by Emma Quinn
I nodded numbly, barely able to think never mind speak. He was lying. I knew it now which made me feel ill.
“So, of course you are the person that I wanted to see first.” He sounded happy. At least he hadn't seemed to pick up on my mood at all. “Because I missed you the most. I was going to cook for you, but maybe we should order in.”
“Oh, well actually I have work.” If he could lie, then so could I. “That’s why I’m here actually. That’s why I came early. Someone phoned in sick and there isn’t anyone else who can fill in but me.”
“Oh.” His face fell, but I could see the glint of excitement in his eye that I wouldn’t have noticed before. It was about to be another night of drugs, sex, and debauchery for him. “That’s really sad. I was looking forward to seeing you. I suppose Victoria won’t let me back in the bar, will she?” I shook my head no. “Oh, right. So, you are back working at the bar then, because I thought you walked out for me. But the first chance you get to betray me…”
Holy fuck, I had just put myself in a real predicament here. If I admitted that I was lying and that I didn’t work at the bar anymore, then it would cause issues, but if I continued down this path then it would upset him as well.
“I don’t work at the bar, not really, but they are having an emergency. Someone can’t work…”
“Who?” His eyes flamed. He was falling down the hole of anger, just where I didn’t want him to be. Shit, why didn’t I give some other lie as a way to get the hell away? “Who is off sick? Why is there this emergency?”
“Jake.” He was the only name that I could think of right now. “Jake is ill, I think. Or he has something on.”
“No.” Brandon reached across and he snatched the cell phone from my hand. I didn’t even realize that it was still clutched tightly between my fingers until it was wrenched away. “No, I’m going to call him and make him work. There is no way that I’m letting him bullshit his way into a night off. I want you here with me tonight…”
“You can’t.”
Oh God, Jake hated me, he wasn’t going to lie for me. Especially when he didn’t even know what it was about. I also didn’t want to be stuck here with Brandon either, not with him in this mood. “You can’t call Jake. I don’t have his number. I don’t have any way of contacting him. It was Victoria who called me…”
“Jake’s number is right here.” Brandon hit the call button, making my blood run cold. “Now, what is the real reason for you not wanting me to call Jake? Are you fucking him or something? Let me find out.”
I leapt over to him and knocked my phone from his fingers. It clattered to the floor so I couldn’t check it to see if he had hung up or not, but it didn’t really matter. Not with Brandon looking at me like he wanted to kill me.
“You are being a massive bitch, Mila,” he growled at me. “You come here, to my house, and then you lie to me about needing to go off to work… but why? That’s what I need to figure out. Because you’re a slut who is fucking Jake?”
“No, that isn’t it,” I whimpered while backing towards the door. If I could get a chance I was going to have to try and run for it. He was bound to be faster than me but I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to try. “Nothing is happening with me and Jake. I just have to work, that’s all. I don’t have any choice. They need me there.”
“Is it because you want to get away from me?” He grabbed my arm hard, making me squeal and whimper. “Why would you want to get away from me, huh? All you’ve ever wanted is to get close to me and now I give you a chance, so why the fuck would you want to escape?” He yanked me and I nearly tumbled. I cried harder. “I don’t get it. And the lying as well. I didn’t think that you were the lying type, Mila. What’s going on?”
“Let go of me, please,” I cried out. “Stop, you are hurting me. Please stop it. I didn’t lie.”
“You did. You are a fucking liar. I hate lying. I would never lie to you, you bitch.”
“You did lie to me.” I didn’t mean to say that. The words just tumbled out of my mouth. “About your dad. And Vegas.” Why was I talking? Why was I saying this? It would only make things worse. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t stop. “You want to have your junkie friends all raping me?”
“You fucking what?” He threw me hard until I hit the floor with a thump. I wailed in agony as I did. “You were here listening to my calls? What a bitch, how dare you! Those calls were private. Not for you to hear.”
“Good job I did.” A part of me couldn’t stop arguing, even if I knew that it could end my life. “Otherwise I might have come on the trip with you and your fucked-up friends. Then what would have happened to me?”
“My friends are better people than you could ever be,” he snapped back. “Don’t you dare talk about them…”
I siddled away from him, dragging my body along the floor as he ranted at me. He was going on about how incredible his friends were as if they weren’t disgusting people who needed to be put down. He wasn’t looking at me much when he went on, which gave me the time that I needed to move as far away from him.
By the time I got to the door, I knew that I needed to drag myself up and fast. I wasn’t going to get any time, which would be a challenge because I was pretty much winded. I wasn’t sure if that was because of the shock or the violence that came my way. I was pretty sure that I had a bruise forming on my arm already.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I had barely made it to my knees before Brandon spotted me. I dragged myself to my feet and tried to yank the door open but Brandon was faster than me. His fingers curled around my dress and he tore it. I heard it rip before I felt the material digging in to my body, causing more of an ache.
“What are you doing?” I screamed. “Let go of me, Brandon. Let me get out of here.”
“You can’t run around naked, Mila.” He sounded much too pleased of himself. “Not unless you really are a slut and a stripper as well. Unless you want the world to see you nude. I think you’re stuck with me.”
He reached out for my body, showing me a nasty glaring glint in his eyes. He wanted to act out his Vegas plans right here and now. Only he wanted me to remember it so that it would demoralize me completely. Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen. Even if it meant running out of here naked and letting people see me nude it would be better than being here with him. I couldn’t stand it any longer.
27
Jake
F
uck, fuck, fuck. My head was all over the place as I ran around, just searching for Mila. Ever since I heard her and Brandon arguing on the phone with it sounding like it was getting violent along the way, I raced out from behind the bar telling Matt that I had an emergency and that he needed to take over. I knew that Brandon lived near the bar somewhere because of all the times that he had walked Mila to work, but I wasn’t exactly sure where.
“Mila!” I cried out as desperation clung to me. “Mila, where are you?
I wanted to call the cops, but I needed to find her first. I was hoping that I would discover her away from Brandon, storming away from him, or at the very least hanging out of a window somewhere begging for help. I was willing to fight Brandon if I needed to. Anything to help Mila. I really didn’t want him to hurt her.
“Mila!”
Oh my God, where was she? I wish that I could have stayed on the phone, but it was crackling and hard to hear it all. My desperation to find her over-shadowed anything else anyway. Just finding her was more important. “Oh my God, Mila?” A flash of a figure caught my attention, running off into the distance. “Mila, I’m coming.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect but as my feet pounded against the concrete sending sparks of pain up my legs and my heart thundered in my chest, I knew that I wouldn’t stop. Whatever Mila needed of me, I was there.
“No, stop, go away.” I finally found a figure curled over by a dumpster with barely any clothing on. She was shivering, maybe from the cold or maybe from fear. I couldn’t quite tell. “Stop, please don’t hurt
me, Brandon.”
I whipped my tee shirt off because Mila needed something to cover her up. Her needs were greater than mine. “Mila, it isn’t Brandon. It’s Jake.” I handed her the tee shirt and she glanced up at me through tears. “I heard what was happening on the other end of the phone. Well, some of it anyway. I know that it got bad with Brandon.”
“He grabbed me,” she sobbed while showing me her bruised arm. “He grabbed me and he was going to rape me. He wanted to take me to… to Vegas to get me all drugged up and to have his friend… his friends rape me.”
I felt sick, those words were disgusting, but I couldn’t get too wrapped up in my hatred for Brandon right now. That certainly wasn’t a priority. Getting Mila out of the line of danger was what I needed to do first.
“Let’s go.” I helped her cover herself up with the tee shirt. “Let’s take you home. Get out of here so he can’t find you. If he is acting all crazy like that then there is no telling what he will do.”
“I don’t want him to come to my home,” she whimpered as she leaned in to me. “I’m scared.”
“I won’t leave you alone, I promise you. You don’t need to worry about a thing.” I hugged her tight, feeling every goose bump of sheer terror that he had placed on her poor body. But he would pay. “Don’t worry, we will get the police on the case and then he will get his punishment. He won’t hurt you again.”
She nodded, but I wasn’t sure that Mila was convinced. But she would see. I would make her see. She could trust in me, I want going to let her down, she didn’t ever need to worry about that bastard again. Never ever. I took Mila to my car, hoping that Matt was going to be okay with working all night tonight in my place because I wasn’t going back to that bar any time soon. Mila needed me, I was her hero tonight, saving her from that asshole at last.
“Thank you so much,” Mila smiled over the hot tea as I handed it to her. Finally, she had a look of someone who knew that she was safe which meant a whole lot to me. It had only taken three hours and a long interview with the police to get there. But they would get Brandon now, I was sure of it. They couldn’t let him continue on as he was. “I wouldn’t have been able to get through that without you. You are such a life saver. And I keep thinking about you coming out to find me because of what you heard on the phone… not many people would do that.”
“Of course.” A heat raced through my body. “I want to protect you no matter what.”
“You do?” She grinned, relaxing into the belief that I was there for her now. Thank goodness. “Well, that’s amazing. I don’t know if I have done anything to deserve that. Especially since everyone tried to warn me about Brandon and I wouldn’t listen.” She huffed sadly. “I stuck my head in the sand and wouldn’t listen to anything.”
“No one will blame you, I’m serious. Everyone understands how hard it is to see things sometimes.”
She cocked her head to one side and stared at me intently. “You sound like you have a love dilemma of your own right now… anything that you want to talk about? I’m all ears after all that you have done for me.”
“No.” I shook my head hard. “No, now isn’t the time for me to be piling anything on you.”
I wasn’t about to tell her that I was hopelessly in love with her and it killed me to see her with Brandon all the time, especially when I knew that he wasn’t good for her as proven by this bull shit tonight. She was still reeling from that however calm she looked right now, she had only just broken up with him. I couldn’t put my feelings on her.
If she wanted me, then she would have let me know when we together. When we had a chance…
“Something to do with Wendy?” Mila’s cheeks flamed with redness as she said this. “I saw messages on your phone the morning after we… were together.” Her eyes slipped away from mine. She was embarrassed, I could tell. “I know that I shouldn’t have done that, it was an invasion of your privacy, I didn’t mean to…”
“Wendy is my ex-girlfriend, not someone that I am with now.” I was glad for the chance to explain myself to be honest. I didn’t even mind that Mila had looked at my phone. “She wanted to get back with me but I made her see that wouldn’t happen. She wasn’t impressed, but that doesn’t matter to me.”
“Oh.” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head in shock. “I didn’t realize…”
The air around us thickened. Now, we were both single and we knew it for the first time since we slept together. That knowledge clung between us, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. I knew what I wanted to do, but it didn’t feel like the right time. Not for me to make the move anyway. It had to be Mila.
“So, erm… did you want me to go now?” I practically rasped because I was so desperate to do the right thing.
“No, no way.” She shook her head much too hard. “Can you stay here with me? I don’t want to be alone.”
“Oh sure.” I didn’t even think of it like that. “I will stay here for as long as you want. Should we watch a movie or something? I’m sure that you aren’t ready to try and get some sleep right now?”
She looked alert, still a little wired, so it wasn’t much of a surprise when she agreed. “Sure, I would love to.”
We headed over to the couch and flicked the TV on. But I could hardly focus on what was going on with the movie, I didn’t know if we were in the middle or at the beginning, or who any of the characters were. All I could notice was the sizzling chemistry between me and Mila. It was burning, frying me, making it damn near impossible.
How could I keep on ignoring this? How were we supposed to just sit here like nothing was happening? Was she doing it? I was too nervous to even look and see what her mood was like because if I found her looking at me as well… well, there was no telling what would happen. I couldn’t be to blame for that happening…
“Jake?” Oh my God, Mila was whispering my name. She wanted me to look at her even if I wasn’t ready for it.
“Yes?” I caught her eyes and it made my heart skip a beat. “Is everything okay?”
She didn’t reply, instead she grabbed my cheeks and she pulled my face towards her. She kissed me hard and fast, not holding back at all. I had been worried about her, panicked that she would be too upset for this, but as she kissed me it felt like this was exactly where we were meant to be, exactly what was supposed to be happening.
Me and Mila… we were fate. There was no arguing with that.
“I’m sorry that things went the way they did,” she whispered as we pulled apart and she rested her forehead on mine. “I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you about Wendy and about all that happened with Brandon…”
“No more apologies,” I reassured her. “Let’s just focus on the future now. The future of me and you.”
She grinned and nodded. “I like the sound of that. I’m looking forward to it already.”
I kissed her some more and agreed. “Me too, Mila.”
28
Mila
“ I
am so glad that you’re back, Mila.” Victoria grabbed me and pulled me in for a much needed hug. “We missed you a lot. And I don’t just mean at the bar. I have been so worried about you, you can’t even imagine.”
I hung my head as shame washed over me. “I know. I’m so sorry that I wouldn’t listen to anyone. Now that the fog has cleared and I can see properly, I can’t believe how many red flags I missed. It’s just always been hard for me when it comes to Brandon, you know, because back in high school before he got sent away to England, I loved him. I always held on to the belief that me and him were going to end up together. But now I don’t think the version of him that I adored was even real. I think I just made him up and loved an imaginary person.”
When I thought about it now with hind sight on my side, I couldn’t believe how much of a fool I had been. It seemed absolutely crazy to me. It wasn’t just Jake’s party that was a warning sign when I wasn’t really his date, it was everything else. He was always going to want to impress all the wrong p
eople. I didn’t need that.
“So, Jake?” Victoria nodded and cocked her head over towards the bar which Jake was working behind. “You and him… I mean, that isn’t too much of an assumption is it? Since you have both been missing in action for two days and you walked in hand in hand. Have you finally started to take my advice about the best guy ever?”
A blush burned through my cheeks. Jake hadn't been in to work because we had spent the last two days in bed, getting to know one another again, reminding me exactly what it was like to be touched by someone who gave a shit about me, who loved me and wanted me to feel special. I had to admit the difference was phenomenal.
“I should have listened to you a lot sooner. He really is a good guy. I need to get my head out of high school.”
Clearly, my youth hadn't been kind to my judgments. I needed to start afresh and learn from now.
“Well, wisdom comes with age doesn’t it?” Victoria smirked playfully at me as she pulled out a gift from behind her back. “Don’t think that I have forgotten about your birthday. And don’t worry, Jake will be finishing work early tonight so the pair of you can have a romantic night in. I’m sure that’s all you want in the world.”
I nodded eagerly and laughed. After everything that had happened, I wasn’t even planning on acknowledging my birthday today, but it seemed like my cousin hadn't forgotten. Even when she was mad with me because of the whole Brandon situation, she still purchased me a gift which was really sweet of her. And as I tore the parcel open, I spotted a gorgeous looking hand bag inside which was much nicer than anything I would have got for myself.
“Oh, Victoria, it’s beautiful,” I gushed as I tossed my arms around her. “That’s so nice of you. I will use it all the time.” I checked my watch rapidly. “Oh God, I have class in a moment, I don’t want to miss anymore, so I will see you later on.” I waved at her and bless a kiss to Jake. “Thank you, love you all, see you later…”