“Seriously, Hope, just shove your face into a damn pillow.”
I felt like I could cry. I stood up from the couch, grabbed my purse, and walked over to the door. “Trent, please take me home.”
My father originally suggested that I give Trent a chance. Trent’s parents, the Kings, were good friends with my parents. After Carter, my ex, had left a message on our answering machine and broken up with me, I had been crushed. To this day, I had never actually heard the message he had left. My father had gotten to the message first and had deleted it before I had gotten home, and Carter had never called or come around again. It wasn’t long afterward that my father became tired of seeing me so depressed, and within a couple of weeks, he arranged for me to meet Trent. So, after a few meetings with the Kings and Trent, Trent and I went on our first date. In the beginning, we had fun, and soon we had been dating for a couple of years. It was just in the last year I had started to learn things about Trent that I didn’t like. First, Trent was a guy who very rarely, if ever, heard the word no in anything he did, and because of that, he was very controlling.
He sat there looking me in the eye, stunned that I would turn him down.
“Come on, Hope, don’t be like that. Just come over here. I promise, I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
“No, Trent. Please take me home.”
He stood up from the couch and whipped the remote across the room. “Take yourself home, Hope. The night’s over. I’m done with being teased to the point that I’m at now. We’re through, so take your cock-teasing ass home.”
“What do you mean ‘we’re through’?” I questioned.
He turned and glared at me. “I’m tired of trying to get my girlfriend of almost three years to sleep with me. I’ve been as patient as I can be, but as soon as I go to touch you, you stop me. I can’t take it anymore. We are over, done. I can’t be married to someone who won’t spread their legs for me, Hope. My parents expect grandchildren and I’ll be dammed if I don’t give them what they want. If I can’t with you then, well, I would just have to find someone else, and that is frowned upon in my family. So instead, I am breaking up with you. I want to keep my options open for now. If you change your mind, we will talk.” I sat there furious as hell as I watched him get up from the couch and stride down the hall like the cock-swinging asshole he really was. This was the side of Trent King that my parents had never seen.
I looked down at my watch; it was already close to eleven, which meant I would miss my curfew, and I’d already been told if I were late one more time, I would have to find another place to live. To have a curfew at twenty years old was a bit ridiculous, in my opinion, but my parents were very strict, and I still lived under their roof.
I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair, swung my purse over my shoulder, and left his apartment. Once I was out in the street, I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet. Only two dollars—that would never get me a cab ride home; I was thirty minutes away. I grabbed my cell and thought of whom I could call. Mom was out of town. The only person left to call was Dad or my friend Carly.
I quickly dialed Carly. On the fifth ring, she picked up. “Hello?” she said, clearing her sleepy voice.
“Carly, it’s me. Are you able to come pick me up and take me home? I’m stuck outside of Trent’s.”
“Really, Hope? You need to get a car. Why can’t he drive you home?”
“We’re over. We had a fight, Carly, please. I don’t want to have to call my dad. He’s angry enough with me for not getting into school, and now I’m going to miss my curfew.”
I could hear whispering through the phone and knew right away she wasn’t alone. I rolled my eyes and then I heard her voice. “Fine. But you owe me.”
I hung up the phone and sat down on the steps of Trent’s apartment building. Carly finally pulled up an hour later with Josh in tow. Figures. I had probably interrupted their “awesome sex”—as she put it—and they had to finish before they came to get me. I didn’t care, and as long as Dad was in bed when I got home, he probably wouldn’t even know I was late. I climbed into the back of her car, and she pulled away from the curb.
My prayers that Dad would be in bed were snuffed out when Carly pulled onto my street. I could see the house from the corner. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, and there were police cars lining the street and in the driveway. “Didn’t you call home?” Carly asked.
“Nope. I was hoping he would be in bed.”
“Looks like you might be in a little trouble, Hope,” Josh said, laughing from the front seat. “Looks like every police officer in the city is in your driveway.”
“Yeah thanks, Josh,” I whispered. Grabbing my purse and jacket, I climbed out of the back of the car and walked slowly up the front steps. I flinched when I heard my dad screaming from inside the house at whatever poor cop he had called.
I opened the door as quietly as I could and walked toward the kitchen. I stopped just inside the doorway. The room was filled with six officers and my father. My father was barking orders when he took notice of me. “What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” my father demanded.
All eyes turned and were on me. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry?” my father chuckled, but the enraged look on his face said it all. He glanced to the men who stood in the kitchen; their notebooks sat open in their hands, pens poised ready to take down notes. “I called Trent an hour ago. He said you had some sort of childish fit and you left. I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
That was just like Trent, lying to make me look bad. No doubt he would now claim that I no longer wanted to see him and that I was the one who broke it off with him. He would never tell his parents or mine the truth. “Daddy, I’m sorry...”
“Men, as you can see, my daughter is alive and well. You may return to your duties.” Being a high-powered CEO of one of the largest corporations in the city, he had a lot of pull. I watched as each officer walked from the kitchen, nodding their heads at me. I wanted to scream at them not to leave me alone with him, but I stood there, nodding back, and kept my mouth shut. Once they were gone, I turned toward my father. His angry eyes glared at me.
Did I dare tell him that the “amazing” man he was making me marry had told me to get out and find my own way home at nearly eleven at night, because I wouldn’t sleep with him yet, or did I just take the blame? “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“No. There is going to be no more of this. This is the last time, Hope. Your mother and I, we have tried to get through to you so many times. We have introduced you to one of the most prominent young men in the city, who stands to inherit his father’s multibillion-dollar corporation.”
“Oh, here we go,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes.
“You realize that you will be set for life, especially since you don’t care to go to school. I have basically handed you the world, Hope. This is how you thank us? I find myself at almost one in the morning with a kitchen full of officers, thinking the worst, and your mother, well, she is beside herself on her retreat. She is supposed to be relaxing and enjoying herself; instead, she’s spent the last hour in tears worrying about you. Now go to bed. We will talk about everything in the morning.”