Freedom

by S. A. Wolfe

  Freedom

  By: S.A. Wolfe

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright ©2014 S.A. Wolfe

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  http://www.sa-wolfe.com

  Cover Design by Damonza

  Editing and Formatting by C&D Editing

  Dedication

  For my brothers

  They have both been there.

  *This is a stand-alone sequel to Fearsome. No cliffhanger!*

  Dylan Blackard is back in town and certain everyone knows his secrets.

  Putting away his notorious reputation as the wild guy with a womanizing past, he’s now on a new path, wanting to be the good guy his brother can stop worrying over. As long as he gives up his old vices—including women—he can keep himself on the straight and narrow and finally live up to everyone’s expectations.

  However, obsessing about his lack of self-control is making Dylan one humorless, cranky hermit. That all changes, though, when his brother hires a new employee, the stunning Emma Keller, who will be sharing an office with him and all of his tightly wound nerves.

  Emma, a spunky, young woman from New Jersey, isn’t about to feel sorry for Dylan and his situation. She is beyond distracting to him, and that is enough to turn his emotional balancing act upside down. Not only is she intelligent, and a smart aleck, she's also very determined to pull the sexy Dylan Blackard out of his self-imposed isolation.

  From the moment he meets her, he feels alive again, but Emma doesn’t come as a gift with a pretty bow; she comes with major baggage—a family embedded in its own tumultuous history.

  Will Emma be the tipping point that causes Dylan to regress into his past destructive behaviors… or will he actually pursue her for keeps?

  *Due to adult language and sexual content, this New Adult Contemporary Romance is intended for readers over the age of 18.*

  One

  Dylan

  “What has changed the most for you in the last five months, Dylan?”

  I’m not getting laid?

  That persistent question hangs in the air between us for a moment while I look around the room, trying to sum up how I feel without sounding like a repetitive loser.

  I’ve been seeing Dr. Wang every week for months since I came out of the treatment facility, or The Cuckoo’s Nest as my friend Imogene fondly refers to the place where I went to deal with my bipolar disorder.

  I had met Dr. Wang before I went in the place, an emergency situation that warranted starting meds again, and then we’d picked up with regular sessions in January when I had returned from my stay at the rehab joint.

  Rehabbing my brain is how I’ve seen it, and it has been interesting and frustrating to say the least.

  There was no doubt that I had needed the intervention; I had driven one of our company delivery trucks off a bridge and had no recollection of why I had been so distracted. I was banged up yet not seriously injured. It had left me with scars on my head, but other than that, it had really been the sign I had needed to get professional help.

  I don’t remember a lot of my erratic behavior prior to going to Massachusetts and checking into the Willow Haven Center. They always give these places goofy preschool names to make it sound like we are running around with butterfly nets and sipping lemonade all day. I wish it could have been that simple, but mostly the doctors and therapists wanted me to talk about my lifelong struggles and earliest memories of when things seemed to have gone wrong for me. It meant having to share the worst events—my mother’s death and my father’s suicide—with a room full of strangers.

  Unlike other patients, I didn’t tell long-winded stories, and I didn’t take any comfort in the group empathy. I was blunt and to the point, showing no signs of grief when it was my turn to talk. I was so brusque in my first group session, telling my family history in about thirty seconds, that one guy laughed loudly and said, “Well, I guess you’re done here. So much for therapy.” That obnoxious guy became my best friend while I was imprisoned in Camp Happy.

  Truthfully, my brother had been right to insist that I go into treatment. Last year, I was a mess. I mean, I might have been about to propose to Jessica, a woman who hadn’t loved me, but that had just been the start of my downfall. You could say I wasn’t operating at full capacity, and that would have been an understatement. I wasn’t pining over her—I knew that much—because I had never truly been in love with her. It was merely a manic episode in my life where I had constantly been drifting in my own head and feeling pretty soulless. Unfortunately, I had used Jess as a filler in an attempt to get over the lousy emptiness that had surrounded me.

  Jess was someone Carson and I had known briefly one summer when we were kids and she had been visiting her aunt in Hera. So, when she had come back last summer to collect her inheritance after her aunt’s death, I had used the opportunity to make a move on her. She had seemed game for a fling. Apparently I foiled Carson’s plan to do the same, though. I knew he was attracted to her, but I’d had no idea my brother was in love with her, and neither had Jess. At least, not until after she’d dumped me.

  Of course, I’ve been the one that has come off as the pariah in the whole fiasco because everyone blames it on my notorious philandering. And I take full blame for my behavior towards Jess and Carson. I expected that, as my lifelong protector, Carson wouldn’t try to intervene if he thought it would hurt me, and it worked; he stepped aside. I played that card extremely well, and I don’t know why since there is no one on this earth that I love more than Carson. However, I was also playing with Jess’s feelings. I have a vague recollection of being attached to her in a desperate way, one that wasn’t anything close to resembling love.

  I had been blind to the fact that she was falling in love with my brother from the minute she’d moved to town almost a year ago. Somehow, I managed to create the biggest fucking mess for all three of us because of it.

  Luckily, Jess is a smart woman and broke off our relationship, and Carson, despite the trouble and pain that I caused him, made me get help.

  So, there it is; I agreed to go to a residential treatment program to get my bipolar behavior under control. It has helped that I was away from everyone in the puny town of Hera, namely my brother and the woman he loves, so they could have the relationship they both want and deserve. Yeah, I can be a good guy—just send me off to the crazy house to get a periodic tune up.

  I finished my rehab stint in January, only to find myself as the best man in my brother’s wedding. Who did he marry? Jessica, of course.

  “Dylan?” Dr. Wang asks again. He is a slight, young man with a big, friendly smile and kind eyes behind black-framed glasses. He looks like he’s sixteen even though he has medical degrees plastered all over his walls from prestigious schools.

  He types quickly on the computer in front of him, taking notes on our session while watching me.

  “Sorry, I got sidetracked.”

  “Is the medicine having any adverse effects?” Dr. Wang pauses in his speed typing and looks thoughtfully at me. “Are you more tired or anxious?”

  “No, I feel fine.” I look down at my hands resting on my thighs. I flex them, releasing my fists, hoping to find something to calm the nagging feeling inside me.

  “Tell me what’s going on.” Dr. Wang is assertive even when smiling. “Are you still running?”

  “Yeah, I run every day. At least six to ten miles, and I work out in the gym after work.”

  “You’ve been coming here since January, and you are different. You’re more subdued in our sessions. Still restless, but I’m not seeing that high-energ
y, anxious side of you. I’ve noticed the change.”

  I nod along.

  “And you’ve been weight training, excessively it seems,” Dr. Wang adds. “I had your recent physical sent over from your GP. Everything looks fine. The blood work is good. You’ve gained more than twenty pounds. But that’s okay for your height, considering all the exercising you do. It looks like it’s all in muscle. Is that what you’ve been doing—spending all your time bulking up?” Dr. Wang smiles reassuringly.

  “When I’m not working… yeah… pretty much I just work out. I don’t know what else to do with myself. I don’t drink anymore, so I don’t go to bars with my friends.”

  And I’m staying away from women, too. Dr. Wang already knows that, though.

  “So a typical day for you is to get up and run, go to work, and then lift weights at the gym afterwards. And you avoid everyone except people at work?” Dr. Wang’s smile is replaced with a serious frown. “I’ve heard this scenario before. You do realize that you repeat this to me every time you come here.”

  “That’s pretty much my life in a nutshell. Sometimes I run on my lunch break, too. It keeps me out of trouble.” I shift uncomfortably in the small chair.

  Dr. Wang’s eyes widen. I don’t sound like a normal person at all. I sound like some freaking Schwarzenegger caricature. Running, lifting weights, working and avoiding people outside of work. Who lives like that except emotional wrecks like me?

  “Is that what you’re afraid of? Getting into trouble? Do you worry about what Carson thinks?”

  “Of course. I’ve been raising hell for so many years, and now I’m finally the good brother. I don’t want to mess that up for me or anyone else, for that matter. They’ve all spent enough time on me.”

  Dr. Wang gives an unhappy nod. He has heard this before—I’m not good at adding anything meaningful to our sessions other than to confirm that I am not on the cusp of another manic episode.

  “There has to be something else. What do you do for fun? When you aren’t working or exercising, what do you do to let go?”

  “Not much. Sometimes I take long hikes on the weekends to get out of the house.”

  “Anything else? Do you ever relax at home and watch TV or go out for a movie with a friend? I’ll accept any person here—you fill in the blank.”

  “No, I don’t really go out at all. I hate being home alone, though. It’s kind of…”

  “What? Lonely?”

  “Yeah. Being—living alone sucks. Leo is never home; he spends all his free time at Lauren’s house, so I have the place to myself, and I’ve discovered that I don’t like being alone. At least at Willow Haven I had friends who were in the same boat as me. Some of them were unbelievably bat-shit fucked up, but—oh, sorry.”

  Dr. Wang smiles. “It’s okay.”

  I sigh. Sometimes I feel sorry for my doctor because he has to deal with miserable fucks like me.

  “But you do this intentionally,” he says. “You’re isolating yourself from everyone except for the people you work with. What about Carson and Jessica? Do you see them?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been to their house a couple of times for dinner and there’s nothing weird between us. Jess is like a sister. I don’t think of her in any other way.”

  “So why don’t you spend more time with Jess and Carson and your other friends? What’s stopping you?”

  “They all look so happy that it makes me feel miserable.” I rub my palm over my forehead.

  ”You feel like you’re missing out?”

  “Sure. Sometimes.”

  “Are you feeling depressed at all? I’m talking about the extreme low points you felt before the therapy and medication.”

  “No, it’s not like that. I don’t feel depressed, and my moods aren’t flying all over the place. I feel kind of… numb and dull.”

  Dr. Wang doesn’t look satisfied with that response.

  “You just turned twenty-four. Did you have a party or celebration of some type?”

  “Nope. I met Carson for a quick dinner at the diner and then headed home.”

  Dr. Wang looks at his monitor and continues to type away before turning back to me. “Listen, Dylan, you’ve been coming here for months. Contrary to your concerns, you’re not an alcoholic or a sex addict—that was established in the treatment center—but you’re treating yourself like someone who can’t control himself if you’re around others. I don’t see an inability for self-control on your part. You’ve been doing well, even if it seems like very little progress to you.

  “How about this? The next time your friends ask you to join them for dinner or a night out at a bar, you accept? You can drink seltzer or something. And stop thinking you’re not allowed to date women. If you’re not ready, don’t do it. That’s fine. But, for months, you’ve been hinting at or telling me directly that you’re ready for more, and I’m telling you it’s okay to move on.”

  Two

  Emma

  Finally, I’m out of there. I couldn’t take the past year of living back home, working for my father again in the corporate office of his retail chain.

  My father, Daniel Keller, has built his own little empire of mid-quality, dingy, auto repair and supply shops, promoted daily with low budget TV ads and the company’s mascot—an obnoxious, shrieking spokesman portrayed by a has-been pro linebacker. It’s an unglamorous job, but it’s a paycheck.

  My parents offer a nice home and decent employment, however I have to move on and have a real life of my own. With the exception of going away to Syracuse for college, I have never been separated from my parents or “the business” for very long. I don’t come from a mafia family in the way that the rest of America glorifies it in movies or television, but unfortunately, I am surrounded by the real deal. My family is embedded in the culture to an extent; we have suffered because of it. It is not entirely my father’s doing, either.

  He had no idea that building a successful company would put us in this situation. I think he always believed that we would be set free, given the opportunity to stop paying off extortion fees to guys who came to visit him every month. That never happened, though, and the more money my father’s retail chain made, the more he paid and the more I got involved with the types of kids my parents wanted me to stay away from.

  And then there was Robert. To put it mildly, he enchanted me. He was my first hard crush. I watched him grow up from a tough street fighter—the leader of the cool kids that all the young girls fawned over—to a smart, Princeton grad who polished his image as his father moved up in the ranks of the family. Robert Marchetto was a few years ahead of me and too handsome and popular to be in my circle. He was out of my league… until one day when he wasn’t.

  I was working in my father’s office on summer break from college when Robert showed up at the company with his father, Vincent Marchetto. I saw the discomfort in my father’s face as Robert walked right in and started talking to me. He had recognized me from when I was a freshman in high school and recalled who I had hung out with. He was charming and beautiful, just as I had remembered. Only right then, he was a man and I, too, had changed dramatically in those five years, enough so that Robert was very interested.

  In hindsight, if I could go back and alter time, I would. There’s no use lamenting over the impossible, however.

  My new home and job in the little town of Hera, New York are the perfect opposite of what I had in New Jersey. The furnished cottage I am now renting is a very cozy, little one-bedroom hut with full-on 1980s décor, not far from the center of town. Plus, in nice weather I can walk to my job at Blackard Designs. In contrast, my parents’ suburban neighborhood is not far from the Paramus strip of retail stores, businesses, car dealerships and other notorious establishments. I am used to density and traffic; Hera is quiet and wide open without a single traffic light. I can breathe in peace, and there’s no Robert here.

  I am fortunate that Lauren, one of my good friends from college, hoo
ked me up with this job. She and Imogene—also one of my college buddies and a lifelong resident of Hera—knew I was going crazy with interviews in New York City and getting rejected for every single position. Young, inexperienced college grads flood the streets of New York like confused locusts, swarming into each other with no real direction. I am no different than everyone else in our generation; I can only assume that I have some spectacular hidden talent to take on the world, yet it is hidden so well that I have no clue how to figure out what I should be excelling in.

  At the age of twenty-three, I seem to be highly skilled in pacifying unsatisfied wholesale customers even though it is terribly unfulfilling to have people gripe at you all day about automotive parts.

  I do credit Lauren with saving me from another year of living with my bickering parents and working in my father’s miserable offices. However, at least I can say that working for him over the years has given me the opportunity to wear a lot of hats, so I am qualified to do something beyond fetching coffee and filing.

  My father is a difficult boss with all of his employees. He is fair, but he manages his staff like they are roaming, mindless herds that need constant prodding and shouting. As the underling assistant to the real marketing assistant in his wholesale department, I wasn’t spared his infamous wrath. Behind his back, everyone refers to him as Genghis Khan, and I couldn’t agree more. Often, my father would yell at me more than other employees as if to prove a point that I wasn’t getting any breaks for acquiring my job through nepotism. It was incredibly exhausting to play that role. Day after day of being his verbal assault target would wear down my nerves. Between his management style, and my mother’s breakdowns over wanting to flee New Jersey, I was suffocating.

  After I interviewed with Carson Blackard at his furniture factory last week, I knew he would be so much more pleasant to work for than my father, and I already have Lauren and Imogene here as friends—people that have no connection to my Jersey life and the other family I am trying to forget about.