The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(51)

Peeking out from behind barely open eyelids, I saw Skylar's brow furrow  as she took it in, and her own eyes tracked the path of her fingertips  around my chest. I closed them again and went on.

"Every weekend and half the week, parties, and so-called business  meetings that escalated into parties. Booze, cigarettes and  ass-kickings. Dinner not ready on time? That's a slap. Disrespect him?  Imagined or not, that's a split lip. He remembers some shit that might  have happened months ago? Oh fuck."

Those sounds came flooding back from my memory, I swore could almost  hear them. There was a small but violent tornado that lived in that  house, and the path it cut, tearing the place the fuck up as it went,  had no concern about how scared the people were. It could touch down  anywhere and leave pure distilled pain in it's wake.         

     



 

"Even now I remember those nights, too scared to sleep, listening for  that moment when the drunken banter took a turn. If my mom hadn't passed  out yet, then I heard the thuds, the screams and the sounds of breaking  furniture. I heard him beating the shit out of her and I knew I was  next. And I couldn't do shit."

"Oh, Austin … "

"After a while, it used to get quiet down there, like that pause before  somebody gives you real bad news. Mom was done, but he didn't feel like  he'd been respected enough. So …  what? I hear these footsteps on the  stairs. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Steady, just like that, no  hesitation. He knew where he was going."

"What did you do? Could you hide?"

"There was nowhere to hide. I haven't been afraid of anything since …   well …  since him, but I remember how hard it was to breathe, how my heart  used to beat so fast I thought it was going to explode. So much blood  being pumped through me that my skin was hot, prickling with pins and  needles. I was no doctor, but I knew you could get hurt so bad that you  died. I knew he had that power over me."

Crash!

The memory of the way he used to burst through my door hit me like a hammer.

"He'd kick that door open and see me there, shout something about why  the fuck wasn't I asleep, disobedient little fucking good for nothing  piece of shit. Get the fuck over here! He made me walk over to take my  licks. Made me stand up to take more as many times as I could. It was  worse if I didn't. I was forged in hell."

"When did you get away from him?" Skylar asked.

"Started when I was ten."

"Started?"

"That's when I started sleeping on the streets. I stayed away more and more as the years went by."

"At ten?"

"Yeah."

"Did your mom manage to get the two of you away in the end?"

My heart, flooded with adrenaline just as my mind was flooded with these  nightmares, had been building up to a crescendo, almost like those  nights when I was a kid. It almost ground to a halt when Skylar  mentioned my mom. And the end.

"No. She was a drunk. Her body was there, but who knows where her mind  was? I begged her to take me away and she couldn't. I promised myself  that when I was big enough, I'd fucking save her. Well, I met Ross and  he started training me. I got pretty big. I went back one night."

"What did you do, Austin?"

No doubt reliving the comparatively tame events of the club in Vegas,  Skylar could barely get her question out. She would pull her hands back  in horror if she knew.

Those soft hands. The softest touch I'd ever felt in my life. The quiet  words in the dark after we fucked, when we talked as if this marriage  wasn't going to end when NHBFC told us it was. All gone, if she knew.

A lump formed in my throat and my surprise at that fact jump-started my  heart again. How the fuck did this woman get under my skin? All I'd  wanted was a tight pussy to put my cock in, but damned if she didn't  feel like a …  what? A wife? A …  partner? Like she was a part of me? Fuck.

"There was a party going on, as usual. I stormed in there and I fucked  him up in front of his friends, anybody that tried to stop me too. All  those years being paid back all in one righteous fuckin' … " I trailed  off.

Skylar sat up and turned to face me, sitting cross-legged. Another peek  out of the tiniest cracks in my eyelids showed me she was crying.

"Did he leave after that?" asked Skylar. I could hear the hope in her voice.

"The police said he committed suicide. Guess he couldn't face the  humiliation of being destroyed by a fifteen year old kid," I mumbled.

"What did your mom do?"

I didn't answer for a long time. "She …  she barely did anything. Except  drink. It was almost as if the only thing that had ever stopped her from  drinking herself off the edge of the world were those beatings that  signaled party-over. When I tried to sober her up …  she got nasty. She  said the kinds of things he used to say …  and one thing that was  completely new. Holy fuck."

"What?"

"She said I wasn't even really their son. I was the worst fucking thing  that ever happened and she wished they never bought me. Bought. Me."

"No."

Skylar spoke the word in a long groan as if my pain was her pain and I  felt the bed shaking as she struggled to contain the sobs. My own breath  was on the border of hitching every time I inhaled too.

"So I left again, and she drank herself to death. That's what happened  when I thought I was some kind of hero. I fucked it all up."         

     



 

I had to shut up now. I had to shut the fuck up before I did something stupid, like tell her everything.

That police report. It said suicide. That much was true. What was  curiously missing from the report was how Leon Aquila had been beaten to  a pulp and found at the bottom of the lake wrapped in chains and with  broken legs.

It didn't mention the water in his lungs that showed how he was still  alive when he went under. It couldn't show how he begged for his life.

Either the police were glad that the asshole who used to spit in their  faces every weekend when they were called about the noise got what he  deserved, or they were just that corrupt and it looked like a mob hit. I  had no idea, but suicide it was.





Skylar





Austin's story had me in tatters. I noticed that he had no family at our  wedding, just like me, but I never brought it up, because that would  have lead the conversation to the topic of my own parents. Best to let  sleeping dogs lie, I'd thought.

Now it was different. From the way Austin spoke, with a waver in his  voice I'd never heard from him before, I could tell this wasn't  something he shared often. If ever.

I'd wondered what kind of life it took to make a man like Austin, and  now I knew. All the years spent in becoming a nigh-on invincible  fighter, all the power and confidence relentlessly built up, and the  take-shit-from-nobody attitude, these were the tools he needed to  survive.

He said that he was forged in hell, but it was really just his armor  that was made there. When he opened up, he let me see that fear, the  source of his anger. I saw the real man in charge of this tank of a  body, and he was hurting.

"Did you ever try to find your real parents?" I asked.

"No. Fuck that. In order for somebody to buy something, somebody else  has to be selling it. They were probably junkies that needed some quick  cash. If I ever found their asses, it might not be pretty."

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and tried to compose myself.

Over the past couple of months, Austin had done things for me I'd never  would have thought possible. It was like looking at myself with a  completely new set of non-judgmental eyes. It was a huge relief to have  so much guilt and self-consciousness off my shoulders. To have a man  look at me the way Austin did and for it to be OK, more than OK, might  have seemed like such a simple little thing to somebody else, but they  weren't me. For me, it was priceless. It was irreplaceable.

Austin did that for me, and now I could see …  he needed me too. As much as I needed him.

Since he started talking, he had been lying on the bed with his fingers  laced over his forehead and his eyes closed, as if he couldn't bear to  look at me. I reached out and stroked his cheek.

"Hey."

He opened his eyes.

"I'm so sorry you went through that, Austin."

"It's OK."

"No it is not. It wasn't fair that you had to grow up in that house. Scared. Hurt. You didn't even have anybody to … "

I licked my lips and swallowed, turning my eyes up for a second as if  seeking some extra strength. It was hard to believe I was about to talk  to my fake husband about this …  but things had changed somewhere along  the line between when the ink dried on our marriage certificate and now.

There was more than a contract holding us together, as confusing and  scary as that thought was. I was sure Austin felt something too, or he  wouldn't have just told me as much as he did.