AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I was the one being off, and she said that I shouldn’t think of it that way. “After what he did to you, Amber, he is going to pay for it.” It was just that simple as far as I was concerned. I knew that I wasn’t letting go and she wanted to do something else, but I didn’t care.
“It is over, and I just want to move forward. We don’t have to live in the past.”
I scoffed and looked at her like she was crazy. I wondered if she had taken some pill or something to make her act this way. She was acting like she had nothing to say about it and it all just happened to her. Amber didn’t have to accept anything. People could be put in jail, and justice could be found in my hands. There were many options of how we could handle it, but I never thought that doing nothing was one of them.
“Come on, Frank, I just want to see how you are. Come in. We will have some coffee, I just made some fresh. I am home now, everything is fine.”
It wasn’t, I could tell that it would likely never be “fine” again. What did that word even mean? I was filled with self-loathing that I really couldn’t swallow. It was too much. I had not been able to keep her safe and I had no clue how many horrible things happened to her. I could see the marks, and I knew that it was only a small part of her arms and face that was showing. There were marks on both.
“What has been done to you?” It was likely not what I wanted to say when I walked in her house, but her attitude was so different than what I remembered, that spark was gone.
She looked at me and asked if I really wanted to know. It felt like a warning more than anything else and I backed out, afraid to say that I did. Maybe it was better if I didn’t know, though my mind had been coming up with scenarios to fill in my wonder.
“I just want things to be as they were.” I stopped short of specifically what was missing, the easiness between us. I was afraid to touch her, because I could easily touch the wrong spot. I didn’t know what had happened to her, so I had no idea how to act. I wanted to hold her, kiss her, be inside of her like I had been not too many days ago. That was what I wanted, but now I was stuck on pause, trying to understand what happened to her.
“I don’t know if they will ever be like that again, Baron.”
It felt wrong to hear my name out of her mouth. I was Frank to her, that’s what I was used to and anything other than that was confusing on so many levels.
I grabbed her up and pulled her in. She winced for a second and I almost pulled away, but instead I asked her if I could kiss her. Amber wanted to know why I was asking. I wanted to tell her that since we’d seen each other, I wasn’t sure of anything. I knew that much had happened and it was all my fault.
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
“I want you to kiss me like you did before, Frank. You never asked me before.”
I could see her point, but damn it was hard. I knew that there was something weird between us and I likely had started it, but there was no going back now. I had spent several months in this relationship. I pulled her close and leaned in to kiss her. She wanted the kiss, and her response was one that made me smile inside. Amber was exactly what I needed in some ways. I just needed some fun it would appear, because everything changed when I was with her. It was easier not to ask, when she told me to.
When I pulled away from her, those beautiful eyes of hers were dilated and I didn’t need to ask what was on her mind. I didn’t know how we could always be so turned on, no matter what was going on. It was the one constant and while it revved me up at some of the most inopportune times, I still leaned into it.
One kiss turned into me carrying her off to the bedroom and kissing her for what felt like hours. I was interested in getting her clothes off and burying myself deep inside of her. Amber was a lot of things, but she wasn’t patient. She was taking them off with me, helping me pull the shirt over her head, eager to get to a place where the two of us were intimate together.
I pulled up and was about to go to her pants, when I saw all of the bruising on her. It was everywhere and every single one of them was a graphic way that she was hurt. I could read it like a police report, and I tried to close my eyes to it. The last thing I needed was to think about it. I was supposed to let bygones be bygones and it felt impossible.
“What?” By the tone of her voice, the sigh in her words, she knew what. It was horrible. She was cut up and bruised, Tony had done a number on her, and it enraged me. I was no longer horny, hell I didn’t want to do anything but cover her up and hold her in my arms, never letting her out of my sight again. That was all I wanted to do and knowing that he was somehow out of it right now, was crap. He needed to go to jail, it was just that simple.
“I’m sorry, Amber, I can’t. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She told me that if I didn’t want to hurt her, then I needed to kiss her right then and shut up. I wish I could do that. I wish I could pretend like she wasn’t beat all to hell. It seemed to matter, I mean really matter, and there was a moment where I knew that I had to walk away.
Walking away from a woman in the middle of sex was practically unheard of. She was stunned, that’s the only way there was to describe it. She wasn’t happy with me at all, and Amber yelled something about if I left now, I wasn’t supposed to ever come back. That was the last thing that she said to me as I walked out. I hoped that she was just upset. I couldn’t do it, not when she was like that, and I had no idea what happened to her.
It wasn’t just that either, it was my own shame that came across suffocatingly. I didn’t know what to think and the more I tried to figure it out, the less likely I was going to be able to do it. I had failed Amber, and all of this had happened because of me. She had been taken by Jeff, threatened to be killed and when I had saved her, I saw the look of relief in her eyes. It had been a great moment, but then everything had gone to hell because Tony had taken her. I wished that I could take back everything that she lived through and endured. I wanted to know yet didn’t. I couldn’t face her and walking away from her might be the worst thing I’d ever done.
I looked back to her house, wishing I could go back and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to. It killed me, it really did, the push and pull. What had I done? Was that it? Would she have nothing to do with me now?
Who could blame her if she didn’t want to? Sadly, I couldn’t.
23
Amber
The rejection from Frank was probably the hardest thing that I had to deal with. It took me a while to get myself together and it was only when my parents popped up worried about me that I even started going in the right direction. I never knew what was going to happen once he left, but now I knew I would never see him again.
I hadn’t necessarily accepted that, but I was on the way to some form of acceptance. I wanted nothing more than to forget about Frank or Baron or whatever his name was. I could still see the look that he’d given me, like I was hideous, and he couldn’t even look at me. It was a mess and before I could do much more than cry with his reaction, I tried to move on.
My mom dragged me back home and I stayed with them for a while. Dad swore that he would kill whoever had upset me, but I didn’t have it in me to tell him who that was. He had met Frank, he liked him, and he would take it personally. I fantasized about telling him and then he could beat Frank to a pulp. That would be better. That would make it so that I was able to handle what came next. Right now, it was hard to figure that out at all. What came next was not going to be good.
When I was able to go out and about without crying, I realized that other things had changed. My boobs were bigger and sore. My bra didn’t fit, and I was starving all the time. I really didn’t think anything of it, didn’t take it as I was pregnant, because I didn’t have any of the morning sickness. I felt great.
