Chapter 61
Chapter Sixty-One
“Parents will really mess you up,” I whispered into the pin drop silence of Dr. Eloise’s office.
My eyes were dry. I think the fluid my body reserved for things like tears was all used up. I knew I looked like hell, dressed in last night’s clothes, running on way less than the eight hours of sleep that I needed.
I couldn’t tell Dr. Eloise everything. As a health professional, she was required to report evidence to crime.
Telling the authorities that Florida’s leading gubernatorial candidate was the actual shooter in the shooting of his own daughter…
Well, that would certainly get my father charged with multiple crimes—conspiracy, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence, and a slew of other misgivings I was probably not aware of.
Family is a very interesting concept. Only a family member can be hated and loved at the same time so effectively.
It was that weird mixture of emotion that made me keep my mouth shut.
The man had shot me, and I didn’t even want to see him get the punishment he deserved for it.
So I didn’t tell my therapist the whole truth.
“I’m going to cut off my parents,” I announced.
“Mom and Dad. Both. I don’t think it’s healthy for me to live my life feeling like they don’t love me the way they should.
There’s this idea that a lot of people have about parents, that just because they brought you into the world, they have your best interest at heart. ”
“Parents can be selfish,” Dr. Eloise pointed out. “Thousands of children get abandoned every day. Blood is not always the thickest. Just because someone has a child, doesn’t mean they will rise to the occasion.”
“You’re right.”
“Can you relate?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t relate. I still think about the baby I should have had.
Last summer, when my period was late, I panicked, but I never thought of him as a burden.
My mistakes were my mistakes, but I would have never made my child feel like one.
I loved him instantly, and I could never imagine choosing myself over him. ”
Dr. Eloise offered a faint smile. “You envisioned a baby boy.”
“I had this baby picture of Kain last summer. His sister had given it to me. It was just about the cutest thing you’d ever seen. And I just…” My voice gave out, and I drew in a steadying breath. “Yeah, I envisioned a baby boy.”
“These kinds of family issues happen in cycles. Parents neglect children who go on to neglect their own children until entire bloodlines of loveless family units are made. It only takes one person to end the cycle,” Dr. Eloise stated.
“No,” I shook my head, correcting her. “It actually takes two. I think your first big decision as a parent, is choosing who the other parent will be. Will that person love your child the way they need to be loved? Will that person be patient? Will they be forgiving? It’s all very important.”
“And do you feel like that person is Rashad?”
“Rashad isn’t relevant anymore,” I answered, noting the way my therapist tried to hide the pleased look on her face.
“Sometimes I think about my mom, though. I want her to be blameless in the clusterfuck that is my life. I oftentimes try to paint her as some sort of victim. She’s suffering under the same hell we all are in my father’s house, I used to tell myself.
But then I have to remember… she chose him.
She chooses him all the time. And she has no problem choosing him over me. That makes her just as guilty.”
“And you’ll be different.”
“I better be different,” I replied adamantly. I finally realized the time, and I geared myself to say goodbye. “This might be my last time seeing you, Dr. Eloise.”
“And why’s that?”
“Like I said,” I started to remind her, “I’m cutting my parents off. I don’t think I can afford to keep seeing you without them.”
She smiled faintly to herself, shaking her head a little as if something was funny. “Lauren, I’ll see you on Monday. Same time as always.”
***
“You feeling better?”
She looked better, eyes no longer red and the set of her lips no longer downward.
Lauren walked through the doors, a single supermarket bag in her hands along with her purse.
From what I could see in the almost translucent white bag, she’d stopped by the store for toiletries, some things to hold her over for the night.
Even though I figured she might, I was glad to confirm she was staying one more day.
“I’m just so angry,” she said simply, looking up to meet my eyes.
Upon getting a better look at my face, her eyebrows came together questioningly, as if the last couple of hours, while she was gone, were observable on my face.
I didn’t even have to tell her that Vance had stopped by for her to prompt, “Hey, are you okay?”
I forgot what it was like to be around someone who knew me so well.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “I’m angry, too.”
Her brows dipped curiously. “What about?”
“It’s a long ass story,” I warned. She only stared at me, waiting. I nodded for her to follow me to the double doors of my bedroom. “Come on. I’ll tell you all about it.”
***
“And before you apologize for that night when you told me Silas killed her—don’t,” I finished up.
I was sitting up on my bed, while she laid down and listened.
After telling Lauren about the day I had, I could already see her getting ready to apologize for her hand in this.
“If you hadn’t told me what you did, when you did, I might’ve still been in the dark about all of this. Who knows for how long.”
Lauren sat up from her laid position, thinking something to herself before she ultimately decided, “Parents will really mess you up.”
“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth…”
“Are you never going to talk to him or Silas ever again?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I had no desire to right now, but never was a really long commitment. Still, I was gonna make the effort. “Probably.”’
That was still saying a lot.
We didn’t say anything else for a really long stretch.
As a form of silent comfort, Lauren laid her head on my shoulder, her hand settling on mine in the dimming light of my room.
The sun was beginning to set, washing the room in different shades of orange.
The light hit against the exposed skin of her arms, turning gold against her brown complexion.
There were no words for how beautiful even the simple things about her were.
From her hands, my eyes followed up the outline her body, showered in the colors of the setting sun, and I slipped my shoulder from underneath her head. I didn’t say anything to the questioning look in her eyes, reaching over into her hair, to pull off the tie that held it back.
When her curls fell to her shoulders, Lauren released a sigh.
I loved the sound of her breathing.
The moment I reached for the hem of her shirt, she raised her arms for me.
In just her bra and jeans, she leaned in to my space, pressing her lips to mine.
When I kissed her back, her arms rose to hook around my neck, moving in closer until she was seated on my lap.
Her free hand reached under my shirt, stretching the sleeves through my arms without separating her lips from mine until she was ready to pull the shirt completely off.
My hands rose to her waist, and I felt her tense when she realized my hand rested directly atop her surgery scar. Lauren was very clearly self-conscious about it. Time alone would make her understand that for me, this was nothing. I had her. Scars and all, she was perfect.
I could feel the temperature of her skin rising, growing hot under my hands as the slow work of parting her lips to taste the honeyed flavor of her tongue commenced.
The more turned on she became, the faster she breathed, the harder she grinded the heat mounting between her legs against me.
From her waist, my hands dropped to the button of her jeans, helping her out of them while she reached for the waistband of my pants.
A small whimper came out of her when my hand passed through her underwear and slipped between her folds, her legs slightly closing around my hand.
With the hand I still had, I unlatched the clasp of her bra and tossed it aside.
Her nipples poked out hard, grazing along the skin of my chest with the motions of her breathing.
Lauren was wet like I was hard.
Very.
“Mmm,” she moaned into my neck, my hands on her ass as I slowly lowered her onto my lap, guiding my dick into her little by little until I’d completely disappeared into her tight core.
“Yes,” she whispered breathlessly against my skin, her walls clenching hungrily around me.
“Kainie—” Hearing that for the first time in what felt like forever drew a soft smile out of me. “—don’t cum in me, okay?”
Lauren would say some shit like that to me with the muscles of her pussy literally holding me hostage. Forever my annoying ass tease.
My voice was strained when, against her ear, I replied, “You play too fuckin’ much.”
The shake of her silent laugh persisted as I lowered her body against the pillows behind her. My body hovered over hers for maybe a single second before I lowered into a kiss, pushing out of her almost completely before bringing it back in hard and fast.
“Ahh.” The sound that came out of her might’ve sounded pained, but I knew her body, and I knew what each sound she made meant. With each thrust into her, her fingernails sunk into the skin of my shoulders, though not nearly as deep as the time I took her virginity.
She was close.
You get to know a person as thoroughly as I got to know her, and you can just tell.
So I slowed to a stop, slipping out of her and pulling her waist up and around until her ass was in the air.
Lauren waited with baited breath, her breasts pressed against a pillow under her, the arch of her back curving up perfectly to meet my entry.
Her voice was unstable against the force of each inward and outward motion, causing her to stutter out the words she was moaning into the pillows. The muffled sounds of her pleas only somewhat understandable. She was getting to that place where every sentence she spoke ended with my name.
“Yes, Kain.”
“Don’t stop, Kain.”
“I’m close, Kain.”
I fuckin’ loved all of it. My hands moved under her, taking handfuls of her breasts as she began to throw herself back to meet each of my thrusts. Her hands closed, taking fistfuls of bedding when her body started to spasm under me.
The sounds of her moaning couldn’t be contained by the pillow she held between her teeth, the volume of it all bouncing off the walls, announcing that she was climaxing.
Water ran down her thighs, the tremors of her body still sending her rocking back and forth along my dick for a little bit longer until she could no longer hold herself up.
Lauren was still twitching when I pulled out, heeding her request, and finished on her lower back.
She caught her breath as I reached for the tissues on my bedside table to clean her up. When Lauren finally turned to look at me, catching me admiring the beauty of her body, she smiled, and whispered, “I really missed you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the admission. It was sweet, but I definitely caught the double meaning. What she said was, I really missed you. What I heard was, I haven’t been fucked like that in sixteen months.
“I missed you, too, baby.” And she smiled, because she caught the double meaning in my words just the same.
“Kain,” she spoke softly when I took my spot beside her. I turned to look at her, motioning for her to go ahead and say whatever it was. She expressed her words like a statement, but she spoke it like a question. “I’m not going back to my parents’ house.”
And she wasn’t talking about tonight.
She was talking about forever.