Hers From The Start: A Collection of First In Series Reverse Harem

by Laura Greenwood

  The doors slid shut and silence surrounded me. Suffocating me.

  “Now that we are alone. Hand over your phone, Kayla.”

  I stared at his outstretched hand. How did he know? The call about schooling. I wanted to smack my forehead at my stupidity. Why hadn’t I called using a hospital phone?

  My heart lodged in my throat. I couldn’t do it. It was my only lifeline. My way to talk to Adam, to Desiree. And because I was still stupid, it was the only way that Kris or Ryan could get a hold of me. Even if I knew they never would, I couldn’t help but hope that one day it would ring and they would be on the other end, apologizing for leaving me.

  “Come on, Kayla. I know you have one. I don’t know how you got one or where you got the money for all those inappropriate clothes, but I won’t inform your stepmother about them, if you had it over, now.”

  The taste of blood filled my mouth. I wanted to throw up. I couldn’t do it. My hand gripped it tighter inside my pocket.

  “I’m not asking again.”

  My knees shook. I had no other choice. Pulling it out, I threw it at him. Ice filled my veins. I may have to live with him, with my stepmother until I was eighteen and graduated, but I wouldn’t be more than a robot. And when I left, I would follow in my older brother’s footsteps and never look back. My family was dead to me.

  I was dead to me.

  A human, scarred and badly hurt had entered the elevator, but a corpse, a zombie exited.

  Without saying a word, I climbed into the taxi. I didn’t care where he sent me. The cabbie could abduct me, leave me on the roadside, or do anything and I wouldn’t care.

  Nothing would ever affect me again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  It was a Saturday morning in early May. The sun was shining and the birds were singing, but none of it made an impact. I couldn’t tell you the date, I didn’t care anymore. All I knew was that I was free the moment I crossed the stage and received my diploma. Each day was one day closer, but I’d stopped counting, stopped tracking the day. It was too much and still seemed so far away.

  I didn’t have much money to make a run for it, but I still had money on the prepaid card Desiree sent. It would be enough to get me started.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the parental people—I refused to call them anything else—in my house that made me want to have graduated yesterday. School had become a nightmare. Before Chloe, I’d been ignored. I was the girl who dressed strangely and had the crazy stepmom. My marks had opened a few doors, but when I couldn’t attend things outside of school hours or contact anyone, those door soon closed.

  But when I returned to school the day after I’d been yanked from the hospital, I discovered how those parental people explained my absence and enrolment of online classes through the hospital. They told the staff that I’d had a mental breakdown and needed to be monitored at all times. But that the doctors felt it best if I attended classes as normal while completing the courses online for my final year.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad—I would have continued to be ignored by the students—but, stopping breastfeeding abruptly made my boobs grow even larger. And harder. I’d also suffered some leakage giving me two giant wet spots on my shirt.

  I could have shrugged off the teasing and it would have died down within a short time. But Chloe didn’t like to feed from the bottle. She’d fed, with difficulty, my expressed milk that I’d left at the hospital, but then she refused to eat anymore once it ran out. The second night I’d been away from the hospital, they’d had to put in an IV to keep her hydrated and I’d been forced to pump so that my milk could be brought in to feed her. The parental people promised that I’d continue to breastfeed her around my school schedule before they’d release Chloe from the hospital.

  Having a baby in the car that came to pick me up and drop me off, along with the boob leakage, it didn’t take long for the rumors to start. They began simply: that Chloe was my baby. But then the parental people’s story began to circulate. Suddenly, not only had I given birth, but that I’d had a mental breakdown, including trying to kill myself, the baby, the mysterious father, or a combination of all three.

  But that wasn’t all.

  No, the mysterious father reared its ugly head. First, the popular guys told people that they’d slept with me because obviously they would have tapped any girl who was free enough with sex to have gotten pregnant. Idiots! But since each of them denied being the father, more guys confessed I’d slept with them. Because if I’d had sex with one group, I’d obviously had sex with the others. And when a father still hadn’t emerged, the pool of males I’d supposedly slept with grew.

  Now, instead of being ignored, I was the school tramp. And they never let me forget it.

  My hands formed into fists as I banged my head against my bedroom window. When would my purgatory end? I pushed back a section of hair that fell from my braid. My hair wasn’t long enough to stay back in one, but the evil woman forced me to put it back every day. Each time it fell out, she’d make a comment about how it was all my own fault since I’m been stupid and cut my hair.

  “Kayla. You need to answer the door,” the evil one called.

  I rolled my eyes, knowing she was relaxing in the living room, telling us how tired she was from all her work that week and from getting up with Chloe at night. I’d long stopped snorting at her little comments every Saturday at breakfast and instead ignored her while hiding out in my room as much as possible. She wasn’t the one who worked hard. I did.

  “Kayla,” she yelled again.

  I strode out of my room and through the house, refusing to answer her summons verbally. Instead, I made sure to walk directly in front of her on my way to the front door.

  With my eyes focusing on the floor, I pulled open the door. “”Yes? May I help you?” My voice came out as dead as I felt. I couldn’t even muster a smile. And those that I did muster were reserved exclusively for my younger siblings.

  “Kayla? Is that you?”

  The voice sounded familiar… from a long off memory. My eyes found the ballet slippers on the front step and traveled up. Up and up until my chin dropped allowing my mouth to hang open.

  “You’re so beautiful. I never imagine how gorgeous you would become. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  A deep voice rumbled its agreement, but my eyes were still stuck on the person standing before me.

  The silence lengthened, but I still didn’t know what to say. It was only the sound of the evil one’s voice yelling about keeping the door open that prompted me to speak. “M-m-mom?” At her nod, my heart thumped. “W-what are you doing here?”

  She gave me a funny look, but then rolled her eyes. “Why, I’m here for you.”

  You could have knocked me over with a whisper from a mile away. Never in my life had I dreamed of this moment. And why did she think she was here for me?

  “Can we come in? We should talk about a few things before we leave.” She patted her extra large stomach. “And besides, standing for too long hurts my back.”

  I stepped back and motioned for her and the large dark skinned man behind her to enter.

  “Oh good, you’re here,” the evil one commented from the doorway to the living room before bellowing for the other half of the parental people. “Come on in to the dining room and sit down. I’ll bring us out some snacks. I swear that you’d think Kayla was raised in a barn for her lack of manners, but I did my best. Maybe you can do better?”

  Thoughts swirled in my head as I followed them into the dining room. For the first time since I’d been removed from the hospital I realized I wasn’t dead inside. No, I’d been numb. I’d had to be. Because you couldn’t feel this much confusion, this much hurt, this much embarrassment if you were dead.

  We took our seats, including the other parental person when he arrived. The evil one bustled around the table pretending to be the perfect hostess. I sat quietly, waiting to find out the reason for this unexpected visit. At least it was unexpected to
me as the parental people acted like they knew this was going to happen.

  “Kayla, I’d like to introduce you to my husband. He’s a professor at Boston University.”

  I nodded and politely murmured a hello.

  The woman who’d once been my mother, the one who walked out without ever looking back, grasped my hand between hers. “Thank you so much for agreeing to come live with us in Boston to help out with the twins.” She pulled one of her hands away to rub her belly. “You’ll have a great time attending Boston University. We know you wanted to take history, but if you change your mind, you can get into any program.” She turned slightly to wink at her husband. “A perk of being a professor’s daughter. And of course based on your stellar grades as well.”

  My mouth did a guppy impression. What the hell is she talking about? I didn’t often swear, but this was one time it was needed, even if it was only in my brain. This whole thing sounded like a done deal. Like I was somehow moving to Boston. To take care of my mother’s twins. A woman I didn’t know. And going to school there.

  My breath came out in gasps. My heart raced. I could feel sweat breaking out along my brow, in my armpits, and on my palms. They couldn’t do this to me. I had it all planned out. My life was going to be my life.

  The murmur of voices continued around me. But I didn’t hear the individual words, too wrapped up in my own personal hell.

  “…so glad the school is letting her go early. The timings worked out great.”

  Letting me go early? What the fuck? My swearing was getting worse. I couldn’t remember the last time the “f” word came out of my mouth or even in my head. But I was lost. So very, very lost. And I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what was to come.

  My mother’s husband quirked his eyebrows. His eyes darted around the table and his eyebrows rose higher and higher. I knew the moment he understood my plight because his eyes widened fractionally and then hardened.

  He fixed his gaze on me. A resigned smile on his face. “Kayla, I heard so much about you these past few months that I feel like I know you, but I have a feeling that this is all new and overwhelming to you.” I nodded. Finally, an adult who acted rationally.

  “Your mother and I would like to offer you a chance to move to Boston with us. She’s carrying twins and the pregnancy hasn’t been easy. Plus, as my daughter, you can attend my school for free. The only problem is that we need you to come with us today. Your mother is scheduled for a C-section next week and both babies will require some extra care initially.”

  I sucked in some air through clenched teeth. Even though he was making it sound like I had a choice, I knew that this had been a done deal. But I had a suspicion that until this moment, he didn’t know that I hadn’t been involved in the decision process. I glanced at my mother’s eager face and noticed her pinched lips and some hardness around her eyes as she stared at the evil one. Maybe she didn’t know I wasn’t involved either? If so, maybe she hadn’t abandoned me all those years ago? What if she’d tried to contact me only to have been blocked?

  “If you’re worried about school and graduating, your father and stepmother informed us that your school considers you a graduate already based on your marks. They say that you’ve already finished all your school work and are willing to waive your exams.”

  “Is that in writing?” I couldn’t not ask the question. My new stepfather needed to know exactly the type of people he was dealing with.

  He smiled. His first truly at ease smile. And his eyes twinkled. I may have just met him and still didn’t know much about him, but I knew that I liked him. “Yes. Actually, your principal has been in contact with our registrar since the application deadline had already passed and you were missing some of our standardized testing.” He reached into his sport coat pocket and pulled out a small envelope. “I know that small envelopes usually signify a rejection, but in this case”—he held out the letter to me—”I know that it is an acceptance.”

  A smile graced my face. It was the first one not directed at my siblings and it felt weird. A familiar sensation, but yet it felt foreign at the same time. My fingers shook as I reached across the table to snatch the letter from his hand. Without waiting, I tore it open and read. He’d spoken the truth. They were offering me an acceptance with no fees based on my marks and his status as a professor.

  I slumped back into my chair. Could this really be happening? Was I really being offered an escape plan? One a few months earlier than I expected?

  The whole idea sounded too good to be true, but the opportunity it afforded… I’d be an idiot to turn it down. The faces of Kris and Ryan popped into my mind. Boston was a hockey town. It was home to a professional team and both of them would play there. They may have broken my heart, but I still loved them. Maybe I would have the courage to reach out to them. Having them in my life, even as friends, would be better than the silence I had now.

  My heart skipped joyfully at the idea. Having the two of them back would fill in so many holes.

  Chloe’s cry of hunger sounded over the baby monitor. My boobs ached with the sound, but thankfully it was only a phantom sensation. I’d managed to wean Chloe only a month earlier. I could leave knowing she’d at least survive and could feed from a bottle. But the ache in my chest didn’t ease when her crying let up.

  Adam.

  Moving to Boston would mean I’d be removing Adam from my life permanently. I knew I must have hurt him badly, leaving the way I did, but there’d been no way to contact him without tipping off the parental people. If they had even the slightest suspicion of what had gone on between us, I had no doubt they would have made waves, possibly destroyed his career.

  My plan had always included making my first stop back at the hospital to see if he still felt the same. But I couldn’t do that from Boston. Could I go and give him up?

  The evil one returned with Chloe in her arms. My heart broke at the idea of leaving her and my other siblings behind. But my plan had always called for it. It had been the one drawback. She hit the back of my shoulder as she walked by, drawing my attention. The scowl she gave, cemented my decision. I wasn’t welcome in her house anymore.

  Returning my gaze to my new stepfather, my lips wobbled, but I held myself rigid. “Thank you for the offer. I accept.”

  My mother clapped her hands and smiled, but it was the look on my stepfather’s face that confirmed I’d made the correct decision. His shoulders sagged in relief while a smile graced his face. “Thank you,” he mouthed with a dip of his chin.

  I excused myself from the table to go pack and organize my things. They’d said they wanted to leave for the drive back to Boston as soon as possible. I threw my belongings into the suitcase and a few garbage bags. The clothes the evil one made me wear remained in my closet. There was no way I was taking those.

  Crawling under my bed, I found my secret hiding place and removed all the items I’d received from Kris, Ryan, and even Adam. The things I hadn’t wanted the parental people to find. They, too, went into my suitcase. I may not have the three of them in person, but I would keep their gifts, their words, close by forever.

  Dragging the suitcase and bags behind me, I made my way to the front door. I called out to let them know I was ready to leave.

  They found me hugging my younger siblings goodbye. Without a word, I pulled Chloe from the evil one’s arms. Holding her close, I took in one last breath of her sweet baby scent. My eyes stung. They burned, but the pain was nothing compared to the pain in my heart. I’d known it would be hard, but I never imagined it would be this hard.

  “I know you’ll miss your younger siblings, Kayla, but we’ll make sure you can video chat with them weekly, if not daily, correct?” My mother stared at her replacement.

  It didn’t matter that my mother walked out on me, my brother, and my father. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t contacted me. All that was wiped out with her comment. For I knew how the evil one worked. Her ego and the face she presented to people was the mo
st important thing. With my mother’s comment, I knew she would have to agree. If she didn’t, people—meaning my mother, her husband, and anyone she told—might question their parenting skills.

  I held my breath.

  The evil one looked like she sucked on a lemon, but her shoulders drooped. “Yes. We’ll make sure that they get to video chat weekly.”

  “Daily,” my new stepfather stated in his deep gruff voice. His tone ensured no argument.

  A huge breath rushed out though the evil one’s lips. “Fine. Daily if Kayla wants.”

  For the third time, I smiled. “I want.”

  I kissed Chloe and handed her back. Picking up my bags, I walked out the door and never looked back.

  It wasn’t the way I planned. It wasn’t in the city I’d hoped for. But my new beginning stretched out before me. And I was going to grab hold with both hands.

  Epilogue

  Six years later in early July

  Kayla wandered along the beach at the edge of the water in the fading light. Her toes left soft imprints which were soon washed away by the waves rolling in. Spotting an abandoned lounger up the beach in the dryer sand, she retreated, the sand clumping on her damp feet.

  She’d spent the past month relaxing, but really hiding out from reality, at her best friend, Molly’s, beach house in the Caribbean. Molly’s husband Sean, a professional hockey player with Boston, had surprised Molly two years ago with the house.

  Sitting back, she watched as the sun began its descent below the horizon. The riotous colors streaking through the sky were lost on her as her mind replayed a conversation she’d heard earlier in the day between two of Sean’s teammates. They discussed her recent ex-fiancé, Jack, and his sexual exploits both prior to and after their recent break-up. None of which was new to her, but when one of them happened to mention some of Jack’s hook-ups during their relationship, she knew she needed out of the house.

  How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I see it? But the reality was, she knew the answers the answers to the questions rolling around in her mind. It just bugged her that she’d turned into someone who didn’t care and not in a good way. She never saw the signs that he’d been cheating on her, not because she was oblivious, but because she didn’t care. She didn’t care enough about her own fiancé to notice all the signs.