That Which Destroys Me (5 page)

Okay, so… As soon as the first sentence fell out off my mouth, any and all control over the remaining words that I originally maintained fucking vanished.

And from where I’m sitting, Stella seems to have gone as pale as a ghost, broke out into a sweat, and is chewing that goddamn bottom lip of hers to hell.

“I asked you a question. Answer it.” I say sternly.

She stops chewing on her lip however the ‘O’ her mouth is currently forming is making my cock swell so hard, it’s almost unbearable.

“Close that pretty fucking mouth of yours. You won’t like what happens to it if you don’t.”

She snaps it shut and begins squirming in her seat. I sit behind my massive mahogany desk and watch in fascination as she pulls her confidence up around her and I find it somewhat amusing.

“Monday through Friday, seven to six. Got it. Able to be reached twenty-four/seven. Got it. Yours? Never.” She leans over my desk with a detested looking smirk on her face, “Not in a million fucking years. Your employee? Yes, sir. Got it? And if you ever,
EVER
, talk about my mouth in the context you just did, I’ll have your ass in court for sexual harassment quicker than you can steeple those fucking fingers of yours again. Understood?”

She stands from her chair before snatching her file from my desk and flipping it open. After setting a piece of paper on the top my desk, she spins on her heel before making her way to exit the double doors of my office.

But before she can close the door I get the last fucking word in, because I always get the last word in. It’s what I fucking do. “Rachel has your new work cell phone. Make sure to get it from her before leaving. Goodbye, Ms. Reese.”

Long after Stella’s left my office, I remain sitting there, staring at the doors she walked through. Weird, and I mean weird as fuck shit begins shifting around in my chest. And my mind? Fuck don’t even ask where that damn thing went. Because even I don’t know.

I do, however, know three things. One, I like Stella Reese—a-fucking-lot. Two, I could not have chosen a better intern for Jacobs Publishing. And three, those goddamn subs Paul has lined up, every damn one of them better look exactly like Stella Jolie Reese.

I shove my fingers through my hair and fist them before settling my elbows on my desk and staring at her fucking initials on the forms.

“Shit! What in the hell was that? Who in the hell is she?” I ask the paperwork on my desk.

No, it doesn’t answer.

“Shit!”

What the fuck is today? Thursday. Okay. Yeah—I totally have this shit. All I have to do is wait one day. Totally got this shit.

Chapter 6

Who The Hell Does He Think He Is?

I was
SO
ready for that interview. I walked in that bitch, head high, shoulders squared. Ready! Until I saw him again for the first time since I was thirteen years old. I’m almost certain I was able to pull off my nonchalant attitude. Well, until he told me to close my… What did he call it? Pretty fucking mouth?

Yeah, after that, I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. All that ‘
mine, you are mine’
bullshit didn’t surprise me at all. It’s classic Wesley Jacobs. C-l-a-s-s-i-c. Wesley. Jacobs. He hasn’t changed at all in the last fourteen years.

So no. I was fully prepared for that little dirty, sexual innuendo-riddled speech.

Well… I guess it’s time for me to explain why I was so adamantly set against doing my internship with Jacobs Publishing. I’m not sure if I’ll ever tell Trina, but you… You probably should know this tidbit to fully grasp what the hell is going on, as well as fully understand my reaction to all this.

I was probably nearing the fourth foster home when I landed in a new home. They lived in a small town in northwest Louisiana. I was excited when I first met the family. They had the whole Brady Bunch thing going on with a daughter of their own as well as two other foster boys. The house was clean. It was a little small and old, but it seemed nice.

I settled in quickly, but never could really seem to fit in. I tried to adapt my personality as best as I could, but it was impossible. My shy and quiet cards didn’t work. My abrasive stand-up-for-yourself cards also didn’t work. When I combined the two decks, shuffled and tried playing those, shit just got even worse.

The friendship I initially hoped would form between Jessica, their daughter, and I never even had a chance. She told me within the first twelve hours not to speak to her. That we were not sisters and she planned for my ass to be gone before the week ended.

The boys were older than me, but Sam, the oldest, seemed to take me under his wing. If he and his friends were going to a baseball game, he always let me tag along. If they went out to the lake to fish or to just hang out around the bonfire at night, he’d also let me come.

I zeroed in on Sam’s friend, Wesley Jacobs, the first time I laid eyes on him. He was beautiful. I didn’t care that I was only twelve. In my mind, I was close enough to thirteen; so him being seventeen was easily brushed aside in my preteen fixated mind. I truly believed I was in love with him and that if I could change myself enough, in time, he would notice me and love me as much as I loved him.

As a product of the foster care system, you immediately conform—you become a chameleon. Your survival depends on your ability to become whatever or whoever others expect you to be, and by foster home number four, I’d honestly thought I’d mastered this skill.

I was sorely mistaken.

I turned thirteen in May. By the time mid-summer came, I was at the pool almost every day. The sun had tanned my skin to the perfect golden tone and puberty was making itself known by causing my boy straight hips to fill out and my breasts grow into a decent B cup. Before going swimming every day, I would French braid my hair and spray a mixture of peroxide and water to help the sun create natural looking highlights.

By the time the Fourth of July weekend rolled around, I had completely transformed myself from the pale skinned, dull, dark and stringy haired girl with nothing but a gaunt, boy figure into the beginnings of an attractive young woman.

Armed with a mini skirt I’d cut off to mid-thigh (it was originally long enough to reach my ankles) and a white eyelet strapless bustier top, I slipped my old ugly black rubber flip flops on and ran out the back door to avoid being seen when Sam honked his horn for me to hurry my ass up.

His reaction to my choice of clothing was exactly what I was hoping to achieve from Wesley.

Sadly, that night was not only the night I lost every ounce of hope to ever find or believe in love. It was also the night I lost the only friend I’d ever had, as well as the last remaining vital part of my soul.

As soon as we pulled up to the beach at the lake I kicked my ugly flip-flops off and jumped from Sam’s truck. Excitement was zipping through me as soon as my toes sank into the sand.

Make a note of this moment, because this is the last time in my childhood that giddiness would ever consume my already grim life. Morosely, it would also be the turning page in my life, the domino that is tipped and leads to my being homeless and truly knowing what life is like with absolutely nothing.

I skipped over to where the keg was when I saw that Wesley was the one handing out the red solo cups of beer. I’d never drank before, but what the hell? I wanted to act as old as I looked.

After waiting for the five people in front of me to collect their cup I walked up smiling at Wes, waiting, hanging on his every word and body movement.

He never even spared a glance in my direction. His fist pumped the keg filling the cup. Then he handed it to me before grabbing some chick’s ass as she walked by. Somehow, I managed to blink the tears away and swallow the lump in my throat, then I tucked my tail between my legs and quickly walked away.

Sad, huh? I know. There is honestly nothing that leaves a deeper wound than being so that when you do, in that fleeting moment, everything you’ve obsessed about and yearned for - for months - would all finally transpire. Only it doesn’t.

I wholly believed that entire squabble of bullshit for merely five more hours of my life. Having drunk more than three cups of beer, I knew my ass needed to keep itself planted right where it was: On the log near the bonfire Wes had made. Yep. He walked right past me, dragging logs then dry grass before sitting on his haunches less than two feet away and kindled a fucking fire. He never looked my way, not one damn time.

Most of the party guests had either left or wandered into the surrounding woods to take their groping a few hundred steps further while I sat and stared into the fire until nothing but embers remained.

I wasn’t naïve, being molested the first three or four years of my life, then raped repeatedly by my father as well as two different foster fathers… I knew what the hell was going on. I’d just never, well besides Wesley, actually wanted to participate in any petting or groping, much less taking it further.

I heard some yelling coming from the woods to my left, but shrugged it off and kept stabbing the embers with the stick I’d found and had been hanging out with for the last two hours.

I was a little shocked when Sam and Courtney came out of the woods. I covertly ducked my head and watched from beneath the veil of my hair only to witness her rearing back and slapping him across the face. Snickering too low for anyone to hear, I went back to poking the coals and charred wood.

A few minutes later Sam stumbled over to me, “Stell, come on. Time to go.”

“Thank God! Sorry, but this party freaking blew.” I stood up dusting the sand off my ass and started following Sam as we made our way to the parking area. Once we were close enough to Sam’s truck, I realized Wes’s truck was parked diagonally in front of Sam’s. When I saw him stand on unsteady feet and begin unbuckling his belt and pull his thing out, I blushed in embarrassment and then mouthed “Thank you, Jesus.”

A smirk crept its way onto my face, but quickly dissolved when I heard a female voice purring right before Wes told her, “Goddamn right you little whore. Fucking suck that thick cock.” His hands delved into her long blond tresses before he yanked her face into his crotch and his head fell back. “Suck until I cum or I’ll spew my load into your fucking eye. You hear me, bitch?”

To say I was sickened was a horrid understatement.

I was so overwhelmed with disgust, my mind utterly consumed with hatred for this fucking asshole that I’d placed on a pedestal and worshipped for the last eight months that I didn’t realize what was happening when Sam let down the tailgate of his truck.

Honestly I didn’t know until he had me pinned, bent over with my skirt flipped up over my ass and felt the metal grating of his truck biting into the flesh covering my hipbones. He shoved his hand between my legs before he grabbed the panties covering me and yanked them down.

I screamed, as loud as I could. I let the cry for help, the shrieking words, “Wes, please! Help me Wes, please fucking HELP ME!” tear their way from my soul, claw up my throat and pierce the night with nothing but moans and grunts as an answer to my pleas.

When Sam shoved my panties so far into my mouth, I gagged struggling to breath around the suffocating material.

And vaguely, somewhere between my sobs and tears, I remember - I’ll always remember - as my best friend, my only friend, my brother shoved himself from one hole into another, having to listen to Wesley Jacobs reach orgasm.

The sound was so disturbing, it caused me to heave every drop of beer I’d consumed that night. And after I lost the contents of my stomach, I then drowned in it.

That’s why… You wanted to know why I was so goddamn fucking set against working for him? That’s fucking why.

And never fucking ask again.

Sam tossed my lifeless ass out of the back of his truck, and hauled his ass from what I could gather.

I woke up in a hospital days later—utterly shocked. I honestly didn’t understand why I was still alive. I’d been hanging outside the pearly gates with some woman claiming to be my mom and an older woman that kept apologizing for her ‘shitty piece of shit’ son. So yeah, I was confused when I woke up in a hospital bed. But not too confused to know I needed to run if I planned on staying alive.