by Anna Brooks
Well, blackmail is more like it. Like the asshole I am, I say if she tells, I won’t stay with her. It’s a vicious cycle, our relationship. Half the time when we get into this argument, she tells me to fuck off and leaves me, and the other half, she cries in my arms and begs me to stay with her.
She knows why I don’t want them to know. And although I think she’s placating me until I change my mind, I will never be good enough for her. And because her family knows that, they’ll tell her so. And because I know her, she’ll stay with me just to prove them wrong, and I don’t want that. I don’t want her to be with me because it’s a challenge. She needs to be with a man who’s deserving of her love. So until she realizes that and finds somebody else, I’ll take whatever I can get from her as long as nobody else knows.
Her hands cross around her stomach again, and before she can open her mouth and say anything, I tell Smith, “She and her asshole boyfriend got into a fight.”
“Need me to go kick his ass?” he asks.
“No.” Sophia shakes her head. “He’s already beating himself up enough for the things he said to me. I know he never meant to hurt me.”
“When am I going to meet this fucker? I don’t care if he realizes how much he fucked up, he needs to not do it in the first place.” The protective side of Smith comes out in full force. He adores his twin sister and has always been this way with her, so it doesn’t faze me.
“When I’m sure it’s going to last.” Soph sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. “He’s afraid to commit because he’s insecure about his micropenis, even though I told him it’s not the size of his boat but the size of his heart that hooked me.”
She flutters her lashes at me, and I sputter and choke on a laugh, promising with my eyes to punish her for that later. Micropenis. What a little brat.
“Jesus.” Smith laughs uncomfortably, probably feeling sorry for the guy, even though it’s all a damn lie. Once he clears his throat, he assesses me. “Still doesn’t explain why you had your hands on her.”
“He was just comforting me.” She offers a weak smile in reassurance to her brother. “I need to go.”
“Where are you headed off to? You sure you’re okay to drive? You seem really upset.”
“Promise. I’m heading over to his house since he apologized to me.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind and need me to talk to him, gimme a call.” Smith hugs his sister, and we both watch her drive away. Once she’s out of sight, he asks, “What are you doing here?”
I hope he doesn’t see the panic on my face as I try to come up with a lie. “You told me you were coming home for the weekend. Thought we’d hang out.”
“I did?” he asks, as we walk to the front door of his parents’ house. “I don’t remember talking to you about it.”
“Hmm.” I head inside before he can ask any more questions.
By the time I’m able to get away from him and back to my house hours later, she’s waiting for me inside. I open the door, and before it’s even closed, she launches herself at me. Her legs wrap around my waist, and I turn and hold her between the wall and me. “Micropenis?”
She laughs and throws her head back. I take the opportunity to suck on her neck, and when I know there will be a mark, I finally pull back. I might not be good enough for her, but I can do everything in my power to keep other guys away, no matter how fucked up it is.
I can almost feel her in my arms. Can feel her small body pressed against mine and her soft hair beneath my cheek. She squirms, and I grunt when her ass hits my dick. How did I get so lucky to have Sophia forgive me for my shitty attitude when she told me she was pregnant? I should be sleeping alone, not with my girl in my arms.
I press into her, and the spark ignites. Just like always. Just like I know is irreplaceable. She’s only wearing panties, and when I reach to tug them down, my patience snaps and I rip them. Dammit, my head pounds—how much did I drink last night? I’m not too hungover to pass up the opportunity to slide into her, though. The room is still dark, and I know if I try to open my eyes, my head will hurt even worse, so I free myself and lift her leg to gain access using my other senses.
The moment I touch her warm center, I sink inside her and already feel better. The alcohol fog rises, and I take my time feeling her. Each glide is slower than the next. Her tightness squeezes around me, and I pant at her moans and the sensations she elicits. I hold myself inside her for a moment to hold off; otherwise, I’m gonna come already. She wiggles against me, thrusting so I’m even deeper inside her, and I lose control. I slide out and pound back in, over and over, until her nails dig into my forearm tossed over her stomach.
Somehow, she gets even tighter as her legs quiver, and I can’t hold back anymore. “God, Soph.” I empty myself into her, and remain rooted, loving that she likes sleeping with me inside her. That’s the last thought on my mind before I doze back off.
* * *
Why am I naked? I open my eyes, and when the light hits them, it might as well be a fucking sledgehammer. “Fuck.”
After taking a moment, I try again, and though it still hurts, I sit up. When I push on the bed to stand, I wince at the pain in my hand.
Fuck.
I get up and go to take a shower, hoping the water will make me feel semi-human, when I see the ripped shower curtain. This bathroom is trashed, and while I’m still waking up, I don’t put much thought into how it happened, because I know the answer. I binged last night. By the time I make it to the hall bathroom, since mine is unusable, I glance over into the guest room and freeze. Shit. She was here last night.
Polly.
My head falls forward in shame, and I rush through the house trying to find her. Realizing she’s not here, I take a shower as fast as I can, because I smell like puke and have dried blood all down my arm. After I get out, I take a couple of ibuprofen and put some clothes on. Downstairs in the kitchen, I grab a banana and slam a glass of tomato juice—the secret weapon for a hangover. Grabbing a few bottles of water from the fridge, I head to my car. Somehow, I fucked it up with her. I know I did. It’s what I do.
I don’t remember much, which isn’t unusual when I go on a bender. It takes a little time for me to realize I repeated my form of self-torture last night. No matter how many times I try to stop, I always end up curled in the bathtub like a little bitch.
As I’m pulling onto the street, I grab my phone to call her, only realizing she never gave me her number. When I arrive at her place and walk to the bottom door that leads up to her apartment, I pound on the steel and call her name, but she doesn’t answer.
My worry increasing, I jog back to my vehicle and drive to the diner. I head inside, and a woman I’ve seen here before smiles at me. “Hi.”
“Is Polly here?”
“No, she’s running late.” She glances at the clock and then nervously around the diner. “She said she’d be here by one.”
I follow her line of sight and calculate Polly has about a half an hour. “Thanks.” There’s no way I’m going to miss her, so I sit in my car, waiting impatiently to get my hands on her. I have no recollection of last night after I sat on the end of my bed with a bottle of vodka in my hand, and I need to know everything is okay between us.
I don’t know how I got these scrapes on my hand and I have no clue when Polly left. I’m a fucking bastard. I was supposed to make sure she was safe, and I can’t even do that. I was so drunk I don’t even remember going to bed.
Seconds tick by and minutes drag. I’m so busy focusing on the door to the diner that I don’t realize how much time has passed. I finally chance a glance at the clock and see it’s been an hour and forty-five minutes. There’s no way I missed her, so when the door opens and the same girl as before comes out with a paper bag in her hand, I hop out of my car.
I reach her just as she’s about to enter a tattoo shop that’s next door in the small strip mall. “Hey.”
She jumps, but turns, and it’s then that I recognize he
r as Brad’s partner’s best friend. “Yes?”
“Where’s Polly?” Her eyes widen at my tone, and I hold my hands up. “Rayne, right?” I can’t believe I was so messed up in the head earlier that I didn’t realize who she was.
“Yeah, you’re Erik.”
“Right. Look, I’m just trying to find her.”
She assesses me for a minute, and I can see the lie forming before it even rolls off her tongue. “I don’t know where she is.”
“You said she’d be here by one. It’s almost three o’clock.”
“I, um… I don’t know where she is, okay?”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” I don’t mean to shout. Dammit, I couldn’t have done it at a worse time either, because a tatted-up dude pushes through the door and pulls Rayne behind him.
He looks at me, and recognition hits him since we’ve met at Complexity before. “We have a problem here? ’Cause I’m pretty fucking sure I just heard you yelling at my wife.”
“No disrespect, man. I’m sorry, Rayne.” I crane my neck over so I can see her, but then focus back on the guy. “I’m just looking for Polly.”
“I really don’t know where she is.” Rayne steps out from behind the guy. “Vaughn, it’s okay,” she whispers to him, as he pulls her next to him, not trusting her to be close to me. I don’t blame him; I’d do the same thing if I were in his place. “She called in this morning, but said if you came by to tell you she was just running late. She’s never said anything like that before, and she sounded really upset, so I agreed.”
“Motherfucker,” I growl. “Okay. Thanks.”
I don’t say anything else before going back to my car and driving to Polly’s apartment. I don’t see her car, so I drive around town—to the mall and to the movie theater—and punch my steering wheel when I still can’t find her. She’s avoiding me, and I don’t know why. I need to know why.
Deciding to take a chance, I head down the street she used to live on. Sometimes reliving old memories helps put things into perspective, so when I see her car right in front of her old house, I breathe a sigh of relief. I park behind her and get out. When I hit the porch, I peer inside the windows, only to find it abandoned. Foreclosure notices litter the dirty glass. She’s clearly not in there, so I walk down the steps and around the house to check in the back.
I pause when I see her. She’s sitting on the grass in the middle of the yard, her legs crossed and her head hung. The yard isn’t very big, but she looks so small right now. So sad. I call her name, but she doesn’t acknowledge me.
When I get closer, I notice her hand. It’s bandaged, and I know for a fact she didn’t have any injuries when she got to my place yesterday. That means… something happened when I was fucked up. I… No, I’d never hurt her. No. “Polly, baby, what happened to your hand? How’d you get hurt?”
She still doesn’t answer, so I crouch down and put a finger under her chin, tilting her head up. When her vacant eyes meet mine, I know the answer to my own question. Me. I fucking hurt her.
I should apologize. Or grovel. But none of those things will make this right. Begging for her forgiveness won’t help, and promising nothing like this would happen again would be a lie. Failing the woman you’re supposed to be protecting isn’t something new to me. I’ve done it twice before and I knew it would fucking happen again.
The only way I can fix this is to leave. If I’m not in the picture, she won’t be subjected to my stupidity. She won’t have to be with a man who’s incapable of doing the one thing, the only thing, a man needs to provide his woman in order to make her happy. If I can’t make her feel safe when she’s with me—if she can’t fully trust that I’d never let any harm come to her, especially from me—then it’s better to walk away.
So I do. I start heading to my car. I’ll wait until she leaves and follow her home, but once she’s safely inside her apartment, I’ve gotta give her up, no matter how hard it’s going to be.
Chapter 10
Polly
“I’m not an ex-druggie.” By the sound of his feet, my words make him pause. “I know that’s what you think, and I know that’s what reports said, but I’m not.”
My head is still down, my blurry eyes focused on the green grass, but I hear him move closer to me.
“I grew up in foster care, and despite the horror stories and worst-case scenarios, I made it out okay. Yeah, there were grabby hands and some scary nights, but I learned really quickly how to fight them off. For some reason—and I don’t know why—but for some reason, I was one of the lucky ones who escaped unscathed for the most part.”
He sits down next to me but doesn’t touch me.
“When I was eighteen, I was kicked out of the group home with barely more than the clothes on my back. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t tough, but I survived. I fought, and I survived. Being alone is terrifying. Having to be in a constant state of awareness made me so tired, and it was a struggle sometimes to even stay awake.”
“Yeah. I understand that,” he agrees.
“But I was determined to turn my life around, so every time I got a job, I saved the money. I shared a crappy apartment with kids I was in the system with. It was what it was, ya know? I avoided their drugs and their company and kept my head down. I worked multiple jobs—whatever it took to pay the bills. I ate ramen and drank tap water to save money. After three years, I got an Associate of Arts degree and applied for a job at a large marketing company.
“Knowing I’d have to start at the bottom, I put in an open application, hoping they’d accept me for anything. Cleaning, being a coffee bitch; I didn’t care. So when I got called back for an interview, I was ecstatic. The money they were offering was more than I’d ever made before, and I knew I could save enough to finally get my own place in a few months. Halfway through the interview, an older man, probably around forty-five, walked in and dismissed the woman who’d been interviewing me. He sat in front of me just staring.”
Erik curses under his breath, and I finally risk a glance at him. The turbulence in his unique irises shakes me, but I press on.
“He finally smiled at me and offered me a different job. It sounded marvelous. All I had to do was clean for him, and he’d let me live in a room. On top of that, he’d train me so I could get experience in marketing. I think he could tell I wasn’t very well off.”
“He saw that you were vulnerable and fucking took advantage of you,” Erik snaps.
“Not at first. The moment he took me to an upscale apartment building had never been so thrilling. I smiled like a kid in a candy store when he opened the door and I took in the beautiful room… and when he showed me where I’d be sleeping. I always wanted a big bed, and this one was huge.” I swallow at the memory, my emotions threatening to overwhelm me.
“I remember sitting on the pink bedspread and him coming next to me. He wrapped his arm around me, and although I thought it was weird, he didn’t push more than that. He only said, “You’re safe here, Polly,” and then he left my room. I think part of me was naïve, but the other part of me was just happy to have a safe place to sleep and not worry about scraping enough money together to eat. So I cleaned and trained with him for about six months before it went any further.”
“Goddammit.” Erik’s knuckles turn white from squeezing his hands so hard. I place my bandaged one on top of his, and he loosens his grip.
“I didn’t love him or anything, but I liked him. He was nice to me, and he actually did teach me a lot. I learned more about marketing with him than I did in school.”
The whites of Erik’s eyes become more prominent, and his mouth falls open a tad.
This is the part of the story that’s embarrassing. “He never did anything to me I didn’t want. He treated me like a princess. He made me feel special. He gave me everything I could have ever wanted. But one morning, we were, um, in bed together, and a younger version of Don charged into my room. I screamed, and when he started talking, I had to physically hold my throat to prevent th
e vomit from rising.”
“Really, Dad?”
Don sits up, his arm still around me. “None of your business, DJ. Get out.”
Ignoring him, he looks at me. “How old are you, sweetie?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Jesus Lord,” he whispers. “You’re a sick old man; she’s even younger than the last one.”
“What?” I gasp.
“Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Don says to me, loud enough for his son to hear.
“Really? Are you sure you want to go there?”
Don growls. “This is not your concern, son. Get out.”
His head tilts and crosses his arm. “One hour. Otherwise, it won’t be just you I destroy. I’ll take the company, too. I’m sick of this shit.”
After he walks out and slams the door, I can’t help the tears that fall. “What was that?”
“My dick of a son. But he’s right. This is over. It was fun, kitten.”
I don’t have time to ask more questions because he stands and starts getting dressed. When he grabs his wallet out of his pocket and takes out some bills, I shake my head. “No.”
“Fuckin’ kills me, kitten. You were great. I’d have liked to keep you around longer.”
The man I’ve known is suddenly gone. He’s no longer sweet and caring, but a shell—a very hard shell—of himself. “Don.” I say his name… begging, maybe?
He crawls over the bed, kisses me hard, and then folds the money in my hand. “This should be enough to help keep you on your feet for a while. I wish I could say you could come to me if you have any trouble, but I’ll be frank here. Don’t.”
That was the last thing he said to me before he walked out, and I never saw him again.
“It took a good twenty minutes for me to move off the bed. I had no clue what just happened. But it didn’t take long to figure it out. He used me, played me like an instrument. And I was naïve enough to let him.” Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t see the signs. He only stayed the night randomly, talked in hushed conversations, and never took me out. Plus, he was more than double my age. I guess I had daddy issues I didn’t even know about.
