by Lane Hart
“You have plenty of clothes, and I thought mom took you shopping for all the bedding and dorm stuff,” I reply.
“Yeah, she did, but I want to be prepared. Oh, and Daddy said we could ride through a few car lots to see about getting me something nicer than the Altima since I’ll be driving back and forth a lot.”
Oh, fuck no.
“No, Bridgette, your car is fine. Let’s just you and me go clothes shopping, okay?” I ask, ready to beg that she doesn’t do this alone with our stepfather.
“So my plain car is fine for me, but you get a fucking Mercedes convertible when you turned eighteen?” she asks, her hands on her hips. “And he takes you shopping all the time.”
God, she has no fucking clue the slippery slope she’s on. I know exactly what that bastard is doing, and it’s not gonna happen.
“Ready?” our asshole stepfather asks Bridgette with a smile when he comes in with Patrick from the patio.
“I wanna go too,” I tell him.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. Spend it faster than I can make it. You girls wouldn’t know what to do with a credit card that has a limit, would you?” Mike says absently.
Okay. So getting him to agree to let me go with them was almost too easy.
“Have fun shopping,” Patrick says snidely to us before he disappears up the steps. I’m still pissed at him, unable to believe that he didn’t say something to Derek about us last night when he helped him take the boxes to his house. That’s exactly why I didn’t want those two alone together. So why hasn’t Derek called or texted me today telling me he knows and doesn’t want to marry me? It’s unusual for me to go for so long without him even checking in to say hi. He doesn’t send me poems or even sweet messages, but he does ask how my day is going and tells me he loves me. I’ll give him a call when we get home tonight, but right now, there are more pressing concerns.
Me, Bridgette and Mike head toward the garage; and since I can smell the familiar stench of alcohol on Mike’s breathe, I offer to drive.
“So, Bridge, I’ve got a meeting in Miami in a few weeks. Maybe I can come visit, and you can show me around campus since I can’t go down with you and your mother Sunday,” the asshole says from the passenger seat before we pull out of the driveway. Goddamn him. How dare he?
“Sure, Daddy, that would be fun,” Bridgette says to him from the back seat, not having any idea about the disgusting type of ‘visit’ he has in mind.
Shit. This isn’t good.
I thought convincing my sister to go hours away for college would keep her safe. Apparently, the psycho bastard will do anything it takes to torment me, and now her. I’ll think of something, maybe talk to Bridgette’s new roommate, and convince her to never leave her alone…
God, I hate him so much! Just when I thought things were gonna finally be good for once in my life, he has to go and fuck with my head!
By the time we pull up to the mall, my eyes and nose are burning painfully as I try to hold back the unshed tears. I’m so sick of this bullshit. What did I ever do to deserve this sort of life? And when the hell does the torture end?
While Bridge is in one of the dressing rooms, I find out exactly what he’s playing at.
Mike comes at me, trapping me against one of the clothing racks, his dark eyes angry as he smirks down at me.
“You think this is done? That you’ll get married and move out from under me?” he asks. “Think again.”
“If you touch her –” I start, and he grabs me by my throat.
“What? What will you do? Not a damn thing,” he growls inches from my face. “I’m thinking next week we should start getting together daily for lunch. Derek will be at school, right? We’ll have an hour to play catch-up each day.” He glances around to make sure no one is watching, and then he shoves his hand down the front of my pants, harshly cupping me before forcing multiple fingers inside me while the ones around my throat tighten. “You try and avoid me even once, and I’ll start making weekly trips to Miami. I’ll fuck her virgin pussy and ass so hard she won’t be able to walk for days. You remember how painful the first time was, don’t you?”
I nod, remembering in excruciating detail how horrible it felt as he held me down and ripped me apart, brutally stealing my innocence on my fifteenth birthday. It was easily the worst day of my entire life because even as young and naïve as I was, I knew it was just the beginning of the real torment. And that however uncomfortable he had made me the years before by fingering me or making me stroke his cock whenever he got me alone, the worst was yet to come. Everything he did to me was with the sole intention of eventually having sex with me; and once he forced his way inside, he wouldn’t ever stop. And I was right. Things only got worse from there. Before, he might go a week or two without touching my ass or breasts; but after my birthday, his visits to my room became much more frequent.
As soon as his fingers release his grip on my throat, I’m gasping for air.
“Glad we’re in agreement,” he mutters, fucking me hard with his fingers between my legs a few more times before he finally pulls his hand out of my panties and wipes his damp fingers on the pants leg of my jeans. “You can keep pretending you don’t want it, but the truth is you’re always wet and ready for me.”
My face heats in shame and embarrassment at his words after he walks away. I’m still soaked from Patrick’s tongue and cum just hours ago, but this isn’t the first time the asshole has told me that I’m wet for him. Over the years, while my mind has fought him every step of the way, sometimes my body betrays me. It makes me sick. I’d rather have the pain; but every once in a while, my body doesn’t resist his invasion. That’s when I hate myself more than the monster. It’s when I hear my mother calling me a liar and worry that no one would ever believe the truth --- that I don’t want this and never have.
God, I feel so hopeless. How stupid was I to think Bridgette and I both could escape him so easily? It was naïve of me to believe he would give up and leave me alone. Being out of his house will make things better, even if it won’t make them completely disappear. And no matter how much I loathe him, I’ll keep letting him inside me; because there’s no way I can ever put this burden I’ve carried for so many years on my little sister.
Once again tonight, I’ll try to convince Bridgette to stay at her friend’s house. It’s safer for her until she leaves since we’re supposed to be sharing a room. And, even though I know it’s a horrible idea, I’ll probably sneak into bed with Patrick, not just because I know I’m safe with him, but because I like being with him.
Whether or not he told Derek about us doesn’t seem to matter since Derek didn’t say a word about it when I called him later that night. Instead, Derek told me he had been busy at Mike’s office and said he can’t wait to see me at the rehearsal tomorrow night. The fact that he isn’t bothered by me being with another man before our wedding should concern me, but it doesn’t. He’s still my escape, so I’m just grateful he hasn’t changed his mind and called off the wedding.
Chapter Nineteen
Trick
I’m lying flat on my back in Mina’s bed in just my boxer briefs, hands behind my head, staring at the ceiling in silent thought, when the bedroom door opens and quietly closes again.
Tonight, I had dinner alone in the kitchen with Michael, who didn’t act like it was unusual to have absentee parents, which is sad as fuck. The girls and my father didn’t get home until late from their shopping trip, and then Mina was still locked in the bathroom when I came to bed.
She slips underneath the covers and curls up next to my side without a word, burying her face on my bare chest. Her body shakes silently before I feel the wetness from her tears coating my skin.
I hate seeing her upset. It makes me want to shake some sense into her, tell her just to go into the rehearsal tomorrow and tell everyone the wedding is off. But she won’t do that, and I don’t understand why.
“Anything I can do?” I ask her softly, lowering my arms to put one around
her back and let the other rest on her hipbone. That’s when I realize that she came into my bed completely naked, making it pretty obvious about what she wants from me. I’m nothing more than a distraction. A good time. A few toe-curling orgasms before she becomes another man’s wife.
“Just need you to hold me,” she whispers, letting the air out of the sails of my indignation and assumption.
“I can do that,” I reply, squeezing her to me tighter.
Hearing her say she needs me is even better than the sex, although I know her need is only for a few hours before I’m cast aside yet again. Forgotten. Which is confusing as fuck. How can this connection between Mina and me be so one-sided when this warmth in my chest is so damn intense? Maybe it’s just my ego that doesn’t want to admit that there’s nothing more going on between us and I’ve been delusional the entire time, since the very first night.
Mina’s fingertips trail absently over my chest before they find the dog tags. My two identical identification tags hang on one necklace while there’s only a single tag on the other necklace. One of Austin’s remained with his body after he was killed. The room is too dark for Mina to read them, but her fingertips can feel the raised words.
“I would’ve written you,” she says, paralyzing my lungs.
Those four unexpected words touch me so deeply that tears overflow from my eyes for only the second time in my life. And she’s not done breathing life into my soul yet.
“Almost every night for five years I’ve been writing in a journal; and if I had known you were in the Marines, I would’ve written you instead. Bridgette and Michael would have too. Hell, knowing my mother’s whorish need for attention, she would’ve made you into an epic publicity stunt and had the whole city sending you care packages.”
I laugh at that, but it comes out as more of a choked up sniffle.
“Are you okay? I’m sorry,” Mina says as she starts to reach for my face, but I grab her hand to stop her and place it back on my chest, my masculinity refusing to let her feel the proof of my moment of vulnerability.
“Does your mom keep in touch?” she asks.
“No,” I answer.
“Not even when you were over –”
“No.”
“Friends back home? A woman waiting for you to marry her?”
“Not a soul,” I answer, so she’ll stop reminding me of the pathetic loneliness.
“Well, that’s probably because you didn’t tell anyone, right?”
“That would’ve only made it worse,” I tell her. “Having them know and still not giving a shit.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “And I’m sorry you lost a friend.”
“He was more than a friend. Austin was like a brother to me. His family treated me like I was their son.”
“What happened?” she asks.
“You really wanna hear this? It’s not pretty. Even his widow doesn’t know…”
“Yes, because not only did you live through it, but you’re obviously still carrying it on your shoulders like some sort of burdensome, guilty secret.”
Her intuition is dead right about that. I still think about it several times a day, what I could’ve or should’ve done differently.
“Of course I feel guilty,” I tell her. “Austin had a son and a wife, and I was supposed to protect him, not send him home in a casket.”
“Don’t you think he felt the same about you?” she asks.
“No. I didn’t have anyone waiting for me to come back, so it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“Your life was no less valuable than his or anyone else’s.”
“He was only there because he had to be for his family. They would’ve rather had him come home alive than me.”
“Well, I would rather have you here alive,” she says. “But it wasn’t my choice or his family’s or yours. You know that, right?”
“Whatever,” I mutter.
“Now we’re off topic because I’m guessing you don’t want to talk about that day?”
“Talking about it reminds me of the godawful details it took months to start to forget. I don’t want to fall into that black hole again.”
“I’ll help you forget afterward,” she offers, pressing a kiss on my pectoral and then letting her tongue tease my nipple.
“You use sex as a weapon,” I tell her with a smile and a shake of my head. “Since being with you is more volatile than a nuclear warhead, I’d say it works pretty well.”
With a sigh, she says, “I’m starting to think sex can just as easily be a coping mechanism as it can be a torture device. It all depends on who you’re doing it with.”
“Fair enough,” I agree on an exhale.
“Unburden your secret so we can start coping,” she orders while her fingernails trail down the center of my abdomen, teasing, coaxing me to open up to her. And so I do.
“Austin was an EOD tech, explosive ordinance disposal technician, and I was one of the grunts assigned to patrol with him, to watch his back while he searched for and disabled IEDs,” I start.
“Sounds dangerous,” Mina states the obvious.
“Yeah, it was. On June 20, 2014, our unit was in the Afghan providence of Helmand, clearing a bazaar, their marketplace, to look for a suspected bomb based on some intelligence we had received. We cleared out the civilians and had two engineers with us sweeping the area using metal detectors. It was nothing new to any of us. Our team had found and defused a dozen other bombs earlier that week.”
“But something went wrong?” she asks when I pause.
“The civilians were angry at us for evacuating them, hurting their business, like we were there to just inconvenience them. The area was cleared, but then this little boy appeared on the hillside, just standing there in his dirt-covered clothes. We all knew better than to trust women or kids, so a second later I had my M16 up and trained on him. Austin was certain he was harmless and told me to stand down. He was just a boy, about the same age as his son Grayson. Austin must have thought he had just gotten separated from his parents during the evacuation…”
Following my long silence, Mina climbs on top of me, pressing her warm, soft curves against the length of my body, burying her face in my neck where she starts kissing me.
“What happened?” she whispers.
“The kid was wearing a bomb. I think Austin realized it at the last second when one of the engineers’ detectors went off. I don’t know… I don’t know what Austin was thinking, but he threw himself on the boy, and then there was a bright flash, followed by a deafening explosion that threw me face-first to the ground. Austin’s body was…obliterated. The two engineers, Howell and Thomas, were badly burnt. Howell lost his arm and had really awful phantom pain. A few weeks ago, he took his own life.”
“God. I’m so sorry, Patrick,” Mina says brushing her lips over mine and bringing me back to the bedroom. “But how can you possibly feel guilty about any of that?”
“Because I had the chance to stop it. I should’ve killed him.”
“And what if you had been wrong?” she asks. “You never would’ve forgiven yourself for killing an innocent boy, and neither would your friends.”
“Regardless, why did I escape death or mutilation?” I ask her. “All three of those guys had families…”
“I don’t know why you were the lucky one, but you should be thankful. And you helped save all the lives of those civilians that were evacuated. I’m sure your friends wouldn’t want you to blame yourself for something you had no control over. Just like you wouldn’t want them to feel guilty if the outcome was reversed.”
“I failed Austin, his wife, his son,” I tell her. “After I came back, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even begin to fill the gaping hole he left behind for Alyssa or Grayson.”
“Alyssa is his wife?”
“Yeah.”
“And how exactly were you trying to ‘fill her gaping hole’?” Mina asks.
“Seriously?” I scoff at her insinuated innuendo.
>
“You cared about her? Wanted to be with her?” she prompts.
“Maybe,” I answer on a heavy exhale.
“And?”
“She started dating this other guy…”
“The one you got into a fight with?”
“Perceptive girl,” I say, squeezing her hip, surprised that she remembered that conversation.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“And, um, you didn’t sleep with her?” she asks.
“No.”
“Good,” she replies.
“You’re happy that I was rejected and humiliated?” I ask in confusion.
“Yes, because I don’t like the idea of you with another woman.”
“You’re a gorgeous damn hypocrite,” I mutter, and she hides her face in the crook of my neck while shaking her head.
“You wouldn’t understand,” is her mumbled response.
“Is it about money?” I ask her, getting straight to the point.
“What?” she shrieks, pushing herself up so that she’s straddling me again. “Money? Seriously?”
“You don’t have a job, and you obviously like to shop. Mina, your car costs more than most houses.”
She scoffs. “If I could trade my life for a different one, any other one, even if it meant working my fingers to the bone and then scraping together pennies for food, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“Then do it,” I challenge her, reaching up to stroke the side of her face. “Give up this life and come live in poverty with me. We’ll work shitty jobs all day, eat ramen noodles for dinner, and fuck so good we keep the neighbors up all night.”
Mina laughs softly before she asks, “What are Roman noodles?”
“Ramen,” I correct. “They’re a pack of noodles that only cost twenty-five cents. And the fact that you don’t know what they are means you’ve never been broke.”
“Actually, I have,” she says. “After our dad left, we were about to get kicked out of the house. Mom was a fucking mess, crying all the time. And then your dad came along…”
