Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
DOTTIE
E very night when the sun goes down, and I’m left in the shadows of my hotel room with my secrets, I slip my hand under the covers and replay the moment Damon licked me over in my head until I’m creaming all over my damn hands.
The obsession is there, but so is the hurt, rejection, betrayal and humiliation. So, I do what I hoped I’d never to succumb to, I drown those stupid thoughts and feelings in poor coping mechanisms like drinking, watching porn, and masturbating until I pass the fuck out.
It’s not healthy, I know.
Releasing a deep sigh, I step back from the mural I’ve started painting and analyse it. It’s really coming together now, and the Hot Rod cars are starting to take form as well. I glance at the Holden EH and smile. It’s my favourite and I swear one day I will own one.
One day. Just not today.
I’m packing up when I hear a knock behind me. Peering over my shoulder, I wipe my hands on my denim overalls when I lock eyes with Harry.
I inwardly groan. Since the night we all had drinks, and him petting me and saying dumb shit, he’s avoided me, and I him. It’s been bliss, but from the sheepish look on his face, I dare say shit is about to get awkward.
“Hey, Dottie.”
“Harry,” I answer, and start packing away again. “What can I do for you.”
“Shit. Was it that bad?”
I turn and raise an eyebrow on him while stopping what I’m doing and planting my hands on my hips.
“Fuck. I just wanted to say sorry.”
I nod in acknowledgement.
“Dottie, I really am…” he tries, but his sentence is cut off.
“I thought I told you I wasn’t paying you to flirt with my niece, Harry. You’re fired.”
“Sir, please.”
“Pack your shit, now. I’m not in the mood.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong, Mr Woods.”
“Are your fucking ears painted on?”
“Uncle Damon…”
“Not now, Dorothy. This doesn’t concern you.”
“Excuse me?”
Damon turns to look at me. I want to tell him to fuck off, but I am not poking that bear right now. Instead, I turn and face Harry. “Probably best you do as the asshole says. I think he’s had a bad day.”
Damon’s eyebrows cave and the tick in his jaw returns, but he doesn’t move even though I can tell he wants to.
“Fuck this. This is bullshit,” Harry curses.
Damon and I don’t move. We’re in a stand-off, neither one of us backing down, and I can see it’s taking everything in him not to react. However, when the garage door slams shut and we know everyone has left the workshop for the day, he moves.
I’m up against the wall in a nanosecond, Damon’s hard body pressing into mine while he fists my hair, and I can’t stop the want rising up inside me even if I wanted. Lust dances over my ire toward him, making a mockery of it.
He doesn’t get to do this to me, not again, but when I open my mouth to tell him as much, his face is in my neck and I lock up, unable to move when I feel the tremors vibrate against my body.
“Why are you testing my every fucking resolve, Little Dottie?”
“Stop. Calling. Me. That,” I demand, but the shake in my voice gives me away.
I feel his smirk on my neck, but when I go to move, his grip on me intensifies. Pain pricks my scalp, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing so. Instead, I stay still, hating the pulsing in my clit when I remember his mouth down there.
No one has ever gone down on me like that, made me come like that, but I’ll be fucked all the way to hell with a cactus before I ever let him in on that dirty, little secret.
“You’re awfully quiet, Little Dottie. Are you thinking about my head between your thighs like you do every night, baby?
Are you remembering how my mouth felt on your pretty little cunt?
Or maybe you’re thinking of my tongue lashing your clit, or my fingers deep in your hole as you squirted all over them? ”
“Stop it,” I choke out, my eyes fluttering closed.
“I can still taste you on my tongue, Dottie, feel you on my fingers, and it fucks with me every single time I see you. But you understand that, don’t you? Because you feel the same when you see me.”
“Damon, please… ”
I have no idea what I’m asking for. I’m starting to question my own damn sanity, but he releases me, putting as much distance between us as possible.
“Leave,” he tries, but it comes out gravelly.
“Damon?”
“Now, Dorothy! I won’t be able to ─ you need to leave.”
With one final look at him, I shake my head with my emotions whirling inside of me.
I don’t know what I’m feeling or what I even want, all I know is he’s doing is the right thing.
I stop at the threshold and keep my back to him, but I leave him with some parting words, ones I hope will help him deal with whatever war he’s wrestling in his mind. “Thank you.”
I don’t give him time to reply. I dash out of the office toward my car. Leaning my head on my headrest, I close my eyes and let everything consume me.
It hurts.
Drawing in a shaky breath, I open my eyes and grip the steering wheel, knowing I’m about to cause myself more pain. Turning the engine over, I put the car in first gear and leave the workshop, heading to the place where the pain first began.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m parked out the front of the house I grew up in. Even though it’s not completely dark yet, my father has left the light on the fishtank that sits outside the front door to signal he has pot for sale.
Heaving in a breath, I get out of the car. Making my legs move, I step up the six stairs and glance at the flyscreen and listen. I can’t hear anything, but that doesn’t mean mum and dad aren’t fighting.
I rap my knuckles on the door.
“Coming!” My mother’s voice causes my heart to skip a beat.
When the door opens, her dark brown eyes find mine and start to water .
“Dottie? You came back.”
“Hey Ma.” I don’t finish my sentence before her arms around me, squeezing.
“I’m ─ I’m so sorry,” she whispers into my shoulder, and I hold her while we both cry.
After a few seconds, she pulls away and smiles at me, and I can’t help noticing the discolouration of her teeth and the dark rings under her eyes.
It makes me sad seeing her like this, but when you were sexually assaulted by your father for years, tried to take your life multiple times, only to fail and have to relive the nightmare day in and day out, it is a wonder she lasted this long.
I remember my Uncle Vito speaking of a time he came home from school, to find her lying on the couch, her body contorting, her mouth foaming, because of the pills she’d ingested.
It’s kind of ironic and sad that he was the one to find her, because when I was six, my mother received a call from the cops to come down to the local flats he was living in, because they needed to talk to her about Uncle Vito.
She thought she could talk some sense into him, alas, he was lying cold in the back of the paddy wagon; he had hung himself from a tree after a fight he’d had with his then girlfriend, Winfred.
He didn’t do it the traditional way, no, he did it the way they used to asphyxiate themselves as teenagers until they passed out. He tied the rope to the tree, and then placed the noose around his neck, before leaning forward and allowing the rope to tighten.
I shake the terrible memory away. I never liked that bitch, Winfred.
A piece of my mother died with Uncle Vito. He was the only one who stood up for her, and he copped a beating beyond measure each time as well .
All these memories float through my mind as I stand there at the front door, but one speaks the loudest. A time of my mother telling me once when she was drunk and high as a kite, she wanted to take Aunty Kerry-Anne to the roller derby with her, and my grandfather had told her that if she didn’t fuck him in the back of the car before she left, then he would take it out on Kerry.
My mother sacrificed herself a little more that night, always trying to save her sister, and actually managing too as well.
He never touched my aunty, only my mother, and I’m only glad he’s rotting in the ground somewhere and no longing roaming this earth.
So, I guess when you’ve lived a life like my mother, you find ways to cope with your trauma.
For her, that was drugs and alcohol, and my father.
“Come in. Your father is in the backroom watching T.V.”
“Is he in a better mood?”
She smiles sadly at me. “He isn’t too bad, bub. Just a rough day when you came over last week. He’s only just found out he’s sick, so he’s taking it hard,” she lies easily, protecting him.
Nodding back, she guides me inside, and when the door slams behind us, I jolt. Swallowing the saliva collecting in my mouth, I walk along the weathered floorboards and into the kitchen to find a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering away.
It’s amazing how one thing can elicit so many memories, both good and bad. Cooking was always big in our household, well, when we had money that was.
I push the memories to the back of my mind and find my father’s hazel eyes on me. They widen briefly before returning to normal, and then he gives me a rare, genuine smile.
“Dottie, you came back.”
“Hey dad…” I let the words linger and pull my walls higher to protect myself.
See the thing with my father is, he can flick his switches in the blink of an eye. One minute he’s cheery and happy, the next he is a raging asshole with a God complex and hard-on to make everyone’s life a living misery.
“Come and sit next to your pops and tell me everything that has been happening.”
Mum smiles at me and tilts her head.
“Go on, bub. I’ll put the pasta on, so we can eat.”
Smiling back, I grab a seat next to my father. He has a hopeful look in his eyes, but there is fear as well. He’s always been afraid of death, and I remember when he thought he was sick when I was nine, and he started smoking heroin because of it.
He wasn’t sick. He just wanted a reason to continue his addiction, so I guess that’s why I’ve always questioned their authenticity and honesty.
For the next hour, I tell my parents what I’ve been up to and eat with them. Dad sips on a beer, as does my mum, and I wonder why he’s still drinking.
“Are you moving back?” my dad asks, drawing me away from my thoughts.
I hesitate a moment before answering.
“Nah, dad, I’m just here to help Arrie, and I wanted to see you both.”
I see the tick in his jaw through his grey growth, but he simply nods his head and looks to my mother. Something passes between them.
“Look, Dottie, I hate to ask… but we are a little hard up now, with the medical bills and all, I was wondering if you could lend us a little bit of money? I’ll pay you back as soon as the insurance clears.”
Disappointment seeps into my marrow, but I nod anyway, the little girl inside of me wanting him to love me and be proud of me.
I tried to trick myself into believing that him being sick might have meant he might have turned a new leaf, but I should have known better than to lull myself into this false sense of hope.
Dad hated that I picked up and left home.
How I wanted more for myself, and he made sure he voiced it so many times, along with the fact Nonna left me money and not him.
I look to my mum and find her head lowered, a clear indication she’s embarrassed. My eyes volley between them before I release a breath and say,
“How much do you need?”