“Shut the fuck up!” I roared, getting ready to lay him out again. I wanted nothing more than to kill this motherfucker.
Aubrey shook her head back and forth. “No, no, no, no, no,” she repeated, placing her hands over her ears like she knew what he was going to say next.
What the fuck was going on?
“’At last… my love has come along… and my lonely days are over…’” he sang and I jerked back, the realization hitting me like a ton of fucking bricks.
“God, I loved you then. You were so goddamn beautiful. Everyone in the bar wanted to fuck you, right then and there. What kind of man lets his woman provoke men like a fucking whore? Any guesses? I’ll tell you, one that knows that is exactly what she is.”
“Please… please… stop…” Aubrey panicked, whipping her body all around the room. I felt her slipping away from me, again.
“Oh, now, you want to beg me,” he viscously mocked. “I followed you home that night. I watched you fuck her up against the door. I pulled my own cock out and jacked off the entire fucking time. The slut loved it rough and that’s when I knew. I knew she was mine.”
That night flashed before my eyes.
Every last second of it played out in front of me.
“I waited. I waited until I had my chance. It didn’t take long.” He snidely smiled. “’Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…’” he sang again. “I watched her run and I couldn’t wait to fucking chase her down. She thought I was you,” he sadistically laughed. “I cleared that up for her real quick though. See… Dylan, I made her fucking hate you. It’s the only way I could make her truly mine. I placed your shirt over her face as I fucked her seven ways till Sunday. She smelled nothing but you while I ripped into her tight fucking pussy that I still can’t get enough of.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t fucking breathe.
All that time… All that goddamn time. That’s why she wouldn’t come near me. She couldn’t stand to smell me. It brought her back to that moment.
I shut my eyes, reliving that day all over again.
The image of her lying there broken, beaten… dead.
As if we never left.
“Please, Jeremy, please, fucking stop…” Aubrey pleaded, crying her eyes out.
I went to her and she actually held out her arms for me.
“Oh, Dylan, what a damn fool you are,” he spewed, stopping me dead in my tracks.
“No!” Aubrey screamed loud enough to break glass.
“See, I never forgot about the girl who stole my heart. It didn’t matter how many other girls I raped, I always saw Aubrey’s face. Her pussy is so fucking addicting, huh? It’s like she was made just for sex.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I came at him and he surrendered his hands out in the air.
“Baby,” he ridiculed. “Why don’t you tell Dylan here about Giselle.” He shrugged. “Maybe he should hear it from you. I can’t wait to see the hatred in his eyes. Go ahead, baby, rip the man’s goddamn heart out.”
I looked back toward Aubrey and her face turned white.
“Giselle?”
She fiercely shook her head. “I’m sorry… I’m so fucking sorry, Dylan… please forgive me… please let me explain… please…” She immediately started bawling again.
Jeremy sighed, bringing my attention back to him.
“Aubrey is a goddamn liar. It didn’t take long for me to find her. The first time she let me fuck her I noticed she had a little scar.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” she yelled out uncontrollably.
“Want to guess where it is. Better yet, why don’t you take a look for yourself?” He gestured towards her lower stomach.
Her body shook as my feet moved on their own accord.
“’And… life is like a song… oh… at last… and here we are in Heaven…’” he continued to sing.
“Please… please…” she begged, pleading with me as I pulled down her cotton shorts.
“Oh my God,” I breathed out in disbelief.
“’For you are mine… at last…’” Jeremy hissed. “She gave up your daughter even after she knew it wasn’t mine.”
I would remember the next few seconds for the rest of my life.
It all ended with a…
BANG.
Six years later
I walked out of the gates of Hell.
The boys and Alex were all waiting for me on the other side of the fence, as I passed through the prison walls that I called home for the last six years. I was supposed to serve ten years for the manslaughter of Jeremy Montgomery, but got out after six for good behavior.
They all looked so goddamn happy to see me. I gritted my teeth hardly being able to tolerate it.
There was nothing to be excited about.
Not one fucking thing.
“Dylan,” Alex beamed, throwing her arms around my neck. “I’m so happy you’re out. I’ve missed you so much,” she wept, breaking down.
I didn’t hug her back. I grabbed her arms from around my neck. She froze, immediately frowning when I pulled them back down. Still perceptive as always, except this time I didn’t give a flying fuck.
The boys didn’t pay her any mind. They were too caught up on the fact that we were all together again. Me? I wanted to get out of there faster than a bat out of Hell.
And I wasn’t talking about prison.
“Let’s go,” I rumbled not bothering to hug any of the boys.
I opened the passenger side door and got in the SUV. I was thrilled about the fact that it wasn’t a car and I didn’t have to sit close to anyone. After sharing a cell with three other guys who wanted to fuck you over in more ways than one, you learned to appreciate some personal space when you could get it.
“How does it feel to be out, brother?” Austin asked, slapping me on the chest as he drove.
I didn’t falter. “I will definitely miss the ass raping going on around me and especially the fucking food. I’m sure one day you will experience all of it first hand… brother.”
No one spoke after that.
I shut my eyes, leaning my head against the headrest, already dreading what was to come.
I held the invitation in my shaking hands.
“Aubrey, you’ve come such a long way. I’m so proud of you,” Dr. Wexler stated.
She was the therapist that I had been seeing for the last seven years.
“They wouldn’t have invited you to Dylan’s welcome home party if they didn’t want you to go.”
“His mom invited me. Not Dylan.”
“I’m sure he knows.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know that. I haven’t seen him since the trial.”
I went to visit him once a month for the last six years and was denied visitation each and every time. He refused to see me, not wanting anything to do with me. I couldn’t blame him, but it still hurt nonetheless.
“Aubrey, you’re not that person anymore. The broken woman that came to me is long gone, sweetheart. She’s not even in the same vicinity as you anymore. You’re strong, independent and most of all you learned to love yourself again. You can overcome anything and you have.”
I took a deep breath. “I know.” And I did.
“So, you’re going to go?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Great. I can’t wait to hear about it next week.”
I drove home with a heavy heart. I knew he was getting out. It was all over the papers. During the months of his trial and then after his sentencing all you heard and read about was how Detective Dylan McGraw was behind bars for the murder of Jeremy Montgomery, son of the highly respected politician Bill Montgomery. Our families and close friends knew what I went through with Jeremy, but it didn’t matter. There were no police records for any of my so-called allegations of the years and years of abuse I endured from him.
Jacob said he was lucky that he was a Detective and had closed several cases saving peoples lives or else he would have been loo
king at twenty plus years versus the plea bargain that he had to take for only ten.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to write him, all my letters were returned unopened. I kept them all in hopes that one day he would forgive me and read them.
The celebration of his release was being held at his mom’s house tomorrow afternoon. I would have to go to the home that held so many of my happy childhood memories. Come face to face with my truths.
I was going to go.
It was time to face my demons.
Most of them I had already conquered, especially the one smiling at me as she opened the passenger side door.
“Hey, honey, how was school?”
“Hey, Mom.” She kissed my cheek.
She was the sweetest girl with the sharpest tongue, much like her daddy. After the night Jeremy left me in the kitchen to die, I started to see Dr. Wexler, I told her that my biggest regret was turning my back on our daughter.
My Aunt Celeste came to see me a few weeks after the rape, nine to be exact. I could never lie to her. She was always very perceptive when it came to me, making it nearly impossible to slip anything past her. I broke down one night and told her about the rape. She held me in her arms the entire time, comforting me the only way she knew how. The next morning we went into my mom’s office at the hospital and she proceeded to tell my mom everything that I shared with her the night before.
Knowing there was no way in hell I could utter the words again. My mom cried for what felt like forever. Then they both took me down to the lab so that my mom could test me for every STD under the sun.
Except she took one test that I never even considered a possibility.
A few days later we found out I was pregnant. I was nineteen and knocked up, but the question at the time was whose baby was I carrying?
Dylan’s or my rapists?
I refused to tell anyone about it, which my mom and aunt understood.
Two days after that my mom and Aunt Celeste decided that it would be best for me to leave Oak Island and spend the duration of my pregnancy living with my Aunt Celeste. I attended a community college near her house, lying to everyone that I was at UCLA.
The following day after the decisions and plans were made, Dylan found me in my room having what my therapist referred to as a nervous breakdown.
“School was great. So, when can I meet my dad?” She bounced in her seat with excitement.
Another one of Dylan’s qualities that I had been dealing with for the last six years, his daughter didn’t beat around the bush.
She said what she meant and meant what she said.
“Honey, I told you. I need to see him first.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s so stupid. I’m his daughter and I’m super adorable and loveable.” She shrugged. “He’s going to love me instantly.”
I laughed. She was also cocky like him.
Giselle knew everything that happened to me. My Aunt Celeste never kept it a secret from her. I always knew what was going on in her life. I just wasn’t involved in it until I got her back when she was ten. The first time I met Giselle was only a few months before she came back to me. Our daughter loved hard, exactly like her father. She forgave me, saying she had been waiting for that moment all her life, and she knew in her heart that I would make my way back to her.
We belonged together.
“Why can’t I go to the party?” she asked. “Gammy and Papa invited me, too. They told me, Mom. Besides, my name is on the invitation, which in my book means I should be there.”
“Honey, I promise. Let me see him first and then you can meet him.”
She frowned, disappointment clear across her face.
“You’re right.”
She glanced over at me as I parked the car in our driveway.
“You are super adorable and loveable. Your daddy is going to fall in love with you instantly.”
She beamed. The same honey colored eyes tore into my heart, exactly how her dad’s used to.
“Fine, but take a picture of me, just in case. You know, just to seal the deal and stuff.”
I nodded, silently wishing I had her confidence.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I roared, taking in the woman I never truly knew.
I didn’t want this party.
As far as I was concerned there wasn’t anything to celebrate, thanks to the bitch standing in front of me. I woke up in my teenage bedroom. I was thirty-seven years old and officially living back home with my parents. I couldn’t even rent my own goddamn apartment, seeing as I was a convicted felon fresh out of prison.
I was outside on the porch, needing to get some air before this godforsaken party, that I never asked for or wanted to begin with, started when I saw her.
“I won’t fucking ask you again, Bree, what the fuck are you doing here?”
She peered all around the open space and then back at me. “I… I was invited,” she stammered. “I came early to help set up and hopefully talk to you.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me? You have quite a set of brass balls on ya, don’t you? Who the—”
“I… no… I just—”
I loomed over her. “Do not interrupt me! Don’t you fucking dare interrupt me,” I seethed.
She shook her head. “I’m just trying to explain. If you could give me—”
“If I could give you what? What else do you need me to give you? My fucking life? Oh, no, you already took that away from me on more than one occasion.”
“Dylan, I—”
I placed my finger over her mouth, quieting her. I was done hearing her goddamn mouth and pitiful excuses. The old pussy whipped McGraw was gone. I kicked his sorry ass to the curb the day I found out she was a fucking liar. Everything I ever felt for her vanished as if it ceased to exist in the first place.
“I don’t want you here. Do you understand me? The mere sight of you makes me sick to my fucking stomach. I spent half of my life loving the shit out of you, and I lost everything in a matter of seconds because of you. Everything! My career, my freedom, and my fucking daughter. You took away my choice to be a father by hiding her existence from me for ten fucking years. As far as I’m concerned you fucking died the day Jeremy did.”
She gasped.
They say that vengeance doesn’t make you feel better. Well, that was a lie.
It felt fucking amazing.
“I'll never forget you, although I'll spend the rest of my life trying.”
Her eyes widened, immediately watering. I saw her cry so many damn times that I could drown in a sea of her crocodile tears.
“Is that why you never read my letters? Or let me visit you in prison?”
“No, Bree, that’s not why.” I leaned in close to her lips and her breathing hitched.
I spoke with conviction, “On that day you just turned into another girl I used to fuck.”
She shattered. Her glass house breaking as she ran away from me. I held the hammer firmly in my hand ready to use it again, when needed.
“Dylan Anthony McGraw,” Mom snapped from behind me.
I spun around, facing her as she came toward me. “Don’t even go there, Ma. Don’t even try to fucking go there with me.”
“Oh my God! I am so ashamed of you right now, I can’t even look at you.”
“Good,” I barked. “Then turn your ass back around so you don’t waste my time with this fuckin’—”
Her hand was up in the air, connecting with the side of my face before I even got the last word out.
“Oh, Dylan, I don’t care where you just got released from. I don’t care what you may have seen. I don’t care what you have gone through or who you think you are now, but if you ever,” she gritted out through clenched teeth, shaking the sting off her hand that I felt on my cheek.
“Ever, raise your voice or talk to me like that again, boy, I will not hesitate to remind you who it is you’re talking to. Do you understand me? Or do you need me to remind you again?” “Yes, ma’am,” I forced out, holding my cheek.
“Oh my God. Where is my boy? Where is my son? Because I have not seen him since you walked through these doors yesterday afternoon. I raised you better than this.”
“Yeah, Ma. You raised me so damn good and I still ended up in prison.”
She shook her head. “Whose choice was that? Yours! No one else’s but yours. That girl has been through enough and she doesn’t need your shit on top of everything else. She is an amazing mother to that young girl.”
I jerked back. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Obviously not clear enough.”
“She has Giselle. She’s had her for the last six years, and has done nothing but include us in her life. I know my granddaughter because of her. That girl is exactly like you, and up until a few minutes ago, I was proud of that fact.”
“I… I didn’t…” I stuttered.
“Now, you get your act together before your guests arrive. The one’s who are so excited and relieved that you’re finally home. Go take the stick out of your ass and find my son. When you do, have him come find me.” She spun, walking back inside.
“Jesus Christ, six years, Ma! Six damn years. You couldn’t have told me that when you visited! You couldn’t have let me know that Aubrey had Giselle, that she was raisin’ her. I have spent the last six years thinking of nothing but my daughter! No one had the decency to tell me that!” I yelled, stopping her and making her turn to face me.
“What good would that have done? You were behind bars. The last thing we wanted to do was cause you anymore pain. You know, as well as I do that seeing Giselle and not being able to hug her and kiss her would have torn you apart. Hell, maybe if you would have accepted Aubrey's visitations or read her letters, she would have told you. If I would have known this—” she gestured at me, “—would have walked out, trust me, Dylan, I would have told you. Your sourpuss mood while you were in there was understandable and never stopped anyone from visiting you. But you’re out now. It’s time to put on your big boy pants and deal with the fact that this is your life now. Hopefully the Dylan I used to know, the boy I raised to have manners and respect others, will still come out on top and figure out something meaningful to do with his life, instead of tearing everyone to shreds for his own decisions.”