“Mama, please.” My voice was raspy from my previous yelling—from the excruciating pain he provided. The severity of his wrath left me bruised, tattered. My head hung and my cheek smashed against the carpet. For a moment I felt safe as the room became quiet and spun around me.
Finally she spoke up, her voice almost a whisper. “I’m sorry, Liza, but you knew this was important. When we need money, it’s not a joke. Should’ve done what was asked of you.”
A tear escaped from beneath my swollen eyelids and then I opened them, watching her turn around quickly. I called after her desperately, begging her not to leave me alone with that bastard. More tears fell, cigarette smoke drifted into the room, and then he yelled for me to get up, yanking on my arm.
My knees buckled again and my face slammed into the floor. Blood spilled from my nose and my forehead burned from scraping against the carpet. He threatened that if I didn’t get up, he was going to make the punishment worse, but I couldn’t. I was weak. I didn’t have the strength within me to move anymore. I was blank, nothing, like a thin sheet of paper. Unmoving unless blown by the wind or picked up by someone.
I wanted to dissolve into dust and blend in with the floor to become anything—anyone—but Eliza Smith.
I prayed and wished it would stop, but as he chuckled eerily and muttered something threatening beneath his breath, I knew it was coming. Heavy leather stung the backs of my legs, my hips, my back, my arms, and even my face countless times. I cried out repeatedly, digging my fingernails into the carpet with thick tears streaming, hoping soon I would numb to the pain.
I did eventually.
FUDGE SUNDAE
Gage Grendel…
There were only a few words that could describe him: hot, mouthwatering, and way out of my league. He and his band were out of my league, but apparently not my dad’s. He was their manager, and this summer things were really starting to kick off for them.
I remember exactly how my dad announced the tour to me:
“You need to start packing. We’re going on tour with FireNine!” he said over dinner.
I looked at him, a frown taking hold of my features, before digging into my mashed potatoes. “You mean you’re going on tour. I’d rather stay home.”
“Why? You need to get out and have some fun, Eliza.”
My dad’s personality made me feel so boring. He was spunky, hip, great taste, young-at-heart, all the above. When I’d moved in with him, he took me shopping first thing. He literally ran me to the mall because he said I looked “terrible.”
Apparently he didn’t approve of my sweatpants and the brown T-shirt I’d gotten from summer camp when I was twelve years old. I admit, by the age of sixteen it had gotten a little small on me, but I didn’t mind. I was twenty-one and would still wear it whenever I could because it was my favorite tee. It was a summer I was free of the hellhole.
“Come on, Liza Bear,” he begged. “It’ll be fun. I know you get tired of this house. You do the same thing every day. Eat. Draw. Paint. Sleep. You aren’t tired of that routine?”
“Not really.”
His brown eyes scanned me and then he smirked. “I think I know what it is.” He placed his fork on the table and tucked a lock of his perfectly trimmed hair behind his ear. My dad and I had the same natural platinum-blond hair. The fact that my skin was paler than a blank sheet of paper didn’t make it any better for me. He’d told me once before that I could pass for an albino if my eyelashes and eyebrows were a paler blond.
My dad pulled it off, though. He classified himself as “HOT” and I agreed. He worked out every day and had straight white teeth; his hair, parted at the crown of his head, just touched his shoulders. He naturally had more fashion sense than me, which was quite embarrassing sometimes.
“What do you mean?” I asked as he crossed his arms.
“It’s Gage, isn’t it?”
Hearing Gage’s name caused me to tear away my gaze. “What about him?”
“I notice the way you practically run to your room to hide when he and the band come over to practice now. You’re such a little girl.”
“Am not.” I stuck out my tongue and he laughed. “Besides, they’ve only been here twice.” A smile touched my lips as I slid away from the table, grabbing my plate. I took his as well, then made my way toward the kitchen. Our house was nice and somewhat simple. The kitchen was always clean. We had tan marble counters with grey and silver flecks, dark-brown cabinets with brushed nickel knobs, and an island in the center, surrounded by six bar stools.
I remember Gage sitting on one of those barstools and since then, I haven’t touched it. There’s just something about his presence that makes me nervous.
My dad stepped into the kitchen as I dropped the plates in the sink. “You really aren’t going to come with me, Liza? I want you out of the house. You’re twenty-one, and you spend every summer trapped here. It’s time to get out and live a little, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, Dad—”
“Ben,” he corrected. That was one thing he couldn’t stand. Being called “dad.” It supposedly made him feel old, and he was the type who would rather feel like a brother than a father.
“Well, Ben,” I said, rolling my eyes and plugging the sink, “I don’t think going on tour with FireNine will be such a great idea. It’s just a bunch of guys on a bus, drinking beer and doing God knows what else. That’s not my kind of crowd.”
“What is your crowd, exactly?” he asked, narrowing his eyes and leaning his elbows on the counter.
“I’m my own crowd.” I winked over my shoulder. I rinsed the suds off the plates and placed them into the dish rack as he laughed.
“All right, let’s make a deal.” He clasped his hands. “If I give you a gift card to a bookstore, buy you some cute clothes, and even take you to get your hair done, will you go?”
I shrugged. “I like the bookstore part. As for the clothes and hair, that was kind of a downfall.”
“Well, shit! You can get all the books you want. Just please come, Eliza. I swear it’ll be worth your time. We’re making tons of stops during the tour so there’ll always be something to do. It gets boring here in Virginia after a while, and you know it.”
I could agree with him there. There wasn’t really much to do in Suffolk unless someone had a party of some sort, but parties weren’t really my thing. Nothing was really my thing. I stayed cooped up in my house so much I think I missed out on most of the fun as a teenager. Even while enrolled in college, all I did was go to class or hide in my dorm. My roommate was trashy so I hardly ever saw her, which was a good thing most of the time because I couldn’t stand her.
“Okay.” I sighed as Ben’s large brown eyes looked me over. “I’ll go, but I don’t wanna be on the same bus as the band.”
“Oh, sweetie, you won’t be,” he assured, stepping around the counter to stand next to me. “You’ll be on a separate bus with me. You’ll have all the alone time you need. I wouldn’t put you on a bus with a bunch of boys like them. That’s just… ew. Gross. The things those boys do. Ugh!”
“Okay, okay.” I giggled, lifting my hands in surrender mode. “I’ll go—mainly because I do like their music and because I think it’d be cool to watch the cities go by. I can snap a few pictures or something.” I shrugged, sighing. “Why the hell not?”
“That’s my Liza.” He kissed my cheek and then pulled me in for a hug. I hugged him back quickly before pulling away to get to the dishes again. “Tomorrow we’ll go shopping.”
“Cool.”
The doorbell rang a few seconds later and Ben grinned as he braced himself, wiping his hands on his peachy button-up shirt. “Oh, great. The boys are here.”
My eyebrows knitted as I stared out of the kitchen. “The boys?”
“Yes. FireNine. They’re practicing in the garage tonight since their producer’s out of town. They have a new song, and I’ve been dying to hear it. Perks of being the manager, huh?”
I swallowed. “Um… yeah. Sure.”
Winking, my dad trailed out the kitchen, but I pulled my hands from the dishwater, dried them off with a dishtowel, and then dashed for my bedroom in a heartbeat, shutting my door behind me. I hated when they made random appearances, especially when I looked like complete trash.
As I stepped forward, I kneeled down on my knees and pulled out one of my sketchpads from beneath the bed. I then grabbed a pencil and sat at the desk in the corner of my room. Deep voices echoed through the hall, and I tried to concentrate, but it was extremely difficult. The hardest part about it was hearing Gage Grendel’s deep, bedroom-like voice. It was humming through me, almost luring me in his direction. At one point, I had to fight myself to not get up and steal a peek at him. His voice was completely irresistible.
“I’ll be in there once I find the bathroom,” Gage called. His footsteps sounded heavier than normal and my pencil stopped sketching as he got closer and closer to my bedroom. The bathroom was a door down from mine and knowing how one could confuse the two doors scared the shit out of me. I knew it was coming. I knew he was coming.