Chapter One
Jenny
I walk up the steps to my one-bedroom apartment and I am dead on my feet. It’s just after midnight and I left skin exhausted. I hate days when I work at both my jobs, but building clientele is rough and it takes time and patience, so like it or not I need to keep working full time at Skin.
I hear the text come through like clockwork and smile. Before I can get my door locked I hear the alert to another text.
I drop my keys and purse on the floor swiping the screen of my phone seeing my text.
Noah: You home okay?
He sends this every night that I work at Skin and I respond letting him know I made it safe as I kick my shoes off and sigh.
The second message comes like clockwork too every night, but it is full of sexual tension, unanswered questions and heartache... for me anyway.
Cal: Hey Red, you get home okay?
I know he asks out of general concern and some sort of meek obligation. I am the mother of his child and lately I have been the rock he breaks himself against to ensure he still feels. He knows I love him, but he can’t possibly understand the depth of that love. I have loved every version of Cal Dorian for most my life. Since Jr High it has been him, and for him it was anyone and everyone. I loved that boy and it morphed and changed before he found his success as the Lead guitarist of Thick as Thieves. That love destroyed me... and as he found his fame and success in the nation’s number one band, I found myself alone and pregnant in the pits of hell that only worked to draw me deeper.
In it all I loved him, when he hated me for the neglect our son experienced as I worked nonstop knowing he needed care. For the night our son was exposed to the ugly things in life and for the times he saw me as that loser Jenny Pope.
Me: Yes, thank you for checking. Goodnight
That was all it ever was. He never texted to ask about my night and I never asked about his. We were so fragile, even at our strongest. Because of that, I didn’t cross the boundaries we had made silently. The last time I did, was over a year ago and it cost me dearly in the end.
I learned that night I couldn’t be anything casual with Cal.
I slipped out of my work clothes and stood beneath the spray washing off the nights memories. I wasn’t one of the dancers that Skin employed, but the men never hesitated to push the envelope with a cocktail waitress and too many hands touched me tonight.
When I started working there when I was just twenty-one, I allowed the behavior. For years I would push that same envelope and it was always about the hustle. I would hustle every cent I could when I danced and when I became a server. I would work multiple doubles and spend my days off on tour busses and partying.
Now though, hell I don’t even recognize who I was.
I think that’s a good thing, it isn’t like I could forget. I am weighed down by that guilt every day. It is why I continue to let Cal use me, to buffer his hate against me. He isn’t cruel or unkind, but he pushes even my limitations, and with him there are very few.
I close my eyes against the onslaught of memories as they flash through my mind. His hands and teeth all over me, every inch of my skin covered in his skin and it has ruined any innocence I could have still held on to.
I shut the water off and step from the shower, wishing I could wash his memory away. I see my phone flashing another text message alert and I know it is my third and final check in for the night, and he will want to text me.
CD: Hey babe, how was work? Are you ready to let me take care of you forever?
CD works at the PIT. He is one of the newer tattooist that Sully and Noah brought on over the summer. He is from Barking and Dagenham, a borough of London andohmigawdhe is sexy. He has a blue mohawk and green eyes, lip piercings and tattoos. He is everything I would want, even without the sexy accent.
I should want to attack him and sometimes I do, but his name stops me. Cal is engrained in everything I think and see and the name CD is like a bucket of ice water.
Me: Hey Hun... Work was ok. I made good tips and so sadly I have to deny that gracious offer of support LOL
His response was immediate.
CD: Jen, when will you bloody realize I am crazy for you?
I try to picture us together and it is easy at first. I see us going to movies and concerts and laughing like we always do. But, like always the minute I try to picture being in bed with him it gets destroyed by the image of Cal fucking me senseless on his covered porch last Christmas.
I want to scrub my eyes and my memory of that night. That was the night I let him in and told him I loved him. It was Christmas and he was still freshly screwed over and destroyed by Tayla.
It was also the night he said he wanted me in his life and asked me to be patient so he could figure it all out. He didn’t want to lead me on, but was clear he wanted to see what would happen...
I was overjoyed and couldn’t have written a more perfect story of us to tell Axe one day, to prove happy endings were real.
