Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgments

  Breathe Me

  a Me novel

  JERI WILLIAMS

  Copyright 2015 © Jeri Williams

  All Rights Reserved

  This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state, and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give or sell this book to anyone else.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if the author uses one of these terms.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.jeriwilliamsauthor.com

  To everyone who feels they don’t fit.

  You do.

  Chapter 1

  Harley

  You know how you hear those stories about once abused kids growing up and overcoming the difficult life they had been dealt and becoming majorly successful, like FBI agents or lawyers or something cool like that, and never having any lingering problems?

  Well, this isn’t one of those stories. In fact, those stories are just that, stories with happily-ever-afters.

  My story has no happy ending, not even the kind you can get in a massage parlor, but I’m okay with that, because it’s my life. I’m going to die soon, I know this for a fact, but I’m calm about my impending death.

  Things never worked out for me early in life.

  I should have taken the hint when my mom told me I was the product of a one-night stand with some guy she didn’t know the name of and all she could remember was the beer she’d gotten faded on and the Harley he rode out on the next morning.

  It’s how I got my name, Harley. Better than Miller.

  I want the happy-ever-after they talk about in all the books and movies. The one where the girl finds love where she least expects it, and sure, it’s a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, she gets her happily-ever-after and all is right in her world in less than 300 pages or 245 minutes. This, I knew, was not my life, never would be my life, because I was me, and from the start, I was unwanted and unloved.

  So I was not surprised when I woke up and saw that the sun was on the other side of my closet door, signaling it was well past noon and I had overslept and was late for work.

  Shit.

  Fumbling on the floor for my phone, I saw that the battery had died, therefore making the alarm that I’d set useless. I had forgotten to charge it at my best friend Ember’s house before I came home. I was probably at least two hours late for work. Hopefully my boss would be late, too, and not notice. It was a slim chance, but I was optimistic.

  Hopping out of bed, I crept to my bedroom door and put my ear to it. If my mom was up, then it was unlikely I would make it to work without a scene. Hearing that the house was silent, I eased out of my room as quietly as I could and down the hall to the bathroom, locking myself inside. I rushed through my bathroom routine and got dressed for work in twenty minutes flat, my personal best, only to be stopped on my way out the door.

  Dammit, I was so close!

  “Where the fuck are you going?”

  She was the one person who made me feel this, this overwhelming fear. I calmed my breathing and answered without turning around. “Work, I’m late.”

  “Well, don’t let me stop you. You’re such a fuckup, you’re gonna lose that job anyway.”

  When she didn’t say any more, I took that as my cue to leave and rushed out the door, exhaling the breath that I was holding on the way out.

  Safe.

  Outside, I was safe.

  I lived only two blocks from Bookwormz, the bookstore where I’d been working for the past five years, and if I took the shortcut, I would shave five minutes off my walk, but I needed time to calm down, time for the fear to wear off. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact time my mother started hating me. I just knew that no matter what I did to change her mind, it never worked, so I stopped trying. When I started hating her, though, that I did remember. It was something I’d never forget, like how people would always remember where they were when the Berlin Wall came down or what they were doing when the first plane hit on 9/11. It was historic.

  I was seven and hungry and was in my room playing. She went to the kitchen to fix herself something to eat, and I followed, hoping she would notice me and fix me something, too. When she started heading out of the kitchen with a sandwich only for her, I had asked her for a bite. Next thing I knew, my head got slammed against the wall so hard my ears started ringing. All because I asked her for some food and apparently she was in a bad mood. Later, while in my room crying, I swore to myself that I would never love her again. You might think that this realization would have caused me to book it when I turned eighteen, or at least try to end it all myself, but I didn’t. I stayed because of one thing.

  Fear.

  Fear of not succeeding, fear of getting caught trying to leave, fear of never being loved, just fear.

  It had a viselike grip on me.

  Family-wise, it was just me and her, and she had never kept that many friends. She had always told me that without her I wouldn’t make it, that I would get murdered or raped living on my own, and that I was too stupid to be an adult. That shit sticks with you even when you know it’s not true. At least I had Ember. Ember was really my only friend. I knew her from working at the bookstore. She worked in the little café attached to Bookwormz, and we met one day while she was on break looking for a book on nail art.

  She lived with her boyfriend, Matt, and was always trying to get me to go out, but I would make up something to get out of it. Mostly she thought I was too busy with some random guy to go out with her, but that was only because I gave her that impression. The truth was just too subpar.

  “God, Har, you’re only twenty-three and already have a life to rival most porn stars,” she had said one day after I told her I’d had a threesome the night before.

  I wasn’t sure if she was indirectly calling me a ho or just making an observation. At this point, I doubted I could tell her the truth—that I was a virgin—and have her believe me. It was my fault, really; I provoked people to think that way about me. So I had replied to her in my normal manner:

  “Yeah, well, when you can do what I can do with my mouth, they all want a taste.”

  I probably went too far with that one, if her jaw on the floor was any indication. Of course, she laughed because she knew it wasn’t true, but I think she believed me just a little bit. The fact was, I w
as an adult with a curfew, and if it was broken…

  And forget her coming over. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Ember had never been to my house because I told her my mother was ill—I just left out the mentally part. Ember didn’t mind, though. Her life was blissfully perfect enough not to care, and that suited me fine.

  Reaching in my bag as I approached the store, I quickly pulled out a pill from my prescription bottle, bit it in half, and swallowed it dry. I normally didn’t take a pill during the day, as it mellowed me out so much to the point I’d eventually fall asleep, but since I was late to work and had no idea what I was walking into, I thought I would need it. I had gotten the antianxiety pills almost two years ago after a particularly bad night. It was hard to relax and sleep when every time you did, you were awoken with the memory of hands around your neck. After it began to affect my job, I had to do something. It wasn’t really anxiety, but fear.

  Fear masked as anxiety.

  Fear ruled me.

  I put my game face on and walked into the store like I had this. I waved hello to all the other employees and, passing through the café, I saw Ember and waved hello to her as well. She eyed me like she knew I was late and waved back. I figured if I pretended that I didn’t know I had to be at work two hours ago, I could get out of any type of punishment coming my way. And it totally worked. My boss let me slide with a “check your schedule next time,” and that was it. I breezed through the day being my normal, joking, sarcastic self. To everyone at work, I was the person to be around and the life of the party. Just not any party they would ever see. That was who I was to people who didn’t know me.

  That was the fake me.

  To them, I was Harley Reynolds, sarcastic party girl and a big fat slut, basically an all-around awesome person with not a care or problem in the world. God, people were so easily fooled, or I was just that good at pretending. I suppose I was just that good. I mean, I had been doing this a really long time, so I had it down to an art. No one would guess what my life was really like.

  A tough shell to crack, people would say, but in reality, I was as fragile as a raw egg. I would never tell anyone just how fragile, though. That would just give them ammunition to hurt me, and I had more than enough hurt in my life. I suppose you could compare me to one of those brainwashed kids you see on television or read about in books. My mother had been telling me since I could store and recall information that I was a loser and no one would ever love or want me. If you hear something so much for so long, you start to believe it, and not just a little bit. A lot.

  It wasn’t like I wasn’t smart enough to know that this was all about control. It was her way of ensuring that I didn’t leave. This may sound seriously fucked up, but I would have rather taken the physical abuse than the mental abuse. The bruises would fade over time, and yes, they would leave scars on my heart, but not as much as the mental abuse.

  That kind of abuse left scars all the way to my soul.

  You would also think that my mother was highly intelligent to be able to pull something like this off, but she didn’t finish high school. Hell, she didn’t even finish middle school, and it wasn’t because she got pregnant with me. This isn’t that story. My mother simply thought she was too “it” for school, so she left it behind, along with any chance of her having a decent job or career. Her reading level was still that of a fifth grader, and she had too much pride to get help, so that left me to read and clarify for her the things that she couldn’t. Once I realized that, first, my mother was a sadist in disguise and, second, an illiterate one at that, I vowed to be smarter. No way was I going to wind up like her. I excelled in all my classes and was in honor classes by high school. Once she saw that my academics were better than hers, she started more and more with the name-calling and verbal bashing. “Stupid” was her favorite word for me, and for some reason, it was the one thing that didn’t stick, the one thing I knew in my whacked albeit highly rational brain was a lie. I knew I was smart, at least smarter than her, and as long as she kept asking me to read some big word for her or tell her what it meant, my thoughts were validated.

  Still, I never left.

  “So did you have to blow Tom so he wouldn’t fire you?” Ember came up behind me as I was stocking a book I’d read over ten times.

  I looked at Ember, her dark brown hair framing her expectant green eyes, and thought about telling her what really went down, that I stayed up late reading, as usual, so that I could stay out of the way of my mother and her fist. But that would mean breaking my fake and letting her in. So instead, I subtly wiped the corners of my mouth and flashed a wicked grin.

  “You bitch, you didn’t?” she exclaimed in a hushed whisper, eyes going wide.

  God, did I make myself out to be that easy or that gross? Tom was at least fifty years old, short, and greasy looking. My fake had better taste than that.

  “No, I do have standards. Nice to know you think so highly of me, though,” I said, throwing her a look.

  “I would have carried your ass to the doctor to get your brain tested if you had because, eww.” She made a gagging motion.

  Not replying, I turned back around to continue stocking. She took that as her cue to keep talking.

  “So what did you do after you left last night, or should I say, who did you do?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. I had gone to her house for a little bit after work. She was always inviting me, and I’d figured it was time.

  “Ask Matt,” I replied, referring to her boyfriend. I often joked like this only because she knew it would never happen. First, he was so in love with her, he was shitting her name, and second, Matt was really not my type. Not that I had a type. I had never dated, but if I did have a type, the blond hair, blue-eyed surfer type wouldn’t be it. I could only hear “awesome” and “right on” so many times before I wanted to take a shish kebab stick and give myself a lobotomy. Having never had a date or any guy interested in me, I didn’t have a type. But I knew instinctively that guys like Matt were not it.

  “Ha, ha, someone ate a clown for breakfast,” she said sardonically.

  If I hadn’t heard her say this before, I would have been really lost, and even though she had these lame jokes and comebacks, she was still my best friend. My only friend. We joked around for a few more minutes, and when it was time for her to go back to work, she asked her usual, “Wanna hang out tonight?” and I replied with my usual, “I don’t know, maybe,” which she knew meant no.

  “But Matt’s older brother is in town, and we thought we could double-date, you know.” She looked at me hopefully.

  “I don’t know, Em. I hate setups.” I would’ve had to have actually been on a setup once to know this, but I figured it was something the cool me would say. Plus, if I did get set up with someone, I wouldn’t want it to be with a Matt Sr. Negative.

  “You’ll like this one, Har. He’s all sarcastically not funny, just like you.” I knew she said this with love, I think.

  “I’ll think about it, but no promises.” I only said this to get her off my ass.

  She had accepted this with a smile, probably thinking she had me. I would make something up before work ended, and that would be that. I couldn’t even imagine actually going out on a setup. I wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with a guy, other than what I had read in books, and that would get me only so far. I wasn’t even sure how you go about kissing someone. I laughed at this thought. If only Em knew…I was the biggest slut who had never even kissed a guy.

  All a part of faking normal.

  Chapter 2

  Deklan

  I glanced down at my phone ringing for the third time in the last hour and sent the call to voice mail, again. My brother never called me. Ever.

  As I lit up a cigarette, my phone rang again. Fuck. The bastard was doing this shit on purpose. He wouldn’t stop blowing my shit up like a needy bitch until he got me.

  “What?” I growled, answering before I said the hell with it and chucked it out the window of my car.
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  “It’s about time. I’ve been calling your ass for an hour.” My brother had the nerve to sound pissed. Fucker.

  “You got me. What?” I took a long draw, feeling the burn of the cigarette in the back of my throat. I fucking hated smoking, but I had to get my head right before I walked into the shithole I called a job. I will say one thing about this job, though: it had its perks.

  “You have to come home, Dek,” Matty said quickly.

  That wasn’t likely.

  “Why the fuck would I want to do that?” I laughed. I was sure he remembered my “fuck you” when I ducked out two years ago, not looking back once. I hated Dacula, the small town in Georgia that was home until I left for Atlanta. I hated that place and everyone in it, except for one person, and even she wasn’t enough to make me stay.

  “Because Mom’s sick,” he spat out. I knew he hated asking me to come home, fucking hated it like I hated his ass.

  Fuuuuck, if anything could get me back to that shithole of a town, it would be her.

  “How long?” I asked, flicking my half-smoked cig out the window. That should make me quit; after all, my mother was dying of lung cancer, but fuck it, I was never one to follow the standards. I knew she was sick when I left, but I still left and didn’t give a shit about anything at the time. Think what you want, but I had my reasons.

  “The doctors say not that much longer, a month if that.”

  Shit.

  I didn’t need this shit right now. Just when I thought I could bury that life behind me, this shit had to happen. I should’ve said fuck it, that it wasn’t my problem, and hung up. But I would’ve been a bigger bastard than the person I hated most in this world if I did.

  “I’ll be there by tomorrow night,” I said and hung up before he could say anything else to me. I was already dreading what was going to be a fucked-up family reunion.

  I got out of my car and walked over to Diesel, where I was a bartender and occasionally a bouncer. I hated the douche I worked for. He was the sleazy, greasy-deals-made-under-the-table type of asshole. I didn’t think twice about it when he offered me a job after I kicked his old bouncer’s ass for kicking my baby, my car. Apparently, his old bouncer, Stone, had been the best fighter he’d ever seen, and I choked his ass out in two minutes flat. The pay was good and I had shit, so I took it.