Authors: Josie Leigh
Tags: #college age, #Travel, #dubious consent, #Romance, #drug use, #action, #new adult, #ptsd
Seven Days
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
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.
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 my open window, reminding me that my window was probably the most used entrance to our house. Unfortunately, it was never utilized by the actual occupants. It was these moments that I was glad that my window faced the giant block wall surrounding the trailer park where we lived, so I knew no one could see who made frequent trips in and out of my bedroom in the middle of the night.
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.