Green Eyes
Authors: Amanda Heath
Green Eyes
Amanda Heath
Green Eyes
Copyright © 2016 by Amanda Heath
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
The use of artist and song titles throughout this book are done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
Cover:
Cover design by Kris Pittman
Editing by Nicole Bailey
ProofBeforeYouPublish
Formatting by Amanda Heath
Green Eyes
My name is Alexis Michaels and my life is pretty lonely. Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ve made it that way.
Ten years ago my family did things to lose my trust and stomped all over my love. If I never see any of them again it’ll be too soon. Bitterness and betrayal make me a very angry girl.
Five years ago I made a horrible mistake when I fell in love with the wrong man. I also got pregnant and had the most beautiful baby girl in the world. I’m terrified every day that my actions could come back to haunt me and she’ll have to pay the price.
Now I’m on the set of the first movie I’ll have filmed since I got pregnant. My leading man is a sexy asshole named Ryan Danse. Our chemistry is out of this world. We’re sure to make movie gold. The Australian actor makes me feel things I don’t want to feel. I’ve closed my heart off from the world and I refuse to open it ever again. That only leads to ultimate heartbreak.
Ryan’s connected though, connected to my family. I just know if I open my heart to him, I’ll have to let them in as well. It’s hard to keep myself closed off from him when he looks at me with those intense blue eyes.
Maybe I’m too hard, maybe I’m just a bitch, but forgiving a decade-old hurt I’ve left open, bleeding and infected, isn’t something I’m willing to do just because I love the way his hands feel on my body or the way he calls me green eyes.
I find myself wanting to tell him my secrets. I crave the touch of his hands. I long for his eyes to fall upon me and all that other mushy crap. I’m so obsessed I might do just about anything to have the love of this man.
Table of Contents
For every girl who is holding a grudge. May you find it inside of yourself to forgive.
Alexis
“Anxiety.” Even the word makes me feel weak. I’ve spent my whole life taking care of myself, only having myself to count on and now I feel so fucking weak. I break out into cold sweats when I think about having to see other people. I’m constantly worried my kid is going to die in some random freak accident. I hardly let her leave the house. I’m also constantly worried she’ll be taken from me and she’s all I have. There is only one person in this whole world, who really knows me, that loves me. I also have issues with my death. I’m terrified of it and I’m twenty-seven years old.
“Let’s talk about what causes your anxiety. You’ve skirted around the issues since you began to see me,” Dr. Lily Bowen says from her seat a few feet away. It took me several weeks to find someone I could trust to see. Most of the doctors I interviewed seemed more inclined to just hand me pills than to actually listen to my issues. I just didn’t realize I still wouldn’t talk about them.
“Why do I need to tell you all that? It’s depressing. Besides, I need help with the anxiety not the things that caused me to be this way,” I tell her, looking down at my short nails. It seems like years since I’ve gotten my nails done. You know, now that I think about it, it has been years. It’s been years since I even gave a shit about my appearance. That’s saying something, considering I’m an Academy Award-winning actress.
Dr. Lily sighs. She’s roughly my age and I think that’s one of the reasons I chose her. “I can’t help you completely unless I find the root of the issues. Something happened to make you this way, we have to address it and make you come to terms with it. Only then can we work on the actual anxiety and depression.”
My hands start shaking. I’ve been in the entertainment industry for going on ten years and this happens to me every time someone wants to know about my past. I guess it’s the decade of being silent that’s not helping me right now. I close my eyes and put my hands between my legs. A tear slips out even thinking about it. I open my eyes and see Dr. Lily’s kind blue eyes and all I can do is look away.
“Alexis, this is a safe place. Nothing can touch you here. I would never sell your story or tell anyone what goes on in this room unless I thought you were in danger of hurting yourself or others. And I can honestly tell you I don’t feel that way.” She gives me a kind smile and I take a huge breath.
Then I open my mouth. Every word is pulled from me with a huge pair of pliers and it physically hurts. “My father was a wonderful person. I loved him with all my heart. I think I was the only one though.” A tear slips past my defenses. I promise I’m not a weak-ass bitch. “He was really into music. He used to say, ‘Lex, music is life. Never ever forget that.’ I grew up on AC/DC, Metallica, the Beatles, Black Sabbath, Queen, but he had a love for it all. He’d play Madonna and Cher sometimes but his favorite female was Whitney Houston.” I start panting, trying to get past the pain. I choke out the words though. “I played ‘I Will Always Love You’ for weeks after he passed.
“Daddy had his kids late in life. He was well into his eighties when he died. And I was the only one there. I was the only one and it destroyed me.” I slump back into my chair and just let the tears fall silently down my face. I lied earlier; I’m a weak-ass bitch.
“Why were you the only one there?” Dr. Lily asks, her voice soft and soothing.
I take a minute to calm down but after I do I let it all out. “My daddy had three other children. Two boys and a girl. They aren’t much older than me but the second they could, they left. They left me alone with him and he was sick, God, he was so sick. They didn’t call, they didn’t write, fuck, I didn’t even get a text message or an email. Then they showed up at the funeral and got all the praise. I felt so angry, you know? I kept it inside though. I bottled it up and pretended it wasn’t there even though I wanted to shove them down, kick them and hit them until they bled to death.”
“What kind of illness did your father have?” she asked, her blue eyes meeting my green ones. They are clear and calm but, and it could be my imagination, but a little anger was there as well.
“Dementia. Some days he didn’t even know who I was, and I was sixteen when he died. I didn’t know how to handle any of that. I did though, I sat by his bed every fucking day and I held his hand when he missed all his other kids.” I turn my head away from her and look out her window to see downtown LA. “He’d get confused most days, angry on other days. He hit me a couple of times, not knowing what he was doing. But mostly he just wasted away. At the end I played music constantly but I still don’t think it helped him. All I ever wanted to do was help him.” I pick my hand up off my lap and wipe the tears away. I sniffle a little, trying to clear my nose. “One of Daddy’s sons wanted me to live with him after Daddy passed. It’s all a little fuzzy because I was sad all the time back then, but I’m pretty sure I punched him in the stomach and walked away. I can tell you I never looked back and I’ve never had anything to do with them since that day.”
Dr. Lily, seeing that I’m done with the sordid tale, writes something down on her notepad. Another thing I like about her, she doesn’t use electronics. I assume most of her patients are famous, so that’s actually pretty smart. “I notice that you call them your father’s other children, you don’t call them your brothers and sisters.”
“In my head, brothers and sisters stick together. They fight for each other; they are there for each other. They don’t abandon the youngest to deal with their dying father. They don’t take all the credit. That’s not family. Those three are strangers to me and they always have been.” Which is a total lie.
Dr. Lily looks at me with one of her eyebrows arched.
I roll my eyes. “I was close to them growing up, maybe. I don’t really remember.”
“That’s okay, Alexis. We’ll talk about them when you’re ready. It only took you three weeks to get into your father’s death.” She pauses and looks down at her notepad. “I think we’ve found your anxiety issues with death. And for being around other people. I just don’t see why it’s gotten so bad over the past four years.”
I clench my hands. Talking about my father is one thing, but I will never talk about that. What’s made me so crazy lately. “I don’t know, maybe because I hardly leave the house.”
Dr. Lily sighs and moves her notepad over to the little table by her chair. “I’m just telling you, Alexis. I don’t want you to feel like I’m making you talk about things you don’t want to talk about. This is your private life and with the public eye being on you, I understand why you’re so closed lipped. I just wish it wasn’t like trying to crack open a nut.”
That makes me laugh. “My daddy used to call me a nut, constantly. I used to put on plays for him when I was little. Don’t get me wrong, I love music because music is life, but I was never interested in performing it. I loved to act out the stories I read. My daddy was my biggest fan and it hurts he never got to see what I did with that.”
“He sounds like a wonderful man.”
I nod. “He thought the sun and moon rose out of our asses. The four of us were the world to him.”
“You don’t talk about your mother, so I’m assuming there aren’t any issues there?”
I shake my head this time. “Honestly, I don’t remember her. I was two when she died. She got mugged one night while she was walking to her car after shopping. One of Daddy’s sons said I was always a Daddy’s girl, even right after I was born.”
Dr. Lily nods and picks up her notepad to write something else down. “I want you to do some things for me, in-between now and our next session.” She looks me in the eye right above the edge of her notepad. “I want you to read at least one script. I want you to take your daughter to the park and talk to another mom. I want you to write a letter to your siblings about how you feel. I don’t want you to send anything; I just want you to write it. And last but certainly not least, I want you to stop worrying about death.”
“That’s a little harder than it sounds,” I tell her.
“You’re right but that’s the point. No one can tell you what happens after we die. No one has proved heaven or hell to be real. I get what you’re saying though. It would be terrifying if we just died and there was nothing. We just simply didn’t exist anymore, anywhere. I think it would drive me crazy too if I felt that way.” She reaches across to place her hand on mine. “You can’t know everything about life, so you obviously can’t know everything about death. You’ve got to let this fear ago. I know it seems like a bunch of crap to you, but it’s not. This fear is irrational and it’s only hurting you in the long run. Everyone passes away and it can be any time or place. You’ve just got to learn to live with it. And when this fear starts bothering you, practice those breathing exercises. Tell yourself that it’ll be fine in the end. Life moves on whether we’re ready or not, Alexis.”
I nod my head. I get up from my chair and move to leave the room, but I turn around and look at Dr. Lily. “You’re an amazing doctor. I just want you to know that.”
She looks startled for a second and then she smiles brightly at me. “Thank you. You’re an amazing actress. The world misses you. I just wanted you to know that.”
And just like that I’m sad again. I started seeing Dr. Lily because I wanted to get back out there. I wanted to make another movie. I wanted to do something I loved again. But I just can’t. The last time I made a movie I ended up with a baby and a broken heart. Luckily, I kept that away from the media. When you don’t tell anyone whom you’re sleeping with, it’s actually pretty easy to hide things.
I leave the office and find Marley waiting by the car with his hand on the door. I smile at him and pat him on the shoulder when he opens the door for me. “I tell you every day not to open the door for me.”
He winks at me, his warm brown eyes sparkling. “And I tell you every day that it’s my job. You pay me, remember?”
I shake my head while he closes the door. Marley is my driver, my bodyguard, and my best friend. We make an odd pair, actually. He’s as big as a linebacker with skin the color of my black coffee in the morning. I’m five foot four and blonde with pasty skin because I refuse to tan. That’s one thing I said to myself once I started getting fame for my roles in movies. I swore that I would never change myself to become part of the rest. I’ve always wanted to be different. And I’ve stuck to that.
“Where to?” he asks as I look in the backseat and see Talia asleep in her car seat, her little head slumped to the side and her mouth wide open.
“To the park,” I say, keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us.
“To the…park?” he asks, confusion in his voice.
I laugh. “Dr. Lily says I need to take Talia to the park. Go talk to other moms and shit. Might as well start now.”
“So she gave you homework?” I can picture his face right now, with his eyebrows arched and his lips slack.
“Yes, she gave me homework.”
“Can I ask what other homework she gave you?”
This time I turn to look at him. I only get him in profile but instead of the confusion I thought I would find, I find delight. He has been begging me to get out of the house more. “She wants me to read a script. She also wants me to write a letter to the BlackSheeps. She doesn’t want me to send it; she just wants me to write it. Oh, and I’m not supposed to be worried about death anymore.”
“I approve of this doctor. She seems to be actually helping you, not trying to get your whole story to sell to the media or shove a bunch of pills down your throat.” He taps his hands against the steering wheel. “Think I might write a letter to the BlackSheeps myself. I’m still pissed over that sucker punch.”
I curl my lip up at that one. Marley and I have dubbed my daddy’s other children as the BlackSheeps. It has several meanings. One being that they have black hearts, two being that they are exiled from my family of three (Marley, Talia and me) and three being that they are sheep, just like everyone else in LA.
My brothers and sister took a slightly different path in life from me. They started a band. Call it Dirty Deeds, as from the AC/DC song. If that wasn’t a slap in the face, nothing could be. Of course, they started the band before Daddy died, but still. They’ve won several Grammy’s and gone platinum with almost all of their albums. And while I’ve been slowly rotting away in my home, they’ve gotten even more famous. With a song they’ve fucking titled, “Little Sister”.
And yes, it’s about me and it hit number one the same day it was released. I was so pissed I couldn’t speak for ten whole minutes after I heard it for the first time. I might have taken a golf club to my stereo.
Before I had Talia, Jason, the one born before me, got drunk at an after party and punched Marley. I haven’t spoken a word to any of them in years but that night I got right in his face and told him what a worthless piece of shit he was. I told him that I was better off without any of them in my life and I hoped he died of alcohol poisoning, and then I could spit on his grave. Luckily, this was in a hallway and no one really saw anything.
Actually, they did, that was a lie. When it was first realized that I was pregnant and being tight lipped about the father of the baby, he was one of the guys they speculated about. Considering I’m known as America’s sweetheart, I smile at everyone. I’m nice to everyone. I’ve never been involved in a scandal in the public eye. The only stain I have on me is the fact that I had a baby out of wedlock and if anyone says she’s a stain on my reputation then I’d probably have them murdered.