Tainted Love(66)

“You two remind me so much of my late husband and I. It’s so sweet to see young love.” My eyebrows shoot up and I start coughing, taking hold of my water.

“Thank you,” I say into my glass.

“It’s all new,” Dominic adds, stretching out his collar. I notice his cheeks redden a bit and he looks adorable.

She touches my hand. “They all start new, sweetheart.”

I smile at her words. Maybe she’s right. Dom stands from the table before the woman begins walking away.

“Do you know how to take a picture on one of these?” he asks her, flashing his iPhone.

I roll my eyes. There’s no way this woman knows how to take a picture on an iPhone.

She giggles. “Well, yes I do. I had to learn so I can take photos of all my great-grandchildren.” Dominic hands her his phone with a smile then looks over to me with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

He sits back down and pats his lap. “Come on.”

I smirk at him, walk over and sit myself on his lap sideways so my legs hang to his side. I look down at him with a smile.

“You’re such a dork sometimes. Do you know that?” He places his hand behind my neck, pulling my face gently down to his and smiling against my lips, before kissing them gently.

“Only when I’m with you.”

We both start laughing against each other’s lips. I forgot all about the woman with Dom’s phone. I quickly stand and the old woman smiles.

“I got some good ones in there. Bless your heart sweet girl. He’s a keeper.”

I think that was the turning point for me. Dominic is amazing. Not only on the outside but the inside too. At this moment, I want to try with him.

“Thank you,” I say shyly.

Dominic walks up behind me, taking the phone from the old woman. “Thank you,” he says and she smiles. “Oh don’t thank me. That was a pleasure to see.”

My eyebrows shoot up. If she weren't such a sweet old lady I would have been creeped out by that comment. I look up to Dominic, and he’s smiling a huge smile at me while flicking through his phone.

“What?” I say self-consciously.

He smiles. “You’re so fucking beautiful. These are going on Facebook.”

I shake my head. “Give me a look first. Shit.”

I swipe his phone out of his hand. Flicking through the photos, they are actually great. We look like a couple in love. She snapped three of them. One was of us laughing against each other’s lips. The other was a perfect snap of a light kiss on my lips, and the other was both of us looking deep into each other’s eyes. We look like a happy couple. I smile up at him and pass his phone back.

“They’re good. Maybe she should be a photographer.”

He laughs. “Or maybe you should be a model.”

I laugh, sitting back to my seat. “Yeah, nope. Never. Carter has enough model like behavior for me to handle.”

The waiter comes back, placing our meals out in front of me and we chat and eat like the friends we are.





I’m tossing and turning in bed, thinking about what happened tonight. It feels as though I’m forcing myself into this a bit too much. I need to try it out, but I also don’t want to lead him on.

Relationships are such a fucking mess. Now I could lose a friend as well. I close my eyes and let sleep drift over me, where my nightmares await.



“No. No. Get the fuck off me.”

Who is that? Where am I? I try to open my eyes, but I can’t, it was as though they were stuck closed.

“Get the fuck off me you pig.”

That’s Alaina. Oh my God, what the fuck. I began to stir around.

“Fuck up bitch!” I heard the sound of a fist hitting flesh, and then there was silence. The next thing I heard is a zipper and the slapping sound of skin-to-skin contact. I attempted again to say something, but it came out in mumbled words.

“Fuck…where am I?” I managed to mumble out in a sleepy haze.

The sound stops. “Fuck, Jason. Go put that bitch back to sleep.”

I felt a hand come over my mouth and a pill drop on my tongue. He kept his hand covered over my mouth, forcing me to swallow. My eyes closed and darkness took over once again.



I wake up in a sweat with my arms shaking. That wasn’t a nightmare. That was a memory. I look at the time on my phone, ignoring the two messages and see it’s the early hours of the morning. There’s no way I’m going to be able to go back to sleep. My body begins to convulse as tears start pouring down my face. “Alaina,” I whisper out to the darkness. She endured horrific things. I bet that’s not even the tip of what happened to her. Here I am moping about having fingers shoved inside me. I’m a shitty person. I pick up my phone, opening a new message and send her a text.