by Edwina Fort
When he opened the passenger door, I pulled back a little, but he only turned and wrapped his big hands around my waist before lifting me into the seat. Then as if he feared I was going to try and run away, he reached over and secured the seat belt around me.
I thought about jumping out and running for my life as he rounded the truck to get in, but I must confess to being a little curious about this sudden turn of events. This was one of my last nights in this town. Graduation was tomorrow and I’d set up early enrollment at Grambling because I had a summer job with the campus library.
If everything went well, I pray I’d be able to keep that job throughout my time there. The pay wasn’t bad and I would be surrounded by what I loved…books.
“You hungry?” he asked after he started the powerful engine.
I shrugged. “I can eat.”
We drove a short way to Webster’s Bistro. “Let’s grab something to go,” he said as he helped me out of his truck.
"I've never eaten here," I told him as I walked through the door he held open for me.
“What? I see your stepsisters and mom here all the time.”
I chuckled without any humor. “Yeah…” was all I said, too ashamed to admit that Angie didn’t bring me to eat here because it was too expensive.
She said stowaways don’t get to eat fine dining.
“Yeah, what?” he asked as he handed me a menu.
Leave it to him not to let it drop. “Yeah, well…she never brought me.”
He must have seen that he’d hit a nerve because he let it drop. “Okay, just order anything you want.”
“Anything?”
He nodded with a grin on his face. “Anything.”
And so I did. He carried two big bags in his hand when we left. He drove a short distance to the beach and then parked his truck. With a blanket tucked under one arm and the two bags of food in that hand, he held my hand with his other and guided me a little way down the beach. He led me to an area that was private.
"I didn't even know this place existed," I told him looking out at Lake Michigan. There was a huge moon in the sky casting a beautiful glow down on the calm water.
“Most people don’t,” he said as he laid out the blanket, putting the food on top.
There was a gentle breeze that blew my dress up around my legs as I walked toward the water. Wanting to put my feet in it, I untied my sandals and gathered my dress as I stepped into the cool water. A wave that was bigger than I thought washed up against me, splashing my front. Laughing, I ran out the water and back toward Tucker.
He lay reclined on the blanket watching me as he ate his fries. Giggling, I sat down next to him.
“What did you drink tonight?” he asked as I began to dig through the bag for my food. Really, it was all mine. The only thing he’d ordered was a burger and fries.
“Champagne.”
“Who gave you champagne? That p***y Dillion?”
“He is not a p***y, he’s a really nice guy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yet, here you are at the beach with me.”
I paused in taking out my food. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“That nice guy sh*t is overrated.”
I shook my head at him. “Why are you so violent?”
He shrugged looking out at the water. “I don’t know, I think I was born this way.”
I took a bite out of one of the grapevine rolls I'd ordered, it was so good. Before I could toss the rest of it in my mouth, his big hand came over mine and took it away from me, popping it in his instead.
"Nobody is born violent," I told him frowning at him.
“I was…”
“Hmmm…” I didn’t argue, maybe he was.
I forked up one of the big meatballs I’d ordered and took a bite, closing my eyes and moaning at how good it tasted.
That damn Angie’s been holding out…
I lifted my fork to finish the meatball, but before I could put it in my mouth, Mr. Man reached over, taking my fork and put the rest of the meatball into his.
“Mean Tuck, really? Why don’t you just get your own?”
He chuckled. “Yours taste better.”
I looked down at the plate of meatballs. “They’re literally coming from the same plate.”
“Yeah, but yours taste better.”
And so, we continued to eat in silence, me taking a bite of food and then feeding him the rest. Once I got full, he pushed the food to the side and then he just sat there or more like reclined there, looking up at me.
My nervousness was back. I knew what he wanted and I think I may have wanted it too. What a way to spend one of my last nights in this town. Angie said that a girl should be able to take the memories of her prom night with her forever.
I don’t think I would ever forget this… Naphtali Tucker Pelletier, the most popular boy in the whole town was lying with me on a private beach, looking at me as if I was the most beautiful girl in the world.
He reached up and took my glasses off my face.
“So, what are you going to do after graduation?” I asked out of pure nervousness.
“My dad’s good friend is the deputy administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He recruited me when I was like twelve. I’ll be leaving for the academy the day after graduation.”
"Wow, the DEA," I said as he gently pushed my shoulder back until I was lying flat on the blanket in front of him. “I thought that you would do something like become a famous football player.”
He shook his head as his big hand came to rest flat on my stomach. “Not enough action for me.”
I drew up my left leg and the split in my dressed opened so that my leg was completely exposed. His gaze followed it.
“Your skin is so pretty. It’s like fine spun chocolate.”
I smiled, that was the nicest thing I had ever heard him say. “Thank you.”
His finger played with the string to my dress and my heart began to accelerate. This thing was getting ready to happen. He and I both were leaving town after graduation, we may never see each other again after that.
But this is the guy that has bullied you for four years straight.
That was true…But this is also the guy that has starred in a number of my dreams that left me hot and wet and panting for something that I knew deep down in my heart that only he could give me.
“I ummm…”
For the first time since I’ve known him, he sounded nervous. I was confused about that. I know for a fact he was no virgin like me. I’d heard many stories of him screwing some girl in back of his truck, or at someone’s house…
So why was he nervous now?
“Do you have a condom?” He looked up at me surprised. But then a grin settled on his face as he reached in his pocket and pulled out a condom.
“Okay…” I inhaled. “Untie my dress…”
The look of joy that settled on his face was like a kid in the candy store. He took his time pulling the strings and then gently opened my dress.
I bit my lip as he stared down at my body. Today I wore the one cute panty and bra set that I owned. It was the color of bubble gum.
“I knew you were going to be beautiful,” he whispered before his head lowered and he kissed my stomach.
I gasped as a wave of pleasure washed over me. He moaned as he continued to open-mouth kiss my belly. When he hooked his hands inside my panties and pulled them down my legs before stuffing my panties in his pocket, I had to ball up my hands to keep from stopping him.
Nobody has ever seen what he is looking at…Well, outside of my mom when I was younger, but nobody of late.
“So beautiful,” he whispered again before his head lowered. But this time it was not my belly button he was tonguing.
I stared up at the beautiful night sky, clutching the blanket in my palms as he brought me to peek for the very first time in my life. When I came apart, I cried out his name…
Minutes later, I heard the crackle of the condom wrapper
and then he was there over me…
“I’m so sorry, baby, but this is going to hurt a little.”
When he filled me for the first time, my mouth opened to cry out, but his mouth covered mine as he consumed my cry.
He didn’t move again for a while. He just lay there, letting me get accustomed to his size as he continued to kiss me.
His kisses were so drugging that it wasn’t long before my hips were moving underneath him. This time when he filled me, my cries that filled the night were those of passion. When my world shattered for the second time, tears came from my eyes.
Breathing heavily, he rolled to his back pulling me so that I lay on his chest. Very gently he kissed the top of my head.
“Thank you for seeing me, Free…”
Those were the last words I remembered before I drifted to sleep. I did it with a smile on my face. My tormentor and I had ended our relationship on a good note. After this, I think I can forgive him for all the hell he’d put me through.
However, the next morning when I woke up, I was lying alone on the blanket. I closed my dress as I sat up looking around. Like a fool, I sat there waiting for him to come back. After about twenty minutes, I had to face the fact that he'd left me on the beach.
My house wasn’t far from here, just a short walk, but still…he’d left me after taking my virginity, like I was some cheap whore or one of the groupies that was willing to put up with or do anything for him.
A strong sense of humiliation washed over me. Last night, he’d made me feel as if I was different. I laughed bitterly… I am such a fool.
My bully had won. This is by far the most painful thing he’s ever done to me.
For the first time since I’ve known him, I felt hate.
I hated Naphtali Tucker Pelletier with my whole heart and soul.
Chapter 1
Tucker’s Back
Free
This morning I woke up to a cloud hanging over my little house, although it was sunny and bright outside. My mother would have said the aura is off. My grandmother, whose little book house I now call my own would have said, God was getting ready to shake up my world. I think by the end of this day, I would have deduced that they both would have been right.
I know many of you are wondering why I call what used to be my grandmother's home before she passed but was now mine a book house, and I will come back to that. For now, I must tell you how this turned out to be the worst day of my whole entire life.
Actually, it began last night. Dillion, my boyfriend for the last four years, was supposed to pick me up from my office and take me to dinner, a dinner where I was more than positive he was going to propose to me. I know this because I found a ring in the nightstand next to his bed the last time I spent a night at his place. No, I wasn’t snooping. I was actually looking for a cord to charge my phone and I knew that he kept an extra one in that drawer.
Anyway… He never showed up to get me, didn’t call or anything. I waited there at my clinic for nearly two hours before calling for a cab, angry with myself for leaving my own car at home, thinking he would actually be here to pick me up.
Of course, when I made it in and tried to call him and got no answer, my mind started having thoughts of him being in a car crash or getting mugged. The Endurance Clinic was in a rough neighborhood. He probably pulled up to get me and somebody jumped in his car and drove off with him.
After about the third time of trying to call him and still not getting an answer, I bit the bullet and called his mom to see if she’d heard from him. Now, let me tell you guys something, his mother hated me. No, I don’t mean a gentle dislike. I mean hated me… would run me over with her car if she could or step over my burning body and dump a glass of water on the ground across the street kind of hate.
So needless to say, the conversation was very painful.
“Hello,” Her well-polished voice came from the other end.
“Hello, Mrs. Collins. I was calling to see if you’d heard from Dillion. He was supposed to pick me up from work tonight, but he never showed.
“Who am I speaking with?”
I rolled my eyes. See what I mean? “It’s Free, Mrs. Collins. Dillion’s girlfriend for the last four years and one of his best friends for the last fourteen.” She knew damn well who I was.
“What kind of name is Free?”
I exhaled; this wasn’t the first time she’d asked me this. In fact, it wasn’t the fiftieth time she’d asked me this. My mother, God bless her heart, thought she was doing something empowering by naming me Free Spirit. But what she’d really done was curse me with the burden of always having to overcompensate to prove to my colleagues and others in my field that I and my studies were to be taken seriously. It was one of the reasons I no longer told people my first and middle name. If I didn’t know that it would break my mother’s heart if she was still living, I would have changed it years ago.
My colleagues called me Dr. Roberson and the few associates I had just called me Doc. However, the two people I could honestly call friends insisted on calling me Free, Rachel, because she’s known me as Free forever and ignored all of my requests for her to stop using that worrisome name.
And Oaklee… well, Oak is just Oak. It’s really hard for me to try and determine why she does any of the things that she does. When you guys meet her, you will understand what I mean by that. With that being said, I could not demand for Dillion’s mom to call me Doc or even Dr. Roberson for that matter, it was just too formal. So instead, I had to put up with her abuse.
“It’s the name my mom gave me,” I carefully explained to her. I wanted to add to the bane of my existence but thought better of it. She would not understand.
“Hghmm...” Although I wasn’t standing next to her, I would bet my last dollar she was holding her little nose way up in the air.
“I called my son about an hour ago, and he said he was in the middle of having dinner with a really good friend of his. She sounded beautiful.” And then she hung up the phone in my ear.
I felt like someone punched me in my stomach, but I convinced myself it was foolish to feel that way. I did not put it above Mrs. Collins to lie to me in order to hurt me.
Hmmm?
Why does she hate me so?
I’ll give you the quick version. Basically, when Dillion and I were younger, we used to talk about how we were going to save the world. I was going to med school to become a psychiatrist to provide people who couldn’t afford good healthcare to help fight their addictions. And he was going to med school to join Doctors Without Borders to help the people in war-torn countries that the news doesn’t report on.
Mr. and Mrs. Collins found out about our plans and threatened to not pay for his schooling if he decided to go through with such a foolish notion. In the end, he gave in and promised them that he would not give away his services for free. I did pre-med at Grambling, made it to the dean’s list, and then got accepted into Morehouse School of Medicine, which was a major accomplishment in my opinion.
However, the Collins didn’t see it that way, especially since Dillion got accepted into Harvard. They’ve always felt like he was slumming it hanging out with me. Of course, they were nice to me until they found out I was Angie’s charity case. Then they wanted him to end our friendship instantly. They assumed I’d been the one to put the Doctors Without Borders idea in his head and doubled down on their efforts to get rid of me.
I think they exhaled a long sigh of relief when we graduated, me going to Grambling and him to Harvard. However, they didn’t count on us bumping into each other ten years later at a medical convention and hitting it off. When he brought me home to have dinner with them four years ago, I thought Mrs. Collins was going to have a stroke. She sat sour-faced the whole evening.
And for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Yes, I run a free clinic for addicts in the Oakwood Heights area. Yes, I was barely receiving funding for it and was struggling to keep the lights on, but that had nothing to do with Dillio
n. He’d done them proud and was well on his way to becoming one of the highest paid neurosurgeons in the Detroit area, which was quite impressive for two reasons. One, he’s pretty young to have blazed such a trail and two, he’s black.
I am extremely proud of him and although our busy schedules leave us only a little time to spend together, I try and tell him that as often as I can. Anyway…that is the gist of the Collins’ hate. They believe their son is slumming it with the likes of me.
So, I’d convinced myself not to feed into her words. Yes, it’s possible Dillion had forgotten our dinner date and was having dinner with a colleague. It’s happened before. And yes, it’s possible said colleague was a female. No big deal in our field. Right?
Right…
Except, last night before I went to bed, I got a strange call from Angie.
“Free, I need you to come by the house before you go into your little clinic.”
I exhaled. Between Angie and Mrs. Collins and the rest of their little crew of snobby hens, I’d had my fill of the black elite.
“I can’t, I have an appointment at eight-thirty.”
“Well, cancel it!” she snapped. “Your sister and Dillion have great news to share with everyone. And I also had my accountant cut a check for you and your poor little drug addicts. An associate of mine informed me you are once again at risk of losing that dump. Can’t have my name attached to an eviction for God’s sake.”
Normally, I would explain to her how shallow and degrading her words were although I knew I would be wasting my breath. I’m a doctor, it’s my job to help the mentally unstable, so I press on. However, she said two things that prevented me from going there. One, she had a check for the clinic. As much as I hated accepting money from her because it caused me to be beholden to her, when all I wanted to do was cut her and her evil daughters out of my life, I was still very grateful for it.
Without her nearly monthly donations, the doors to the Endurance Clinic would have closed a long time ago. Because it is a private practice and I can’t technically call my facilities a rehab, we don’t qualify for the many grants and government assistance programs set aside for such establishments. Thanks to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, most rehabs in the Detroit area now qualify for compensation for the treatment of patients with Medicaid.