Authors: S.L. Siwik
Winning Back Ryan
Winning Back Ryan
S.L.
Siwik
Copyright 2013 S.L.
Siwik
Cover Design by Humblenations.com
Editing by Laura G.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All materials, content and forms are the intellectual property of S.L.
Siwik and may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or displayed without express written permission.
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following word marks mentioned in this work of fiction: Coke,
Cough Syrup,
Young the Giant, Hinder, Jason Derulo,
Facebook, Youtube,
Better Than Me
,
Whatcha Say, Save The Ta-Ta’s.
If anyone you know has been abused, please call the
National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE (7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224
For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, know that you are not alone: RAINN 1800-
656-HOPE
This fictitious story in no way represents or gives advice on what a rape or assault victim should do.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
This book has been two years in the making. First published on Fictionpress, people had a polar reaction to its original ending, and story line. The book sat and sat. I thought I’d have to scrap it forever. However, I kept receiving emails from people who loved the story so much that they wanted me to find a way to be satisfied with the story line. This book is the result of their pleas.
Many people needed to be thanked for their help in this book:
My editor Laura from http://www.therevolvingbookcase.blogspot.com/ - Thank you for all of your hard work.
My
betareaders:
Lisa from http://truestorybookblog.com/ - If I sat here writing down everything that I needed to thank you for, I’d be here forever. So, thanks.
Angie Merriam, the talented author of the Neveah Trilogy – You were a life saver and one of the nicest people I have ever had the privilege of meeting.
C.R.M. for your suggestions and for always seeing what I’m missing.
Thank you to Beverley Hollowed for her advice and thoughts.
Thank you to BJ Harvey for allowing me to bounce around ideas with her.
I’d also like to give a big thank you to Gail McHugh for answering my questions about this whole ‘publishing business.’ I’ll never forget your patience or kindness.
To my BFF, Lesley: Here’s to cheap vodka, forgotten nights, and ‘boy talk.’ Thanks for all these wonderful years.
To my family for their constant support.
To my fans, especially from
Fictionpress, for all of the messages pushing me to find a way to publish this. I didn’t give up because of you.
A special
thanks to all of the bloggers who helped promote my books. You help make authors’ dreams come true.
To Krystyna, the love of my life-
Always remember this: I am so proud of you.
“
Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”
~Euripides
On a hot summer Friday night, music blasted through my headphones as I walked home from the train station towards my apartment. My feet were killing me from the high heels I wore and my sweat-drenched cream silk shirt clung to my body nearly the moment I left the office, making my normally professional looking outfit positively obscene. There was nothing I could do about the situation at the moment, so I tried to relax, listening to the song as it floated through my headphones. It was a new band, Young the Giant, that I had just discovered. Their song, Cough Syrup, had my full attention. Halfway through the song, my phone beeped, letting me know that I received a telephone call. My phone paused the music, and I answered the call, not bothering to look at the caller I.D. first
.
“Hello. Who is this?” I answered politely.
"It’s me. So, what are you doing tonight?" My best friend, Brian’s, deep voice asked over the phone.
I pushed my sweat-dampened hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. "I bought some ice cream in the train station, I'm going to order some take-out, and Ryan and I will probably just chill out on the couch."
“Let me guess: rocky road.” I heard a horn honk loudly in the background from wherever he was.
“Is there any other kind of ice cream that I should even consider eating?” I replied.
Looking both ways first, I stepped off the curb and into the street to cross the road.
Beep!
My knees locked in place, halting my body from taking another step.
Beep!
Turning my head to the left, I saw the yellow and black taxi that nearly ran me over. I ran to the other side of the street, while he rolled down his window.
"Watch where you're going next time, sweetheart!" His words dripped with irritation.
I bristled at his comment. "I did look both ways before I crossed actually, and I'm also walking in the pedestrian crosswalk. You're supposed to yield to me, sir!"
"Pfft! Tourists! They think they know everything!" He shouted in annoyance.
"I’m not a tourist! You just suck at driving!" I shouted back in my defense.
He flipped me the bird before driving off, and I shook my head in disgust before continuing down the street.
“You alright?” Brian asked, concerned.
I sighed in aggravation. This was exactly why I didn’t want to go out tonight. It was just a bad day.
Period. The kind of day where you wanted to crawl into bed and let the rest of the day pass by, so you could start fresh the next morning.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Some jerk almost ran me over.” I shifted my pocketbook from one shoulder to the other, my body aching from work stress.
I stopped at an intersection a few blocks from my house. I didn’t know why, but I always got lost there, taking the wrong way.
“Um, Brian?”
He knew exactly what I was going to ask, since I called and asked him every day since moving into the apartment six months ago after graduating NYU. I had no idea why, but my brain was stuck on this. It just couldn’t remember. Thankfully for me, Brian lived four blocks away from me, and he knew the layout of our neighborhood well. I never called my boyfriend and asked because I felt like an idiot about it. Who’d want to marry a girl who couldn’t even find her way home from the train station?
“Take the right,” he answered the unasked question. “Then two lefts. Your apartment building will be on the right.”
I turned down the direction he told me to. “Thanks. George texted me at work today and said that he and Ben were going to Pyro’s tonight to see some bands play. If you’re not interested in going, why don’t you give Max a call?”
“We’ll see,” was his non-committal answer.
“Did you have a good day at work?” I asked, my heels shuffling against the concrete sidewalk.
“Yeah, but I think something big is about to happen because they’ve been calling me to sit in on more meetings.”
“Sounds like someone’s about to get a raise. Congrats!”
“Thanks. You sure I can’t talk you into coming out tonight?” he asked again.
“Not tonight, but have fun doing whatever and take some pictures for me. Bye, Brian.” I hung up the phone and made the first left. I was about to turn my music back on to finish the song I had been listening to, but my phone beeped again.
“Hello?” I was too tired to see who it was.
“Annie, there’s a great show going down tonight on the Lower East Side at Pyro’s. Ya gotta come.” I knew the voice immediately to be my friend, Ben.
“Can’t tonight. George already texted me about it at lunchtime.”
“Wild night with Ryan? Will blindfolds be involved? Does he need to be spanked?” I heard the mischievousness in his voice.
I rolled my eyes at the phone. For as long as I’ve known him, almost five years now, he always asked questions like that to embarrass me or just to push my buttons. I had yet to ever answer any of them.
“Goodnight,Ben.”
“Wait! Before you-” I disconnected the phone, rounding the corner for my second left.
A smile plastered to my face at the site of 520 Tenth Street, Hoboken, New Jersey. I sighed in relief.
Home.
"Hey Annie," the bum, Charlie, who sat night and day on my front stoop, greeted.
"Hey Chuck." It was the nickname everyone in my building affectionately called him from all the garbage people chucked at him. People in New York or New Jersey could be, well,
unpleasant
at times. "Need to take a shower, buddy," I told him politely as his stench assaulted my nose, forcing me to swallow bile.
"That bad already?" he asked. "Damn heat. Hey, you might not want to go up there." He pointed upstairs.
"Why not? Is the landlady fighting with her cats again?"
"No," he replied, "You just …shouldn't go up there."
I glanced down at the melted tub of rocky road ice cream in my grocery bag. All I wanted to do was relax, and Chuck wasn’t known for his sanity.
"Okay, thanks for the warning," I said politely, smiling before opening the door.
Poor, old guy. The heat must really be getting to him.
I made my way up the narrow hallway, plaster walls with black and white checkered tiles. I stumbled up to the third floor where I lived. It was like a sauna in the hallway. I couldn't wait to see Ryan after my particularly rough day at work; he would hug me, kiss my forehead, and everything would be okay. Ryan, my totally legit boyfriend for the last two years - my longest relationship, my only relationship.
Taking my keys out of my pocketbook, I slid them into the door, walking inside. The studio apartment blasted cold air and smelled like sweat and popcorn. What a weird combination.
"Ryan, I'm home," I called out, taking the ice cream into the kitchen, sticking my head and the tub of rocky road into the freezer. The frigid air was a welcomed relief on my overheated skin as I sighed in gratitude. Yanking my head out, I closed the freezer, taking out a bottle of water from the refrigerator. I didn't trust tap water. Never have, never will. With my bottle of water in hand, I set out for the living room. It was a decently sized apartment consisting of the living room, bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom in a T-shape layout.
"Ryan?" I called out again after not receiving a reply.
I made my way through the apartment and still not hearing him, I moved onto the bedroom door. With my hand on the nickel finished knob, I turned it. Opening the door, I called his name out again. "Ryan?"
My eyes widened in disbelief. The sight before me made my knees give out, and I felt as though someone had knocked the wind out of me. I gasped for breath, trying desperately to fill my lungs. No air would come to my rescue. I leaned against the doorway molding for support.
My ears met with moans and groans, and my eyes greeted a sculpted, naked body moving up and down in a rhythmic motion. From behind, the naked form had a perfect hourglass figure. I stood there for a moment, watching the body gyrate up and down, my head bobbing with her body. I even glanced at the tattoo down her back in elegant script:
Go find your happy ending.
Was she mocking me? Didn't she understand that she was currently
fucking
my happy ending? A part of me just wanted to crawl up into a hole and die. The other part of me said there was nothing to be upset about, because nothing was wrong. Because the part of me that was saying nothing was wrong felt the least painful, the least soul crushing, I instinctively edged towards denial.
"Oh, shit!"
The vulgar language came from my boyfriend, the one swizzle sticking the blonde bombshell to death, who finally noticed my presence leaning against the door frame.
Ryan unceremoniously dumped the wench onto
our
bed, and grabbed
our
blanket to cover himself. I was in such a state of shock that I did not scream, throw things, or attack him, because there was no reason to be upset. Nothing was wrong.
Ryan sat there half-naked, half-covered, staring at me with his eyes wide, his mouth opened. As good looking as she appeared from behind, Miss Homewrecker was just as sexy in the front- a nice perky rack, pursing lips, and no pooch. She was the girl people made snide remarks about to make themselves feel better. She was so gorgeous that I wondered if she were a model. Had she had work done? Why didn't she have any cellulite anywhere? Were those breasts even real? I just felt uglier in comparison standing near her. No, there was no comparison, she just won.
I stared at Ryan and said, "I was thinking we'd have take-out, then have some ice cream and watch a movie. I'm going to take a cold shower, if you wouldn't mind putting the trash out."
The naked nightmare glared at me in shock while actually fixing her hair, thinking that I was insulting her by calling her garbage. Ryan bit back a laugh thinking I wanted to take a cold shower because I was turned on by the scene before me. I shook my head in disgust, and turned away. It felt as though he had reached across the room, ripped out my still beating heart and feasted upon it. That would make sense as to why my chest felt so hollow and yet devoid of pain. It couldn’t ache because it was empty.
I walked out of the room, still cool as a cucumber, while Ryan still tried not to smile. I made my way to the bathroom, turned on the water, stripped my clothes off, and threw them into the hamper before stepping inside the cold shower. I stood there, staring at white subway tiles in front of me while the water ran down my body. I was pleasantly numb; I couldn't feel a thing.
After some time, I snapped out of my vacant gaze and began showering, grabbing the shampoo to begin sudsing. Everything I did felt mechanical, and everything surreal. It still hadn't hit me yet exactly what just happened. What tugged at the back of my mind bothering me about this whole moment was the question: Who fixed their hair after being caught in bed with someone’s boyfriend? Was that the normal behavior of model women? Why was this bothering me so much? Was it because I wanted to believe that she didn’t love Ryan the way I did, and for him, she was just a body to use for pleasuring himself? But, why did
that
matter? Why did that bring me comfort if I loved him more? Shouldn’t I be more concerned with whom Ryan loved more? A schism broke out in my mind between part of me that wanted desperately to figure out how to salvage this, part of me that still said nothing was wrong, and yet another part of me that whispered to walk away and not look back.
The door to the bathroom swung open.
“Anne, when you get out, we need to talk.” I ignored him, continuing to shower. “Do you hear me?” I still ignored him.
"Annie Watson," he tried again. "We need to talk about this." I said nothing, hoping that if I kept quiet, he’d just walk out of the bathroom, out of the apartment, and out of my life forever. Nothing was ever that simple, though.
He yanked back the shower curtain as I gasped, covering myself with my hands. We’ve never showered together. I felt too uncomfortable being naked in front of him with the lights on.
“Get out of here!” I screamed, trying to rip back the curtain.