my cheeks.
“God made the world in six days,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. What the hell is she talking about?
“I always thought He shouldn’t have taken the day off. He half-assed it and I think it’s the humans who got short-ended.”
“You mean because we’re so flawed?” I ask.
“That’s exactly what I mean. We’re flawed, lacking. He made this great big world beautiful in every way except for us.”
I chuckle and wipe my nose. She’s crazy, but I’m fluent in crazy.
Is this her way of saying she isn’t perfect?
That she made a mistake?
I scoff. A mistake is putting a red shirt in with whites.
Her leaving wasn’t a simple mistake. It was a life decision that affected my well-being.
My eyes skip past her, looking down a road I thought I’d never see again.
I used to sit under the tree when I was just a girl, staring dreamily at that road, wondering if she’d ever come back down it.
My eyes are transfixed. The breeze picks up, encircling me in an icy whirlwind, but I don’t move.
The sky shades and the world bleeds gloom.
A faint smell of whiskey causes the hair on my arms to stand up and I’m unable to decipher if I’ve cheated time as a memory plays out before my eyes.
“Come here.” I hear his loud voice coming from the open window of the house. His voice is slurred and causes me to roll my eyes.
Mama has been gone for five years now, and I still look down this gravel road, praying she’ll come back for me.
I’m thirteen now. I love daydreaming and reading books from the school library. Books are fun because they let me escape my true reality.
Mama is gone.
My stepdad is an asshole.
I’m unwanted.
“I said come here!” he yells again, causing me to jump from my thoughts.
I stand up from under the tree and head inside.
The sky is as gray as the smoke from the cigarettes he smokes, and the smell of rain makes me homesick for a home I don’t have.
“Yeah?” I ask, walking into the house.
“Get in here and clean up this mess.” He’s piss drunk and reeks of whiskey.
I look behind him at the kitchen I cleaned only an hour ago. Now crumbs from a sandwich he made covers the counter, along with an open bread bag and a dirty butter knife. The ham is still out, and I see beer bottles on the stove.
I shake my head at him. “You clean it. I didn’t make this mess.
”
I regret saying this as soon as it leaves my mouth. He throws his beer bottle toward me, missing my head by an inch, but beer splatters onto my face when it passes by. Before I can wipe it off, he has my hair fisted in his hand and he’s roughly directing me to the kitchen.
I wince and try to pull his arm off, but it’s a futile attempt. My face is shoved in front of the beer bottles covering the stove, so close my nose touches one and it tilts over, spilling a last swallow onto the stovetop. “Grab them,” he says. I reach my arm up and collect as many as I can. He then pulls me to the trash. “Toss them.” He speaks to me like I’m an imbecile. I drop the bottles and they clank against each other loudly.
He walks me over to the counter, and for some stupid reason, I try to fight back. I’m not sure if it’s teenage hormones or stupidity, but I do it without thought.
I push with my other hand against his chest as hard as I can. Drunk, he stumbles back a little but not without taking some of my hair. It’s forced from my scalp, causing blood to surface and I see it on my fingers when I touch my head.
“You bitch,” he sneers.
My eyes narrow, and my heart beats erratically.
My pulse pounds, and blood rushes through the veins on my neck. My hands shake violently as he smiles and brings the whiskey bottle in his hand to his lips.
My eyes dart to the door and my legs and mind think alike. I bolt, but he grabs me by my waist and body slams me. Air is yanked from my lungs, and throbbing pain from the back of my head causes me to see spots. He’s on top of me now.
I shake my head and blink my eyes, trying to get control of this situation.
Breathe in, I tell myself.
I gasp and gasp harder.
My lungs are struggling, and my head is foggy.
I hear something pouring out… It sounds like liquid from a bottle. He must have dropped the whiskey bottle. I hear a belt rattle and then the sound of a grunt.
“You’re old enough now,” he says.
What?
I feel his hand on the top of my jeans.
No, no, no.
I shake my body and tell my mind to focus.
Fight, Kat. Goddammit, fight!
But I’m heavy and he’s heavier. I try to push him off. I try to wiggle, but he has me pinned.
Give Me Perfect Love (Give Me Series Book 2) Page 3
