Chapter One
Erin
You would think that persuading myself to get out of bed on such a beautiful fall day would be easy to do, especially since it is the day of my best friend Shayne’s wedding. But instead of doing what any good maid of honor should be doing, I am lying here staring out the window and watching the fading autumn leaves slowly float to the ground.
I’m so happy for Shayne; really I am, but every time I attend a wedding it takes me back to my wedding to Joel. It was the happiest day of my life until his true colors started to show three months after we were married.
I remember the first time he laid his ugly hands on me. It seemed that in his eyes I couldn’t do anything right. One day we had both just gotten home from work and he just started yelling, so what did I do? I yelled right back at him. That just fueled the fire in him even more, but honest to God, I have no idea what the hell set him off to make him slap me. The next thing I knew, he had struck me so hard that I fell to the floor. Of course the son of a bitch dropped to his knees and held me and cried and told me how sorry he was. At the time I believed him.
I shouldn’t have. Over the years, the beatings became at times more than I could bear. I was abused so badly that I was scared to death to leave my house for fear that someone would look me in the eye and know exactly how weak and broken I was inside. When someone constantly tells you that you are not worth a damn, you eventually tend to believe it. But even after everything that happened, not once have I ever thought of my marriage as a mistake. How could I when Joel gave me my precious daughter Sierra?
I’m so thankful Sierra doesn’t remember him. Not once did Joel ever sit down and play with his daughter, or comfort her when she was sick, or read her a bedtime story. I often wonder to myself what my grandfather would say if he knew about the things that Joel did to me. I think he would have chopped his balls off with the dullest machete he could find and then fed them to the neighbor’s pigs.
The day I decided to leave him was the best decision I have ever made. He could have done whatever he wanted to do to me, but when he hit Sierra one Saturday morning I wanted to kill him. Joel had come home with a hangover from drinking the night before, and Sierra was running through the house laughing and playing like little kids do. I will never forget the look on her little face when he reached out and grabbed her arm as she passed him. She was too young to understand that she was even doing anything wrong, but Joel slapped her across her face and knocked her to the ground anyway. I have never seen her cry the way she did that day. It was all I could take. I ran and scooped her up in my arms and held her. At that point, I wouldn’t have given a damn if he beat the shit out of me a million times over for picking her up and loving her, but as I braced myself for his reaction, I could never have imagined the nightmare that was to come.
I take a few deep breaths trying to shake off the memories of that awful day and climb out of bed, heading for the bathroom where I take care of my morning business. My mind drifts again to the fact that Shayne and Luke are finally getting married today. As I stare at myself in the mirror a smile creeps up on my face. The love those two share for each other is so rare that you can’t help but to be just a little bit jealous, but God knows they deserve it. They have been through so much together. Before leaving the bathroom, I frown at the look on my face as I stare at my reflection as always.
“Get your head out of your ass Erin and go make sure the one woman who has been by your side through all of your bullshit has the best day of her life.”
Pacing myself very slowly, I leave my bedroom in this huge house that Sierra and I have been staying in since we moved to Michigan three months ago and make my way into the kitchen. I stop dead in my tracks as I see Adam standing at the counter with his back to me wearing nothing but a pair of black shorts. And fuck, they are hanging damn low on his waist.
Adam Payne. God, why does he have to be so damn sexy? Every damn muscle in his body is defined. Owning your own construction business will do that to a man, I’m sure, but I have never in my entire life seen a man who has a nicer body than he does. I have imagined being able to just lick every square inch of it...but apart from one incident months ago back in Texas, thinking about it is all I have ever done. No matter how much my body craves Adam’s touch, it will never happen. There isn’t a man out there who would want to touch me after he saw the woman I really am on the inside.
“Who the fuck would want you, Erin? You’re worthless!” The words Joel used to scream at me pop back into my head again, and I know he was right. I am not worthy of any man.