He taps the envelope against my chest and then glances down at my heaving breasts. The look in his eyes has me taking back my statement that I’m not afraid of him as he leans even closer.
“Or…you stay, play the whore to the Kingston men. And it’s only right that you start with the head Kingston.”
Nausea sours my stomach at what his words imply but it’s the hard hand that jams between my jean-covered thighs and squeezes me painfully that has me snatching the envelope out of his hand and shoving him off of me in desperation.
Maple snorts and stomps at the tension in the stall as I fly to the other side of it and turn to face him. I want my voice to come out with all the sickness and rage I’m feeling but it quavers and stutters instead.
“I go and you l-leave Luke and my dad alone?”
He gives me one hard nod so I crush the envelope in my fist. I want to throw it at his feet, tell him to go fuck himself but if I have to leave, I’ll need it. Instead, I suck back all the hate I want to spew at him and nod but I can’t help taking one shot at this bastard before I go.
“I’ll go. You might think you’re doing this for them but I promise you, one day, you will die all alone and unloved and you’ll only have yourself to blame.”
He huffs an ugly laugh at my words and motions to the door so I quickly leave the stall. My feet fly over the fields that separate our two properties as tears roll down my cheeks. I want to go to my dad and tell him everything, scream to the world what a monster Lannister Kingston is but I know I won’t because I remember.
I remember Luke’s face and his small broken voice saying he had no home after his parents died and I can’t be the reason this one is taken from him.
I know how hard my dad works every damn day to keep us fed and I can’t be the reason he loses his home either. So even as my heart is breaking, I pull my phone out of my back pocket and send the text.
Text: VAULT!!! I need you to pick me up across the field tonight at eleven. Don’t tell anyone, Mags!
Mags: Locked and ready to blow if opened. Where are we going?
Me: I need to catch a bus out of town
Mags: What the ever-lovin’ hell happened???
Mags: Rain? Rain?
Mags: I’ll be there
Rain
People say fate’s funny but she’s not. She’s a cunt. That bitch will string you along, showing you glimpses of everything you think you want, lead you down the path of all your dreams, and then laugh when she cuts your throat and circles you back to where you started from. Like I said, cunt.
I cringe at the vulgar word that comes so easily to my mind. That’s not who I am anymore. I worked damn hard to leave that raw, untamed girl behind. I swear, the closer I get to where I began, the more that girl pushes back in.
I stare through the windshield of my car at the single-wide trailer lit up by my headlights. I’ve been frozen here behind the wheel since I drove up the dirt lane twenty minutes ago. I can’t bring myself to shut the car off and get out. It’s like if I don’t leave the car, none of this is really happening. The only thing I see as I stare at the run-down trailer that I lived in for seventeen years and three hundred and sixty-four days is me slipping out of the cracked bedroom window. I snuck out with an envelope of cash and a backpack full of clothes hours before the clock ticked over to my eighteenth birthday.
My eyes slide away from the trailer and across the fallow field, tracing the path I took that night to where my best girlfriend waited for me in her rusted-out Dodge Neon that was held together by duct tape and primer. That car held together enough for her to drive me the hour to the closest town that had a bus going through it.
I ran to protect them and hoped to find something more, something…better - and I forced myself to not look back. I held true to that for ten fucking years. I found more, I thought I found better - and then that cunt laughed and laughed and took it all away with one phone call.
My fingers squeeze the steering wheel tighter making the diamond ring on my finger pinch my skin. I drop my eyes to it in the dim light just as a flash of lightning rips across the sky making it shine mockingly at me and wish I had left it on the counter of the condo. The cold rock on my finger was supposed to represent the next stage of my life, my future. But that phone call sent me to Jason’s office in search of comfort, seeking support. What I got instead was a full view of him slamming his dick into his assistant while she was bent over his desk. When he looked up and spotted me watching, his eyes went colder than I’d ever seen them before. He looked annoyed, frustrated that I was interrupting him. There was absolutely no guilt in his eyes as he pumped a few more times into her to finish himself off.
He caught me just as the elevator doors opened and grabbed my wrist so hard that I have a pretty ring of black and blue bruises circling it. My throat was locked up in a double knot of grief from the phone call telling me that my father was dead and losing what I thought was my future with a man who loved me. He squeezed my wrist harder with a jerk making me look up at him.
“Go home and wait for me there, Rain. We’ll discuss this when I get there later.”
I yanked my arm trying to get free but he just squeezed harder, making the delicate bones grind together painfully.
His jaw clenched and his tone was filled with warning when he told me, “You will want to consider very carefully any rash, knee-jerk reactions you might want to have regarding what you just saw. It changes nothing.”
He stared hard into my eyes and then dropped my arm, gesturing me into the waiting elevator.
As the doors closed between us, I took a good long look at him because he was wrong. What I saw changed everything and there was no going back. I had felt like a zombie leaving his office building and getting a cab to our condo. I felt nothing but emptiness as I numbly walked through the ultra-modern space on the top floor with sweeping views of the city. Clothes were thrown in heaps into suitcases, bathroom toiletries swept into a bulging bag and every last trace of me was removed from that condo until I called the doorman up to carry it all down to the underground parking garage and into my car.
I was robotic as I opened my banking app and transferred out the money I had contributed to it, leaving his much bigger amount behind. I didn’t want a cent of his money.
