by Blair Grey
“I mean to do you, Avia,” I whispered, seductively. “You and me – after school. If you’re real nice, I’ll buy you a pop afterward.”
“You can go fuck yourself.” Cocking her head to one side, she looked directly at me without blinking an eye. “But you won’t be fucking me.”
Her spunk just makes her that much hotter.
“Bet I will.” I was going to get what I wanted. And I wanted her. I wanted her real bad.
“Bet you won’t.” Holding up her hand, she used her fingers to make them look like scissors. “Snip, snip, Pee Wee. Don’t fuck with me or you’ll lose your manhood. The little that you have.”
Smiling, I liked the idea that she was thinking about my cock. Sure, she had it all wrong. But her mind was right there, with my long, thick male member at the forefront. “If you call eight inches of pure muscle little, then I guess you’re right. I won’t be losing it though. Once you get a taste of me, you won’t want to cut shit off.”
“You’re delusional.” Tossing her head made her hair whip around, causing the scent of Alberto VO5 to waft past my nose.
“And you stink.” I ran a lock of her good-smelling, silky hair around my finger, twirling it. “Your hair feels like straw. You should really use some conditioner on this mess you call hair.”
“You should get your damn fingers out of it before I rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.” Not even a hint of a smile moved her full lips. Lips that looked more kissable than any lips I’d ever seen in all of my eighteen years.
“You better get the reading done so you can answer those questions. Time is running out.” Moving my fingers from her hair, I trailed them along her neck. Her skin was the softest thing I’d ever touched. “You should make sure you scrub your neck when you wash, it’s scaly as fuck.”
“You’re scaly as fuck.” Jerking her head, she made my fingers leave her skin. “And stop touching me, you jackass.”
“As if you don’t love it.” I knew she did. Goosebumps don’t just happen.
In the blink of an eye, I stood outside the exit doors of the high school. School was out and kids ran willy-nilly, leaving campus. I waited for Avia and caught her by the arm as she came out the doors. I’d waited all day to take her away to someplace remote so we could get to doing what we’d done in my dreams.
Her eyes went to my hand as her upper lip curled. “Get your hand off me, Lyle Franklin.”
“You and I have a date. Don’t you remember?” Moving my hand down her arm, I took her hand in mine. “Come on. My car’s over here.”
“It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I get into a car with you.” Jerking her arm hard, she thought she’d get free of my grip.
Which she did not. “Then consider it a cold day in hell, baby because you are coming with me.”
I wasn’t sure if her act of hating me was done out of repetitive behavior or if she actually hated me. I hadn’t done anything mean to her in years for her to still hate me. “Don’t call me, baby. I am not your baby.” With a solid jerk, she freed herself and ran back inside the school.
Following her inside, I found the hallway empty. Not a soul in sight. Grabbing her arm once again, I pulled her with me into the science lab. With no one around, I knew I had her right where I wanted her. If she still hated me for things I’d done forever ago, it had to stop so we could get to the good stuff.
Pushing her against the wall, I used my body to hold her there. “You sure you don’t want me to call you, baby?”
Defiance danced in her eyes as she shouted, “Positive! Let me go! Now!”
“Oh, I’ll let you go.” Pulling open the closet door next to her, I shoved her in, then closed it. I grabbed the nearest desk to cram under the doorknob to trap her inside. “You happy now, Avia?”
Now you can hate me because I have done something mean to you. So, there!
“Lyle, stop it! Let me out!” her screams were frantic, telling me she was as afraid as I wanted her to be.
Standing back, I crossed my arms over my chest as I listened to her beg and plead with me to open the door. I’d been in the same position plenty of times when my father had put me into a closet when I did something he didn’t like.
He’d done that to me since I could remember. “Eat your beets, Lyle,” he said the first time I remembered being thrown into the closet. I must’ve been about four or five.
I didn’t like the taste of the beets. “Dad, they’re yucky.”
“Do what I say or you’re gonna get it.”
I put one into my mouth then gagged and it came right back out. Then I found myself lifted off the chair, dragged by one arm down the hallway before being tossed into a small, dark closet.
I had no idea how long I’d been left inside that smelly closet. The one thing I did remember about that was that I ate beets from then on without uttering a word about how much I hated them.
“Lyle, please. Please, don’t leave me in here. Please. Please,” her tone had gone from shitty to sweet in just under five minutes. I thought that to be progress.
“If I let you out, will you stop being such a bitch and accept the fact that I want you? I mean, for now, I want you. I don’t want you to think we’d be exclusive or anything like that.” I closed my mouth tightly, trying to figure out what to say and what not to say. Letting a girl know that I liked her wasn’t a thing I’d done before. But letting them know that I wanted them for sex was a thing I’d done plenty of. Avia just wasn’t as receptive as the others I’d taken with ease.
“I’m not one of those sluts you mess with, Lyle Franklin. I don’t care if you want me or not. I don’t want you. You’re a mean asshole who doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but your own. No one worth a damn will ever want a jackass like you. Once you get out of high school and into the real world, you’ll see just how right I am. No one will want you. No one will ever want you, Lyle Franklin.”
Sitting up in bed, I wiped the sweat off my brow as I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “Fucking dreams.” Throwing my feet over the side of my bed, I got up, scratching my bearded chin as I went to the bathroom.
My subconscious had a way of bringing shit back into my head that I had effectively managed to keep out of it when awake. Avia Forester and my father were two people I didn’t want to think about much less dream about. And they’d both just starred in my dream – or more like a nightmare.
My father – because of all the shit he’d done to me. Avia – because all the shit I’d done to her.
She didn’t deserve any of it.
My cell dinged with an incoming email. Looking at it before I began my morning routine, I saw it was a reminder about the invitation to my fifteenth high school reunion I’d gotten a month ago. The thing was being held at the gym at our old high school the next day.
Fuck that.
I still saw the people I wanted to from my high school days. Those who I didn’t care to see again, Avia being one of them, might be at the reunion. So, I would not be attending. Sending the appropriate response of – not attending – I put my cell phone on the bathroom counter then began to wash away the dream I’d woken up from.
What a shitty way to start my day.
Starring at my face in the mirror, I saw the tell-tell signs of aging. Thin lines along each side of my mouth. One crease in the middle of my forehead. And three grey hairs at my right temple. They all told me that I wasn’t getting any younger.
Maybe it was my lack of constant female companionship that had me dreaming about the bad old days. I’d had a handful of relationships since graduating from high school. But all had failed. The one thing in common with each breakup – each woman had said it was all my fault.
Maybe Avia was right after all. Maybe no one will ever want me.
Chapter Two
Avia
The sparkling diamond on my left hand did little to stop me from slamming my fist into my fiancé’s face. “Leave. Me. Alone!” I screamed the last word to show him I meant it. �
�I’m not taking even one more beating from you, Jerome Conti!”
The six-foot, four man stood there in shock, holding his cheek where I’d punched him. “You’ve lost your fucking mind, Avia.”
“Maybe I have. Maybe after all the punches I’ve taken from you, my mind has finally snapped.” We were out on our own. None of Jerome’s mafia buddies were anywhere around.
My cousin, Julia’s wedding had us without any of my fiancé’s family, friends, or mafia muscle around to protect him. No one would be coming into Julia’s home that night to break up our fight.
She let me and Jerome stay the night at her place since she’d be moving in with her husband as soon as they got back from their honeymoon in Hawaii, two weeks from now. The ironic thing was that Jerome had paid for their honeymoon that had them away, leaving him with no one to run to his defense.
My fiancé was the head of a sector of the mafia. He called himself the president. As such, he had more money than he knew what to do with. I had a monthly allowance of fifty-thousand dollars.
The money had kept me in place. It felt good to be able to help members of my family out when they needed it. Wearing gorgeous clothes, carrying purses that cost more than most people’s cars, and driving my one of a kind, forest green Mercedes had kept me in place. But all that seemed like nothing more than a golden chain that kept me tethered to the king of assholes.
Blood dripped from my lip onto the lilac, satin dress I’d worn as a bride’s maid in the wedding. “Another thing ruined by my blood, Jerome. All because you feel that backhanding me in the mouth is the thing to do anytime you don’t like what comes out of my mouth.”
“You don’t learn, apparently.” Rubbing his jaw, he looked me in the eyes. “I don’t like you to use foul language. You know what I do when you say something ugly.”
Fury rose inside of me. “I said that the suit you have on is, the shit. That means it’s nice. It’s slang – not ugly in any way at all.”
“Shit’s a bad word.”
“I am thirty-three – not thirteen.” Why he thought he had to retrain me wasn’t a thing I understood. We’d been together for three years. Year one – utterly fantastic. Year two – he started knocking me around some, mostly when he was drinking. Year three – he asked me to marry him and for some fucking reason, I said yes. And then he felt he had to retrain me if I was going to be the wife he wanted. Because Jerome Conti did not do divorces. He married for better or worse and by God, I had better make sure it was all better and no worse.
Like any rational human being, when he told me those things, I told him I wasn’t going to be retrained. I tried to take off the engagement ring he’d given me. But he would not have that.
That was the first of the beatings and by far, the worst. I suppose he thought that if he hurt me so badly that I had to lie in bed for a week before I could even see straight that he would never have to exert himself that much again.
Not truly understanding that he meant that everything I’d done prior to our engagement were things he couldn’t accept in a wife, I tried my best to be a good woman – a woman he would be proud to call his wife.
We met a man on the streets of New York who I had dated in my early twenties. Not ten minutes, after leaving the man’s company, Jerome and I got into the back of his Lincoln, Town Car. That was the first of the backhands to the mouth. “You think it’s okay to say hello to some piece of shit you used to fuck, Avia?”
“We were a foot away from each other when we passed on the sidewalk. And he said hello first. What was I supposed to do?”
Another smack made sure both my lips busted and blood poured all over my five-thousand-dollar, white, Gucci dress. The driver adjusted the rearview mirror, so he didn’t have to witness the rest of the beating which ensued.
One thing after another, after another, came up that led to me being beaten to the point of passing out. I would wake up in our home, in my room, cleaned, bandaged, and otherwise taken care of. His mother was the one to administer medical care. Not that she was any Florence Nightingale.
“Why do you have to keep testing my son so much, Avia?” she would ask me each time I woke up. “He adores you and you keep making him discipline you. Why can’t you just act right?”
There was never anything I could say to make her see my side of things. She’d obviously taken a beating or two from her husband and she’d figured out how to act the way he wanted.
But she had something that I didn’t. She and her husband had been together since they were fifteen. I didn’t meet Jerome until I was thirty. I had a past. I had old boyfriends in the city of New York where I’d moved to after graduating from high school in Baltimore, Maryland. And I’d met Jerome in New York. We lived in the town all my ex’s lived in. Chances were high that we’d run into at least a few of the nearly twenty men I’d dated in the twelve years before I’d met Jerome.
My number of men was too high, in Jerome’s opinion. Yet, he was thirty-five and he’d dated so many women that he jokingly said he’d lost count. We ran into the bimbos from his past almost every time we went out. Apparently, that was cool. That had never caused a fight between us even once.
“On your knees, Avia. I might cut you some slack if you do what I tell you to.” He took a step toward me. “Now!”
I wasn’t about to get on my knees. “You’ve told me to do that countless times. It’s ever stopped you from beating me until I’m unconscious yet. Your mother’s not here to see to me either. You might just kill me this time, Jerome. And yet you still don’t give a shit.”
Drawing his hand back to deliver another smack to my face, he growled like an animal, “That mouth of yours is out of control.”
Stepping back, I wasn’t about to stand still and let him hit me again. “You’re out of control. I’m finally getting in control of myself. Fuck you and fuck your money. I’m leaving you, Jerome Conti. Do you hear me? I. Am. Leaving. You.”
“The only way you’re leaving me is in a body bag, bitch.” Lunging at me, his reach was further than I could back up.
“Jerome, no!” One hand closed around my throat, lifting me off the floor. Clawing at his arm, I kicked my feet, hitting him in the legs as hard as I could.
Trying not to panic as my air rapidly subsided, I brought my knee up, catching him in the groin. The connection was spot on and he fell to his knees, his grip on me gone.
He pulled me down with him as he fell. Scrambling to get away from him, I rolled over and got on my feet. I didn’t get far as he grabbed my ankle, tripping me. The fall to the wood floor was so solid and abrupt that it knocked the breath out of my lungs.
He rose above me, pulling his leg back to kick me.
Kicking me while I’m down. So typical of the men I’ve had in my life.
I didn’t know what it was about me that made some men want to hurt me. Time moved in slow motion as I laid there, unable to move, waiting for the impact of Jerome’s size twelve shoe to deliver the blow that would most likely send me into unconsciousness.
Get up!
My lungs pulled in a sudden burst of oxygen and I rolled out of the way before he could kick me. I rolled and rolled until I hit one of the end tables in the living room. A lamp plummeted toward the floor.
I caught it before it hit the ground, then I jumped to my feet, finding Jerome charging at me. “Stop!”
He just kept coming. His face was beet red, his jaw clenched, his fist at the ready to pound me into oblivion. He just kept coming at me, fury radiating from him.
Closing my eyes, I listened to the sounds of his shoes as they hit the wood floor. When they were close enough, I swung the lamp.
My body was jarred as the lamp connected with him. I heard the sound of him falling. When I opened my eyes, he lay on the floor, blood ran from one wound on the side of his head, at his temple.
The way the blood kept pouring out, told me I’d gone too far. “Jerome?”
I got down on my knees beside him and picked his head up.
It moved like a newborn baby’s head does, like no muscles were there to hold it up at all.
Laying his head gently back down on the floor, I got up and ran to the bathroom, grabbing an armful of towels. Hurrying back, I picked his head back up and put some of the towels underneath it. The rest, I used to clean up the blood that had already begun pooling around his head.
Standing back up, I looked down at him. Kicking him a little in the side, I thought he might wake up. But he didn’t move. Getting back down on my knees, I pulled one of his eyelids up and found a dilated pupil staring straight ahead. “Jerome?”
Don’t panic.
Sweat beaded up on my forehead as I got back up. My eyes went wide as saucers as I saw how much blood the towels had soaked up. Covering my mouth, I held back a scream as I knew no one could live after losing that much blood.
Jerome’s naturally tan face had gone pale. His mouth hung open a little and his chest wasn’t moving at all.
Backing up, I only stopped when a chair hit the backs of my legs. Sitting down, I stared at the man who lay on the floor, unmoving.
No more beatings.
Putting my face in my hands, the tears burned as they left my eyes. It had been only a couple of years, enduring his torture. But it had felt like a lifetime. And now it was over.
You’re going to prison.
Gasping as reality hit me. I clutched my chest as more of the same hit me. I wouldn’t be going to prison. Jerome’s mafia men would kill me first.
“I’ve got to hide the body.”
I’d seen an old rug in the spare bedroom and ran to get it. Dragging it into the living room, I laid it out next to Jerome’s body. Lifting his arm, just to make sure he still seemed dead, I let it go and it fell as if it had no muscles at all.
Going to the other side of him, it took all I had to roll him onto the rug, then I rolled him up in it, like a giant burrito. But that was all I could do, without having a crane to help me move him.