by Tiya Rayne
Shit! That’s when it hits me. The conversation I had in the park with her that first day.
“I think I know where she is.” I say. I rush to my truck. Zora runs down the steps to join me. Mr. Henderson, Langston, and Calvin all join me in the truck.
I peel out of the yard heading to the water tower.
“Um, just so you know, Luke.” Calvin says behind me. “My name is Marcus, and I’m engaged to Zora’s sister.”
I turn to look at Zora with an eyebrow quirked.
“I’ll explain later.” She says with a shrug.
That was enough for me.
I pull up to the empty field the water tower is on and immediately I spot Peyton.
“Peyton!” Zora screams as soon as she spots her up at the top of the old water tower. In these conditions it wasn’t safe for her. The old metal stairs were wet and slippery. And the wood circling the tower was probably old and weak.
“Luke!” My daughter says excitedly.
She stands to her feet and takes a step, immediately her foot goes through one of the old wood planks.
“Peyton don’t move.” I shout to her.
Thunder cracks across the sky and startles her. She falls onto her bottom and the entire side railing on the water tower leans towards the ground.
Zora cries out and I’m sprinting towards the tower with Langston behind me.
“Stand under her in case I don’t get to her in time.” I tell Langston.
He follows my directions.
“Peyton stay still ok, Luke is coming to get you.”
“Go away. All of you. I don’t want you here.” Peyton screams down at Zora.
I ignore their argument as I stay focus on making it up the slippery ladder.
“Sweetheart, don’t say that.” Zora yells back.
“None of you wanted me. I heard what you said. I googled the word abortion. You didn’t want me.”
“That’s not true, Peyton. We wanted you, we all wanted you. My family just didn’t know you.”
Thunder cracks across the sky followed by lightning. Peyton jumps again and the railing cracks sending pieces to the ground. Langston moves back to avoid being hit by the debris.
“Hurry Luke, Please!”
“Just keep her calm.” I call back down to Zora.
I was going as fast as I could go. My arms slip on one of the metal rails and I lose my grip falling back down three steps before I was able to grab on again.
“Luke!” both my girls call my name at the same time.
I swing my body back around to get back on the ladder and proceed up the steps. I was determined to get my little girl.
“Mommy, I’m scared.” Peyton admits.
The attitude from earlier is gone.
“I know, baby. Just stay still, ok. We’re going to get you down. I promise.”
“I’m sorry for running away. I’m sorry for saying I hate you. I just want to go home now.”
“I know Peyton. I love you!”
“I love you, too, Mommy.”
Suddenly, everything happens at once. The moment I get to the last step, the thunder and lightning hits so close to the water tower it nearly strikes the top. Peyton screams, backs away from the tower, and lose her footing. Zora screams as Peyton starts to fall. I dive for the edge of the railing. Everything flashes before my eyes in those few seconds. The first time I saw Zora. The years I spent wanting her. The nine months I spent loving her and the eight years I spent trying get over her. It all flashed through my mind in the seconds my daughter fell from that tower. When I finally came back to the moment, I was hanging by one hand from a metal bar as I gripped Peyton’s arm in my other hand. Her sobs overpower the sound of the rain falling.
Langston climbs the ladder and grabs Peyton, pulling her to safety. The moment we are all back on solid ground, I take my daughter out of his hands and hold her as tight as I can to my chest.
“Don’t leave me, Daddy. Don’t leave me again.” She sobs into my chest.
“I won’t, baby. I’ll never leave you again.”
I make that promise to her and vow to myself I would never break it. I didn’t care what happened, nothing would take Peyton or Zora from me again. I hold my hand out for Zora and she let’s go of her father and runs into my outstretched arm. I wrap my arm around her and place a kiss on her forehead. As the rain fell down on us that night, I realized that this was all I needed. I would never give up my girls again.
Chapter Twenty-One
I walk out of the shower in Luke’s suite, and find him lying on his back with Peyton wrapped in his arms and sprawled across his chest. Mr. Button is tucked under her chin and she’s fast asleep.
After dropping my family back off at home, Luke only gave me a few minutes to let them know we were ok and grab a few things before he was steering us back out the house and into his truck. I had to drive because he refused to let go of Peyton and she refused to let go of him.
“You can go take a shower now. She’s down for the night.” I whisper to him.
He only nods at me as he continues to stroke his daughter’s face. I walk out of the bedroom into the living area. I plant myself in front of the TV. It only took twenty minutes for Luke to join me on the couch. His body still dewy from his recent shower. I switch off the TV that I wasn’t actually watching.
“Come here.” He calls for me and I go without question.
I straddle his lap, the long t-shirt I borrowed from him the only thing I have on. His hooded hazel eyes watch me cautiously. “Thank you!” he says.
“For what?”
“For keeping my daughter. For loving me enough to do it on your own, and for allowing me to have one of my dreams come true.” He grips my thighs, rubbing his thumb in circles over my skin. “But no more running, Zora. You’re home now, and I’m not letting you go again. I love you.”
“I love you too, Luke.”
His hand skates up my thighs to my ribcage. It stops at my full heavy breasts to squeeze. I moan as my hips move involuntarily. My bare pussy rubs against the knot in his baller shorts leaving behind a wet stain. He slides his hand up to my neck then drags my face down to his lips. His kiss soothes all the stress from the day. Reuniting with his lips makes my bones weak. His hooded eyes pull back to stare at me. His hand grabs the hem of my shirt and pull it up over my head dropping it to the floor. Hazel eyes take in my naked body. My nipples pebble to hard rocks under his lustful gaze. His finger pinches one of my chocolate peaks and again I moan. He drags me back to him for another deep kiss. I love kissing this man. His hand skims down my back to between my butt cheeks until his longest finger dips into my velvety heat.
“Uhhhh!” I moan when he pulls his wet finger out to rub it against my clit. It slips along the hardened nub in circles.
“Ride this dick, Darlin’. It’s all yours.”
I waste no time slipping Luke’s hard cock out of his shorts. It’s standing at full attention. He doesn’t take over. He allows me to wrap my hands around the huge member. My fingers so far from touching they could be in different continents. I raise up just enough to line him up with my opening. I settle the head of him between my pussy lips. Luke groans and I look up to watch his eyes as I slowly lower myself onto his dick. The ache of him stretching my walls is drowned out by the pleasure of having his thick length inside me. Once fully seated, I place my hands on Luke’s shoulders. I bite my bottom lip, rock forward and then lift my hips before bringing it back down.
“That’s it, Baby. Fuck me.” Luke encourages me.
I take his advice and soon find a rhythm that has the both of us moaning.
“God, I love you, Zora.” Luke grabs my ass, one cheek spilling out of each of his hands, he guides me up and down on his dick. He slaps one round globe when I take over the rhythm he started. I can feel my orgasm building. Luke must feel it too. He wraps his mouth around one of my nipples twirling the bud around his tongue and then sucking it into his mouth all while his hands help move my hips on
his cock. I come so hard my mouth opens on a silent scream and my vision goes blurry. Luke powers through my orgasm, fucking me from below by bringing his hips up into me. My bones have turned to liquid as I collapse on top of him. He’s still tunneling inside of me. When he finally comes, his grip on my hips get so tight I was sure I was going to bruise. His body folds over taking me with him as he goes so deep in me I have to bury my face in his neck to drown out my scream. It wasn’t just us here anymore.
Luke falls back on the couch his chest rising and falling rapidly, mine doing the same as his, our sweat soaked bodies sticking to each other. I place my ear over the forever tattoo and listen to the rapid beat of his heart. There is nowhere else I want to be.
“We didn’t use a condom.” I say when I feel his sticky sperm ooze out of me.
Luke chuckles. “I know. It doesn’t matter. You’re mines now.”
I nuzzle further into his chest. I was always his.
*********
I woke to the sound of the TV. Last night Luke and I stayed up for hours talking. I told him everything. I told him about the conversation I had with my sister that encouraged my decision. I admitted how I lied about not wanting to be broke and how guilty I felt for using his parents to break up with him. I then told him about everything I went through in Chicago. After all the tough stuff was discussed, we talked about Peyton. I filled him in on the pregnancy, birth, and her childhood. We made love again and then ended up passing out on the couch.
I rub my eyes as I lift off of my hard bed. Not a bed. I realize that I slept on top of Luke.
“Morning, Beautiful!” he greets me, kissing my lips.
I smile down at him. I could wake up like this any day.
“Morning, Mommy! Morning, Daddy!” Luke and I both startle to find our daughter with Mr. Button sitting in the chair.
Peyton’s sitting with her legs tucked under her, her curly hair in a mess on top of her head and a half finished banana is in her hand. I’m completely naked under the heavy blanket, my shirt on the floor and Luke’s shorts are somewhere with it.
“Shit. She shouldn’t be seeing this.” Luke says under his breath.
“Uh, Peyton! You know how sometimes on the weekends I ask that you go back to bed and give mommy a few more minutes to rest?”
“But, Daddy is on TV.” She points to the TV.
Luke must have been watching the sports channel last. On the screen is a picture of Luke in his Football uniform. The gray haired male anchor is talking in the background.
Cougars Quarterback, Luke Trent, has been in the news recently for the car wreck that totaled his Audi. Now he’s back in the news. Pictures surfaced of him with a known prostitute. What do you think this means for the clean cut player, Mike? Do you think Luke Trent is falling off the bandwagon?
The anchor turns to another dark skinned anchor as pictures of Luke and I holding hands at the old fairground appear behind their heads. I don’t listen to the rest of the anchor’s words as I focus on the picture. The pictures are so clear it’s almost like we posed for them. One of them was just of us holding hands. Another one is of us kissing. Luke has one hand on the middle of my back and the other gripping the hell out of my ass. My heart starts to beat fast because I know what happened after that. Please Lord don’t let them have a picture of that. I guess the Lord wasn’t answering my prayers that day. The screen changes and there is a censored picture of the both of us in Luke’s truck. You can only see Luke’s face, but the entire top of my body is exposed. It’s so obvious what we were doing.
“Oh….. My….. God!” I say out loud.
“Mommy, what’s a prostitute?”
“Fuck!” Luke shouts and sits up. I use the end of the blanket to cover my chest. My body covers Luke and the blanket still fully covers everything else on my body.
“Peyton, sweetheart, go back in the room and brush your teeth.”
“Aww man, how did you know I hadn’t did it already?”
Because I know my child.
“Go ahead, kiddo. I’ll be in in a minute to join you.” Luke says and our daughter leaps off the chair to race into the bathroom. I can already see how this is going to be.
As soon as Peyton is out of the room, I climb off of Luke’s lap and pull my shirt on. Luke pulls up his shorts.
“I got so side tracked last night, I meant to tell you about all this.”
“Why are they calling me a prostitute?”
“Whoever sold the picture told them that’s what you were. Don’t worry, Zora, I’ll get with my lawyers and sue the shit out of whoever did this and that fucking news site.”
I stare at the screen in horror. I can’t imagine what my parents are thinking. Just then my phone goes off on the table.
“Hello?”
“What the Fuck?” Langston shouts through the phone.
I guess he was watching the sports channel this morning too.
“Where is Luke?” he demands on the other end of the phone.
Luke must have heard him because he takes the phone from me. “Calm down, Langston. We just woke up. I’m about to call my lawyer now.” Luke walks out of the sitting room and into the bedroom still talking to my brother.
I flop down on the couch and stare at the screen as they show those pictures of Luke and me again. Maybe it isn’t as bad as it looks.
***
It was much worse than it looked. Much worse. In four hours, my parents’ house was swamped with reporters camped out in the front yard. All my social media accounts are being bombarded with friend request and horrible messages and death threats. I’ve been called everything from a whore, to an adulteress, to that damn N word. It was made worse when a crying Melissa uploaded a video to Twitter where she told the world that Luke broke her heart. She also said that she only found out Luke was cheating on her when the pictures came out. Luke was pissed. He told me he called her last night to tell her. Since Melissa’s video hit the news, I’ve been even further drug through the dirt. Luke has been on the phone none stop since this morning. The only people I’ve answered the phone for was my best friend, Maria and Sean.
“This makes no sense. Why would they stand out there on my lawn like that?” My mom says peeking out of the curtains.
“Mama, come away from there.”
The entire family, including Luke, has been camped out at my parents’ house.
“This is insane.” Maya argues, sitting down on the couch beside me. She hands me a mug of warm coffee.
I take it without looking up from my phone.
“How can people that don’t know me say such evil things about me? I’m a hashtag on twitter. “Luke Trent must be suffering from a concussion. Why else would he leave his beautiful fiancée for a fat ugly bitch? #ZoraHenderson.”” I repeat the ugly words some guy wrote.
Luke walks over, still on the phone, and plucks my phone from my hands. He glares down at me and puts my phone in his pocket. He keeps telling me not to read the messages.
“Zora, don’t let their ugly words hurt you. They are just words, baby.” My dad states.
Yeah, but words hurt like hell. Trust me, I know.
Luke finally hangs up the phone and comes to sit in front of me. “Hey, you ok?”
I’m not, but I tell him that I am. He lifts one of his dark thick brows. He knows I’m lying.
“I’m going to get all this worked out, Zora, I promise.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I have to go back to San Diego tonight.”
“What?” I shout.
“I know, Baby. I don’t want to go, but the General Manger of the Cougars wants to have a meeting with me. The team is catching a lot of crap because of this and he wants to try to figure out a way to make it go away.”
“It definitely needs to go away.” Langston says.
Langston was busy making calls himself. He’s trying to do everything he can to get those pictures taken down. So far there’s been no luck, and at this point I don’t think it would help.
&
nbsp; “I want you to stay here with your family while I go back.”
“Wait, you’re leaving me.”
“No, I meant what I said. You are mine now. Nothing will change that. But right now I can’t risk traveling with you and Peyton. What you see out there,” He tilts his head towards the window. “Will be nothing compared to what’s waiting for me back in San Diego. Until this stuff blows over I want you two safe. That means staying here in Richland and not going back to Chicago. Can you do that for me?”
I didn’t want to be without Luke, and I definitely didn’t want to stay in Richland. But Luke was right. I couldn’t travel with him. It wasn’t safe. Especially not for Peyton. She freaked out this morning when the cameras were all in her face just trying to leave the hotel and make it to my parents’ house.
“Alright, I’ll stay.”
Luke kisses me, making all the craziness of the day fade away with just the touch of his lips.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” I reply.
Luke stayed for two more hours, hanging with Peyton and promising her that he would come back. She cried like a baby, which made me cry. Even my mom and sister cried watching my daughter cling to her father. Luke held it together, but I can tell he was beating himself up about leaving. With another kiss at my parents’ door, he walked out of our lives.
That was three weeks ago. And despite all the time that’s passed, this still hasn’t died down. In fact, it’s gotten worse. One week after the story broke, Melissa went on a certain morning talk show where she once again broke down crying about her and Luke’s break up. She told the sympathetic host how I’d deliberately left scratches on his back to antagonize her. I wanted to shout at the TV screen and tell that bitch I wasn’t thinking about her ass when I scratched up his back. While Melissa can’t seem to stay off the screen telling the world how she is a victim and I am the adulteress whore that ripped her fiancé from her, Luke has been silent. Not one press conference or TV appearance. Any time someone catches him outside and sticks a microphone in his face he says, “No comment.” He isn’t talking to the press, but he calls and talks to me and Peyton multiple times a day. He says that his agent, general manager, and publicist all say it’s the best thing to do, especially if he isn’t going to admit that he was wrong and try to reconnect with Melissa.