7:10
By
Dominique Wilkins
Copyright 2012 Dominique Wilkins
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copying or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted without written permission, or in accordance with the Copyright Act 1956 (amended).
Published by Dominique Wilkins
Edited by Jeyrin
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Author of 5 star titles: The Bad Parent; God Loves You, Theresa in Wonderland, The Audacity of You & more!
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 1
It was ten o’clock p.m. on Friday, July 10th, when Charlotte Pinkerton decided to leave her mother’s house and go home to visit her husband. He was supposed to come spend the weekend with her, but she thought it would be fun to surprise him. She texted him several times that day to make sure that he was still coming on Saturday, so that he wouldn’t wreck her surprise by leaving out on Friday and arriving at an empty house.
Charlotte and Greg were living apart and attempting to salvage their marriage, if it was at all possible. It had been three months since she threw in the towel and called it quits. She had run as fast as she could with only her children and a week’s worth of clothes for them to use interchangeably. Charlotte loved him so much but thought that her love for him was not enough to keep her alive. Greg was a monster when his switch was tripped and your best friend with the best advice and jokes you could ask for when it was not.
One day after Greg had come home from work, she had no idea what was on his mind, but she decided to ask as a loving wife who detected something wrong would do. It was a simple query. If it was nothing, he only needed to say so. Heck, if it was something, he only needed to say that, too! Yet, with Greg, it was not that simple. She remembered asking him about what was bothering him and, he attacked her as his response.
He turned into The Incredible Greg. His chest began to rise and swell right before her eyes and his pupils seemed to turn from brown to an evil, coal-colored black. He raised his hand, converted it into a fist, and slammed it first down on the table then to her face. Since Charlotte was used to his inconsistencies, her reflexes had become pretty impressive. Maybe he shouldn’t have hit the table first, sending off the warning signal, because she ducked to avoid the blow. To some that would have been a miniature victory, but to her, it was the start of the end. His miss infuriated him, prompting him to lunge and choke her. He relocated the confrontation to the top of the stairs, with his hands planted securely around her throat and pushed her down.
Charlotte was wearing her house shoes and loungewear, she was not dressed to fight or be outside. He not only pushed her down the stairs, but in the direction of the second level of stairs, so she went down the stairs a few steps then tumbled over the banister to finish off the rest of the flight. As she lay crumpled up at the bottom, she found out what she did wrong. He stood over her and kicked her as he screamed at her about how he goes out working all day and all night to keep a roof over their head, while she stayed home going through his things while calling people and co-workers in his phone to embarrass him.
Charlotte had pissed him off, because she had taken his phone one day to sync it to her computer so that she could get his numbers off of it and text everyone to meet up at the bowling alley for his surprise birthday party. Apparently, someone had no idea of the meaning of the word surprise, because the fact that she emphasized it meant nothing to that person. She thought it was either that or maybe the way she worded the text was offensive. It read:
Hello, this is Greg’s wife. I am contacting you to invite you to his SURPRISE birthday celebration on May 15th @ 7:00pm
Brunswood Bowling Alley
Archer/Pulaski Rd.
Free food w/cash bar please join us as we celebrate his 35th birthday!
Her girlfriends later told her that one of those phone book entries under the single/double letters, must have been a girl she text, who called back to give him grief about either not knowing he was married, him not being able to spend his birthday with her or how the heck did his wife get her phone number? The audacity of his wife to text her phone! Greg would have to make up for that.
While crumpled up on the floor, Charlotte was caught up to speed on what she had done that put her in that position. Greg towered over her, angrily shouting obscenities at her about how she should stay off of his phone bothering people, whom he claimed to not know. He said that he did not like other people in his business, so when she contacted people in his phone, she texted people whom he may not have actually knew anymore; people from his job or from his past who he chose to separate himself from. By going through his phone and telling these people his where-abouts, she was waking problems that he had put to sleep long ago and would have a time putting things back to normal.
She knew not to say a word to him while he went on his rant. If she said anything, she was susceptible to push him over the edge of insanity, so quietly, she tried to unwind and pull herself together. After she was able to restore her body to an upright position, she crawled to the nearest corner to lick her wounds and evaluate her injuries. He didn’t go on very long, which she was grateful for, so after he wrapped up his speech and finished waving his fist, she took mental note of the time. It was one hour left until she needed to pick up the girls from school. As usual, he retreated to the den to engulf himself in football and Sports center while she devised a plan.
Charlotte was sore and her wrist was very tender from the fall but not broken. She bruised easily, so she rose and began to gather her makeup bag and her wrist bandage to provide reinforcements, because she knew she would need that to make the pain bearable. Moving around slowly and quietly, she packed two gym bags and left the house en route to the kids’ school a little early. It wasn’t until she had driven completely off of the block that she felt comfortable picking up her phone to call her mother and confirm that she still had an extra room available.
This was not the first time that Charlotte and the girls had to stay with her and her mother knew that as long as she kept going back to Greg, it would not be the last. She would always keep the room available for them to stay in as long as they needed to. She hated Greg for the very same reason that she hated her own ex-husband. However, as an adult, Charlotte knew she would have to make her own waves and make judgment calls that worked best for her and her family. In the meantime, she would always be there to support them and pray for their safety.
Charlotte picked up the twins after school and stayed with her mother for a while. At first, Greg became irate when he realized that she had gone and had not planned to return home. He cursed at her and called her every name under the sun. Then, he suggested to her that she stay where she was since he no longer needed her services.
After a couple weeks, his switch had changed and he had begun to talk of how he loved her, but still played the blame game, to make her feel as though, none of that would have ever happened if she would’ve just minded her own business and stayed out o
f his phone. He claimed that he preferred to go to the alley as a family without the extra folks to bowl that day. He went on a few weeks longer with different versions of that before he finally chose to drop it and focus only on apologizing, missing them and wanting his family back.
Chapter 2
After some time, Charlotte missed being at home and loving him too, so she was feeling good and decided to take the girls and head over to stay with him for the weekend. She went late and knew that by the time she got there it would be bed time for them all and just might have some much needed bed time fun of her own for once. She parked in the garage and instructed the girls to be quiet as she always did, when they traveled in the early or late hours of the day. She hated the neighbors and knew that they watched when she came and went all of the time. She also reminded them that it was late and after their one- hour drive, to go to bed when they had gotten in the house, which they did when she let them in the back door.
The girls went up the stairs to their room, while Charlotte proceeded to head into the living room, where she expected Greg to be laid out on the couch, half sleep in front of the TV, as he always was after getting off of work. She was pleasantly surprised that he finally listened to her and had gotten up for once to go to bed, when she found the couches empty. The room wasn’t neat, which didn’t surprise her at all, so she threw her things on top of a pile of clothes on the couch and headed to the den to see if he’d gone to sleep there before she went to the bedroom. She was still skeptical about him being smart enough to do the right thing and go directly to bed.
Sure enough, her second guess was right. He laid there on the sectional sleep in front of the TV on low. He hadn’t noticed that whatever program that he was watching had gone off and the credits had taken over the screen.
She smiled in response to his smile that she saw, as he turned his head to the left, showing her the side of his face now as he slept, with his hand still behind his head. She stood there at the door just smiling at him and contemplating on taking off her clothes quickly to wake him from his good dream to see such a beautiful goddess standing there whispering his name in the nude. As the thought began to manifest into action, her nipples began to grow hard and her panties became wet with anticipation of his response.
In the TV’s glow, she looked around the room for a good spot to place her clothes, when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked back at him and focused her eyes harder, because the screen gave even less light with the TV’s credits being on a black background. The movement was in his mid- section. It looked like he had started without her. No wonder why he was smiling! To confirm it, just as the credits finally ended, the movie went back to its menu to show that he had been watching a porno flick. Just as the porno revealed itself, so did the woman underneath the blanket, who had been lying still on top of him giving him a blow-job the whole time.
The woman sat up, emerging from her cover to quickly position herself to straddle her work that she had erected to greet her shaved and pierced vagina. This woman was full of tattoos and piercings. She had nipple piercings to match the one in her vagina and a tattoo across her 36 C’s that said CC; one of the names in his phone, that she texted that awful day three months ago. CC was so busy concentrating on him, that she did not see Charlotte standing in the corner with her mouth open in shock. CC jumped up and down on him as he reached up to hold onto the reigns of her breast. In what seemed like hours, but was actually just a few moments, she watched her husband have sex with another woman in their home with no condom and heard him address her as “baby” in his moans, before he received her anaconda-like tongue as she stuck it in his mouth.
Charlotte was frozen in place and unable to speak. She was doomed to watch this scene play out as every moment of it felt like a knife being stabbed and turned in both her stomach and heart. The room became inaudible as she heard a girlfriend’s voice play in her head, “Girl, don’t go over there surprising him. You know how your last surprise went...”
She didn’t even hear her daughter, Estelle, walk up. It wasn’t until she asked in an upset tone, “Mom?!” That Charlotte thawed out. CC looked up in surprise, but remained seated and simply straightened up in her position and smirked at Charlotte. Gregg couldn’t move or just didn’t want to move from underneath her, so he turned his head to see first Charlotte, then his daughter.
He raised his voice in anger to say, “What are you doing here? Who told you to come here? Get out of here! Close the door and leave my keys on the table.”
He did not need to say anymore. Charlotte screamed for Adele to wake up and get dressed to go. She pushed Adele to help her move quickly and grab their coats to leave. Charlotte slammed the door to the den as she left out and ran to grab her things in the living room, when she noticed that the pile of clothes still sitting there belonged to that tramp. She was so enraged at this point, she went to the linen closet and opened the top to the bleach, then sat it on top of the pile for it to leak first on the clothes and then onto the couch, rug and floor. Charlotte smiled and wondered if that would wipe the smirk off of CC’s face, when she came for them. Apparently, she was in no rush, because neither of them emerged from the den, while Charlotte was there. Charlotte made a few more alterations before she left, such as throwing the tissue stack into the tub and ran the water, as well as taking all of the shower gel, laundry detergent, and any extra soap with her when she left.
Charlotte could not lock the doors, so she decided not to close them either, since she left her keys there on the table like he asked. She was leaving and realized that there was no coming back. She now understood where all of those random diseases and beatings came from and would never stop. She was being hurt because she had made the mistake of falling in love and marrying the Devil himself.
Charlotte was so tired when she got there, but she was awake and filled with anger as she left. At this point, the time had gone so far past her bedtime, she knew that she should not be driving in the night’s air on the dangerous high way, but she had no choice. She needed to get away. Charlotte pulled out of the driveway quickly to get away, but she couldn’t help but to look back. She needed to. How else would she be able to do such damage, when she reversed her car back into his, if she wasn’t looking? She called it the love tap heard all over the world, because when she hit it, she had to give her car some real gas to disconnect her car from his it seemed. Maybe that’s why, when she did, she saw quite a few of the neighbors’ porch lights turn on in response. She pulled off down the alley and into the darkness to go home.
Chapter 3
After what felt like an endless drive, Charlotte tried to kill her-self and her children. She knew she could not drive that far in the peaceful darkness without getting sleepy. She found her-self nodding off. She was not going to pull over on a highway with no lights, to get plowed over by another car going well over the 70 mph speed limit. She did like she saw them do plenty of times on TV. She shook her head vigorously from side to side.
Twenty minutes from home, she followed her children to sleep. She could feel her-self driving while sleeping, but didn't open her eyes right away, because she just needed a second for herself. When she did, she opened her eyes slowly and took over the wheel. God had taken control of the car as she slept, for the car floated along, keeping the exact same distance as it had been from the car in front of her before she went to sleep. She even noticed that they had taken a turn with ease!
God was her co-pilot, and he had taken over the wheel. It was not their time to go. Though Charlotte did not get on the road to intentionally kill her-self and her children, she was making a bad decision, controlled by emotions that ultimately ended in a suicide attempt. She made it home safely with the grace of God and the next morning, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she had done the night before. She acted like a fool, she thought. Her children did not choose to be there in this world or in that car, nor did they choose the person who she allowed to hurt her repeatedly, so wh
y would she hurt them because of her mistakes? She kept asking her-self that over and over again.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
( Proverbs 14:12)
Charlotte had been married to this man for over six years and had put up with too much of his off and on stunts. She was done with it and was moving on. She had no choice; this time he had embarrassed her in front of her fifteen year old daughter. This was the only chance that she had to show her daughter how to be a woman; where to draw the line. There would be no more excuses. She took her girls and moved into a low income housing unit that they could afford, so that she could raise her children alone. She thanked God for her mother, but that was no place to raise her family. Besides, when Greg’s switch turned on, she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. He wanted CC, and he could have her and all of the time he needed to compare the difference between losing a lady and gaining a tramp.
Charlotte had been faithful to this man for so long, that she did not know how to be alone. In the beginning it was easy to get him out of her system because the hurt and pain was so overwhelming, but after time passed, she began to need a little more than girl talk with the twins. So the day that she went out with a guy one of her friends had introduced her to, she was captivated. Everything he said to her, he said it with respect and in low and assertive tones. She loved his sureness whenever he spoke about anything to her. His name was Jerome Bettis from the west side of Chicago. He was from the hood, but not of the hood. Jerome did not push the issue, when Charlotte told him that they could only go out for lunch dates, because she could not yet allow him around her children.
Jerome not only understood but agreed not to call the house phone and would wait patiently until the time was right to introduce him to Adele and Estelle. He knew that whenever the time came, that he would love them too. Charlotte made it through an entire month of their midday outings at the park, strolling along the beach or catching a midday movie. They talked until they were blue in the face or until it was time for Charlotte to go pick up the girls from either school or one of their extra-curricular programs. After a month of confessions and laughing, she was so happy and horny she invited him to the south side, to meet her children for dinner. Adele seemed to like him, but Estelle immediately threw up her shield. Estelle had been scarred almost as much as Charlotte had, since she served as an eye witness to that horrible incident, the night they went over to their father’s house.
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