Chapter Three
Jona
Her body on top of me, her lips caressing mine, the taste of her kiss melting on my tongue—Justine is killing me.
That’s what she wants to do. Fucking kill me.
My hands travel over her back, her spine, grabbing handfuls of her ass. Damn, her ass is perfect. Heavy and round, shaped like a pear. I want to dig my nails into her flesh and bruise it; leave marks so everyone after me knows whose ass it is.
I didn’t forget how she dismissed my words. I know she doesn’t have an answer, at least not one she’s willing to face, let alone give.
I’ve got her now, and nothing else matters. That’s what compartmentalization is for. Justine. To live my life without remembering that I can’t live without her.
My cock twitches beneath her, painfully hard in seconds. I palm her ass harder and kiss her whiskey tasting lips harder than I’ve kissed anyone. “We fuckin’ on the beach?” I ask, biting on her bottom lip. We aren’t shy. Privacy is for secrets. We’d never lie to the other, even if at times we probably should.
“Mmm,” she moans, answering my question when she reaches between our bodies to palm my cock through my jeans. “You think it’s messed up how hot that sounds?”
I grab a fistful of her hair and tug, pulling her lips from mine so I can see her eyes. Those dark, sultry eyes. “We’re messed up. Don’t worry about being anything else.” I crush her mouth back down on mine, kissing her warm whiskey lips in the sand.
The soggy heat in the air leaves our clothes matted to our flesh. The sweet smell of her skin intensifies my kiss. Her perfume, this light fruity aroma, mixes with the salt in the air. It’s like a magic potion.
I wanted her before. I’m going to have her now.
I roll us over until I’m on top, resting between her legs as her hands twist in my hair. Thoughts of cutting it fade. Her warmth and touch have me feeling like I’m not completely lost. I manage to unbuckle and unzip her jeans, urging my hand below her waistband. Her panties are wet when I cup her pussy in my palm.
The heat of her body greets my fingers as I urge them between the cloth and her wet folds. I know her pussy; I’ve made love to it countless times and spent hours on my knees savoring the pleasure that soaks her heat. It’s mine, but unlike my other possessions, I love it far more. I find her clit and press down, earning a helpless whimper. She’s on the edge of falling, and this time, I want to be the one to push her.
Her arms fling around my shoulders as she grinds against my fingers in the sand. The sound of the waves hit my back. We’re covered in sweat, booze, and each other. I wrap my tongue around hers intensely, kissing her soft pink lips as deeply as I can.
“Jona,” she mewls, humping my hand.
I pull her panties to the side and stroke her wet hot slit. Her kiss turns nasty. I love nasty. All tongue and lust, no love. I’ve always thought her pussy was a gift. It was the only one to bring me to my knees, to leave my heart pounding as my breaths left me. It deserves to be worshiped. I find her opening and toy with it, skimming the tips of my two fingers around her heat.
Her jeans are in the way. I can’t give her what she wants. I tear my lips free of hers and look around. Most of the beach is empty, except for a cluster of people at the far end of the cove. They could look over, but there’s a chance we’re cloaked by the setting sun.
I’ll take my chances.
I yank her jeans down her hips mid-thigh, leaving her gorgeous pussy exposed. Shaved, pink, shining under the setting sun with want. I want to bury my tongue between her wet folds, lose myself in her taste. I find her tongue instead at the same time I shove my fingers inside of her.
She gasps into my mouth. Her nasty kiss becomes filthy. Only tongue. Nothing but tongue. I screw her with my fingers fast, hard. Her tightness molds around me and the heat of her is overwhelming. I want to feel her wrapped around my cock. Her excitement coating me.
With a growl, I increase my speed. I feel her hand between us, and soon, she’s shaking from her orgasm as she caresses her clit. I pull back to look down, watching her fingers work her clit as mine work her. Fast, hard, deep, the way I plan on moving into her the first chance I get.
She comes loud, moaning as she gazes into my eyes. She’s gorgeous. Long thick brown lashes damp and fawning. Her eyes are gleaming like tempered chocolate. Her cheeks are flushed, and her hair is splayed in the sand. I don’t feel lost watching her fall apart from my fingers. I feel like I’m looking at everything I want.
I just don’t know how to keep it.
Her hands fumble with my zipper. “Sex. Now.”
Her husky orders are going to get her in trouble. “Here, here. Let me help.” I laugh and knock her hands away, pulling my zipper down and pushing them off my hips. “There. Happy?”
She grabs my dick and grins, stroking me with slow tight presses of her hand. “I love your cock.”
“You do?”
“Mhm.”
“What do you love about it?” I watch her hand on me, in a Justine-filled daze.
“I love this part for sure.” Her thumb plays with my piercing. “I love how it feels in the back of my throat, stretching my lips. I love how good you taste, too. But right now, I want to feel it inside of m—”
She doesn’t get a chance to finish. I flip her over, pull her on her side, and then I lift her leg enough to slip inside from behind. To an onlooker, we look like we’re spooning. To me, I’m moving into her wet pussy as fast and hard as I can from behind. I don’t cuddle anyway. I don’t hold anyone—there’s no one to hold—despite how tightly I’m holding on to her tonight.
“Come inside of me,” she moans, her fingers curling in the sand. “You feel so good, Jona,” she grounds out, moving to meet my thrusts. “Harder, please!”
I hold her thighs together and give her want she wants. A hard, fast, deep pounding. The sound of our thighs slapping together is almost overshadowed by the cawing of late night seagulls and my heavy breathing. I’m lost in a haze only she makes me feel.
I’m high.
I’m flying.
I’m alive in the best way.
I feel her pussy clench from deep inside a second before her muscles tighten and she moans into the sand. I love the way she moans when she comes. It comes in spurts. Ahh, moan, ohh, moan, Jona, mmm, moan. She flips my switch a moment later. My balls tighten and white and black fills my sights as my cock floods with heat. My end fills her, and the idea of filling her sends me into a heat-filled fog. I pound into her deeper, harder, wanting as much of me inside of her as I can get. I bury my face in her hair and groan out her name as my mind and heart wonder how the hell I’m going to live without this forever.
She’s the only thing that’s ever brought me self-awareness; she’s the only thing that puts my inadequacies into perspective. I won’t do anything with those inadequacies, but to know I’d love them gone is better than never knowing they’re there.
I put my dick back in my pants and zip my jeans up before moving on to her. I put her panties back in place and then her jeans, buckling them blindly as I try not to fade away. Once we’re clothed, I pull her into my arms and hold on.
“Where are you staying?” I ask, breaking the quiet of the waves.
“I don’t know. If I go home, I’ll have to deal with my old man. I came to your place first thing.”
I skim my nose along her pulse, inhaling her skin. “Tell me what happened.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I wanted out of Crystal Gulf; he was leaving. It was a haze of coke, sex, and music. We split the money from the gigs he scored. In Arizona, we met this producer that was scouting for a record company in Portland. That’s where we were headed, but he scored a deal without me. I was just there for the ride, I guess. Literally.”
Justine can sing. The sound of her voice is beautiful. I can still remember the first time I heard her. We were probably fifteen, drunk as shit at a bonfire party on this beach, and some idiot had pulled out a guitar. She started singing Beautiful by Christina Aguilera, but she made it hers. Adding her rasp and twang to every word. When she sang, she made it hers. It was the first time a woman took my breath away. She was so damn hot. Cutoff jeans, crop top, cowboy boots, tight tanned body, shining brown eyes—I remember thinking I wouldn’t mind if she shit all over my heart.
Of course, she did. And I did hers. Fucking faceless woman night after night. I’d forget about Justine, could spend months drunk off my ass and high in the clouds before I came down and saw her on another man’s lap, in his arms, giving what was mine to someone else.
“You weren’t that good anyway. I mean, you’ve got that whole beautiful thing going on, and your voice makes my cock hard, but you’re not that good, baby.”
When she speaks, there’s a smile in her voice. “Your compliments are making me wet again.”
“You love him?” I whisper, unable to get that long-haired douchebag off my mind.
“Ryan?” She snorts softly. “The only man I care about is you, Jona.”
I wonder if I should just accept this. She cares about me. Fine. We hook up occasionally. Inside, there’s so much more to this relationship to me than there actually is. I release her and sit up, grabbing the whiskey bottle and my cup.
I need a drink.
“You want one?”
She nods on her back, eyes gazing up at me. She knows something’s off, but she’s a wall; nothing can penetrate her, not even me.
I fill our cups to the top with cola and booze, and then I stretch my legs out in the sand and pound it back. Maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe I’m so … I don’t know … lost? Confused? That affixing myself to Justine makes me feel like I’m not losing my mind.
But I’m losing my mind regardless.
I ignore the cola and pour whiskey straight into my cup, feeling the old spark to ruin the woman beside me. Like she’s ruining me.
“You ask.”
“No, you ask.”
I look over to find a group of girls in bikini’s whispering and pointing at us. They’re younger than my twenty-two. Probably eighteen, a little older even. Freshmen’s at Crystal Gulf University no doubt. They’re all blond. All of them. Tanned, blond, and well-endowed.
“Jackpot,” I mutter under my breath.
A hand smacks off my shoulder. When I look over, Justine’s glaring dangerously. “Don’t,” she warns, knowing me so well.
So well, in fact, that she doesn’t want me at all.
“Why not?” I look her right in the eye, letting her know everything I’m feeling. “Why not, Justine?”
“Because,” she hisses, leaning forward to grab my arm. Her nails dig into my flesh, making me groan. “Your dick’s still covered in my pussy. That’s why. You stick it in one of those skanks, and I’m going to make sure you pay.”
“Ahh, that fucking hurts,” I growl, shoving her off and lifting my sleeve. Sure enough, there are four marks from her nails, raw and bleeding. “Tell me what I want to hear, or I’m going to get up and fuck all of them tonight. You know I can, you know I will. Tell me, Justine. Or we’re done. I can’t keep doing this to myself.”
She’s snapping and snarling, she’s so pissed. If we were alone, I’d probably have a black eye already. “Jona, you don’t even know what you want. How can you ask me to give it to you?”
“Wrong answer,” I growl and push to my feet, walking over to the horde. “What’s up, ladies?”
The ring leader steps forward. Cute, perky, blue eyes like the water. Not a tan on her, no brown eyes sucking my soul out of my heart. There’s nothing there—that’s how I like them.
Empty.
“We were wondering if you were twenty-one? We saw your bottle, and we wanted one too. We’ll pay, and we’ll even give you something special.” Her hand touches the hem of her little white bikini.
I eye her body shamelessly, feeling the woman behind me lighting me on fire. “I’ve been there,” I say, giving her a fake empty smile. Her eyes widen, and she bites her lips. It depresses me how easy it is to lure them in. I could smile at Justine, and all she’d do is roll her eyes.
I want this one to roll her eyes, to dig her nails into my flesh, to make me feel her love.
Instead, she blinks with forced innocence, fingers pulling ever-so-softly on her bikini bottoms.
“I’d love to help you out. Why don’t you come with me, and your friends can hang out with mine?” I nod at Justine like she’s no one.
Blondie looks at her friends, getting their silent approval. They all nod mindlessly. I’m enraged. I could be anyone. I could be a monster waiting to lure her in. To hurt her the way Hillary was hurt and my … Feeling sick to my stomach, I shake my head, fighting off nausea.
“It’s cool. Let’s go.” She smiles in victory as her friends take off for a bonfire at the other end of Crystal Beach.
I look to Justine, but she’s already gone. Her cowboy boots stomping away in the sand, a trail of smoke and suffering in her wake. She’s going to make me pay for this.
I’m going to love every minute of the pain she’ll cause.
“My car’s in the cove,” I explain. “The black Mustang. I’ll meet you over there. I just need to get my things.”
“Okay, sounds good,” she says, eye-fucking me. She strides away with a wink, her ass cute and little. She’s just a kid. If I don’t buy her this booze, she’ll get someone else to do it. I’m a piece of shit, but I’m not a monster, and I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to another woman on my watch.
After gathering the remnants of Jus and me, I jog in the sand to my car. My new friend is leaning against the passenger side on her phone, texting so fast she makes my eyes dizzy watching her fingers.
When I unlock my door with the keypad, she jumps, looking over at me in relief.
“Get in, sugar.” I sink into the driver’s seat as she gets in beside me, and toss my things in the back. Her long skinny legs are on display. She’s an idiot. A stupid, young idiot. “What’s your name?”
“Monika.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
Great. A baby. A sweet innocent girl. “You in Crystal Gulf for college?” I guess. She’s too fresh to be from here.
“Yup. Freshman. It’s so much fun.”
I pull out of the cove, searching for Justine. Knowing her, she called some other moron to come and get her. The idea of her with some other guy makes my skin crawl and the rage in me coils. “Yeah, it’s real fun,” I mumble. “What are you studying?”
“Mental health and medicine. I want to be a psychiatrist.” Her tone softens. “My brother’s mentally ill, and he doesn’t always get the care he needs.”
I glance over at her sweet face. “My mom was too,” I reveal, hating myself the moment it’s out. Mentally ill, broken … same thing, right?
“Really?” She bites her lip, trying to cover her legs now that sex isn’t in the air.
“Here.” I reach around back clumsily, my fingers touching cloth. I pull a gray hoodie out from the back and hand it to her.
“Thank you … what was your name?”
“Jona Kyles,” I supply, irritated she’s just now asking my damn name. “Yes, really. How old is your brother?”
“Jona Kyles, huh?” She frowns, but before I can determine why, she looks away. “He’s my age. We’re twins. Fraternal. His name’s Mikael.” Her tone saddens and, suddenly, she looks like a little girl in a bikini in the front seat of my car.
It turns my stomach. “Did he come down with you?”
“No. He’s kind of … he’s … um.” She sniffs, looking away from me. “He’s an addict.”
“Shit.” So am I. Was. I didn’t know. “I’m sorry, sugar. I know that must be hard. My mom was one too.” What is this, show and tell? I didn’t talk about my past. Not with her, not with anyone. Even Justine knew bits and pieces.
“What was her drug of choice?”
I pull into the same liquor store I stopped at earlier and shut the engine off. “Heroin. Which is why out of all the drugs I’ve ever done, that ain’t one of them. What do you want to drink?”
She gazes at me, her eyes sincere. “I’m sorry too, Jona.” The depth of her sincerity throws me off.
It’s so real, like she knows how badly my mother hurt me. But that’s impossible. She couldn’t know that.
She tucks her legs under my sweater and reveals a wad of cash in her fist like a little girl waiting for the ice-cream truck. “The girls wanted tequila.”
I shake my head. “It’s on me. You want anything special?” Like a nun uniform?
She smiles, thinking about it, her bright blue eyes sparkling. “I like pink champagne.”
“Of course, you do. I’ll be right back. Hang tight. And lock the doors.” I leave her in my Mustang and take off for the liquor store, filling a basket with tequila, pink champagne, and food. The whiskey in my system is dull, but it’s there, wanting the final shove into oblivion.
After paying, I head back out, ignoring that my wallet is approaching empty. I’ll either need to throw a party or get one of those rare and atrocious things called a job.
“Thank you,” Monika croons, pulling out the goodies once I return. “Ohh, it’s cold.” She hugs the champagne bottle.
“Hand me a bag of chips.” She tosses me one. I rip it open and dig in, shoving the cheese-dusted goodness into my mouth. I’d been working out more and hadn’t been eating like shit, but tonight is a night where I need a little shit.
“Why don’t you come hang out?” she says when we get back to Crystal Beach.
All of me wants to say no. But I don’t like the idea of her drunk and alone on the beach at night.
“If you don’t mind.”
She smiles in that soft way that lets me know what she’s thinking. I’d never touch her now, even shit-faced, but she’s cute as hell trying. “I don’t mind,” she assures me.
But I do.
***
Justine
Rage tastes like metal.
This bitter, tangy taste that settles on the back of my tongue like no matter how many times I swallow it’s going to be there.
Jona is a moron. How can he give me an ultimatum he himself didn’t know the answer to? And why is it up to me? On what universe could we work? We barely work on this one. To say yes to him, to give him something we didn’t understand, feels like losing him forever.
I can’t do that. I need Jona somewhere, somehow. But he’s a fool if he thinks we’re going to be … I don’t even know what he wants.
“Asshole,” I hiss, stomping my boots in the gravel. I don’t know where I’m going, only that I need to get away from him and his stupid sluts.
The man could lure any woman in. He’s unflinchingly gorgeous, with that dark bad boy edge that made pussy’s wet and knees weak. He’s funny too, knowing what to say when I’m going down a dark path. Not to mention the best lover I’d ever had. His cock was magic, pure hard perfect magic.
I picture them all over him, touching him, feeling the pleasure he just made me feel. Their blond hair caressing his skin, their hands on his body. Why do they always have to be blond? And I’m pissed, really pissed, but beneath that, I can barely see past my hurt.
“What am I doing?” I demand of myself in the dark, feeling a sudden bolt of misery.
I’m too sober, coming off a breakup and dream loss, and the usual break-my-heart-hook up with Jona Kyles. That’s all this is. A small breakdown. I’m not questioning my life.
What is there to question?
Having nowhere else to go, I find myself back at my dad’s place. I stop on the street and stare at it. At the peeling beige paint, the old Buick in the driveway, and the empty beer cans spilling over in the trash on the curb. I was forced to move to Crystal Gulf when I was fifteen to live with my old man after my mom got picked up for hooking. We’d been living in Nebraska then, with her overly friendly pimp. We moved a lot. We were hungry a lot. I did my best to adapt, probably too well at times.
When she got picked up, I was waiting in the donut shop we designated for out meet up spot until it closed. She never showed. She was caught with a drug dealer, and their sentences were the same: fifteen years. I’d lasted five months on my own before I got picked up for shop-lifting doughnuts from a supermarket. I hadn’t wanted to steal. I’d gone in to use the bathroom, and on my way out those damn glazed doughnuts called to my painfully empty stomach. CPS hauled me off to Crystal Gulf to live with my old man.
I lost who I was the day Mom was picked up. With her priors, she had a one-year minimum wait on visitation, but I hadn’t lasted that long on my own. My mother may not have been an ideal one, but she was mine regardless. Perfection didn’t matter anyway. If you were perfect, the fall from it would only hurt more. My imperfections cushioned the impact.
When she went away, I gave up. I found that being high or drunk made it easier to exist. Being beneath a man made me feel like I existed. Doing all three made me feel like I’d never matter again, and I was okay with that.
Because what did I matter now?
My old man’s complicated. He’s mildly acceptable if he’s not drunk. If he is, then, I had scars to prove how much he loves me.
Judging by the empty beer cans, I can only assume I’d add a few more scars tonight. He’d bitch and moan about me taking off without telling him. He’d scream and rant about how I ruined his relationship with my mother. She wanted to save me from him, but she had no idea how to do that without taking off herself. Every time my father hit me, he was really hitting her.
It was sick, but I felt like I had to endure her pain for her since she wasn’t here to do it. For years, my body had been absorbing her mistakes.
Taking a deep breath, I walk across the dry, scraggly lawn and wiggle the spare key from under the hound dog ashtray on the porch. When I step inside, I’m assaulted by the stench of body odor and garbage.
“Holy—” My open mouth can taste the stench; I cover my nose and mouth with my arm.
There’s garbage everywhere. Food, clothes, newspapers, takeout containers, and beer, so much damn beer.
“Wesley?” I call, having never called Wesley Fenton Dad since I was five and he backhanded me for interrupting his “TV time.” Porn wasn’t exactly my idea of good TV, but at five, I’d only wanted to know why all the people were naked. “Where are their clothes, Dad?” I’d asked. He’d spun around to glare at me. His hand cracked off my cheek. “I told you to go to your room,” he’d growled. My cheek still stung.
Memories assault me as I walk through the filthy house. When I was five, Dad lost his job. He got laid-off and had trouble finding work. I was a kid, I didn’t know, but I’m old enough now to piece the dregs of my past together. Now he’s on disability for a bad back I was sure was bad because he fell when he drank, not at the post office like he claims. When he lost his job, he lost himself. Or maybe he never knew who he was. Like all of us, I suppose. He drank more, which made him mean and evil, and I was a small punching bag in his way.
He’d look at me with evil in his eyes and say cruel things I tried to block out.
“You’re beautiful, Jussy,” Mom would promise, her eyes the same as mine. Mom and I were twins. I smile sadly as I push the swinging door to the kitchen open. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and an ever-slight olive complexion to our creamy skin that never went away. It amounted in a yearlong tan I love showing off. “Daddy’s just upset. He doesn’t mean it.”
At the time, I thought she was lying. How can a monster show his teeth and then hide them when he didn’t want them showing? Either you’re a monster, or not. But over the years, what choice did I have but to believe? The monsters in my life had grown prettier masks.
After she had taken off with me at five, I didn’t see him again until I was fifteen. We lived as best we could. Rough. Homeless sometimes, and other times in hotels. Wes wasn’t delighted when I showed up here ten years later. I don’t know what brought him to Crystal Gulf, but whoever she was, she was long gone. I’d seen the pictures. His ruggedly handsome face barely smiling at a woman who was probably his age. I never asked where she went, and he didn’t supply.
She probably had a few bruises of her own.
When he was sober, he could be somewhat charming. When he was drunk, he could be my worst nightmare.
“Wesley?” I call louder, hearing a groan to my question coming from down the laundry-strewn hallway. I push his bedroom door open to find him face down in his vomit. “Damn it,” I hiss, grabbing his shirt and lifting him up. “What’s your problem, shithead?” I toss his head away and march into his disgusting—obviously never used—bathroom, and turn the tub on before returning to him. I grunt in annoyance when I wrap my arm around him and heave. “Get in the tub.”
“Justine?” he moans, trying to focus with drunken blue eyes. “That you?”
His gravelly voice makes me shrink. You are a twenty-two-year-old woman, I remind myself harshly. You will not become a child for your father. You aren’t a victim. “Yeah, it’s your favorite daughter.”
I wasn’t sure he had others, but he could. Anyone with a face as handsome as Wesley’s could get another woman. He reminded me of some of the men I’d spent my years hooking up with—gorgeous and damaged. But my father was darker, and there was no bettering for him. This is who he is. That’s the hardest part sometimes.
He snorts, stinking of BO and beer. “What are you wearing?” He blinks at my shirt, pawing at my cleavage with a meaty hand. “Why do you always dress like such a whore?” He sniffs and spits on the ground as I haul him into the bathroom.
“I’m a product of my environment,” I answer sweetly. Bastard.
“You’re a product of your slutty ass momma. Always a slut, Justine. Like mother, like daughter.”
“I’ve been gone for six months. You think you’d wait at least five minutes before you start laying into me.”
“Where were you?” His mean eyes burn into mine. When I look away, he laughs darkly. “With a prick, wasn’t you? Bet it wasn’t even a big prick either. Probably uncircumcised too. Want to see a real cock, daughter of mine?” He grabs his crotch.
I shove him into the bathroom, sending him into the wall. “No, thank you. I didn’t bring my microscope with me.”
He chuckles, catching himself on the sink. He looks genuinely humored. Lips curled in a nasty smile. “Good one, baby doll.”
“Take a shower. You stink like ass. I’m going to try and clean up. I think. Or maybe I’ll just burn this place down.”
“You gonna be in it when you do?” he sneers, pulling his shirt off to reveal his beer belly. His hairy sweaty nauseating beer belly.
I bite back the bile in my throat. First Jona, and now my father. I feel like I’m on the edge of snapping. I need to forget, to drink myself into a state where nothing matters.
“Clean your own damn house.” I leave him and kick my bedroom door open to find my room the way I left it. Clean. Mine. Safe.
I lock my door and immediately open my nightstand, pushing condoms and CD’s out of the way for the cocaine I know is there. Dad doesn’t do drugs, just booze. I could hide anything in here, and he’d never find it. But as I dump it on a magazine, my tears slide down my face and fall into the white powder, turning it into a paste.
I fling the magazine across the room and fall onto my bed. I feel this rage, this hurt, from so deep inside I don’t know what I’ll have to do to keep going. I’ll become him. I’m already on my way.
Like a fiend, I won’t ever truly leave my father. I already had to leave Mom. I don’t want to leave Wesley too. Unfortunately, he’s my only tie in the world.
With a sigh, I get up and start cleaning. I manage to clear a path in the hall to the kitchen, starting a load of laundry that is long past due. The kitchen is atrocious. Everything is atrocious. I do my best, getting it to a level of barely condemned rather than post-apocalyptic.
“Who said I wanted my house clean?”
I close the dishwasher with my hip and press burn to a crisp, and then face my father, grimacing at his choice of attire. Cut-off jean shorts that look like they’d been burned off and a stained unflattering tank top.
“What got us here?” I ask.
He pauses on his way to the fridge, giving me a barely sober look. “What are you yapping about now?”
“What happened to get us here?” I wave a hand around us, at the filth, the pain, the misery we’ve caused ourselves for no good reason other than because we wanted to. “It’s like I’ve spent my entire life not feeling anything because it hurts too much to bother, that I’ve created an empty existence.” I suddenly understand what Jona’s talking about. I don’t know for sure, but neither does he, and it’s that small window of misunderstanding that binds our troubles together at this moment. “I don’t even know who I am. Who am I? What am I? What is this shit?” I shout, kicking at a haphazardly placed castle of empty beer boxes; they tumble to the floor. “I don’t know anything about anything.”
Wesley watches me, eyebrows quirked. “You been drinking my beer?”
I’m about to crack. The years I spent trying to forget all the rest, have created no room for me to exist within. Sober. I’m sober. If I get drunk, I’ll forget all this shit. It’s how I feel every time the alcohol leaves my pores, when the coke leaves behind depression, when the random guy I end up with looks so unfamiliar the next morning.
It’s a cycle I’m trapped inside, regardless of knowing my bindings. I glare at my father, despising him so completely at that moment for being the man Mom wanted but had to save me from. For the bruises I’ve endured, the insults I’d heard so often I believe them. I am all the things my father says I am. That’s why his insults exist. Because I do.
“Make something to eat,” he orders, popping the top on a beer and sinking down at the kitchen table. “Now, Justine.” He stiffens. “Don’t make me get up.”
When I stand there, he bolts to his feet and grabs me by my face, making me cry out when his yellowed nails dig into my cheek. “Did you hear me, daughter of mine? Make me something to eat. Or I’ll make this beautiful face a little less charming.” He pats my cheek roughly, releasing me. He settles back in his chair with his beer.
I let out a slow breath so he can’t hear my panic and shake the pain from my heart. This is why I don’t exist. Why bother existing when my dear father does his best to snuff out my flame?
I want to whack him over the head with the frying pan. Instead, I fry up eggs. The moon shines in through the open window, mixing with the blue flame from the gas stove as the eggs sizzle and pop. I’m caught in a bad dream, and reality is taunting me in the distance. I find a barely hanging on tomato and slice it, sprinkling salt over the mushy red flesh and smearing it on a piece of toast.
He glowers at his food when I place his plate down in front of him, snatching his fork from my other hand. He screws his face up after taking a bite. “If you cooked as good as you whore yourself around, I’d be eating a feast.”
“Well, you know what they say. A whore’s only as good as her last fried egg.”
“They say that?” He pins me down with a cold stare, the emptiness inside of him impenetrable. “Or only you?”
“We’re all whores, aren’t we, Dad?” I lean forward and imagine smashing his head into his food. “We’re all shitty, because deep down inside so are you.”
He’s on me before I can react. His hands wrap around my throat, and all the evil I see in his blue eyes is rejoicing as my fingers scramble to find something, anything, a weapon … a new life.
“You know what you’re going to become, daughter of mine? This.” He squeezed tighter. “Exactly like your mother. Open for business, heroin tracks in your arm, a dick in your mouth and ass.”
My eyes are losing life; his dark rage twisted face blurs in and out of focus. I know I should fight, should find a way to breathe, but what is there left to breathe for? This? Jona’s out there with his sluts and, if not those sluts, more will follow. I mean nothing to him. After all, I am one too. Just a slut and her father.
Choking her.
Killing her.
Ruining her one last time.
Hot, silent tears slide down my face as I imagine never seeing Jona again. Never hearing his deep sexy voice. Never seeing his spice colored eyes. Never feeling his touch, seeing the fire in his eyes when he looks at me. Never laughing at his corny jokes. It’s then, right before my eyes close to black and my body loosens in my father’s grasp, that I realize how much I love him.
How when I think of never waking up, all I feel is the severe loss of the only man I’ve ever loved.