Fighting My Affections

by Elizabeth Wills

  Dave moves his arm between us, grasping himself in his hand. He rubs himself up and down. My breathing is ragged as I wait, anticipation causing my heart to beat out of my chest.

  “I’ve watched you prance around this house for years, taunting me in ways you didn’t even realize, or have you known all along? You won’t speak a word of this to anyone. Do you understand? I want you all to my fucking self.”

  “I promise.” I don’t know all that I am agreeing to, but I will do anything he says in this moment.

  "I always knew you'd come to me. I've waited patiently. You turning eighteen was a day I've longed for, but I never in my wildest dreams thought you'd be offering yourself to me this soon, you dirty little girl. Let Daddy take care of you,” he whispers.

  His words should have caused me to change my mind, but I started this. I begged for this, and if I’m being completely honest with myself, I enjoy the way the power makes me feel. For the first time, I feel in control. I wanted something and I went for it. All my life I just sat back and let things happen, but today I stood up for myself, not allowing another woman to take from me the only person I have left.

  I’m confident I made the right decision. It’s just Dave and me again. I got what I wanted and I’ll do anything to keep it this way. He provides for me in many ways, and I give myself to him, showing him how grateful I am. I owe him more than just my body but there’s one thing I'm confident about now. I won't ever feel alone again.

  Twenty-four

  Jon~present day

  When she talked about how she felt like she owed him her body, not only to thank him for a roof over her head, but as a way to solidify his role in her life, I thought I would be sick. How could she possibly think like that?

  I’ve never been completely alone. I’ve never been cut off from everyone. I don’t know what loneliness and abandonment can do to someone. I just know how much I loved her, and how I thought I proved my love to her. How fucking wrong was I? She didn’t have one ounce of a clue. She wasn’t allowed. Her life was never hers. Dave made it his and we never stood a chance.

  I turn and face her. Unsure how I feel about all she’s told me. Did he manipulate her or did she allow her insecurities to get the best of her? She still only knows the side of a hurt young girl, never really knowing his true intentions.

  I swallow my disgust and focus on the pain I feel for that lost girl. The one I left behind, thinking I would better our lives by having everything figured out before getting her out of there. Maybe her feelings were right back then. Maybe I did abandon her, but how was I to know?

  “I tried to call every day,” I say, knowing he didn’t always tell her, but I have to hear it from her lips.

  “I had no clue. My phone just stopped ringing one day,” her voice a small whisper.

  I kneel in front of her, meeting her eyes and tear-stained face. “I guess you never fully understood.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How much I loved you. I never would have turned my back on you. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I didn’t show you how I felt in the right way. Maybe I should have fought him to see you and not let him push me out of your life.” I can’t help but put some blame on myself.

  She sniffles and wipes under her nose. “It wasn’t your job to make me feel good about myself. That’s all on me. It’s something I know I need to do on my own now, but back then everything was so fucked up. The thought of you with all those other girls Dave used to tell me about, it screwed with my head. I thought maybe everything you used to tell me was a lie, because Dave trained me to believe so.”

  I steady myself by placing my hands on her knees. This entire conversation has me feeling off balance. “Ri, I never would have touched another girl back then.”

  I waited weeks and then months for this girl, turning down numerous offers from many girls in college. I fought with the idea she didn’t want me anymore but had to know with absolute certainty before I moved on in that way. It’s what drove me to their house that day: the day that changed every part of my life.

  “That day…” I swallow down my rising temper. “The day I showed up, it sounded like you were begging him to stop.”

  She shakes her head back and forth and my heart drops. A choked sob breaks from her chest and she cries harder. “What you heard was wrong.”

  “Were you already pregnant?” I know the answer but ask anyway.

  “Yes.”

  What I can remember from that day is vivid. “What I saw then?”

  An audible swallow sounds in the silence between us. Again, I know what’s coming. I can feel it in every bone of my body. These next words are something I’ve never wanted to hear. I always questioned everything from back then.

  “I was … I was,” her saddened eyes snapped up to mine with regret, as she whispers, “begging for it.”

  I stand and walk away. I’m gonna be sick. It wasn’t just a way to give him something in return for the things he gave her. She wanted it. She wanted him. She left me for the man I always thought she despised. Gripping my short hair in my hands, I tug painfully, trying to distract from the crushing pain in my chest.

  Riley walks up behind me, sobbing. “You don’t understand. I was pregnant. I had to protect my baby. We were a secret. When you showed up; what you heard. Damn it. I was doing the only thing I knew how to do. I gave him what I knew he wanted from me, so I could tell him and not be afraid of the outcome.”

  I turn, repulsed by the woman in front of me. “So you begged him to fuck you?”

  “You don’t understand. I have problems. Problems that have followed me even after Dave died.”

  She’s shaking her head. She understands how I feel about her story. I’ve gone from hurt to angry, and sorry for what he did to her, to loathing the girl I loved because I heard her that day. To know what I heard was her wanting him in that way breaks something in me. I thought I was protecting her, and when she chose his side after everything went down; I never understood it. I battled with her turning her back on me all this time, thinking she must have just been afraid of him. Turns out she wanted him and not me.

  “Sounds like I had the problem, Ri. I loved a dirty little whore who begged her stepdaddy to fuck her so she could get things from him.”

  “STOP! You don’t know what it was like for me.” She cowers away from me.

  I press on. “I don’t? I heard you that day, remember?”

  It’s just like it was yesterday. I quietly walked through the front door after no one answered my knock. There was commotion and noises that caused my heart to leap and pound in my throat. My veins burned with anticipation as I moved through the house. Grunting and begging. Begging I thought was meant to make him stop. When I turned into the kitchen, Dave had her bent over the kitchen table, skirt around her waist, and his hand pressing her head hard into its surface, I snapped.

  I can still feel his face crushing under my brutal fists. Time seemed to stand still as I tried to do the only thing my instincts screamed for me to do. KILL DAVE! The memory of it blurred by the only thing I saw. Red.

  I don’t remember much in between seeing him on my girl and the cops pulling me off of him.

  “I spent four years of my life in jail,” I state, my voice sounding dead.

  Riley cries, kneeling in the grass in front of me, her face buried in her hands. “I never wanted that. Dave told me, even with my testimony; the most you would get was community service, and that if I didn’t do what he said he would throw my child and me out on the street. When they read your verdict, I died inside.”

  I walk away. I can’t look at her. I can’t deal with all of this. It’s why I have avoided it for as long as I have. Four years, for beating Dave within inches of his life, because I thought he was raping her. However, she stood by his side and said that they were not fucking when I walked in, that I was mad because she broke up with me. My charges were increased because of my training in martial arts. I am seen as a weapon. My hands’ actions bear mor
e weight than those of a regular man. Plus, Dave had a good lawyer. I did not. My family turned their backs on me when they heard I almost killed a man, and a public defender did not stand a chance at getting me acquitted from all the charges.

  The door slams behind me as I enter Mase’s condo. “Where are my keys?”

  “Ssssh…Kiley just passed out on the couch. What the fuck happened, man? You look pissed,” Mase whispers.

  “I gotta get out of here.” I stomp around, looking on every possible surface for my keys. Where the fuck did I put them?

  “What happened?”

  I don’t answer; I just continue to search. I don’t want to take this out on him. Mase was the only person there to help me back then. He’s the reason I’m out of jail now. Once things took off at the gym, he hired me the best lawyer, and here I am, a free man.

  Mase grabs my elbow and drags me down the hall to his room, softly shutting the door behind him. I feel like a caged animal. I just need to get out of here. My heart is racing with anger and I can’t catch my breath.

  “Sit down.” He points to his bed.

  I shake my head at him and speak through clenched teeth. “I can’t.”

  “Okay, then just listen. If she told you all that she told me, then I don’t understand why you’re angry like this. She was abused, man.”

  I hear his words. I want to think that was the case, but when images of that night and the sound of her voice were pulled from my memory, I lost it. She said she wanted it.

  “Think past your feelings of everything. Try to put yourself in her shoes. He practically cut her off from the world. Every person she ever counted on left her. She had no job and no money. Between her fucked-up mother and my fucked-up dad, she didn’t stand a chance. She needed help she wasn’t getting back then.” Mase sits on his bed and looks up at me. “Is this about all of that, or is this about her being a sex addict?”

  My eyes snap up to his. “What?”

  Shock takes over his face. “She didn’t tell you.”

  “I guess we didn’t get that far,” I growl.

  A fucking sex addict, yeah, okay, she used to ask me to take things farther with her, but she never seemed desperate for it.

  “Look, she just started getting help not that long ago. It’s maybe only been a year, if that. Some of the stuff she was telling me was fucked up, brother. She was fucked up for a long time after everything went down. She’s finally to a place where she can see things more clearly. You have to respect that.” His eyes are pleading, begging me to understand.

  I point in the direction of where I just came from. “You don’t know what she just told me. That day…” I can’t say anymore about that day. “She wanted it, man. I thought he was hurting her and …”

  I pace his room, trying to burn off some of this destructive energy coursing through me. It scares me to know, I would have responded the same way had I known back then that she wanted it. I can feel it. I would have tried to kill that man, regardless. I want to scream. Fisting my hand against my mouth, I hold it in. I have to control what’s happening inside me right now. I can’t let this monster out.

  Mase walks up, stopping me in my tracks, catching my eyes with his. He wants me to hear him. Not just hear him, but really understand what he’s about to say.

  “No, man. She didn’t want Dave. She wanted that little girl who is out there asleep on my couch. She wanted to be someone different than her mother when she found out about that little girl. She wanted that little girl to have a family, and she did the only thing she was ever taught to do to try and keep her safe.” He places his hands on my shoulders. “She was the victim and she hates herself for it.”

  She hates herself for it. Those words crack something inside of me and I shatter. Dropping to his bed, I release every tear I’ve held since that day. I never let myself grieve the wound Riley caused inside of me. I turned my pain into hate and anger. Hate for a young girl, who was lost in her circumstances. Hate for a girl that tangled herself deeply into my soul and never found her way out.

  Hearing the soft sound of the bedroom door closing, I uncover my face, thinking I’m alone, but find Riley standing timidly with her back against the door. I’m taken back to when we were just kids, sneaking around in the middle of the night. She looks like my innocent Riley. Her hair is pulled up on the top of her head and she’s not wearing her stupid work attire. The only change I can see are the black streaks running down her cheeks from her mascara. My girl never wore makeup, but she never needed it; still doesn’t.

  “JT,” she hiccups, trying to catch her emotions.

  I look at her, feeling every bit of heartbreak she caused me. The weight of it all is heavy enough to crowd all logical thought, halting the words that initially wanted to be said. My old name on her lips does me in. I see her now, the broken girl, not an enemy.

  Riley kneels in front of me, her sad eyes meeting mine. “I imagine every day that I left with you and Mase when you went off to college. I imagine that we have the future we always felt was coming our way, because it was there. I felt our future every time we were together, and I have felt that loss every day that we haven’t been.”

  I’ve felt it, too. Maybe in a different way than her and piled on top of everything else I lost, but I felt it, too.

  She loops her pinky through mine and my heart stops. “I imagine every day we made that little girl out there on the couch. That was our future. I would not trade her for anything, but I would go back and be a stronger person than I was to save you the heartache and pain you never deserved to feel. I would take it all away, if I could.”

  Wrapping my hand around her neck, I pull her closer, leaning my forehead against hers. I let out all of my grief and anger and feel her release, too. We let go of our control. It’s something we never had when it came to us in the first place. I didn’t have control over falling in love with this girl, and I sure as hell didn’t have control when our future was taken from us.

  My fate was never in my own hands.

  Twenty-five

  Riley~present day

  “I know you wanted to leave early today, but it’s not a good time,” Nate speaks to me without making eye contact.

  This is how it’s been lately between us. He’s still angry about me not integrating him into my life and even more pissed that I want to spend time at my brother’s a couple nights a week. I want to ask him for space, but decide against it every time I see my daughter’s excitement when he comes over to visit. He’s become an important part of her life, and I can’t find it in myself to take that away from her. We’ve all lost so much already.

  Jon had asked to take me on a drive today out to the river. I was leery at first because of it being December and the cold temperatures. However, he convinced me to trust him and we would be just fine.

  Things between Jon and I are good. We’re both working hard to let go of the past and on being friends again. I’m just in a weird place where I feel my heart crying out for him, but he’s made it very clear we can only be friends. Even though he’s forgiven me, he’s still working on letting go of the hurt.

  Which leads me to the other weird place in my life, Nate. After everything that happened with Jon, I can’t help but question my feelings for Nate. He’s still been overworking me, and somewhat short with me lately, but I can’t blame him. He knows the relationship I had with Jon years ago, and he knows I’ve been spending time with him.

  “Nate,” my voice quivers with sorrow, “I don’t want to be like this.”

  “I don’t want this either, but I have no choice. We can’t get back what we had if you’re always with him, and we sure as fuck can’t move on until you’re willing to let me be a part of your life.” His eyes still focus on his computer.

  “Nate, please. Look at me.”

  “I don’t want to look at you, Riley. I want to finish my work. Which is exactly what you should be doing. I don’t pay you to stand around here and interrupt my day.”

 
His words sting. His words have hurt a lot lately. I know this is all my fault, like most everything in my life. My decisions to fix things with Mase and Jon and my inability to introduce him to Rea and Striker have triggered his anger. I have hurt another good man. I either fuck them or hurt them, that’s all I’m capable of.

  I don’t know what keeps me from introducing him to my best friend. It just doesn’t feel right to me. It feels wrong enough that I’ve stopped answering her calls and Striker’s. I’ve lied to Nate, saying that they haven’t been reachable and blamed it on their grief from losing Dalton.

  I retreat from his office and head to my own. Maybe I’ve given in to my emotional needs because I’ve been fighting against my physical desires. Some nights I want to go out and forget it all with a random stranger. To find the euphoria that can only be found from the excitement of exploring a person for the first time. To give yourself willingly to someone you’ve known for only a short few hours is both scary and freeing all at once.

  I’ve been going to more meetings, trying to stay focused on my recovery, but it’s not even my time with Jon that tests my strength, it’s my time with Nate. I guess deep down, I want to hurt him even more than I already have. What is wrong with me?

  I always thought I was trying to find love by giving my body up easily. Come to find out, I was protecting my heart by concentrating purely on my physical needs, and I would feel sorry for myself when I didn’t win over a man’s affection with my pussy.

  I was wrong to believe I won Dave over back then. Turns out, he was the one who won me over by making me believe he was all I had and would ever have in my life. It was him, him, him, for what felt like forever back then. He was my only company, my provider, and the only person to show me attention, even if it was negative.