Thrilling Heaven (Room 103)

by Sidebottom, D H

  Thrilling Heaven

  Boss’s Story

  A Room 103 novel

  By D H Sidebottom

  Thrilling Heaven

  Boss’s story

  Copyright © 2013

  By D H Sidebottom

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual places, incidents and persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  It is better to conquer yourself than to win

  a thousand battles.

  Then the victory is yours.

  It cannot be taken from you,

  not by angels or demons,

  heaven or hell.

  Buddha

  Table of contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  JEN

  Prologue

  You know that moment in your life when someone turns to you and says ‘If you could go back to a point in your life and change one thing, what would it be?’

  And then everyone sits there, for like ten minutes, deliberating what moment they would choose? Well, mine wouldn’t even take a tenth of a second to determine.

  It was nine years ago; nine years, eight months to be exact; September 16th 2003 at exactly 11:20pm.

  Precise, you say?

  Hell, yes. I’ll never forget it because it was the moment that my soul died.

  The moment when Kyle told me to choose. The moment when Ethan walked away and left my now husband to say to me, “You choose him and I’ll hunt him down, Jen. Hunt him to the ends of the earth and make him pay, painfully, viciously and fucking mercilessly for taking you from me.”

  Nice, isn’t he? Kyle, that is.

  He was; when I first met him, when I was a fourteen year old schoolgirl with an arrogance and smugness that the schools hottest boy wanted me.

  I was blinded and amazed by his determination to date me; me, a plain, brown haired, grey eye ordinary girl, and him, a tall hard muscled sixteen year old, biker/ footballer that all my friends and every other girl in the school drooled over.

  He had done everything to make me his, and to be honest at the time I had relished in it, baked in his relentless pursuit to have me, and believe me, I had made it as difficult as possible for him.

  I had purposely ignored him, refused to even spare him a glance and waved him off whenever he would get close as he continued to fight for my attention.

  In the end, all it had taken for him to get me was for him to stick up for my best friend Maisie, who was a stick thin, black frizzy haired girl, with cheap NHS glasses and those metal braces that were glued to her teeth.

  Some boys had been throwing her bag around the yard and as much as Maisie and I had tried to retrieve it, they just threw it even more, until along came Kyle, caught the bag and handed it back to Maisie before he kicked the shit out of the three fifteen year old boy’s.

  Swoon! I was his. Any boy that stuck up for my best friend deserved my upmost attention, and that’s what he got.

  Me! Lock, stock and barrel and within six months we were in love and inseparable.

  And, yes, I’ll admit, we were the happiest couple around. Everyone was jealous of our easy, happy relationship and it grew even stronger until on my sixteenth birthday, I gave Kyle my virginity. And yes, it was wonderful and orgasmic.

  And that was where my first mistake occurred.

  He had all of me now; there was no going back on my part. Kyle knew this, knew that as soon as I gave him that part of me then he was mine and I would always be his.

  That was just me. I didn’t sleep around. I purposefully waited until my sixteenth birthday to have sex for the first time.

  Sex to me was something important, at the time anyway, and should be shared between two people in love who were going to be together forever and you wanted to give them your all.

  Instantly after that night, Kyle changed, right in front of my eyes.

  His cockiness and irritability with me came through to the forefront of his personality. It was like now he had me, he didn’t need to try to keep me.

  His moods were dark and sometimes volatile but even then, there was still some of the old Kyle left in there; the Kyle who would open doors for me, the Kyle who would bring me a latte and an apple muffin when he picked me up for college every morning and still the gentle Kyle in the bedroom.

  But this is also when the arguments started; loud, volatile and sometimes frightening arguments that would often see Kyle storming off for hours, sometimes whole nights before he would come back, tail between his legs with flowers and chocolates.

  This is where Ethan came in. He was always the one to pick up my broken heart and fix it back together with his strong arms and his sweet smiles and gentle words as he slowly patched me up and brought back my smile.

  He was the most charming, cutest and adorable boy I’d ever known. His patience and gentleness found me slowly falling in love with him and it soon emerged that he was falling for me too.

  The sexual attraction between us was the most intense feeling I had ever felt. His naughty little innuendo’s and suggestions had an arousal so fierce surging through me that I knew it was inevitable that we would soon give in to the desire.

  Even though we both fought it hard and for so long, it was just too strong to deny and the night I gave myself to him was the same night he told me he loved me, just as he brought an orgasm so extreme I couldn’t breathe.

  The way he told me he loved me will forever stay with me, until I’m old, grey and toothless and my grandchildren cook my tea whilst I watch Countdown.

  We were making love for the first time and he was inside me, so deep inside me as he suddenly stopped moving, cupped my cheeks and said “By the way, Jen…”, he then thrust once more and came inside me as he whispered “…I love you.”

  As soon as it had happened we were both riddled with guilt for what we had done to Kyle and we tried desperately to stay away from each other but it was too strong, our feelings, our love and very soon we were doing everything we could to sneak away and meet up.

  Our special place was the field behind Mr Tarney’s garage.

  Every single time I bounded through the tall grass, looking for the long stick with the small white piece of material attached to it showing me Ethan’s location in our own secluded world, my heart would thump so rapidly I could feel the beat in my toes, my soul danced excitedly like a pink aura that would swirl around me and my smile would cheer up the devil himself.

  Because Ethan was the beat of my heart, he was the aura my soul danced with and he was the sun that lit my smile.

  He was my everything.

  But it all slammed to a halt that night, September
16th 2003, when at exactly 11:20pm a drunken Ethan told Kyle “I’ve been fucking your girlfriend for two years, Kyle and I love her and she loves me.”

  Bang! Just like that my whole world collapsed.

  Ethan announced it to Kyle, Kyle went ballistic and ordered me to choose, Ethan walked out and then Kyle uttered those infamous words.

  Two days later, at the age of eighteen, I was sat beside a dark and simmering Kyle, in the front of his clapped out Corsa to start a new life in London and I never saw Ethan again.

  Chapter 1

  “Nope” I shook my head adamantly at her and she practically growled at me, her eyes narrow and mean..

  “Jen, look…” she persisted.

  I shook my head again, slowly and sternly and concentrated on the spread sheet currently demanding the taxing part of my brain. “Zoe, how can you pay this much for ink? Surely you can find it cheaper somewhere else?” I glanced at her over the top of the laptop screen as I rapidly changed the subject.

  She smiled brashly at me with a twinkle in her eye. “I can. I do. But the taxman doesn’t need to know that.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to set my attention back to Zoe’s tax return, a pile of receipts and paperwork demanding my concentration but my mind wouldn’t shift from last night.

  I shuddered and endeavoured to close off his face, his snarl, the crack of his fist but it was there, right on the frontal hemisphere of my brain - and my cheekbone.

  That reminded me to pick his dry cleaning up tonight.

  Don’t bloody forget again Jen.

  Zoe sighed heavily and I lifted my gaze to her, finding her watching me forlornly with her brow furrowed deep, “Okay, Jen?”

  I plastered a smile on my face and nodded firmly, “Yep, just struggling with your figures today.”

  She gave herself the once over and winked at me. “Nowt wrong with this figure, babe” she grinned as she slipped her hands provocatively over her breasts.

  I smirked and shook my head, “You’re not wrong there, treacle” I agreed with an exaggerated wink, using the nickname Shane had always used for her.

  I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands, tiredness and fatigue blurring them and stood to stretch my legs, taking a glance at the clock. “Christ its one, you want a sandwich?” I asked Zoe who nodded absentmindedly from her design book as she sketched something beside an already complete illustration.

  “Sure, you know where everything is” she told me without moving.

  “I’ll make lunch then…”

  She ignored me, her attention elsewhere and I knew when she had her head in her tattoos that I wouldn’t hear or see a peep from her.

  I turned to Brett in the corner of the room, his tongue protruding slightly from his mouth as he currently concentrated on the artwork of an eagle on some huge guys back, and I mean huge - sumo size huge.

  “Brett?”

  He looked over at me and blinked rapidly to adjust the focus in his eyes. “Sandwich?” I repeated and he nodded.

  “Sure wren, cheese and tomato, pepper and mayo.”

  I snorted at him. “Uhh, I was sure when I last looked this was a tattoo parlour not SubWay.”

  He grinned and winked, “Now Wren, you know you love me and those delicate little fingers of yours want to work for me.”

  I pursed my lips at him, and then smirked wickedly, “And you know I need your delicate fingers to do my next piercing, don’t you?”

  He lifted a brow at me, “Another? Where do you want this one?”

  I lifted the corner of my mouth and waggled my eyebrows at him. His own eyes widened before a grin erupted on his face and Sumo stared at me. “Oh Wren, just for the privilege I get to pierce your delicious lady parts again, I’ll take just cheese” he conceded.

  “Thought you might” I chuckled as I made my way into the back of Zoe’s shop.

  Zoe had been my brother’s wife for four years, but when Shane died of leukaemia three years ago we had become inseparable, leaning on each other in our grief and we became the type of friends that would die for each other.

  She had bought this tattoo shop in memory of Shane. He had made her promise to fulfil her dreams when he had gone and she had worked her fingers to the bone to get ‘Slink’s’ going; the ‘S’ in the name was for Shane, the ‘L’ was for our surname, Linkin, and then of course ‘ink’, but her limit with numbers only extended to her cash till, so I had been doing her finances for the past two years.

  I’m sure she only used me to hide her dodgy receipts. Some of them always brought a chuckle forward. I mean, who the hell claims for a Spotify account? But give the girl credit; she got her tax back for it when she declared it as essential, saying she needed the music to calm the nervous customers.

  I heard a rowdy group enter the shop as I made the sandwiches and mugs of tea. Stacking the plates on top of one another and grabbing all three mug handles with the other hand, I made my way back into the main parlour.

  The plates and mugs slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor with a loud smash when I set my eyes on who had entered Slink’s.

  The tea and bread mashed into a stodge on the floor as my heart dropped right there with them.

  Holy Crap!

  All eyes in the shop swung to me, but it was only one pair I couldn’t divert from and I stood open mouthed like a fucking guppy staring at him.

  My breathing started to shallow out as my bones creaked under the pressure of the body tremor that coursed its way throughout my body at a velocity that squeezed my lungs on its way through.

  “Jen?” Ethan stuttered as his jaw dropped as wide as mine. “Christ… Jen?”

  The group he was with eyed us both up and the female lifted her lips in a knowing smile as she tipped her head to me and held out her hand. “Boss seems to have lost his manners, Hi; I’m E. Short for Eve.”

  I flicked my eyes to her and they widened when I realised who she was. “Oh… yeah, hi. Jen.” I returned her greeting.

  Holy Hell! I realised now that the whole of the rock group, Room 103, was currently stood in Slink’s and it was a shame I was stood like a zombie playing musical statues when the publicity could have been tremendous for Zoe.

  She smiled kindly and elbowed Ethan in the ribs. “Boss…”

  He just stood, silent and staring, his eyes roaming over every inch of me until they settled on my cheek and I fought against the blush that was creeping up my face.

  My whole soul reached out and I grit my teeth and commanded it back inside, as my body trembled along with it.

  My legs were going to collapse any minute, I knew they were and I desperately felt around with my hands for something to support me.

  “Jen…” he repeated with a whisper but I still stood silent and in shock as my eyes drank every part of him, like a man dying of thirst after years in the desert. Nine years to be exact.

  E huffed and glared at him, “I think we’ve established her name’s Jen, Boss. We need to move on from that now, to something like hello.”

  He frowned and turned to E who was staring intently at him. “Fuck, E…” he choked out before he turned and left the shop.

  Everyone kind of fell silent and the vocalist of Room 103, Jax I think his name was, lifted his eyebrows at E. “Babe?”

  She shook her head at him and plonked a smile on her face before turning back to me. “Boss wanted a tattoo but he’s not very good with needles. Just shit himself there” she tried to defend Ethan and I smiled and nodded, not believing a word she said. I was the only one who knew the reason for Ethan’s behaviour, and it wasn’t a phobia of needles… more a phobia of me.

  More uncomfortable silence fell before a tall dude with pure white hair and covered in tattoos sucked air through his teeth and smiled, well I say smiled, it was more of a cringe, “Well, I’ll be fucked if I come into a tat shop without leaving with some new ink.”

  Zoe was instantly beside me, a purr vibrating from her as she gestured to the design book, “Would you like
to take a look at what you want and I can get right onto that for you.”

  I snorted. I bet you will Zo.

  E and her husband, I think they were married if I remember from the media coverage of Room 103, sunk into the chairs in the corner of the shop and started a whispered conversation.

  “I thought you were in America?” I blurted out randomly and rudely.

  Jax raised his eyes to me and E smiled widely. “We were but Jax and I just adopted a baby and I wanted to bring her up in England, so the guys kind of amalgamated groups and took lead, kicked me out of the band and decided we should come back” she said openly with a wide smile and I just nodded dumbly.

  “Oh.”

  “You know Boss?” she asked warmly and I frowned at her. “Boss - Ethan” she rectified.

  “Oh - yeah” I bit my lower lip as memories invaded my mind and I swallowed them back and turned to Zoe. “I’m going Zo, see you later.”

  I didn’t give her chance to respond before I whipped my bag from behind the counter and left the shop.

  ***

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised the house was empty and hurried upstairs, pulling off my clothes and stepped straight into the shower, needing the hot water to pelt my body and stimulate my brain on something other than Ethan.

  ‘By the way, Jen… I love you.’

  ‘God baby, you’re gonna be mine, all mine one day, and when that day comes, when it’s just you and me, then I’m dragging you up that fucking aisle, Jen…’