A Woman Gone Mad (36 page)

Authors: Kimber S. Dawn

BOOK: A Woman Gone Mad

12.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Kari Ayasha from Cover to Cover Designs, girl I put AWGM done and was done until I found you and you made my cover come to life. Thank you so damn much for jumping on my email so quickly and telling me “YES! I can do this!” because everyone else told me “No.”. I love you girl!

Francette Phal, dammit, woman. I don’t know how to say this without sounding absolutely cliché. However, you have no idea how much you and you alone transformed my life. I swear to God.

Your phenomenal writing inspired me to start my blog. LipSmackin’ GoodBooks was born to get the indie authors the credit they deserved; I wanted to be the voice that brought the new kickass indie authors to the readers. Francette, your story Beautiful Disaster literally changed my course in life. And then you went a step further and changed my life even more drastically by staying up half the night brainstorming with me a year later and helped A Woman Gone Mad be born. I will never be able to express to you how thankful I am for everything you have done for me. I aspire to be half the author you are. Your stories are like nothing I’ve ever read. You never shy away from the ugly, you revel in the rawness, and you always keep it real, and I love you for it.

To my best friend, Stacy Trant Brannon, thank you so much for sticking by my side and believing in me through every hard time I’ve had to endure. It has been a weary and exhausting journey, but you never gave up on me and are still by my side and I love you for it, sister… More than you’ll EVER know.

I want to thank my kids. Lauryn, baby girl, I will never be able to explain how proud of you I am. You amaze me every single day at the young woman you are growing up to be. I honestly sometimes can’t tell who is raising whom. I had you at such a young age and was scared to death that that alone would be the reason I would fail you as a mother. However, if the young lady that you are today is a reflection of my mothering, I must say I did a fantastic job because you are hands down the most awesome person I have ever gotten the chance to meet, hold, and love. To my Megan, I am so proud of you, sweet pea. Your personality is so unlike anyone else I’ve ever known. You know what you want more than half the adults I know in my life. Your heart is the kindest and most gentle heart in the world, and I want so bad to keep it protected. Thank you so much for being patient with me, baby. But most of all, thank you for being Momma’s greatest cheerleader. You absolutely love to read, and I will never forget the look on your face when you realized that the reason why I was glued to my laptop all the time was because I was writing a story. I love you, Megan, more than you will ever, ever know. To my son, B (Baby Brian), you are the greatest blessing a mother could ask for. You are the apple of my eye, sweet boy. Your complete and utter love for me both warms my heart and shatters my soul, because I know that one day there will be another woman in your life, and when that happens, you will be the last man who stole my heart and then broke it when you leave me. Until that day comes, though, I will love you to death every single day. I will gather up every one of your slobbery kisses and never wipe them away, you juicy-lipped boy. Lauryn, Meg, and B, y’all are my reason for living, my reason for breathing, and if weren’t for you three, I would have lived my life like a woman gone mad. You are each sweet blessings that I could never live without, and I love each of you so very much in your own specialness.

Momma and Daddy, thank you so much for giving Bobby and me the wonderful and loving family we grew up in. Momma, thank you for raising me to be strong and to never back down. Thank you for the home-cooked meals at the family dinner table every night. But most of all, thank you, Momma, for being my greatest friend. Daddy, thank you so much for being the best daddy in the whole wide world. I’ll always be Daddy’s girl first, even when I’m a hundred years old. I love you both so much and pray that I can make y’all proud. *Psst… Momma, don’t let Daddy read this book—the acknowledgments ONLY!!!!*

Last but not least, to the man who captured the heart of a fourteen-year-old girl over seventeen years ago, my husband, Brian. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would be nothing, absolutely nothing, without you. You gave me more faith in myself than anyone in all of my life. You built a home with me, made a family with me, and stood by my side when everyone else left me behind. You drive me mad, you drive me up the wall, but to live this life without you by my side is an utter impossibility. We fight like enemies and always cut below the belt. We have been through the dredges of hell more than once. We’ve both walked away and called it quits. But in the end, we always come back to each other. You’re my worse other half as much as you are my better other half, but no matter what, you have always had my back and believed in me before anyone else, after everyone else. It always has been and will always be me and you against the world. I love you so much, Brian. Thank you for picking up the pieces every time I fall apart. You are my rock, my strength; you are my absolute everything.

Here’s your sneak peek at Leo’s Story:

Holding Her In Madness:

Leo Phillips Story

By Kimber S. Dawn

Prologue

Or some pussy way of writing a damn letter to the ones who have read AWGM

What’s up and how the fuck are you doin’? I know, probably worlds better than I am right now. Look, all right, I’ll fucking tell you like I told her. It ain’t gonna fix a fuckin’ thing but I’ll say it… I fucked up, okay? I fucked up and I know… I know I did. I let my little firecracker down so many goddamn times.
Fuck!
I know I don’t fucking deserve her, but I’ll be goddamned if I leave her again, and I’ll be even more fucking damned if I let what I deserve or don’t deserve in life keep me away from her. Period.

I told her that everything I touch I fuck up. Why the hell do you think I ran from her little ass all those years ago? Trying to shut her out before she got under my skin. But I couldn’t. Try as I might, she wouldn’t have let me keep treating her like an irritating gnat. Shit, I even told April that I thought she was a nark. Damn, that was lifetimes ago… I’d give anything to go back and keep shit from falling apart. Tell her dad to suck my dick and just grab her up and fucking run. I never should have let her out of my car that night. I could have protected her from fuckin’ everything. From all of it…
Fuck
!

I’d ask where I went wrong, begging for an answer that’ll soothe this terrible ache, this guilt I’ve carried for decades. But again, I don’t deserve a reprieve from the pain.

I know you think you know Lil now that you’ve read her story and walked in her shoes through this fucked up life of hers. But until you hold a woman like Lil, until you stare into her drunk eyes, getting heavy from ecstasy while your balls deep inside of heaven, inside this woman who is so fucking unlike any woman on this goddamn earth. Until you hold her shuddering body as her tears soak your shirt while she cries out for something even she doesn’t know what but anything to take away her pain, you don’t know Lillian. Not like I do. Not like I fucking do.

I felt it in my bones that night—actually that morning. I was supposed to be on my way to Atlanta for some stupid fucking merger meeting between Gramps’s, well…my company’s marketing department and another new upcoming company.

I was hauling fucking ass from one terminal to another, trying like hell to catch my connecting flight from Houston to Atlanta, when it hit me like a motherfucking brick across the face. I shit you not, I stopped right where the fuck I was, assholes crashing into me from behind, cussing at me.

I took my ass to the nearest fucking ticket counter and asked for the next flight to get me back home. Shit, I’d been gone for almost three months straight. I hadn’t seen Lil in over six months that she knew of. I still kept an eye on her. I just didn’t fucking know what the hell my eyes were seeing. She was too far gone. Do you know what it’s like as a fucking man to have to look at your wife and watch her, all over these cheesy fuckers, drunk out of her goddamn mind, lost beyond ever being found?

I knew what the fuck she was doing. I knew about the drugs, the men. But I was such a fucking coward that I just walked away. I told myself that at least she was happy; at least they made her smile. After my boy died, for more than a year I could only get her to look at me, speak to me when we were in the throes of passion.

Pussy. That’s what I was. I thought I could keep her happy by staying away. With me came the memories of what should have been. And if there is one thing Lil and I have, it is a fucking world full of what should have beens, and God dammit, there isn’t a fucking thing in this world worse than what should have been.

I couldn’t find her though when I got home. She wasn’t at home—she was never at home. I couldn’t find her at her normal spots—the bars or lounges that are up and down Common and Market Streets. I called every fucking five-star hotel in a hundred-mile radius and still couldn’t find her. Fuckin’ fuck! When my cell rang, I knew it was her. I will thank God every night of my fucking life for that call. ’Cause I had a number.

Shit, y’all were there. You know what the fuck I saw.

Her beautiful head was lulled back. Fuck, I’ll never forget that shit. It’s imprinted in my brain, across my skull. It’s seared into the back of my eyelids. She had a blood clot smeared from behind her ear, stringing like a fuckin’ spider web, to her shoulder. Pale as a full moon. Not a fucking trace of my firecracker. Not a trace of that beautiful tan skin of hers I love. Lying there in a pool of watery blood was the woman I fuckin’ swore I’d never leave. How many times did I fuckin’ promise her?

Too many fuckin’ times. And I swear, I swear I was there. I was always there for my Lil. But just like that whole month I watched her little sexy ass at sixteen flit around in those damn daisy dukes and clogs. She just didn’t know I was there…always watchin’.

It just wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. As far as I was concerned then, I’d never be enough. But now, I’ll make fuckin’ sure I am enough. I killed all those fuckin’ bitches in her head. I went through hell for my fuckin’ firecracker and brought her back to life.

Now even if I have to stay here in hell to keep her out, that’s what the fuck I’ll do. As a man, sometimes you just have to do what the fuck you have to do. Even if it means your life is hell. Even if it means from this point on you are the one who carries all the burdens. You fuckin’ do it because you love a woman, the only woman in this whole damn world. You do it because she’s your soul mate. And without her, you’d rather be fuckin’ dead.

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