Hurt Me
A ‘Me’ Novel
Jeri Williams
Copyright 2016 © Jeri Williams
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Table of Contents
Dear Reader
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
A Look Ahead
Acknowledgements
F;nd your flame ;n a sea of darkness.
Dear Reader,
I often get asked what inspires me, or where I get my ideas from, and for the most part they just come to me. This story, this world, was inspired by a song that made me feel such emotion I immediately envisioned my main character. 100 songs later and Breathe Me was born...100 more songs later and Hurt Me was here. Music evokes many feelings, happy, joyful and sad and while I didn’t have the story written when I heard the songs I felt the emotion.
Some chapters have songs, others mention songs, but all the songs were meant to convey the emotion that was going on in the scene.
This story, this journey was not an easy one to take and will be equally hard for some to read.
But I urge you to feel the emotions.
Jwill
Chapter 1
Harley
(Icon for Hire “Fix Me”)
The things I know, no the things I’ve learned, suck. It sucks that I've learned that people are mean, and hurt you for no reason other than that they can. That the same mothers who gave you life, can also squeeze it from you, literally and figuratively. I’ve also learned that from the moment I was born, I've been alone and that if I turned my phone off for an hour or a day I'd missed exactly zero calls and text. I've also learned that when you don't fit, don't belong…life has a way of showing you, practically shoving that shit down your throat. At least, that’s how it was to me. Two weeks ago, life showed me in a big fuck you way that it didn’t want me here, and even though I had just found the one person who actually seemed to give a shit about whether I breathed or not, life urged me to just go ahead and end it. It had me thinking I’d be better off.
So I did.
It didn’t take.
It occurred to me as a sat in my normal spot by the window looking out at nothing, that in all the books I have read, I've never come across a self-help book or a how-to book about what to do after a failed suicide attempt. Do they even make those? If so, I imagine the title is less than helpful: So, you tried to kill yourself and that didn't work, what now?
Would it tell a lie and tell you that you lived because of some divine intervention? Or that you didn't really want to die; you wanted help. That life is a blessing we shouldn't take for granted, or would it tell you the painful truth; life is duller, meaningless. You feel detached from reality and the fact that you failed just proves that you shouldn't be here, that you don't belong.
If those types of books don’t exist, they should.
They should be filled with how after it happens, you become this different person, where you say and do things that are not a part of who you were. They aren’t part of who you ever want to be: angry and spiteful. Pissed because you lived. They should talk about how you feel like crying all the time for no reason other than to cry. How death is all that you think about, so much so that it consumes your every waking thought, your being, and not because you’re not happy to be alive, but because you can’t figure out what you did wrong.
But I should be happy I’m alive; I am in a way, but I’m also sad. I thought it would be easy after Deklan saved me and I got through the initial shock that I was still alive, but it’s not.
It’s so fucking hard.
It’s hard to breathe sometimes.
It’s funny; I looked in the mirror and though the bruises around my throat where my mother choked me so hard I passed out were now fading stains on my skin, I still felt them. I felt those hands closing in, suffocating me, and changing me. Even though I looked the same, everything was different; I was different. It used to be easy for me to mold myself into something I thought I should be, something acceptable to the outside world so that I fit. But after that night, I'm finding it hard to pretend, to fit into the mold I worked so hard at for the past few years. My thoughts are so mixed up it’s causing my head to swim.
Thoughts.
Thoughts help people process things; they form into actions, ideas, or opinions and are supposed to be helpful. My thoughts are helpful in letting me know my thighs are ugly, my hair is too limp and dull, my eyes too far apart, my nails are chipped and broken, my skin rough and my body is disgusting. My thoughts, these thoughts are always with me like a scratched CD, repeating the same thing over and over.
They solidify my reasons for feeling the way I do, which I can't put into words, so I say nothing, I do nothing, I feel nothing. The only time I feel is when Deklan is moving deep inside of me, whispering things in my ear, holding me close, and smothering out all the bad thoughts in my head. Only then do I feel.
I feel what I do to him, his body shaking as he brings both of us to our breaking point. I feel his grip on me tighten, like he will never let me go. His heart pounds when he's about to explode inside me, I feel everything in that moment: hope, pain, love, sorrow, grief, anger, happiness, I feel all of it with him.
I feel him.
I read somewhere that people need people. Whether it implies that they need contact, affection, companionship, or just interaction—that statement could not hold more true to me than now. I need Deklan, fucking need him like the air I breathe, like the water I drink, or the food I pretend to eat. I need him. I know he needs me too, maybe not as much, but he does. And it's scary because one day, he won't need me, and I'll have to let him go, still needing him. And that will break me for good.
“Babe?” God his voice, I’d never thought I’d hear it again, and now I cling to it like I’m out at sea, and it’s my life raft. I don’t answer him, of course. I never do. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just…can’t. I have an overwhelming sense of shame, and I feel like a burden and a failure and a whole slew of other things that I can’t put into words; so, I say nothing.
My body however had no problem reacting to him. I break out in goose bumps just knowing he was awake with me. My breathing quickened when he walked in the room clad only in his boxer briefs, sleep still clinging to him as he came over to me.
I had long since
stopped flinching every time he’d raise a hand to touch me gently, always gentle. I wasn’t afraid of anyone hurting me anymore. Not when he was around. He had been the one to save me, first from my mother and her-whatever-he-was when he thought he could accost me in the street one day on my way to work, and then he saved me from myself.
He’d fought for my life when I didn’t want to. According to him, he’d always fight for me, and I wanted him to so bad, because even after all the years of abuse I’d endured at my mother’s hands, after all the lies I’d told that made me into someone that I wasn’t, I still had no idea who I was or where I belonged. I was still damaged.
I needed him to fix me, to love me as much as I loved him because I was romantic and even though I had never known love, I believed it could fix anything. He’d been so gentle and caring, not pushing me into anything, making sure I had everything I needed before leaving for work. It’s been good.
And so un-Deklan like, it was slowly driving me insane.
He’s going to leave you, my mother’s insidious voice filled my head. And part of me thought it was true, otherwise I wouldn’t be hearing it in my head right? Part of me thinks that the reason he is being so unlike himself is because he’s scared of me now, scared of what I’ll do. And I hate that. I hate that I changed him.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulled me up to him, my back to his front, and kissed my neck, causing the voice and inner monologue to disappear momentarily.
“You plan on joining the world today?” He asked this or some version of this question every morning and like every morning, I said nothing, just clung to him, silently willing him not to push it, not to push me. When I didn’t reply, he pulled me back tighter against him, grinding my ass onto his erection.
Deklan had no problem using his assets to get what he wanted out of me, interaction, and I fall in love with him a little more each time our bodies mold together. He snaked his hand around my stomach and under my shirt, pushing down a pair of his boxer briefs I was using as sleep shorts and began rubbing little circles on my stomach, his long fingers grazing the top of my mound. Each pass he made, his fingers would go a little lower, roam a little farther, and my breathing would come out more rapidly. By his fourth pass, his long fingers sliced through my folds pressing on my sensitive nub, slick from his teasing.
“I love that your pussy is ready for me, every single time.” He breathed into my ear and I cried out when his fingers entered me slowly, stretching me, chasing the dark away. He was so gentle with me and I loved it, him; but he was holding back, and I wanted, no needed, all of him.
“Deklan,” I pleaded, relaxing back into him, my head resting on his shoulder, exposing my neck; he wasted no time in attacking with his mouth, pressing hot and wet open mouth kisses over my pulse point tenderly yet hungrily. I wanted him to stop being so slow and gentle and take me hard and fast. But he hadn’t done that since our first time having sex. The same night I tried to kill myself.
My sex sucked his fingers in greedily, needing him, always needing him as his other hand moved under my shirt and cupped my breast, squeezing and cupping them while the tempo of his fingers got faster and faster.
This, this is what reminded me to breathe.
Him.
He cursed against my neck as he slipped in another finger and pumped two times before growling, “Fuck, I need you in my mouth.” He flipped me around, his fingers never leaving me and pushed me up against the window, kissing me long and hard before he bent down and yanked my boxers down. “Put your leg on my shoulder,” he breathed onto my thigh, the coldness of the window and the heat of his mouth causing my senses to go crazy. I loved his hurried frantic movements, like he couldn’t wait to get to me, like he needed me as much as I needed him and at this moment, I saw the animal in him, and I wanted to release him.
Doing as he asked, I was glad his window faced the dumpsters, and no one would see him pleasuring me this way. I didn’t have time to think too much about if someone was taking their trash out and staring at us before I felt his hot breath on me then his wide tongue as he licked a slow, slow path through my folds, nibbling on my clit. When I read about how a guy would do this same thing in all those romance novels I’m addicted to, I always thought, that can’t possibly feel good. He’s nibbling on her most sensitive part…that had to hurt. I was wrong.
This, this was so the very opposite of hurting…this was…oh my… “Deklan, oh god,” I cried out when he sucked hard at my opening, lapping up my arousal; I thought I would explode from the intense pleasure. His mouth, his tongue was the only one that has ever, will ever be, the one I want to feel on me, forever. I was so in love with him and he had to know it, to feel it because I couldn’t tell him. Everyone, my mother, my once upon a time ago best-friend Ember, has proved that love hurts, and I can’t be hurt again, not by him.
I won’t be okay if he doesn’t…
“Put your hands on my head,” he gently commanded. The alpha bad boy was just skating the surface, I could feel his barely controlled hunger in the way his hands roamed my body, in his breathing. I barely had time to comprehend what he wanted me to do before he lifted my other leg over his shoulder and grabbed my ass, pulling me closer to his demanding mouth. Digging his tongue into my hot core, he ate me like I was his favorite ice cream melting all over him. He made every time feel like the first time, the intense way in which he took total control over my body, my heart, was scary and I never wanted him to stop.
“Fuck, you’re so sweet, I need more.” He needed more, and I needed him. I need him, I need him, I need him. I fisted my hands on his head against the aggressive and possessive way in which he shoved three fingers inside of me and began bringing me to my release quick.
“Come all over my fingers.” That did it, his words, his voice laced so thick with his arousal, the smell of sex in the air. I shot up against the window; his hands kneaded my ass as I came hard. He quickly buried his mouth on my sex, gently licking me down from my orgasm.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, leaning against the window after he let me down; even this gentle side of him took my breath away.
He only smirked as he stood, licking my arousal off his fingers. “I want all of it, all the time. All of you.”
I knew he was talking about what we had just done, the physical nature of him taking all I had, all he’d made me give him just now, and all the times he’d made me orgasm. But a part of me, a big part wanted him to be talking about something else, something on a larger keep-me-forever-scale. “You do, always,” I said to his retreating back.
Just as soon as he was in the shower, the voice was back, drawing me into myself once more. This had to end, how was it that she was still haunting me, even now? What could I do to release her hold on me, for good?
Harley
After Deklan left to go and ‘take care of some shit’ before work, I found myself back at the window looking at nothing and thinking about everything, trying to ignore the voice in my head telling me things I didn’t want to hear. He’s going to leave you. You can’t make him happy; you can’t make anyone happy. He’d asked me to go with him, but as usual, I had shaken my head no.
He never asked twice and although he didn’t say it, I knew he was pissed that I’d said no. But how could I tell him why? How could I tell him that it felt weird to be out around normal people; people who hadn’t tried to kill themselves, people who hadn’t given up? I was overly fearful that they would take one look at me and know that I had given up in the ultimate way. They would judge me or worse, judge him for being with me, and I couldn’t stand it if that happened.
He shouldn’t be judged because of my stupidity. I was stupid, and I was mad at myself for being so stupid—for living— or for listening to that voice in my head that sounded like my mother, but I knew was just my subconscious. I knew this, but it didn’t stop the voice, or stop me from believing every single word it said.
I was rational and aware that all of this. This doubt and
fear were all the result of years of abuse, depression, and trauma. God, the trauma. I couldn’t keep being this way, I knew this; I couldn’t keep being like this with Deklan, with myself. It wasn’t fair to him.
I needed to call upon some version of myself, the tough girl I’d draped over me for so long or the wounded one that caused him to swoop in and save me in the first place. I needed to be different, be better—fixed. Because if I didn’t get my shit together soon, I would lose him. That wasn’t my mother’s voice projecting my fears this time; that was me. Guys like him, guys with options, they didn’t keep girls like me, at least not for forever, and I couldn’t lose him.
I needed him.
I knew when I first met him that it would be stupid to fall for him, but I never listened to myself. It was why I had stayed with my abusive mother for so long, why I let her beat the shit out of me on a regular basis. It was why I hid who I really was from everyone except him and why I would do anything to keep him.
With that thought in mind, I got my ass off the chair I had been parked in for the past two weeks and… Fuck, what do I do? Looking around, I was at a loss. Normally, I could occupy myself with work. However, I most definitely didn’t have a job anymore since I was an hour away and in another freaking city, not to mention that I’d kinda left without notice. I missed my job at the bookstore; it was, after all, where I met my savior in more ways than one.
Hurt Me: A 'Me' Novel Page 1