Piece of Me (Behind These Eyes Book 2)

by A. J. Daniels

  He drops the pen on the stack of papers and intertwines his fingers in front of his face. “No, can’t say that I do. Is there something wrong?”

  This is it.

  This is my opportunity to tell him about everything I’ve learned and researched in the last six years on this issue.

  “Sir-“

  “David,” he corrects with a raised eyebrow.

  “David,” I repeat. “Any dolphins in captivity are more than ninety-percent likely to come from this cove where fishermen drive in thousands every year.” I don’t take a breath before continuing, in fear that he might cut me off. “Of these thousands, only a few get chosen for life in captivity in an aquarium, or swim-with-dolphin programs at a hotel or resort. The rest are brutally and inhumanely slaughtered. David, I know the financial benefits that this client could bring to your company but this is something that I’ve been researching and been passionate about for years. So even if you continue with this business relationship, I still had to do my part and let you know.”

  For the first time since I started talking I take a breath and then prepare myself for the backlash.

  The backlash that never comes.

  He doesn’t say anything for the longest time, choosing to sit there staring at me. Finally, he drops his hands and leans back in his chair. His eyes still piercing mine.

  “Well,” he exhales hard, “this really is something you’re passionate about, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “You’re right. The client could have significant financial benefits for this company.”

  I nod. “They could.”

  “Is everything in there? Including some research on that cove?” he asks, pointing one long masculine finger at the file I had placed on his desk.

  “It is.”

  “I’ll take a look at it, but I’m not promising anything,” he warns.

  A grin splits across my face. “Thank you.”

  ***

  The rest of the week goes by in a blur with phone calls, emails, scheduling and rescheduling his entire next week as things come up and others get changed.

  The meeting with the new client goes off without a hitch and I’m even surprised with myself for being able to keep up with taking notes for the minutes. It also helped that David, uh, Mr. Walker, kept repeating everyone’s name when he would respond to their question or comment. I knew he was doing it for my benefit and I appreciated it. He gave me a heads up beforehand that he wasn’t bringing up the dolphin issue in the meeting but promised me that he would be calling a private conference with the client to discuss it.

  I’m unplugging my laptop and gathering up the charger to move back to my desk when David walks up to me and clears his throat.

  “I need those minutes by the end of the day.”

  “That’s in three hours.”

  He smirks, sticking one hand in his designer suit pants. “Yes. Will that be a problem, Ms. Young?”

  “N-No. No problem,” I stammer like a fucking idiot.

  What is it with this man and my inability to form a coherent sentence. He is my boss, for god’s sake! I couldn’t be thinking about my boss.

  Two and a half hours later, I inhale deeply through my nose before knocking on the heavy wood door to his office. My knuckles only connect with the door once before it’s swinging open and then he’s standing there. Looking sexy as hell.

  His suit jacket isn’t on and the sleeves of his white button up shirt are rolled up to his elbows, making his arms somehow look even bigger. His royal blue tie is hanging loose around his neck and the two top buttons of his shirt are undone.

  “Katherine, come in.” He opens the door wider before walking over to the makeshift bar on one side of the room.

  “It’s Kat.”

  “Kat,” he says over his shoulder.

  The hairs on the back of my neck still stand up every time I hear him say my name.

  “Scotch?” he asks, holding up a crystal tumbler.

  “No, I’m okay. I’m still on the job.”

  “Just one, and I promise I won’t tell the boss,” he grins.

  “Just one,” I laugh nervously, as he hands me a second tumbler. “Thank you, Mr. Walker.”

  “Please, call me David,” he says, taking a seat on the couch next to the bar and gesturing for me to join him.

  “David,” I repeat.

  He smiles approvingly and I watch as the hand holding his glass raises it up to his lips. I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs with the sip.

  “I have those meeting minutes you requested.” I hand him the file folder.

  He accepts the folder but doesn’t open it, lacing it, instead, on the glass coffee table in front of us.

  “You’re not going to check it?”

  “I trust that everything is in order. I’ll read through it later if I need to.”

  “I’ll email a copy to everyone who was present at the meeting and those who were supposed to be there but couldn’t make it then,” I respond, moving to get up.

  “Please stay and finish your drink. The minutes can wait ‘til tomorrow to be emailed,” he says, placing a warm hand on my knee.

  “Okay,” I gulp, subtly moving my knee causing his hand to fall away.

  “So, Kat. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, I wasn’t able to be at your interview and I missed your first week here at the office. You’re supposed to be my assistant and I don’t know you at all. So, tell me about yourself.”

  I watch in confusion as he gets up to refill our glasses before coming back and sitting down closer to me than he was before.

  “Uh, okay. I just recently graduated with my—”

  “I don’t want your professional resume, Kat. I could just look that up if I needed to. I mean, tell me about you. Where did you grow up? Do you have any siblings?”

  Another nervous laugh escapes before I can will it back. “Why?”

  He chuckles. “Call me old fashioned but I like to get to know all my employees. That now includes you.”

  I give in, his reasoning makes sense. I needed to stop thinking the worst about people. “Well, I was born and raised in the GTA. Scarborough, to be exact. I’m an only child. And before you ask, no, I’m not close with my parents,” I say in all one breath. I really hope that he doesn’t ask why. I don’t want to think of my parents right now. I put them behind me the minute I turned eighteen and moved out.

  But exactly like I knew he would, he asks anyways.

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  “Why aren’t you close with your parents?”

  I sigh. “Because they’re not nice people and the minute I was legally old enough to, I moved out.”

  He doesn’t say anything after that but his hand finds its way back on my knee and starts roaming up. I push his hand away and cross my legs which probably wasn’t the smartest idea because his gaze heats when it lands on my bare leg.

  “What about you?” I ask, hoping to distract him and draw him back into the conversation.

  “What about me?” His lips pull up in a smirk.

  “This whole getting-to-know-me thing is a two-way street.”

  His smirk morphs into a grin as he’s placing his glass on the table before settling back into the couch resting his ankle over his other knee.

  “All right, I was born and raised in White Rock. I have a younger brother. And my mom died from cancer several years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”

  “Is that lime I taste?” I ask after taking another sip of the smooth scotch.

  He laughs, “It is. It’s an twenty-year-old Glenfiddich. It has a vanilla aroma with hints of banana but then the taste has hints of lime, ginger, and spice.”

  “I can see why you like it.”

  “You do?” His hand is back to its roaming on my leg and I’ve about had it.

  How many times do I ha
ve to keep moving his hand away before he gets the fucking message? I place my still full glass on the glass table and stand.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker, but it’s been a long day and I need to be getting home.”

  “I was about to order some take-out. Why don’t you stay and have a bite with me?”

  Damn, this guy is persistent. I want to tell him to fuck off but he’s my boss and I really like my job.

  “I’m sorry, but I really have to go.” I’m surprised my voice came out sounding so polite, since that’s the furthest thing from I’m feeling right now.

  David gets up and moves towards me, forcing me to back into the corner. His knuckles come up to graze down the side of my face. “Stay. Have dinner with me.”

  His lips are within inches of mine. His breath smells like scotch, and if I didn’t know any better I would think that he had been drinking all day. And maybe he had.

  His knuckles continue their way down the side of my neck, and then over the mound of my breast.

  Fuck it. I don’t need this job bad enough to sleep with my boss. Grabbing the hand roaming down one of my breasts, I twist his arm into the most uncomfortable position behind his back. Bringing my mouth close to his ear, I hiss, “don’t ever touch me again.”

  I don’t stick around long enough to hear his retort. Pushing open his office door and letting it slam closed behind me, I hightail it down the stairs to the ground floor.

  4. Childhood

  Katherine

  My phone rings in the bottom of my purse while I’m trying to juggle an armload of grocery bags and unlock my apartment door.

  “Hello?” I answer as I dump the bags on the kitchen counter.

  “Kat…” As soon as I hear my father’s voice I end the call and put the iPhone face down on the counter, continuing to unpack the groceries.

  Serves me right for not checking the caller ID before answering.

  My phone rings again but I ignore it. It’s his prerogative if he wants to leave a voicemail, but nothing’s changed. I’ll never listen to them and I’ll never call him back. The minute I walked out of my childhood house at eighteen was the minute I put him and my mother behind me. And my life is better for it.

  They’re my parents and I would never wish any harm to them but, as far as I’m concerned, they’re not my family. I may not have been able to choose them as parents but I can choose who I call family, and my family consists of the five people who I know without a doubt would never mistreat me the way my parents had.

  - Twenty-two years earlier -

  This was it, I thought as I heard my mother’s angry footsteps approach the closet door that I’m hiding in

  “Where are you, you little brat?!” She hisses.

  I squeeze my arms tighter around my legs and shut my eyes hoping, wishing I could blend in with the wood paneling at the back of the hallway closet. I pray that she won’t yank open the door and find me.

  I pray that my dad will come home from work and see what she is doing to me. I pray that the wood paneling will open and thrust me into a different world, Narnia style.

  The door to the closet flies open, my mother stands on the other side and I know that this time it will be different. The purple blouse she wears make her brown eyes stand out even more and the rage I see in them makes me freeze. They are cold, uncaring of my outcome.

  I caused this.

  I am the cause of her rage. I ruined her life. She constantly told me that she never did want me but my dad had begged her to keep me.

  “You bitch! How dare you hide from me!” She yells, grabbing my arm so tight I can feel the bruise forming instantly.

  “I’m s-s-sorry momma. I d-d-didn’t mean to,” I whimper as she yanks me out of the closet and pushes me against the wall. I feel my neck snap forward and instantly back as I hit the cold paint and slide down.

  Everything goes black and when I came to my mother is still yelling at me but I can’t make out her words. I’m trying to concentrate on making the floor stop spinning but it doesn’t work.

  The spinning gets worse and I feel a blow to my stomach, then another. I fight to stay conscious, knowing that if I don’t the kicks will just get worse and she won’t stop.

  “You worthless piece of shit! I didn’t want you in the first place,” she screams as another blow hits my ribs.

  Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.

  I hear more than see her stomp off in the direction of the bar in the living room. The pain is so bad all I want to do is stay laying on the tile but I know that if I’m still here when she comes back there will be hell to pay.

  Cringing in pain, I stand up, which is probably not the best idea since my ribs feel like they are all snapped in two but I don’t want to make her angrier with me. I’ll never know how I made it from that floor to my bedroom at the top of the stairs with, I would later find out, two broken ribs and a dislocated arm.

  By the time I shut my door, the darkness is threatening to take over and I know that she has succeeded this time, that this was it. I would never wake up again. The prospect of finally escaping my mother’s clutches makes me smile but I am angry.

  I’m angry at my mother for what she did, but mostly I’m angry at my dad for not doing anything about it. I’m angry at him for letting her kill me slowly and I’m angry at him for not loving me enough to save me.

  I am angry at God too. Why did he put me with these parents? A mom who can’t stand the sight of me and uses me as her own personal punching bag and a dad who can’t care less about what she does to me. What did I ever do to deserve this kind of punishment?

  Wiping the last of the blood from my nose, I pull the blanket off my bed. Wincing from the pain, I get down on the floor and crawl under my bed, finally giving in to the pain and the dark.

  ***

  My phone ringing for the fourth time in a row draws me out from the memories.

  “What is it, Dad?” I ask, blowing out a breath. At least the ringing stopped.

  “Kat, it’s your mother.”

  His voice sounds different. Tired. Defeated somehow. But I don’t care enough to ask how he’s doing. “What is it?”

  “She had a stroke, Kat. Do you…Do you think you can come home and see her?” my father’s voice pleads with me.

  I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. “No, Dad. I can’t come home.”

  “Kat- “

  “No. I can’t. I’m sorry. Don’t call again.” I end the call and immediately set a do not disturb for his number.

  The fact that there is even an ounce of sadness warring inside of me makes me mad. My mother was nothing special. In fact, she was a horrible mother. She made me feel like I was a burden on their lives and my father just sat back and let it happen, never once sticking up for his little girl or standing up to his wife.

  It didn’t take me long to realize how weak and how much of a coward my father was. The day of my eighteenth birthday I hightailed it out of there and moved. My parents never put up a fight when I told them that I was leaving, but I never expected them to. It’s been ten years and I haven’t heard anything from either of them - no phone calls, no emails. Until today.

  Guess I should feel relieved at that. I have nothing to say to either one of them and I should be glad that they finally cannot touch me.

  But I’m not relieved. I’m pissed off. How dare they think that I would just come running back the minute they called? Okay, so my mother had a stroke but my mother never gave a shit about me so why should I give a shit about her?

  It might make me a bitch but I didn’t care. I. Don’t. Care.

  But my dad didn’t sound well.

  Fucking Hell.

  I already know that I’m going to end up going back there. Not for my mother, but for my father. He may have been a coward while I was growing up but as much as I hate it, I’ll always be his little girl, and I didn’t like the way his voice sounded during that phone call.

  So, I’ll g
o back but I won’t be going for her. I’m only going to check on him.

  After I book a ticket home for the next morning I realize that I don’t want to be alone tonight so while I’m on a roll of making mistakes this week, I shoot a text off to Jason.

  Me: Got a phone call from my father today.

  Jay: What’d he want?

  Me: He thought I should know that my mother had a stroke. He asked me to come home.

  Jay: Fuck no.

  That one makes me smile. He has always been my advocate. My protector. Making sure that people don’t take advantage of me. Sometimes it’s stifling because I prefer to fight my own battles but other times it’s nice to know that someone would go to bat for me.

  Me: Can you come over? I don’t really feel like being alone right now.

  Jay: Be there in 30. Anything you want me to grab on the way?

  Me: Alcohol.

  Jay: Trying to get me into bed again, Katherine? *wink*

  Me: *rolls eyes* In your dreams

  Jason

  “Hey,” Kat says with a small smile, as she holds the door open.

  I can tell she’s trying to hide the fact that she has been crying. She’s trying to put on a strong face so that she can convince me she really is fine but I know my girl and she is not fine.

  “Hey” I reply, walking into her apartment.

  I make a beeline for her kitchen and put the six pack in the fridge before I turn to her. “Figured we could just order from that pizza place down the street.”

  “Sounds good. I thought you were bringing alcohol?”

  “Beer is alcohol,” I smirk.

  Kat rolls her eyes and I have to stifle the laugh that’s bubbling up.

  “When I said alcohol, I meant vodka, rum, tequila…”

  “You also said that you weren’t trying to get me into bed again,” I waggle my eyebrows, “and we both know what happened the last time you and I partook in a little Jose.”

  “Ugh, touché. I’m going to hop into a quick shower. Delivery menus are in the top drawer,” she calls while walking down the hall towards the master bedroom and the attached bathroom