Avenged(32)

This girl.

She was going to end me. Others had tried…but only this broken woman could do it.

My life had been spent making sure people couldn’t wait to get rid of me. I’d made it a point to make sure they didn’t want to be in my company for any longer than they had to and here she was savoring me…savoring our moment.

How was I supposed to let her go when she was the only one that wanted me?





Chapter 9



Echo



All the things in life that were bad for you, that you were supposed to stay away from, and protect yourself from sure felt really good and were a lot more fun than the things that were healthy and good for you.

Drugs.

Junk food.

Endless hours of television.

A day spent doing nothing but having mind-blowing sex with a dangerous man I would never see again.

All of those things were addicting, but I knew instinctively the one I was going to have the hardest time quitting was the last one. Getting clean sucked. It left me wrung out and hollow on the inside. It left me feeling itchy and restless, always pushing back the urge to fade away and forget. It left me weak and lost. I’d always had a crutch to fall back on, an easy excuse to hand over whenever I messed up or made a mistake that hurt someone, a justification for why I was always hurting myself. It took a long time and lots of help to find my footing after I kicked the habit and there was a cold knot of fear in my chest that it was going to take a shitload more than that to get over my newest addiction.

We spent the rest of the day and all of the evening after Ben went and found my stuff wrapped up in each other. I learned that sex, when you had to get creative because of limitations, could be the most fun two people had together. I learned he was arrogant and bossy in bed just like he was out of it, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t mind taking orders and doing what I was told if it meant I got him inside of me faster. I’d taken control of my life in an iron fist when I decided to get clean. I held onto my sobriety with a grip that was unbreakable and, frankly, exhausting. It was refreshing to let my hold loosen and let someone else be in charge of making sure things happened the way they were supposed to, that nothing went off course.

I also learned that he could be gentle, but I preferred it when he was rough. Ben was a big man, with hard hands and sharp eyes. When he was soft and sweet, it melted something inside of me, something I didn’t know was frozen until he touched it. When he was impatient and hungry, when he was demanding and forceful, I didn’t melt…I burned. I lit up from the inside and I was pretty sure that made me glow on the outside. I’d never been the type of woman that glowed. I never felt bright enough, shiny enough, happy enough to glow. But Ben and his ragged voice and dirty words rasped harshly in my ear got me there and I didn’t want to ever go back to being dull and lifeless.

I also learned I could deep throat like a champ when I was inspired and that when a man with a beard and a talented tongue told you to sit on his face, you should never, ever refuse him. He made me see stars multiple times; even when I thought I was too tired, too sore, too spent for anything, he always managed to wring one last response out of me. It was like he was making up for all the forgettable sex I’d had in the past with men who would never matter. He was filling every single second of the moment we were in with experiences that would be impossible to top or outdo. No man was ever going to compare; he made sure of it and that twisted my heart into knots because when the sun came up in the morning and the doctor with the sexy voice showed up to take me back to town with him, our moment would be gone and I would spend the rest of my life searching for something that came slightly close to these stolen hours with a man I wasn’t supposed to know and couldn’t have.

After a shower that was more just the two of us rubbing our wet, slippery selves against one another, Ben told me he was going to take that beater of a pickup truck that suited him about as well as the flannel, up to the road to make sure the doc could get in. If he hadn’t said the words quietly and thoughtfully, I would have assumed he was anxious to get rid of me. But he had been watching me all morning long and I could practically see the wheels turning in his handsome head. He couldn’t go and I couldn’t stay, which was a problem…and he was good at figuring out solutions to problems. I let him go without a fuss, figuring he needed the time to get his thoughts and feelings in order before our fantasy was shattered by the harsh light of reality.

I believed if he really wanted to, he would figure out a way to get himself off of this mountain. But I was also used to disappointment and things not working out the way I wanted them to, so Ben was going to have to forgive me for stacking the deck in my favor. I crept over to the closet and dug around until my fingers landed on that ridiculously expensive watch he had stashed there. He might not want to claim me once I was out of his hair and out of sight, but there was no way he was going to let a watch that cost as much as single family home go without some effort to get it back.