Reese
Authors: Terri Anne Browning
Safe Haven
Reese
By Terri Anne Browning
Copy Write
Safe Haven
Reese
Book 1
All Rights Reserved© 2012 Anna
Henson
Written By Terri Anne Browning
Cover Picture By
Dmitrijs
Dmitrijevs
| Dreamstime.com
This is a work of fiction. Any character
s
, names, places or incidents are used solely as a fictitious nature based on the authors imagination. Any resemblance to or mention of persons, place, organizations, or other incidents are completely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission from the Publisher.
Special thanks to Tiffany Krepps and Jessika Bailey for their wonderful input. Thank you ladies for
all of
your help
!
Table of Contents
The night air was cold. I shivered and wrapped my parka around me tighter, hoping to find some relief from the chill of the
winter
night as well as the numbing cold that had invaded my body more than a week ago. My eyes felt dry and gritty. I had cried so much that I was sure my tear ducts were permanently damaged.
Good
,
because I never wanted to cry again.
I would never cry again!
I pushed those thoughts down and quickly pulled up the walls that I had begun to place around my heart six months ago. Ever since my mother had married The Pervert and I had started sleeping with my bedroom door locked.
I had sensed something about the guy the minute that my mother had introduced me to him, the night before the wedding. The way the creep had looked at me when everyone else wasn’t watching. The way his hand had brushed my thigh under the table at dinner…
Nausea twisted my stomach and I had to swallow the bile that rose in the back of my throat.
When they had returned from their honeymoon I had still been home from boarding school
for
summer vacation. My mother, forever in her own little world that revolved around her, herself and no one else, had brushed me off as only wanting attention when I had voiced my discomfort about my new
stepfather. My grandfather, my late
father’s father, had been too busy to even take my calls when I had tried to reach him. His secretary had taken a message, like always, and said that she would have him call me when he got a spare minute.
That minute had never come about and as the days had turned into weeks I had grown more scared of my stepfather, more terrified that I would be woken in the middle of the night with him in my bed, touching me as he had come to do every chance he got during my waking hours. I had looked forward to returning to boarding school and the safety of the dorm that was thousands of miles away. But then my mother had said I was staying home for my
j
unior year
,
going to a local prep school
instead. Something that my stepfather had insisted on.
I had been desperate. I wanted away from it all.
By mere chance I had found something that had repelled my stepfather around Halloween. He was terrified of the Goth kids. I had found salvation in the dark side: painting my face white, with lots of black make-up and clothes. Skeleton jewelry. Biker boots. I had begun to sleep a little easier at night.
Until a week ago.
I had stupidly left my door unlocked. Crazy
because
I had three locks on the door, but for some reason it had completely slipped my mind as I had fallen into a deep sleep after a difficult evening of studying for a Chemistry final before the beginning of the winter holidays. Around three in the morning I had felt a draft as my covers had been lifted. The Pervert had climbed into bed with me without so much as his boxers on and started touching me.
My worst nightmares come to life!
I had screamed, and screamed, and screamed
until my throat was raw from the torture of it
. The housekeeper had come running from the other end of the house while my mother had remained comatose from a night of drinking and her latest vice, cocaine. The housekeeper, the woman who had been around since I was a tot, had been fired the next day. My one
savior
in the madness that was my life
, a
nd she had been sent packing for daring to interfere when she had discovered The Pervert in my room unclothed.
I had decided then and there that I was going to leave. I had no other choice. If I stayed then there would be no one to help me the next time The Pervert tried something, and there would most definitely be a next time.
No one else was going to step in and help me
.
N
ot my mother
.
N
ot my grandfather who was far too busy with making money to care
. N
ot
even
the teacher that I had dared to confide in but who had been convinced that I was only making up stories.
S
o
I
had to help myself.
I made a plan. Each day for three days I used my personal bank card to my own private account that my grandfather put a monthly allowance into
,
and took as much as I could out of the ATMs near school. I had a little hidden away at home
as well
and by the third day I had a good bit of
cash
. The fourth day, which was also the last day of school before the break, I let our driver take me to school
as usual
and
then
waited until he was gone before I had turned in the opposite direction.
I had no friends, no one wanted to hang out with the ‘Goth Freak’ that I had turned myself into as a survival mechanism, but which I had grown to like. I hadn’t overly stood out as a student even though I had been top of my class back at my old school. So no one was going to miss me until the end of the school day when the driver returned to pick me up.
I grabbed a cab and went straight to the bus station. I picked a destination at random and hop
p
ed on board to Mobile Alabama using one of the fake ID
s
that I had bought from one of the older kids at school
, a kid that excelled in art and computer graphics. He made a fortune off of making them for the entire student body, despite the fact that his father was rumored to have a net worth in the hundred millions
.
The ID said that I was Regina Williams and that I was eighteen.
With my above average height and the new lines on my face from the stress I ha
ve
been under recently I looked older than my sixteen years.
From Mobile I had caught another bus to Dallas Texas under the name of Rachel Cook, who was the ripe old age of twenty
, which was cutting it close on the believable age scale, but not by much
.
I had one more fake ID and I used it to grab a cheap seat on a plane that was heading to Indiana.
I have been in Indiana for more than two days
now
and I was sorely missing the milder temperatures of Texas. December was not a good month to find
my
self homeless with only a few
changes of clothes. Luckily I had packed my parka and a
hoody,
neither
could no
t fight the cold winter nights.
Last night I had slept in a rundown motel that looked as if it was more for hourly rentals than for nightly. The noises on either side of my room had suggested that my first observation was correct
. I spent the night on top of the blankets, with the heat cranked all the way up and the little TV blaring in an attempt to drown out the noises coming from either of the rooms beside of mine.
As soon as the sun had come
up
I grabbed my backpack and started walking. I wanted to save my money as much as possible and even the
Whore House Motel
had been more than I really had to spare
right now
. So tonight I was sleeping in a church. There was no heat and even the sign out front had said that Sunday services were cancelled until their system could be repaired.
I hadn’t realized that it would be this cold when I had decided to bunk down here, but now that I was here I didn’t want to leave. It had to be colder outside than in, and I wasn’t likely to find a better form of shelter tonight anyway.
Tomorrow I would find
my
way to a warmer state.
Florida, California, maybe even Texas again. Whatever was the cheapest, I could care less as long as it had a warmer climate.
I could maybe spare a hundred dollars if I
found
a job using one of my fake IDs soon. Another bus ride with heat sounded so wonderful right then that I leaned my head back against the pew and drifted off into a light, though nightmare filled sleep.
Five years later…
I pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels from the top shelf and lined up four shots. The four men
, all in their mid-twenties and dressed like punk rockers,
gave me a respectful nod as they downed the amber liquid and the
n
dropped the small glasses back onto the bar top. I poured four more before I moved on to the next customer. It was Friday night and the place was full. That was good news for me because
I paid my rent on my weekend tips
. It was bad news for whoever had to clean up the mess…
Oh yeah, that was me!
“What can I get you?” I asked the biker. His name was Bubba and he was a regular. He tipped decently, but he could be a handful when he had one to many. But I wasn’t scared of the three hundred plus and his bad temper. I had a few tricks in dealing with rowdy customers and no one liked it when I had to use them. Bubba knew what would happen if I had to resort to my bag of tricks and he still carried a few bruises from the weekend before when I had shown him exactly who was boss inside the bar.
Inside of Safe Haven I was
cop
, judge, and executioner. Regulars knew that but sometimes the liquor made them forget. I simply showed them the errors of their wa
ys and they didn’t forget again—at least for a while.
“
Beer.” His voice was rough from years of smoking but he had respect in his tone and in his
blood shot amber
eyes. There w
ere
no hard feeling
s
for the beating I had given him. “And two shots of tequila, Goth Girl.”
A small smile twitched at the edges of my lips, the closest I ever came to smiling. “Top shelf?” I asked just to make sure.