Chapter 14

Melany

CHANCE WAS… WONDERFUL. I hadn’t experienced being around someone who made me feel so special since I first met Constance. It was practically impossible to let the memories of my past get me down when I was around him. When he spoke, when he looked at me, it was so genuine that I was starting to believe I was worthy.

I felt beautiful when I was around him, cherished, important. But the most significant thing of all was that I felt brave. And it was all because of him. I began seeing that I deserved to be treated with respect.

As it turned out, I had the chance to stand up for myself the moment I walked through the door after returning home from the park.

“Where the hell have you been?”

I stopped just inside the doorway, closing my eyes and sucking in a fortifying breath. The last person I wanted to deal with after a lovely breakfast with Chance was my mother.

“I was out,” I responded vaguely, as I stepped into the living room to allow her to get a full look at me.

“I’m out of smokes. Go to the store and— Dear God,” she gasped, looking downright offended as her face crumpled into a weathered sneer. “What did you do to your hair? And are you wearing makeup? Go wash your face. You look like a whore,” she spat hatefully.

Well, if that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black. It was apparent she’d just come off a bender. And from the looks at the heavy, streaked makeup that was crusted on her face, she’d spent the prior evening trolling for a man. My mother had made hypocrisy an art form.

That unexpected sense of courage that Chance helped instill in me made me capable of taking my mother on in that very moment. I wasn’t going to sit back and accept her abuse any longer.

“You’re one to talk,” I grumbled under my breath.

She stood from the couch, her expression morphing into bitter ugliness. “What did you just say to me, girl?”

I steeled my spine and lifted my chin as I repeated, louder, “I said you’re one to talk. You’ve got red lipstick smeared across your cheek and you’re calling me a whore?”

“Why, you little bi—”

I cut her off. “I don’t look like a whore, or a slut, or a skank like you so lovingly like to tell me all the damn time. I like my hair and the makeup, and so do my friends.”

“Friends?” she scoffed, laughing hysterically. “What friends? Who’d want to be friends with a pathetic loser like you?”

“Stop!” I shouted as my blood began to heat and anger took over. “I’m sick and tired of dealing with your shit! Just because you’re a miserable, hateful bitch no one wants anything to do with doesn’t give you the right to take it out on me. I’m done putting up with your abuse. It ends now.”

She moved quickly for someone on disability who abused her body on a daily basis. The slap took me by surprise. I sucked air in between my teeth as I lifted my hand to my stinging cheek and looked at my mother in disbelief. She was an awful person, but until today, she’d never laid a hand on me.

“Who do you think you are?” she shouted, her face turning red with rage. “You stupid, useless little girl, you’d be nothing without me! You should be kissing my feet for putting up with you for all these years.”

“Putting up with me?” I laughed incredulously, doing my best to ignore the pain her slap caused. “I’m your daughter, not some bum you allowed in off the streets, Mom!”

“And you’ve been ruining my life for the past thirty-one years!” she yelled in my face. My heart squeezed painfully at the realization that the woman who gave birth to me never really wanted me. “It’s your fault your father left. He couldn’t stand that you were his daughter! You’re nothing but a waste of air. You think you’ll land a man because you started doing yourself up like a slut? Think again, honey. No man is ever gonna want you.”

I didn’t want to cry in front of her; I hated giving her that power. But as my eyes filled with tears, there was nothing I could do to stop them from falling, because the truth was, despite her years of verbal abuse and neglect, she was still my mother. I wanted her to love me. I craved her approval, and the reality that she’d never be able to see past her own bitterness long enough to give me that was a pain too acute to ignore.

“What did I ever do to you?” I asked on a broken whisper. “What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

Her face blanched, and for the first time ever, I saw what looked like guilt flash across her expression. But it was too late. I was done. I wasn’t going to allow her to put me down for one more second.

You deserve to feel special. I kept repeating Chance’s words over and over as I turned and left the room, not bothering to wait for her response.

“Where are you going?” Mom yelled as I ran up the stairs. “Melany! Don’t you walk away from me!”

I slammed my bedroom door and pulled my cell phone from my back pocket and began to scroll through my contacts. I was determined to get out of there, and I wasn’t coming back. I could have called Constance. She’d have been at my side in a heartbeat, but she had her hands full with her own family. She didn’t need the stress of me dumping my baggage on her. So I called the only other person I trusted implicitly, the one person I knew I could count on no matter what.

He answered on the second ring. “Hey, honey. Miss me already?”

“Ch-chance.” I sniffled, wiping at the tears falling down my cheeks.

At that one word, all the humor fled from his tone. “What’s wrong?”

I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder as I moved to my closet, pulling my two large suitcases from the shelf and throwing them on top of my bed. “I-I need your help. Can you come back?”

I heard him talking to someone else. I could only assume it was a cab driver as he blurted out my address and told the guy to turn around. “I’m on my way, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

I released a shaky exhale as I began yanking my clothes off their hangers and throwing them into the luggage haphazardly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just done. I can’t stay in this house with my mother anymore. I don’t know where I’m going to go, but I can’t stay here. I’ve had enough. If I have to get a hotel room, I will. I—”

“Okay, calm down,” he spoke up, interrupting me midrant. “I’ll be there in ten minutes, and we’ll get you sorted.”

He rang off, and I spent the next several minutes squeezing everything I could into those damn suitcases. Luckily, I didn’t have much. I’d just finished emptying my last drawer when I got a text from him saying the cab just pulled up.

By the time I opened the door, he was already standing on the front stoop. “Thank you so much,” I breathed, having moved faster in the past ten minutes than I had in months. I was seriously out of shape and needed to consider exercise if packing and one flight of stairs took it out of me.

There was no other way to describe his expression than thunderous. “What the fuck happened to your face?” he growled menacingly.

Until that very second, I’d forgotten all about my mother slapping me. I sucked in a sharp inhale and placed my palm against my skin, still hot from the impression her hand made.

“Uh…”

I’d never seen him so mad. It was almost frightening. The laidback, easygoing demeanor I’d come to know so well over the past two weeks was nowhere in sight as he asked, “She hit you?”

“Um…”

Without another word, he shoved past me and into the house. I quickly followed him, hoping and praying that whatever was about to take place wouldn’t involve blood, hiding bodies, or going on the lam. I didn’t think I’d do well on the run from the law.

“Who the hell are you?” my mother’s biting voice asked as she moved from the living room into the entryway.

“Melany,” Chance said, drawing my attention to his still furious profile. He was staring Mom down as he spoke to me. “You get your shit packed?”

“Um, y-yeah. My bags are upstairs.”

“Go get them, honey.”

“Excuse me?” Mom shrieked. “Just who do you think you are?”

My whole body shook in fear as he took a threatening step closer to her. “You want to know who I am?” he asked ominously. “I’m the man who has the money and the means to make your miserable excuse of a life a living hell. I already knew you were a bitch, but seeing that you put your hands on Melany, I now know you aren’t just a bitch, you’re a fucking piece of trash.”

Her entire frame rocked back like she’d just been hit as her face grew red with fury and embarrassment. “How dare—” she started on a shriek, but Chance was having none of it.

“I don’t think that’s a question you want to finish,” he hissed. “The only reason I’m standing here right now, dealing with your bullshit, is out of courtesy for your daughter. Because I care about her and know she’s a good person, I know she wouldn’t want me to make the calls I’m capable of making to ruin your goddamned life.” His voice lowered as he issued his kill shot. “But trust me, woman. I find out you do one more thing to cause her pain, you so much as fucking breathe in her direction, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”

I had to bite my cheek against the laugh that wanted to escape as Mom sputtered unintelligibly, unable to come up with a decent comeback to the threat Chance had just laid down. It was clear he was finished with her when he turned back to me and, in a much softer tone of voice, said, “Babe. Your bags.”

“Right.” I darted back up the steps, telling myself that once I was settled wherever I was going, I’d see about starting up a cardio routine. Quickly zipping up my bags, I yanked them to the floor and walked out of the bedroom I’d spent my entire life in, not in the slightest bit sad to be leaving it behind.

Chance was already holding the door open for me when I hit the foot of the stairs. Taking the bags from my hands, he looked back at Mom and issued one final warning. “She doesn’t see you unless she wants to. You don’t make a move to call her or seek her out. She wants to talk to you, she’ll call. If not, you accept it and go about the rest of your life knowing you have no one to blame but yourself. But I’m warning you this one time only… if Melany chooses to reach out and you do anything to cause her the slightest bit of distress, I’ll spend every penny I have destroying you.”

He guided me out of my childhood home, letting the door slam behind him as he guided me down the walkway to the waiting cab.

“That was… I can’t even…. I have no words!”

He finished helping the cab driver load my bags in the trunk before turning to me, a playful smirk on his handsome face. “Really? I find that hard to believe seeing as, most of the time, you have more words than are necessary.”

I smacked his arm, then climbed into the back seat and slid over so he had room to sit next to me. I wouldn’t have thought it possible after such a painful confrontation with my mother, but when I looked over at Chance, I was actually smiling.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “I don’t think I could have done that without you.”

“Of course you could have,” he replied, placing an arm around my shoulders and drawing me into his side. “You’re a lot tougher than you give yourself credit for. But I’m just happy I was able to help.”

I let him take my weight as I rested my head on his shoulder and absorbed his warmth, noticing, not for the first time, that whatever cologne he was wearing smelled really, really good. “Maybe,” I conceded after several seconds of silence. “But I’m glad I finally had someone in my corner this time around.”

“You’ll always have me in your corner, sweetheart. Always.”

Neither of us said anything for a while, and as I looked out the window of the moving cab, I couldn’t help but ask, “Where are we going?”

“My place,” he answered instantly. “You’re staying with me until you find your own apartment.”

“But, I can’t—”

“No arguing,” he demanded, looking down at me with a gentle expression. “I want you there. You’re staying as long as you need, and I won’t hear anything else about it.”

I settled back into his side, thinking to myself, This must be what it feels like to be lucky. “Have I told you that I’m really glad I met you?”

Chance’s muscular chest moved under my cheek. “Not recently.”

“Well, I am,” I whispered. “So, so glad.”

I felt his lips at the top of my head as he responded, “I am too, sweetheart. More than you can know.”