Temptations - The Complete Series Read online

  My heart started pounding when he was talking so casually about going to prison. I opened my mouth to say something to him about that but he seemed to know what I wanted to talk about, because he gently put his hand over my mouth. “No talking. Not right now. There will be plenty of time to talk and to cry and to do whatever it is that we need to do before I go away. But right now, that’s not what I want to do. Right now, I just want to concentrate on you and me and that beautiful bed of yours. That very expensive bed of yours,” he added with a smile.

  At that, he picked me up in his very strong arms and carried me into the bedroom. He laid me down gently on the bed, and then crawled in next to me. “Now Serena, tell me a bit more about your fantasies and your past -- your sexual past.” He gently put his finger on one of my many faint scars. “Your skin is fascinating. It’s like a map of all that you’ve gone through. Tell me what you like and why you like it.”

  I felt shy, but, at the same time, I had gotten to know Slade well enough to know that he wasn’t going to judge me. “I used to go to clubs. Underground clubs. Before I got therapy, I was carrying around a lot of pain. A lot of baggage and a lot of shame. I had no idea why. What I did know was that pain felt right to me. It always did.”

  “Right, in what way?”

  “Right in the way that nothing else ever did. You have to understand, I never felt that I fit in with my family. They’re all so aggressively normal. Or at least they were, before my mom was killed. But yeah, my brother Mark is studying marine biology here in San Diego, at UCSD. Christopher is a struggling musician. Amy is married to a guy who is on the fishing boat with my dad. And Luke is a successful artist. I don’t think that any of them have serious problems except Christopher, and the only reason why Chris has problems is because he was there when my mother was killed. As you remember, she literally gave her life for him. That’s a heavy burden for anyone to have to carry around.”

  Slade was looking at me, penetrating me with his beautiful green eyes. He put his finger on my forearm and traced along the edge of it, all the way to my shoulder. As he touched me, I felt the familiar heat as his fingers trailed the length of my arm. I closed my eyes, wanting to capture this feeling for all eternity. Soon, I might not have this in my life on a regular basis anymore, and I couldn’t even begin to fathom what that was going to be like.

  Stop, Serena. You’re never going to find out what that is going to be like, because Slade isn’t going to prison. He’s not going to prison. You’re going to make sure of it.

  He put his hand in my hair and lightly kissed my forehead. “Okay, so, you felt like you didn’t fit in. Is it because of your special abilities?”

  I smiled, knowing that he didn’t really believe in these special abilities. “Yes. I think that it started when I was very little, and I always saw people around me. I never quite understood that, because these people wouldn’t stay around me. They would kind of go in and out of wherever I was. When I got a bit older, and could actually communicate with these souls, they told me things. One of the things that one of the ghosts told me was that he had been searching for years to find someone who would communicate with him, and he finally found me. He told me that he wouldn’t tell the others that I could see him, but that word was soon going to get around, and I was going to be bombarded with messages.”

  Slade tried hard to not make a disbelieving face, but it didn’t quite work. His expression was clearly one of somebody who was “calling bullshit.” I was used to that though, so it didn’t really faze me. He didn’t say anything to me, though. His expression said it all.

  Nevertheless, I had to keep telling him my story. “The ghosts weren’t the only thing that was bothering me during this time. I didn’t know this until much, much later, but when I was a little girl, I was molested by my babysitter. I was only a one-year-old; so of course, I didn’t know what was happening. And I didn’t know anything about this, either, until I saw a hypnotherapist about why I was so dysfunctional. I mean, I knew part of the reason why, but I didn’t know exactly why until I was hypnotized.”

  Slade wasn’t disbelieving of this part of the story, and I was grateful for that. His expression turned from skeptical to pure grief as he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He closed his eyes and I did as well. I felt the emotions from him, that of sadness and empathy, and I remembered, anew, why I was in love with him. For all his bluster, he was really a kind soul underneath it all.

  “That must have been so difficult,” he said. “I can’t even imagine what that felt like to find that out. How violated you must have felt.”

  “Violated is a good word,” I said with a nod. “And then, when I was a teenager…” I shook my head, trying so hard to get that incident out of my mind. It came so closely to when my mother was murdered, too. “I was a mess. I got DUIs, two of them in a span of one year, and I wrecked the car and tried to blame it on the passenger because I was drunk at that time, too. The prosecutor had threatened me, and had told me that if I got another DUI, it was going to be charged as a felony, and I was going to do prison time. So, I tried to make my boyfriend at the time take the blame for that accident.”

  I felt ashamed about that incident, and all the other things that I did during this period of wild rebellion. I felt even more ashamed about the fact that I was such a shit to everyone in my life after my mother died. I abandoned them all, because I felt so emotionally fragile that I couldn’t deal with their grief, on top of my own.

  But what happened to me right before my mother was killed was another matter entirely.

  I felt my lungs constrict, which was the first sign of a panic attack. I suffered through panic attacks almost every day for years after my mother was killed and I was raped. Actually, the rape occurred right before she was killed, so I guess I should say that I suffered from panic attacks for years after I was raped and my mother was killed.

  There were tears coming to my eyes, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Slade was looking increasingly concerned, so he got up to get me a glass of water. “I’m sorry,” I managed to croak out. “I get like this, where I can’t breathe.” I took a sip of water.

  “Is there anything else I can get for you?” he asked me, his eyes filled with concern.

  I swallowed hard. “In the hall closet, I have a bunch of inhalers. If you could bring me one, that would be a lifesaver.”

  At that, he dashed to the hall closet and, a few minutes later, he had an inhaler in his hand. I sucked on it, feeling the air expanding my lungs, and I felt comforted.

  He put his hand on my back and rubbed. “What’s happening?”

  I shook my head. “I still can’t talk about this without wanting to die. But there was a boy in school, his name is Derek. He was the one that all the girls wanted, the big man on campus. And he pursued me. Here was this jock, this popular guy who was the one who had girls dripping off his arm everywhere he went, and he started to ask me out.”

  Slade looked perplexed, and I could also feel his anger, which was clearly directed toward Derek and not to me. I was happy about that, because I was so tired of feeling like people were blaming me for Derek’s attack.

  “So, anyhow, I wasn’t quite in his social status. In fact, I hung out with the goth kids. I was dying my hair black and wearing black clothing every single day. Black dresses with combat boots and black lipstick and eyeliner. They were a good group though, because they weren’t judgmental, and most of the kids in my group got decent grades. We didn’t stay out of trouble though, because many of my friends ended up in rehab for drugs and alcohol. But I certainly wasn’t the kind of woman that Derek would date. He pretty much stayed with the cheerleaders and other popular girls.”

  Slade furrowed his brow, waiting for the rest of the story.

  I felt my lungs constricting again, so I sucked on the inhaler again, and I immediately felt better. “So, yeah, this Derek guy asked me out repeatedly, but I never went. I always thought that maybe he was put up to it, so that when he
took me out, there would be some dirty trick played on me, like with Carrie. That would make sense too, because there were always rumors going around that I was special like Carrie. Not that I could move things with my mind and set things on fire just by thinking about them, but that I had special abilities. I knew that those popular boys and girls hated anyone who didn’t conform to their rigid views on who is acceptable, and I never felt like I was acceptable.”

  “But you finally went out with him?” Slade asked me.

  “Not really, no. I was at a party one night, and he was there, too. He wouldn’t leave me alone. I was trying to talk to people there, people that I felt comfortable with, but Derek was always there, everywhere I was. And I got pretty drunk that night too.”

  I started to visibly shake and I attempted to bring the glass of water to my lips, but I couldn’t. My hand was shaking too much, so I ended up spilling water on my shirt. Slade gently took the glass of water from my hand and put it up to my lips. I took a sip and then turned my head.

  I was going to get through this, dammit. I was going to finally tell Slade what the source of my pain was. How deeply rooted it was. There was a part of me that was hoping that if I told him my story, and he knew how much I had suffered in my life, he would change his mind about his guilty plea. How would he be able to leave me when he knows how devastated I was going to be, and how much I was going to be suffering? How could he leave when he knew that my life was painful, and he was just going to be adding to it?

  Those thoughts felt manipulative though, so I tried to shake them off.

  “Go on,” he whispered. He was still stroking my arm, trying to let me know that he was there for me. I closed my eyes, feeling comforted by his touch. I tried to concentrate on how he was making me feel, as opposed to concentrating on the memories that were flooding my brain, but it was very difficult.

  “There were some woods around the house that was having the party. You have to remember, I grew up in a fairly rural area. I always tell people that I’m from Portland, Maine, but my dad’s house is part of a small, wooded area that is considered to be unincorporated for the most part. Our town was so small that we had a courthouse in a large double-wide trailert hat was very cramped.”

  I was stalling because I didn’t want to talk about what Derek did to me. I really didn’t want to talk about the aftermath. Yet, I felt that I had to.

  My heart pounding, I put my hand on Slade’s outstretched one, and he gripped it tightly. I’m right here, he was saying with his eyes and his gestures. I’ll always be here.

  Liar! He wasn’t always going to be there for me, and a part of me hated him for this.

  I took a deep breath and another sip of the water that Slade had given me, and went on with my story. “There were woods around this house. Woods that I knew. These woods were where I used to go whenever I was feeling out of sorts. This meant that I was out there a lot. Sometimes I met some of my friends out there and we’d smoke pot or drink or whatever. Most of the time though, I just went out there on my own. I could communicate with the animals sometimes, and I never felt like I was actually alone. I always felt such a bond with animals and nature, and being out in the woods felt like home for me. Especially during that time of my life.”

  Slade’s lips curled slightly in a smile. “I can picture that about you. Communicating with the animals. You’re so good with your dogs. I swear that they know what you’re thinking, and you feel the same way about them.”

  “I do. I do. I’ve always felt at one with animals, which is why I decided, early on, not to eat them.” I smiled, too. “Despite what that bitch Charlotte said.” I remembered that Charlotte had accused me of being a vegan just because it was trendy, and that rankled. She didn’t know me. She didn’t know the first thing about me.

  Slade looked at the wall. He appeared to be consumed with some kind of memory. After a little while though, he just shook his head and returned his gaze to me. “Charlotte is a bitch, the worst kind,” he said. “And you don’t know the half of it. Anyhow, please Serena, go on with your story.”

  I did know the half of it. I knew how awful Charlotte really was. After all, she was blackmailing him to take responsibility for a murder she orchestrated. How much worse could she possibly be?

  I looked at Slade and he appeared to be listening for the rest of the story, so I felt that I had to finish. It wouldn’t be right to just leave him hanging.

  “So, yeah, I was at this party, and Derek was sticking around me like glue. I eventually couldn’t take it anymore so I went out into the woods. I had a joint and I was going to smoke it. The joint wasn’t welcome at that party though, so that was one of the reasons why I left. The other reason was that I wasn’t feeling comfortable. Some of my friends were there, but I felt like I couldn’t really talk to them that much because Derek was always hanging around.”

  Slade smiled. “You were a typical teenager, leaving a party to get high. Most of us experienced that when we were younger.”

  “Yes.” I took a breath and let it out slowly. “So, I got out into the woods, and I lit up the joint. And I heard a voice behind me. It was Derek, coming out to tell me that I had to share with him, or else he would report me to the cops when I left the party. He would report that I was driving impaired. Well, even though it was a weak threat, I already had two DUIs, and I certainly couldn’t afford a third. I let him share the joint with me.”

  Another deep breath. “At first, everything was fine. We just shared the joint. Then he started asking me about why I kept turning him down. I told him the truth – that I felt he was only asking me out because he wanted to play some kind of a cruel joke on me. I told him that there was no other reason why he would be so interested in a girl like me. I didn’t have a ton of self-esteem, but that wasn’t the main reason why I thought that he couldn’t really like me. I also thought that he couldn’t like me because I was so different from him. He was the popular football player who didn’t get the best grades, and I was the goth nerd who got straight As in my AP and college courses.”

  “You were a nerd?” Slade teased. “I never would have thought that about you.”

  “Yes, I was a nerd. I mean, I was a nerd in the sense that I did well in school and studied a lot. But I also listened to emo and punk bands, so my love for Muse, Pussy Riot and Death Cab for Cutie kinda made me not such a nerd. I guess I was a hybrid. I always did well in chess, too.”

  Slade’s face brightened. “Chess. You never told me that. We need to play.”

  I smiled, and there was a part of me that hoped that Slade would allow me to drop the rest of the story. That maybe he would tell me that I didn’t have to continue on with the story, and maybe we could just play a game of chess. After we ravished each other, of course. I could see in his eyes that he was still very interested in the two of us getting naked together. But I could also see that he was interested, very interested, in knowing what happened to me out in those woods.

  “Seriously,” he said quietly. “What happened out in those woods? I hope that you don’t mind telling me.”

  I closed my eyes, feeling how it was for me and Derek. I felt his hands on my breasts and I felt his hot breath on my neck. I felt him overpowering me, and slapping me when I didn’t want to comply. I tried hard not to get too caught up in these awful feelings, but I felt them consume me, bring me down. I felt the pain of him taking me, because I was a virgin at the time. I saw the blood that came out of me, and I saw me lying on the ground after he had already buttoned up his pants and high-tailed it out of there. He just left me there after he was through with me, as if I was a piece of trash. Which was what he made me feel like anyhow.

  After he was through with me, I ended up spending the night in those woods. I literally couldn’t get up. All around me, I heard the coyotes chortling and singing, I heard the owls hooting, and crickets and frogs everywhere. It was a veritable symphony, and I remember, clearly wishing that I could transform into one of those animals. I wanted des
perately to be some kind of a shifter, so that I could go and find Derek and kill him savagely, and actually get away with it.

  Slade had told me, on more than one occasion, that you don’t know what you’re capable of until you are put into a situation, and I knew what he was talking about. There was nobody that I wanted to slowly kill more than Derek that night or in the weeks afterwards. Then, when I started bleeding profusely in gym class, with clots being passed, I knew that something was wrong. The bleeding continued for the entire week, as heavily as it was that first day, until one day, the toilet was completely filled with red. I was terrified, not knowing what was going on, until I got on the Internet and looked it up. I saw that I was possibly having a miscarriage, in fact that was what was probably happening, and I felt even more violated. I ended up in the hospital, where the miscarriage was confirmed.

  I mourned the loss of my innocence as much as I mourned the loss of this child, whoever he or she was to be. I lit candles both for my baby and my mother for an entire year. When I moved out and left the family, choosing to stay at the home of one of my friend’s until I got into college, I lit those candles every single night. Nobody really understood it, but they didn’t really question it either. After all, I was a daughter who was grieving for her mother. That much was known. What nobody knew was that there was a secret shame as well, that of getting knocked up through a brutal rape, and then losing that baby in the toilet of the gym.

  Sometimes I had tried to communicate with that spirit of my lost child, but, for some odd reason, I was never able to connect with her. That made me feel even worse because I wanted to know that the spirit was at peace. I didn’t necessarily know how that spirit would find peace, considering the way that this baby was conceived, but I prayed every night that she would.