Branded(45)

As I wait at a red light, I glance over at her profile, reflected in the streetlights from the curb. I don’t know what she was so worried about tonight. She fit in perfectly with my loud, obnoxious family. She laughed and joked with them, she got down on the floor and played a dozen games of Candy Land with my nieces and nephews and she even initiated the good-bye hugs when it was time to leave. My heart aches for Phina the little girl and how she never knew what it was like to grow up in a loving family like I did. I want to ask her more about her childhood, but I don’t want to take the happy, serene look off of her face right now. The little information she did give me when she was practically passed out last night was almost too much to for me to handle. The idea that anyone, especially her own father, would do something as sick and twisted as put his cigarettes out on her skin disgusts me.

I don’t want to push her. I know I need to let her talk to me on her own, when she’s sober and aware of what she’s saying to me. I can’t take away her scars and I can’t erase her memories from her past, but I can kiss the pain away and promise her a better future. One filled with family and love and happiness. One where she doesn’t have to be afraid to trust and lean on other people. I want her to know that not everyone in her life will let her down. I don’t know how to even begin helping her when there’s still the threat of her father out there somewhere, trying to bring all of that pain back into her life. I want to end that motherfucker, to ruin him for what he did to her as a little girl and I want to make him pay for what he continues to do to her as an adult.

Reaching across the console, I wrap my hand around hers, resting on her thigh. With her face still turned to look out of her window, she threads her fingers through mine and squeezes.

At least we’re making progress. She smiled and she laughed just for me today. I’ll take that one tiny step forward for now, but soon enough, I’m going to make her give me an entire leap in the right direction.





I don’t know how long I can keep this up. I’m not this person who is in a loving, committed relationship and who’s happy all the time. It feels right, and every day I spend with DJ is better than the one before it, but how much longer will he put up with my strange requests in the bedroom?

Okay, technically not in the bedroom, since we never seem to be able to make it further than the front door of his house before he’s bending me over some piece of furniture to fuck me, but still. A few times in the last week he’s tried to move us down the hall and I’ve always stopped him. I tell him I just can’t wait that long and that I need him inside of me right that minute. While it’s true for the most part, I also know that there’s a whole shitload of intimacy that comes from having sex in a bedroom that I’m just not ready for yet. Every time he’s inside me, he complains that I have too many clothes on and that he wants to see all of me. It doesn’t stop him from fucking me like an animal on the kitchen counter, against the wall of the living room or on the hood of his car in the garage, though. I know what we do isn’t normal. I know that at some point this carnal fucking is going to slow down and he’s going to want to take his time, remove all of my clothes and just stare at me, because it’s exactly what I want to do to him. My insides twist with that thought, though, and my hands itch to run to my house, grab the lighter and cigarettes from my bedroom and let the searing pain of burning flesh ease this anxiety. I’ve transferred that old, familiar need to DJ, letting the slap of his hips against mine and the pounding of his cock inside of me take the edge off my need for pain. My addiction to branding myself has turned into an addiction for a man, one who loves me, takes care of me and makes me laugh. I know it’s all going to disappear as soon as he finds out the truth about me. I spend each day thinking how that inevitable conversation will go, imagining the look on his face when he finally sees all of me and realizes what I’ve done to myself. He’ll never understand. He thinks he knows who I am. He believes I’m standoffish and bitchy because of the things my father did to me. What will he do when he finds out I’ve continued with my father’s sick brand of punishment because it’s the only way I know how to live? It’s all I’ve ever known and even though his body is enough to calm my nerves for now, it’s not going to last forever. Soon enough, I’m going to dream about pressing a cigarette to my hip to slow my rapid heartbeat and stop my cold sweats. Soon enough, feeling him inside of me and letting him bruise my body with rough sex isn’t going to cut it. I’m an addict and this insane twelve-step program of DJ Taylor isn’t going to cure me, it’s just another addiction I’m piling on top of the first one.