by Laura Avery
He always had been.
His games were long, precise, and if delivered the right way would leave you curled up in a ball while you begged for mercy over and over again. Getting on his bad side was the worst thing I had ever done.
“What are you going to do to me?” I averted my eyes from his.
“Telling you would ruin all the fun.” He jolted me harder into his lap. “But I will tell you this, pet, by the time I’m done with you, you’re going to wish that you had never been born.” His hand inched up my dress rapidly until he was practically touching my center. “And I’m not going to stop until you’re begging to give every single part of yourself to me.” He leaned in, brushing his lips against my ear. “You belong to me, Winter, and only me.”
He released me before I had a chance to respond, standing up and letting my body tumble to the ground without making any kind of effort to catch me. I scurried to my feet, feeling more scared and humiliated than ever. I pressed my legs together, hoping he had no idea how wet he had just made me.
“What the hell is going on over here?” Drew rushed toward us, yanking me out of my daze as he strolled up next to us, taking in my disheveled appearance. “What happened to you?” He frowned, looking my wet dress up and down. “Winter, I’m trying to run a business here.”
“So, run it,” Caden snapped coldly before reaching out and wrapping his hand around my arm and yanking me closer to his body. “I don’t see anyone stopping you.”
My boss’s whole demeanor changed when he realized who I was standing next to. “Caden, what a pleasure to see you here. I wasn’t aware that you and Winter knew each other.”
I could feel him tensing next to me. “Well, now you are.”
“I am.” He looked back and forth between us one more time before backtracking. “Well, you let me know if you need anything, Mr. Dean, anything at all.” His smile was even faker than the one I plastered on my face every night to make it through my shifts.
“I better get back to work,” I mumbled.
Drew waved me off. “Take your time, Winter.”
Of course.
“I had better go,” I grumbled and tried to ignore a headache that was starting to form at the center of my forehead. I took a few steps away from Caden, praying that he wouldn’t be in the mood to make me stay.
The whole situation had started to grow more out of control by the second.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Winter. You can count on it.” The look on his face told me it wasn’t a statement; it was a promise. Caden Dean was ready to deliver his reign of terror onto me. It was no longer a question of if it was going to happen, but rather when it was going to happen.
I could feel his green eyes burning a hole in my back, trained into me like a puppy watching their new toy trot away from them. I thought I was in the clear for a split second until I heard the sound of a fist pounding into flesh.
I swung around, startled, but it was too late. Caden had the man who had called me ‘fine ass’ minutes before by the neck, holding him straight up into the air while his legs flapped under him, struggling to find solid ground again.
“I didn’t know, Caden! I swear I didn’t know!”
“Everyone knows,” Caden growled, an edge in his voice so deep that it could have drowned a thousand men. “You were trying to take advantage of me, Carlos,” he seethed. “Jumping at the chance to take a piece of what’s mine, is that it?” He shook his head, shaking his body like a piece of paper. “You know, I go away for a little while and it’s like everyone forgets their fucking place in this city. Maybe I should make an example out of you, send a message to everyone in this fucking city that Caden Dean’s still got it.”
I wanted to close the distance between the three of us, I wanted to wrap my arms around Caden and stop him, but I knew it would do little good. If there was one thing Caden hated more than being disobeyed it was being reprimanded. Still, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the idiot that was caught under his hold. He was harmless. A stupid drunk? Sure, but harmless just the same.
The guy shook his head with wide eyes, fear oozing out of him like a sticky honey that no bees were around to sap up so ended up getting eaten by vultures instead. “No one’s forgotten their place, Caden, no one.”
My heart started racing, my hands trembling the way they always did when he was near, executing some kind of power. It was true and Caden knew it. No one would do anything to disobey him. It had been that way for as long as I could remember, even if Caden hadn’t been absolutely terrifying, his father could destroy you with one phone call.
Heir to one of the biggest skyscraper companies in New York City, Daniel Dean was a force to be reckoned with. The only thing he loved more than money were his sons, no matter how much trouble they seemed to cause in their hometown while he was off in Manhattan running the day-to-day operations of the family business. The Deans ran this town and everybody knew it.
And Caden? Well, Caden looked at it as his personal playground.
“Please, man, I have a family,” the guy pleaded in fear, growing desperate enough to beg in front of a room full of people who were all holding their breath just as much as I was. The night Caden had gotten taken away in handcuffs popped into my mind again. I had never seen someone so angry in my life. I had never seen so much blood in my life.
I felt like I was going to choke on the memory.
I felt my feet moving forward, determined to do something even if I would end up regretting it. I couldn’t stand by and let Caden destroy another innocent human being, not after everything that had happened six months ago. I had no idea what I was going to say or do when I reached him. I just knew I had to act. I hadn’t that night and had regretted it every day since.
Maybe doing something now would help with the nightmares.
Caden saved me from myself by sighing loudly before he released the man roughly and sent his body flying into a table on the other side of the room. He landed solidly, letting out a yelp of pain when his bones made contact with the hardness of the floor underneath him. A few feet to the left and he could have cracked his head open.
“I want to make one thing clear,” Caden said loudly, dominating the attention of everyone in the room just like he always did. “I don’t know what the fuck you all thought you were doing while I was away but I’m back now.” He turned his eyes to me, slowing narrowing them before shooting daggers of hate up and down my limbs. “And she is mine, she belongs to me.” He cracked his knuckles a few times and smirked wildly.
I closed my eyes and gulped. Caden was back, out of prison, and reminding the whole town that they were to stay away from me, that they weren’t to touch me or associate with me. It was a game he had made the rules for a long time ago and those who didn’t obey lost in more ways than one. I was his star player, one he liked only focused on him.
He was reminding everyone who owned me.
I couldn’t hate him as much as I wanted to.
After all, he was only stating the facts.
Chapter Three
“Borderline obsessed.”
WINTER
*One-Year Ago
I had been watching Caden Dean without his knowledge for as long as I could remember. It had started in middle school, a peek here, a gaze there. It wasn’t as if I could help it; he fascinated me, just like he did everyone else. Soon, without my permission, it grew into more than that.
By the time we hit high school, I was borderline obsessed.
He was the most interesting person I had ever come across in my life. The way he interacted with people. The way girls flocked to him like moths to a flame. The way everyone feared him without even speaking to him. The way he manipulated people into doing whatever the hell he wanted them to do with just one sentence. Sometimes with just one look.
Even if his outer beauty hadn’t of been captivating, his inner evilness would have been. Caden Dean was like a puzzle that had been shoved together all wrong but no matter how many times
you tried to fix it; the pieces would never fit back together right.
But the strangest part of all was how much he seemed to enjoy it.
He liked being fucked up.
He got off on it.
When my mother married Logan Rockwell and moved us into the rich neighborhood on the other side of the city with him and my new stepbrothers, I was thrilled to find the Dean’s house only two away from ours. More thrilling? If I crawled out of my window and sat on the edge of the roof I was able to see directly into their house.
The entire friggin layout.
It was like getting a peek into a world that you only thought existed on the movie screens. The parties, the drugs, the money, the girls. And, Lord, was there a lot of them. Girls, I mean. Every time Caden would bring a girl home I would feel a sickness creep into my throat followed by a gulp of jealousy I didn’t fully understand.
I would swear I wasn’t going to watch, promise myself that I didn’t want to see it. Most of the time I felt frozen when it came down to it, though, unable to move even if I desperately wanted to. It felt like an addiction, watching with envy as he was with numerous beautiful girls that I would never be.
I wondered what it would feel like to have him touch me the way he touched them, curious about how good he would taste with his lips covering every part of me. I started wishing that he would pay attention to me, that he would finally notice me the way that I noticed him.
Of course, by the time he did, I wished he hadn’t. I guess I should have specified all those nights that I spent praying for Caden Dean’s attention that I wanted his positive attention. Caden started noticing me all right, just not in the way I had wanted him to.
I wasn’t sure when Caden had made the decision that I would be his personal plaything but I remember the first time he acted on it. The move to my new home had come with three stepbrothers I wanted nothing to do with. All older than me, all more experienced than me, and all crueler than me. The only one I could stand was the youngest of the three.
Josh Donavon was the baby of the family but still two years older than me. Instead of making snide remarks about my mom being a whore or me looking like a wet piece of trash, he took one look at me and then promptly decided to act like I didn’t exist. It might have sounded cruel but it was a break in the constant tension I was used to and I appreciated it more than he knew.
He also happened to be Caden’s best friend.
Suddenly, the man I had secretly watched all those years was around all the time. I no longer just saw him through the ends of my black hair at school or from the safety of my bedroom with no chance of being spotted. The first few times it felt thrilling; until I realized he had about as much interest in me as Josh did. If I thought I was nothing to Josh, I was straight up invisible to Caden.
But after the first few weeks, the looks started.
Not the sweet, he’s checking me out looks. No, these were sharp and intense, filled with hatred. It was as if he was accusing me of something, annoyed with me purely for existing. Avoiding him became a routine, locking my bedroom door and choosing only to watch him from the safety of my room.
I remembered the first time he spoke to me like it was yesterday.
My stepbrothers had decided to throw a party, inviting half of the town over to drink, do drugs, and hookup where ever they saw fit. When a couple promptly shoved me out of my own bedroom so they could make out I ended up making my way downstairs and into the backyard.
The party was in full swing. Various people mingling around, drinking and partying. The girls were all clad in short skirts and bikini tops, I immediately felt out of place in my pajama pants and t-shirt. I tugged on the bottom of the bright yellow fabric and glanced around the backyard, searching for someone, anyone, that I might know. I should have known better, it wasn’t like me and my stepbrothers hung out with the same crowd.
In fact, I didn’t have any crowd.
It felt like the more I tried to talk to people the more they ran the other way.
“What are you doing out here?” A deep voice said huskily from behind me, disapproval rested there. Caden grabbed me by the arm and swung my body around without even giving me a chance to respond. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Winter.”
My body went stiff under him. Caden Dean had never said two words to me in his whole life and there he was, bossing me around as if it were completely normal. And he knew my name, how did he know my name?
“You know my name,” I choked out.
My response annoyed him and his grip tightened on my body. “You shouldn’t be out here.” He looked my body up and down slowly, amusement creeping into his eyes when he saw what I was wearing. “It’s not the kind of place a girl like you should be hanging out.”
I immediately started to blush. I could have died.
“You aren’t the boss of me,” I said boldly, trying to remove myself from him. I should have been appalled at him for putting his hands on my skin but all I could feel was a hotness that started between my legs and traveled all the way down to my toes. Plus, I was having trouble not getting lost in his eyes. They were deeper up close, almost impossible not to drown in.
My mouth was growing dryer by the second.
Anger drifted into his features and he yanked me against his chest, crushing me into his broad chest. “I’m the boss of you if I tell you I’m the boss of you, Winter, do you understand me?”
My heart started racing in my chest and I felt my body starting to shake slightly underneath him. I tried to fight it, I really did, but my fear and hormones were getting the best of me at the same time.
He closed his eyes and groaned softly, pulling my trembling body even further into him. “You’re nervous,” he said firmly and seductively, almost as if it turned him on or something, which was ridiculous.
Nothing someone like me could do would turn someone like him on.
“Say it,” he seethed between clenched teeth.
“I’m nervous,” I whispered.
He kept his eyes sealed shut for a few more seconds, enjoying the notion, before snapping them open again. They were even more furious than before, even though I had given him exactly what he wanted.
He leaned in close to me. “The next time I tell you to do something, you had better fucking do it the first time," he growled into my ear. "Now go dry off and then go back up to your room and lock the fucking door behind you."
What did he mean dry off?
He pushed his large hands into my shoulders and sent my body flying backward into the pool, completely soaking me from head to toe.
By the time I came up for air, the entire backyard was having a laugh at my expense and Caden was nowhere to be found. I had to climb out of the water with soaking wet clothes and everyone laughing at me.
No, I would never forget the very first time Caden humiliated me.
It was that first night I was thinking about as I sat on my roof all those weeks later. Things had gotten worse since then; Caden’s need to humiliate me had grown more fierce and regular. I was pretty sure everyone in town had laughed at my expense at least a hundred times over thanks to the hands of Caden. I had spent endless hours trying to figure out why he hated me so much without ever coming up with a single reason that made sense.
Maybe he was just that evil.
I hated the part of me that didn’t want to believe that.
I was just thinking about how to avoid him the next day when I saw him throw open the side door of his house and stomp inside, his younger brother trailing after him, spitting words to the back of his head.
Caden reached out and picked the chair up that sat in the living room, tossing it across the room before he grabbed his brother by the collar of his shirt and brought his face to his, spitting words out at him that I knew were venoms just based off their body language.
Leave it alone, Winter.
None of your business.
Caden hissed a few more words out at his brother before tossing his
body aside and grabbing his keys off the counter, leaving the same way he had come. He kicked over a plant that stood next to the entryway as he left, sending dirt flying all over the ground.
Caden Dean is none of your business, Winter.
He’s his own worst enemy.
The thoughts stopped me for about 5.2 seconds before I was crawling back inside of my window and slipping my shoes onto my feet. What harm could it do just to sneak down and have a look? Clearly, he was in some kind of trouble. I knew I was the last person he would want help from but like so many other times where Caden Dean was concerned, I wasn’t thinking logically.
Maybe it was me who had the own worst enemy issue.
Chapter Four
WINTER
“The cleanse.”
*Present
I thanked God as I slipped into the house that none of my stepbrothers were home. Josh hadn’t been here in months, choosing to stay at his mom's after everything that had gone down with Caden last year. He never came right out and said it was because of me but he didn’t have to, I knew exactly how he felt about me without him having to say a word.
When Caden went to jail and Josh left for his moms the beatings started. My stepbrothers were smart, they would wait until my mom wasn’t home or until they were sure I wouldn’t be brave enough to say anything. The truth was that even if I had told someone, anyone, no one would have cared. Not even my own mother, I had always felt more like an obligation to her than a daughter.
I always wanted to go to college but that was when the plan really came full circle. I knew my mother wasn’t going to pay for it and my stepfather definitely wasn’t going to pay for it. If I wanted things to change, if I wanted to escape, I was going to have to do it on my own.
The weekends were the worst if my stepbrothers had been drinking so I was relieved to find them not there. They had probably shacked up with one of their many girlfriends, deciding their need for pussy was greater than their need to deliver bodily pain to me.