Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) (15 page)

I often sat and wondered what it’d be like if my mother had aborted me like she was so fond of telling me was her biggest regret for not doing. Would my soul have gone on to be reborn as a caterpillar that would later be eaten by a hawk before ever having reached the butterfly stage? Would I have been a baby bird who starved to death because my mother abandoned me in the nest with the rest of my bird siblings? Or would I have been reborn to a loving mother who tried desperately to have a baby and I was her miracle child? One whom she doted on and loved with all her heart. And I’d grow up with lots of friends and a family that loved me unconditionally. I think I wished more than my mother that she’d actually aborted me, because then I wouldn’t have been in this unrelenting nightmare I called life. Or I could have ended up in the same situation, destined to be reborn into nightmare after nightmare because my soul was bad. It this later thought that always kept me up at night, contemplating, hoping, wishing.

Dreaming.

I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, not the only person who had her own monster. I didn’t expect pity or sympathy from anyone…I just wanted to, I don’t know, be something more than my mother’s mistake, more than the slut bag Ember thought I was, more than filth to people like Mr. Kane, more than another warm body to Deklan, just more than the nobody I felt like. I just wanted to be more than me. I wanted to matter, to be someone’s life, someone’s reason for being.

I wanted to be someone’s breath.

But I knew that I those things were not in my future. Those hopes and dreams were just that. I would never be anything more than what I already was: my mother’s punching bag and everyone else’s resident whore. I wasn’t sure what made me think it was possible to be anything other than that. Not what made think it was possible, but
who
. Who made me think I could be more?

One look in his eyes and he had me believing that my days were not so dreary. One brush of his lips against mine had me happy for a new day, and having him bring me to an earth-shattering orgasm had me believing that all things were possible. But all that came crashing down with his father’s words.

Words cut the deepest part of a person’s soul.

Words like
filth
,
trash
,
whore
,
nobody
.

I had hoped that Deklan was different, like the hopeless girl always said in my books.

He was different.

But, now it looked like he wasn’t.

I became aware of music, a melody really, and words slowly started to trickle into my subconscious.

Everything is in the names that you call me (every hurtful thing you say)

Everything is in the things you do (how could you be so cruel?)

That haunting song that was playing in Deklan’s car earlier, that song seemed to come from my soul. Deklan. Then it all hit me like a splash of cold water in the face. His house, his room, what happened on his bed, his father and brother, it all came back in harsh Technicolor.

I became intensely aware of Deklan. I knew without looking that his all-seeing eyes were studying me, cataloging everything I was trying to hide. I took in my surroundings. I was in the passenger seat of his car, which was parked in the parking lot of Bookwormz. I wondered how long I had been sitting there, lost in myself. I had no memory of even getting into his car. I took a deep breath and let it go slowly, preparing myself for an unavoidable conversation. A conversation I didn’t want to have.

“I like this song,” I said, trying to put off the inevitable for a few minutes.

I looked over at him to see him closing a book before giving me his full attention. Not saying anything, just doing that thing that people like him do with their eyes when they say so much in one stare. I knew what his gaze was saying: What the fuck?

“What’s the name of it?” I picked at the sleeve of my shirt, dusted off invisible lint on my jeans, and took a mental rundown of my aches and back pain, which had lessened considerably.

“ ‘Everything,’ ” he said, his word hanging heavy in the air.

“Who’s it by?”

“A local indie rock band in Atlanta called HPT.”

“What does HPT stand for?”

“Harley, stop.” He reached over and turned down the song. Out of my peripheral, I saw him bring his hand to my cheek. His touch was a contradiction to his harsh tone, which was gentle and soft as he lightly ran his hand over my cheek and down to my chin, turning my face to look at him.

“Where’d you go?”

I cast my eyes down, ashamed that I had been drawn inward for so long. There was no use trying to downplay the situation. This was the second time this had happened while I’d been with him. I had never had to worry about it before now. I was always alone when these incidents happened.

I was always alone.

I shrugged and mumbled out an inaudible reply.

“You’re gonna have to use your words, Harley. I don’t fucking read lips,” he demanded harshly.

I jerked my chin from his grasp, empowered by his attitude. It was odd, but him being demanding made me defiant. I’d never been defiant willingly and not worried about the repercussions. Even though I hardly knew Deklan, I sensed that showing a little spark of defiance would amuse him.

“I said ‘away,’ ” I said more clearly. And unless you’ve ever had the need for your mind to create a place where it went to protect itself, then it was hard to explain just that. There was no one place I went. I just dreamed and got lost in the possibilities that would never be my reality.

I dreamed of a better me.

“What triggered it?” He sighed and leaned back in his seat, resigned that the asshole, demanding tactic wasn’t working.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. How could I tell him what really triggered it?

“Bullshit,” he barked, and I instinctively jumped, even though I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. The harshness in his voice led my body to believe something different.

“I’m sorry,” I squeaked out before I could catch myself.

“Don’t.”

“I know, I’m so…it’s habit,” I supplied. I was telling the truth; it was habit. If you had grown up like I had, then you’d know that “I’m sorry” came out as often as breathing.

“Break it.”

“It’s not that easy,” I said.

“Tell me.”

I looked up to find him looking out the driver’s-side window, seemingly not invested in the conversation at all—calm. With his head turned, I had the opportunity to study his profile more carefully, to see the vein beating rapidly in his neck, his jaw muscle flexing. Despite how he was acting, I could tell he was feeling the very opposite of calm.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it matter?” I asked, resigned.

He turned to me. “You tell me. Does it?” he challenged.

I didn’t know how to reply to that. How do you tell a virtual stranger that nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things? That nothing I could say was going to change my fate?

You don’t. You lie, and you hide behind fake smiles, short skirts, and made-up sexual acts. Except with him, I couldn’t.

“Is that time right?” I asked, alarmed. The digital clock in his car said it was almost three thirty, which meant that I was five hours late for work. Fuck my life.

“Shit, I have to go.” I bolted for the handle, grabbing my bag.

“We still have business.” Deklan grabbed my arm, and I knew that I would have to tell him something or a semblance of the truth if I was going to make it out of his car.

“Look, I know I owe you an explanation, but I can’t get into it right now. The most I can tell you is that if I don’t work today, I
will
have more of these,” I said, gesturing to my back.

A look flashed in those steel traps of his for a moment, then it was gone and replaced with another gaze. He grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me toward him, roughly taking my lips in between his, licking at the seam and gaining entrance on my gasp.

I would never get used to being kissed so completely by someone. It was my third kiss, and each time they got better and better. All too soon it was over and I was catching my breath.

“You owed me that, too,” he said, blatantly adjusting the bulge in his jeans. I took that opportunity to ease out of his car and shoot him a thank-you before making my way to front door.

Before he drove off, I heard him call out, “We’re not done yet, Har.”

No, I didn’t think we were done yet, but once he knew my secret, my fault, we would be.

Chapter 22

Harley

Tom was pissed, and with good reason. I was five hours late for work, and I showed up looking flushed from the kiss Deklan had just given me. It was a wonder he didn’t fire my ass on the spot. I did what I knew how to do best: I lied. Sold him some bullshit story about having food poisoning and being too sick to call in to say I would be late and thought it would be better to come to work since I was feeling a little better rather than just waste the day. That did the trick. For Tom, if you still came to work, even if the rest of your shift was only twenty minutes, he appreciated the gesture and was less of a dick about it. I got a legit verbal warning, but my job was intact.

Ember made her way over to me with an expectant look on her face. I knew this game, and I was not going to play, especially when it was dealing with Deklan.

“So, I heard you had an eventful morning,” she said.

Matt couldn’t hold an ice cube in hell.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Em,” I replied simply.

“Oh no you don’t. You have to spill. I know you were with Deklan, in his room, with a full house, for crying out loud! You have balls, girl.” She laughed, but it was one of those laughs meant to be chastising and offensive, aiming to make the other person feel bad. And it did just that. She looked at me like I was filth, dirty, and shameful, and while she didn’t come right out and say it, I felt it all the same. The pity in her stare, the tightening of her lips, she wanted to call me out on being a big ol’ slut. Normally I wouldn’t have let something like that get to me. It was who I was, right? But today I seemed to be hormonal, and her accusation struck a nerve.

“Do you really think I’m that much of a whore that I would do that?” It didn’t slip my mind that I would have become that much of a whore because I was contemplating letting him do just that. “God, Ember. What do you really think of me?” I actually wanted to know this.

“Well, you know…” She averted her eyes and cast them down. “…that you like to have fun with a lot of different guys. You know, what everyone else thinks.”

“But I’m not asking everyone else. I’m asking you. My best friend. What do
you
think of me?”

“I don’t know, Har. You’re kind of hard to read sometimes. I don’t ever judge, though.” She tried to redeem herself, but the damage was already done. There it was. I shouldn’t have been hurt by her declaration, but I was. I thought that she would have at least something different to say about me, give me some redeeming quality about myself that no one else knew because she was my best friend, or was supposed to be. I truly had no one in my corner. I was alone.

That reality, the one I knew but was hoping against hope wasn’t true, hit me hard.

“I’m not a slut, Ember. I just want…you know, it doesn’t matter. Look, I have to get back to my section. Tom is on my shit. I’ll text you later.” I turned away from her and returned to my stocking responsibilities, willing the tears that were clogging up in my throat to go away. What was the point in shedding tears over something I had done?

“Yeah, okay. I really didn’t mean anything bad by it, Har. I love you,” she said before she turned and went back to the café.

I busied myself with work for the rest of my shift. It was better than thinking about and obsessing over Deklan, and better than feeling like the more I tried to be normal and act like a better version of myself, there was always something that reminded me that I was not normal. I was always going to be me. Me.

On a bathroom break, I checked to see if my mother had called. It wasn’t uncommon for her to suddenly need me to pick up something on my way home. If I didn’t check my messages and pick up whatever she needed, then…

I was surprised to see I had a text message waiting, since Ember was here and no one else had my number.

D:
Waiting for my book recommendation still.

I couldn’t help but smile. How in the hell did he get my phone to program his number in it? He must have done it while I’d been zoned out. I replied back with the name of a book series about a group of teenage aliens living in a small town in West Virginia. The main character reminded me of Deklan, all dark and moody.

D:
Teenage Aliens??

Me:
Just try it, it’s good.

D:
Can I try you?

Not knowing how to respond to the blatant innuendo, I stuffed my phone back in my locker, glad that he wasn’t here to see the blood rush to my face at the thought of him trying me.

I clocked out later, wondering if I’d see Deklan waiting in the parking lot for me, but he wasn’t, and I was a little relieved. I lost my routine when I was with him, and if I lost my routine, I’d lose my safety. There was safety in my routine, safety in knowing that if I got off at a certain time, I had this many minutes to get home and get dinner before my mother turned into my monster and I was trapped for the night. My routine worked more often than not, and I was sure it had saved me from many beatings. So while my shoulders may have sagged just a little bit from not finding him waiting for me, a bigger part of me was glad to be back on my routine. It was safety.

I walked home quickly, noting that my back was feeling a lot better, and I was glad for that small favor being granted me. After letting myself in and finding the living room empty, I headed for the kitchen, thinking about making chicken stew for dinner, when hands grabbed me and slammed my head into the wall.

“Where the fuck were you?” she screamed.

Stumbling, I found my footing and looked up at her. My vision was spotty, but I could make out the hatred in her eyes.