Seven days, p.1
Seven Days, page 1
Seven Days
By Josie Leigh
Seven Days
Published by Josie Leigh at Smashwords
Copyright 2014 Josie Leigh
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover design and photography by Angela RoseRed
This story is for entertainment purposes only. Names, characters, places, events, most businesses and organizations are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Excerpt for Skin to Skin
Prologue
Ever do something that you know almost immediately might just be the biggest mistake you’ve ever made? That’s what happened the night I walked away from Ryan. It hadn’t been an easy decision, but just a couple of words changed everything for me. They made me realize I needed to save my family, the only family that I constantly fought and sacrificed for. Panic seized me as I fought for control over my emotions.
I could feel those sad amber eyes following me as I rounded the corner of the restaurant. Slumping against the unforgiving gray brick wall when I was sure he wasn’t going to follow me, I let the tears I’d been holding back cascade down my swollen face.
After allowing myself a few minutes to wallow in my misery, I pushed off the wall and started walking again. I knew I had to make it back home before they found out I was leaving. It was bad enough he knew where I’d been last week. I couldn’t leave my sister in that kind of danger, but I needed to get my emotions under control before I got behind the wheel of my car. I would be no good to her if I couldn’t even make it home through my tears.
“Carrie,” I heard from the side of the building. His voice just on the edge of desperation, tinged with receding tears and emotion. “Look at you,” he sighed, as he reached my side and lifted a hesitant hand to my cheek. “You don’t want to do this. Don’t do this,” he pleaded, coaxing my eyes to his. “Don’t do this,” he repeated, moving his hand to stroke my loose auburn locks. I wanted to melt into him, let him fix everything, but I knew that was impossible. “Please, don’t run.”
“I wish it were my choice, Ryan,” I told him, letting him see just how much this decision was affecting me. “I’d do anything to fix it, but I have to get her out of here-- get us out of here before something terrible happens,” I choked out before I broke his embrace and ran to my dilapidated early 90’s model Ford Escort. Fumbling with the keys, I threw my bag inside and it bounced off the passenger’s seat, spilling the contents onto the floorboard. With a sigh, I sat behind the steering wheel, trying to convince myself to not look back at the man with desolation in his eyes, standing across the parking lot. When I was able to choke back the new round of sobs, I started the car that would take me away from him. After the week we’d just spent together, I thought I could figure out a way to get it all. Unfortunately, messy details only get tied with a pretty red bow on television. In the real world, I had to make a choice, continue to give up my dignity to live happily for now with Ryan or leave my shattered past behind and search for a modified version of a happily ever after. Or at least as close to one as I’d ever deserve, because I was sure I’d never find someone as incredible as him again. Lightening didn’t strike twice.
I never believed in soul mates, or in one person for the rest of your life, but Ryan was someone I could see waking up to every morning. Forever and beyond. I couldn’t stay here anymore though. I had made a promise to myself and my little sister, Britton, and I planned to keep it, even if it meant leaving behind the only man I’d ever love.
I couldn’t believe it had only been nine days since I’d met him. I couldn’t believe it had only been seven days since our trip began. Only one week. Seven days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. 604,800 seconds. The more I broke it down, the more it seemed like we’d known each other the equivalent of a lifetime.
Chapter 1
Nine days earlier…
Just one more week to go. Nine days. 216 hours. 12,960 minutes. 777,600 seconds. The more I broke it down, the further away is seemed.
I could barely remember a time when my life wasn’t so…
I could barely remember a time when I could look myself in the mirror and be proud of who I was.
Staring down at the wash-gray sheets that had to have been white at some point, I tried to disappear into my head. My hands were clenched in fists as I waited. Throwing in a moan or a grunt every so often so he thought I was into it. I didn’t need to be, though, he didn’t care. My entire childhood had been lost because of one mistake; one squeeze of a trigger propelled a bullet into her head, and made favors like the one I was in the midst of necessary for survival.
My family had never been anything more than one paycheck away from having absolutely nothing, but we’d tried to make the best of it for the first thirteen years of my life. Although, it had only been nine years ago, it felt like a lifetime. I could barely remember the happiness we’d been capable of when I was younger through the cloud of pot and meth smoke that seeped into every corner of the trailer we lived in. Now, I was the only one fighting to keep the dream alive, even if what I had to do to make it happen disgusted me.
“Damn, baby,” Dallas groaned as he rolled off me and grabbed his jeans from my bedroom floor. He didn’t even bother to get rid of the condom on his shrinking erection before zipping them up and pulling a package from the back pocket. Throwing it to me, he added, “You’ve earned this.”
“I don’t want that,” I cringed away from the baggie until he put it back in his pocket. Rolling onto my back, I pulled the sheet up to cover my nakedness and sent up a silent prayer that he would just leave. He might’ve just finished fucking me, but I didn’t want to let him look long enough to get any ideas about having a round two.
“Why not?” he sniffed. “It’s yours and if you want to bust it open right now, we could spend the night having a lot more fun,” he suggested, leering at me in the dark, his baby blues flashing.
“You know it’s not for me,” I refuted, suppressing a shudder at his suggestion. “Leave it on the porch on your way out, Dallas. You know how this works.”
“So your precious daddy thinks the meth fairy has come again?” he snorted then smiled. The sharpness of his cheek bones always gave me pause. I remember the days before he took his first hit with my ex-boyfriend, Noah. His beautiful bone structure had me making moon eyes over him, even though I thought I was in love with his best friend. It had been nearly eight years since then, so the continued drug use had those same features much more prominent on his face and far less attractive. “What do you think he’d do if he knew what you did to make sure he never comes back from that other world he escaped to after your mom died?” he asked, his words sounding like a threat.
“He knows,” I confessed, turning my head from what I knew had to be a wicked grin on his face.
“Wow, Richard knows his daughter whores herself for his drugs and their rent, but still doesn’t try to clean his act up enough to work again,” he said, his voice sounding disbelieving. “I’m not going to complain because the perks are amazing,” he paused. After a moment, I felt his hand dive under the blanket and his fingers pinched my clit. “How about we head out and grab something to eat? I don’t want you to get the idea that this is the only thing I come over for?” he offered, his eyes were sincere, but glassy. Did he actually think that something more between us would work?
“We’re done tonight, Dallas,” I warned, shifting on the bed so his hand fell away from my body. With the sheet wrapped tightly around my naked body, I got onto my knees, effectively closing my legs to him.“Besides, it’s been made perfectly clear that money is not the form of currency I’m allowed to use to take care of those bills. You don’t have to add insult to injury by offering me food. I can pay for that on my own.”
I didn’t want to get into all of this with him. I felt like a horrible daughter whenever I fed my dad’s addiction, but anytime he started to go through withdrawals, Britton and I ended up with bruises and deeper scars. So we’d just decided it was easier to let the drug abuse go and hope that one day, he’d take more than he should and we’d be free of this life. Then, we’d feel guilty about hoping our father would overdose. The whole thing was a vicious cycle.
“That’s right, baby. Your money is no good here. I’ll see you in a couple of days,” he promised as he escaped through
The trailer was all our family really had aside from a beat up car from a couple of years after I was born. My parents had inherited it and its space in the trailer park from my dad’s parents. I didn’t know where we’d lived before they died, but I was able to deduce through conversations that it had been a much worse area than the one where we currently lived. According to my parents, moving from where we were when I was a baby to this trailer was like trading in bologna for steak.
Staying on my knees, I stared, unseeing, at the water-stained wall beside my bed, the mattress of my bed too warm beneath me to risk laying down. The heat really was stifling in early August and we didn’t have an air conditioner, only a swamp cooler. I knew I should try to sleep, but I couldn’t. I was still too awake to truly rest. I needed to keep going until every last drop of energy chased away the nightmares. I was still, at least, thirty-six hours away from that.
“What the fuck, Carrie?” Britton whispered, harshly as she pushed open my squeaking bedroom door sometime later. Looking over, I found my little sister still in her movie theatre uniform, her own auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scowl marring her porcelain features.
Britton and I had taken after our mother’s Irish heritage, except our eyes. Britton had our dad’s chocolate brown eyes, whereas mine were my mother’s bright green. She’d gotten our mother’s curves, though, and I was stuck with the Patrick side’s stick figure of jutting collarbones and knobby knees. She always complained because I was so skinny that I had to run around in the shower to get wet, but she had to look over her breasts to see her shoes. The whole analogy didn’t make sense, but I let her have it. She was my little sister, and she was the only reason I hadn’t left this God-forsaken trailer park the second I turned 18. And now, four years later, we were just over a week until her 18th birthday and our freedom.
“What, Britton?” I looked back at her, shifting in my bed.
“Um, this?” she questioned, holding up her hand in frustration. Looking closer, I found the source of her irritation, the baggie that Dallas had tried to leave with me was pinched between her fingers. “We are leaving in nine days. I thought we agreed you didn’t have to do this anymore,” she lectured.
“Don’t start with me right now, Britton. I do that,” I explained, gesturing toward my bedroom window, “so you don’t have to. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”
“That doesn’t mean I approve of it,” she mumbled, folding her arms under her ample chest.
“Whatever, just put the shit on the table. I’m going to bed,” I told her rolling over again and staring at the peeling wallpaper and water stained walls beside me.
“Bullshit, Carrie, you aren’t ready to go to sleep yet,” she called me out. “Look, it was my turn to bring the popcorn home, so get your naked ass dressed while I change out of this crap and we’ll watch a movie,” she offered, letting me hear the smile in her voice. Suddenly eating stale, but salty and buttery movie theatre popcorn and watching Emma Stone kiss Ryan Gosling in the middle of a bar sounded like just the thing I wanted to do.
“Fine,” I grumbled, more for show. “Not exactly a nutritious dinner though.”
“It’s three in the morning, Carrie, it’s more like the breakfast of champions at this point,” she disputed.
“Did you already kick dad off the couch?” I asked, getting out of bed to grab a nightshirt.
“He’s not here,” she told me over her shoulder as she walked out of my bedroom and down the hall to her room.
“What do you mean, he’s not here?” I asked, following after her, my footsteps echoing in the hallway. That was the thing about living in a trailer, it was nearly impossible to move around quietly. Every step sounded like a herd of elephants if you didn’t step lightly.
“I mean, that if he was here, I just would’ve thrown the baggie at him before I came to yell at you.”
“Oh,” I frowned, grabbing the package of my dad’s meth and walking past my sister to the living room, finding it just as deserted as Britton said it would be. Passing the beaten down plaid couch and recliner, I set the drugs that I continuously sold my dignity for on the yellow Formica kitchen table that might’ve passed for retro chic, if not for the burn marks blemishing the surface. When I finally got to the other side of the house, I saw that she was correct and my dad really wasn’t home.
I’d hoped that she’d been mistaken and he’d already gone to bed. That would be too easy on me though, and Richard Patrick was the king of making my life suck even more. He didn’t drive, so that could only mean two things: he’d walked wherever he’d gone or someone had picked him up. Both meant bad things for me and the coming nights.
“I didn’t hear him leave,” I grumbled to Britton when I made my way back to the darkened living room where she was setting up the movie.
“He probably snuck out while you were occupied,” she shrugged, putting finger quotes around the last word. “I think deep down inside, he doesn’t like what you are doing for him, but he knows that he doesn’t have the willpower to quit so you don’t have to do it anymore.”
“Ha!” I laughed, bitterly, knowing his guilt wasn’t what drove him away. It was more about plausible deniability, and letting his ‘friends’ do whatever they wanted to his oldest daughter, because he was convinced that I liked it. “Him leaving like that only creates more problems for me, more debt that I have to pay off and he knows it,” I complained, grabbing a handful of room temperature popcorn from the giant bag on the floor between us.
“Let’s just forget about it for now. I mean, less than two weeks to go now, right?” she asked, giving me a small guarded smile. “We’re finally in the home stretch, and tomorrow, er, I mean, today, I guess, is another day!” she finished, brightly, hitting the button on the remote and settling against the armrest of the couch.
**
Dad still hadn’t returned when I had to leave for work a couple hours later. I tried not to worry about where he was. It was Saturday morning, which meant he’d had a number of parties in the park to choose from the night before. I wondered if he’d ended up at Dallas’ as I slipped behind the wheel of my car and headed for my breakfast shift at the diner. If he had, I could probably take the bag he’d left last night back and we’d be square. Deep inside, though, I knew I owed Ben for whatever my father had gotten up to last night. I fucking hated when I owed Ben.
Tapping my stereo, I attached the tape adapter from my car kit and hit play on my portable CD player. It was 2014, and I still had a portable CD player because all of my money went to bills and my savings to get out of this hell hole. Britton and I shared a basic cell phone. She usually had it because she could always call the diner, where I worked double shifts most days. As the opening strains of Savior by Rise Against started to pound through my car, I tried not to focus on who might come through my window tonight demanding payment.
Ben Archer was our landlord and over twenty years older than me, even older than my dad. At least with Dallas, I could pretend that I was still attracted to him, but with Ben, there was no pretending. I couldn’t hide from his skinny chest and potbelly, the pock marks on his face or his wiry comb-over. He liked to make me pay through acts of humiliation. It wasn’t enough to just fuck me and leave like the others. No, he made me beg him and suck his dick before he took me on the floor from behind.
Although there were a few others that demanded payment for drugs given to my father, Dallas and Ben were my most frequent guests. While Ben was the manager of the trailer park, Dallas was just another tenant like us. He was only about five years older than me, but now, he could easily pass for a man in his mid-thirties thanks to the drugs.
