Breathe Me (A 'Me' Novel) Read online

  “You damn right you’re sorry, and you will probably do it again. You’re a fuckup,” she spit out. “How do you expect someone to want you if you can’t even get dinner to the table without fucking it up?”

  I focused on the way her face morphed into this monster who didn’t love me and got her rocks off by making me cry. But she was all I had, my monster who, when I was seven, thought it was funny to hold my hand over a hot burner and dared me to let my arm get tired.

  I didn’t say anything. It was better that way. When she turned back to the TV, I knew that was my cue to leave, so I did. Escaping to my room, I pulled out my phone and saw a text from Ember telling me where they were going later and that Matt Sr. was supposed to stop by because it was “your kind of place,” which meant it was a bar. I hit her with a vague “maybe” and went to shower, letting the hot water hit my back to release some of the tense muscles. They will fade. They will fade, I kept repeating to myself while I gingerly washed my back and body.

  Once back in my room, I put on some yoga pants and a tank top and grabbed my book from this morning. I texted Ember and told her that I was busy with some guy named Mic and would see her later, to which she responded with an “eye roll” and that I should stop by the bar when I was done, because they would be out late. I put on my headphones and shuffled my songs, even though the thought of having my hearing blocked terrified me. Music was my escape just as much as books. I set the volume to low—I needed to hear if she came in—grabbed one of my favorite books, then lost myself in a world I wished I belonged to.

  I got lost in reading about some girl who was getting a foot massage by her suitor after having professed their love to each other in so many words, and I started to daydream about what that would be like. What would it be like to be in love with someone so much, and him with me, that something as simple as a foot massage brought me pleasure? I loved the part in books where the girl realizes that she can’t breathe without the guy and he secretly feels the same way and would do anything to be with her.

  That was what I wanted, what I craved.

  Sadly, that would never happen for me.

  This was who I really was, and there was no fairytale written for me.

  My headphones were yanked from my ears with such force they unplugged from the phone, and the phone flew out of my reach. I could hear the eerily accurate lyrics of “Nothing But the Water” in the background as I looked up to see my mother standing there fuming.

  I was so wrapped up in my daydream that I hadn’t heard her come into my room. I could already tell this was not going to end well.

  “I’ve been calling your lazy ass for over ten minutes,” she seethed.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” I jumped up from the bed. Apologizing. I was always apologizing.

  “Obviously. You and these damn books—are they teaching you how to find a man?” she mocked.

  I didn’t reply.

  She laughed humorlessly. “Of course not. You couldn’t get one even if you offered to blow them. Look at you.” She eyed me distastefully, and I cringed. I knew what she saw, what I was or wasn’t. I wasn’t loveable material; she made sure of it. This was the part I hated the most. She told me this almost every day. I knew it wasn’t true, but deep down…

  “It’s these fucking books. That’s why you can’t do shit right. I’ve been hungry, and you haven’t gotten up to cook or see if I’m hungry. You’re so selfish.” She started looking around my room, picking up random books, and leafing through them.

  If you experience something so much, you kind of have this sixth sense about what is going to happen, and in that moment, I swear I knew, knew something was going to happen. And I was helpless to do anything about it.

  Helpless and fearful.

  “Maybe if you had less distractions then you would be able to do your job.” And with that, she began gathering up every book she could and threw them into the hall. I frantically tried to grab them from her, but she pushed me so hard I fell backward onto the bed, and the look she gave me promised me more if I got up. I watched her gather up all the books she could see—my escapes—and toss them like they were nothing out of my room.

  She then gathered them all up and went into the bathroom, laughing hysterically. Sick bitch.

  I knew before I smelled the smoke what she was going to do. I guess it was that sixth-sense thing, but I knew she would ensure that I would never have those books again unless I rebought them. She burned them. All my favorite words and people that I had come to love were burning.

  I hated her even more in that minute.

  She loved every minute of it.

  The smell of the flames was too much to bear. It felt like all my best friends, my lovers, my teachers were leaving me. I slammed and locked my bedroom door and grabbed the rest of my books and hid them under a floorboard beneath my bed, then I grabbed my phone, earbuds, and bag and climbed out my bedroom window and left her laughing, left my pain.

  I wasn’t worried. She wouldn’t come after me. She’d gotten what she wanted tonight—a little more of me breaking. Each time she punished me for some small infraction, it was breaking me, and it was her drug. She lived to break me, and she was winning. Every time she did something to me, something that no one who loved someone, truly loved them, would do, I skipped taking a pill. I was hoarding them, keeping them separate from the others because those…those pills could help me escape one day.

  From her, from this world.

  From everything.

  I’d be free.

  Earbuds in, I started walking in the direction of Bookwormz—because really I had nowhere else to go—and started formulating a plan. I knew I was weak to even have a plan in place. I knew that death was not the answer. I’d read enough books to know that, I had. But the thing was, not one of those instances in the books were my instances. Not one of those books had my story.

  Not one of those books had someone in them who had no one.

  No one, I had no one.

  And when you had no one, you were no one and no one would miss you.

  If I hid money and worked more, I could replace the books in two or three months and maybe keep them at work or hide them somewhere in the house. I had to have them; they were the only things in my life that were constant. Books, words, they never changed. I didn’t need to pretend for them; they just were.

  As I pulled open the door to ’wormz, I nodded to the few other employees I knew and made my way to the back of the store, where there was a small reading area next to the café. I needed to escape into a world where mothers loved their daughters and fear ruled no one. A world where the bogeyman and the person who is supposed to chase him away aren’t one and the same.

  “Harley.” A voice interrupted my ramped thoughts.

  Well shit, is he stalking me? I thought frantically as I stopped short and took in Mr. Dystopian Biker sitting on the small two-seater couch. He had his jacket off and thrown next to him with one leg crossed ankle-over-knee, making his dark jeans bunch up and show off his black biker boots. His shirt was the tight kind, showing off his muscular arms and the start of a tattoo peeking out from the left sleeve. It was like his muscles were suffocating in the shirt with the way they were trying to escape the sleeve.

  “Are you following me?” I asked, trying to hide my obvious perusal of his body.

  “You found me. I should be saying the same thing to you.” His voice was smooth and velvety, marked with a hint of amusement. He could’ve said the world was ending and I would have been his, hypnotized, done for.

  “I didn’t find you. I work here,” I pointed out.

  He took in my yoga pants and tank top and smirked. “True, but you don’t look like you’re working right now.”

  Up until earlier this morning, I had never had someone look at me so openly and raw. It did things to me, both frightened me and warmed me—two feelings that I had never experienced together but instantly loved. It felt right. Fear, I knew; I lived it every da
y. But this, this was new, and new scared the shit out of me. Trying not to let him know how much he affected me, I walked over and took a seat next to him. He followed my movement, his eyes never leaving my face. The intensity of his stare caused me to blush a little. He let out a small chuckle, and I was sure he noticed my flushed cheeks.

  “I came to read,” I said, trying and failing not to gawk at his face. I mean, I’d read about perfection and seen the guys in magazines, and they still had nothing on this man, who in one day had me feeling things that I thought I would never get the chance to feel.

  “You came to work when you’re off to read?” he asked skeptically. “Why can’t you read at home?”

  His question slapped me back to reality so fast it almost gave me whiplash. What would a person like him think if he knew the real me, the real reason I came here tonight? I’d read enough books to know that guys like him, who looked like him, never fell for the wrecked girl who didn’t love herself enough to be herself. No, guys like him fell for the slightly overachiever type A personality girls, someone who I was really good at pretending to be, except around him.

  “I don’t have many books at home,” I answered truthfully, swallowing back the pain of the memory from not even an hour ago. My books.

  “Really?” he asked, his thumb grazing the most perfect set of lips I had ever seen. “I would have thought you’d have books all over your place, next to your bed, in your living room, stacks just waiting to be read or reread again.”

  How the hell would he know that if I had my own home, that was exactly what it would be like? Shelves of my favorite books worn from use. My friends.

  “Yeah, well, why are you here? Can’t you read at home?” I challenged.

  “I get such a great view here,” he said with an I-could-give-him-my-undying-love smile while his eyes focused on my semi-covered breasts, and all of a sudden my tank top wasn’t big enough and not small enough all at the same time. I felt the heat sting my cheeks and my nipples perk up at the notion that they were getting attention. Bitches.

  He obviously noticed, too, because he suddenly shifted in his seat, relaxing both legs on the floor, and in doing so, his knee brushed against my leg slightly. He cleared his throat.

  In that moment, I felt every bit as much of the person I pretended to be, the fearless vixen who didn’t give a crap about anything. I have never wanted to be that person as much as I did right now. She would have said something sultry and been on her way back to this guy’s house to rock his world. And I wanted to. I wanted to do all the things I read about and more with this man.

  I needed to leave. This was not my reality. He probably thought he was the hot guy, because let’s face it, he was the kind of guy who knew he was every woman’s fantasy and he was going to get some bookstore ass.

  Thank god for the convenient text message that saved me from having to reply or even formulate a thought after that comment of his. Pulling my phone out, I saw it was a text message from Ember telling me they were down the street at Wake, a bar, and she was wondering if I was done with my “entertainment.” Grateful for an excuse to end our conversation, I stood to leave just as he did. He must’ve been almost 6'3", and as he loomed over me, my lungs constricted. He was so close he had to be breathing the same air as me. My breathing became rapid under his stare and proximity, and the way he didn’t bother to move, it was like he enjoyed invading my bubble. It was highly intoxicating and addicting. I wanted more.

  “I have to go,” I stammered. Mush, the man turned me into mush. I turned to leave, and he grabbed me by the arm.

  “What happened to your back?” he asked, his eyes turning dark.

  Shit, I hadn’t realized my tank top had ridden up. I was always so careful about not showing my bruises. Long-sleeve shirts and jeans made up most of my wardrobe, with a few less-conservative pieces here and there for when I was bruise-free. I hadn’t thought about any of that when I left and came here. My mind frantically tried to make up something. Funny that I couldn’t now, when my whole life was made up. I started to panic, and it showed as I ripped my arm from his grip and backed away.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go.” I recognized the feeling, the tightening in my chest, my breathing becoming swallowed. Fear, it was riding me hard, and I had to get away from him before I lost my shit. I barely made it out of the store, not bothering to pay attention to what he was saying as I headed out the door. The quicker I got away from him and his questions, the better. I was not practiced enough to cover up my bruises with some elaborate lie. I never had to, and until tonight, I never wanted to.

  Chapter 7

  Harley

  Outside the bookstore, I could breathe and think a little better, and I realized how batshit crazy I must have appeared to him. Who does that? Me, apparently. I started walking, not wanting to go home or meet up with Ember, so I just walked. It wasn’t until I was almost to Patty P’s that I heard a deep rumble of a car that I just knew, knew belonged to a very sexy James Dean lookalike with gray eyes.

  “Hey, you left your phone back there,” he called through the passenger window. I stopped and looked over at him sure as shit waving my phone like it was some sort of white flag of surrender. Shit, this was going to be awkward.

  He pulled the car to a stop so that I could grab the phone from him.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. Where you headed? Can I give you a lift?”

  “Why would I get in a car with you? You could be a serial killer.” I immediately slapped my hand over my mouth. Did I just say that out loud? I just called him a serial killer, smooth.

  “If I was, I probably would have taken you the first night I saw you.” He smirked, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the sexiest thing I had ever seen.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

  “Been called worse, babe. Don’t sweat it.” He got out and leaned against his car, watching as I fidgeted with my cellphone as I tried to figure out something to say. No one had ever called me “babe” before.

  “Do you want a ride?” He arched an eyebrow. The double meaning wasn’t lost on me.

  “What?” I felt the heat sting my cheeks again.

  “Do you want a ride someplace? It’s late, and this part of town isn’t safe. Anything could happen to you.”

  It’s nothing that won’t happen to me at home, I thought. Sometimes I thought that it would just be better to live on the streets. I thought anything would be better than living at home, but I was still not entirely convinced I was right.

  “No, thank you, I’ll be fine.” I started walking down the street. He followed. “You’re just going to leave your car?” I eyed it. The neighborhood wasn’t known for robberies, but he had a nice car, and I didn’t trust people.

  “It’s good. No one will fuck with her.” He kept pace with me, not seeming to have a care in the world.

  “It’s a woman, of course.” All guys like him dubbed their car a “she.” Typical.

  “I wouldn’t want to ride anything else.” He glanced my way, gauging my reaction, then smiled his full he-could-take-my-virginity smile at me.

  I didn’t know where I was walking, but we walked in silence for a while, neither one of us daring to speak. I had already acted highly suspect and called him a murderer, so I didn’t want to risk saying any more embarrassing things. He finally broke the silence by touching my arm, lightly stopping me.

  “Babe, are we walking a hole in my boots because you think I am a killer and you don’t want me to see where you live?”

  “I’m sorry…for keeping you,” I said, feeling guilty. He was just being nice, and I was keeping him from whatever or whomever he would be doing now instead of walking the slightly awkward bookstore girl home.

  “You’re not. You just look…” He stared at me, and I swore he could see it all in that stare. The sadness I had, the fear, the lies I hid behind, everything. His hand slowly came up and pushed a stray hair that I hadn’t even notice
d had come loose behind my ear, his thumb making brief contact with my cheek. In that small, intimate touch, I felt a spark. A tingle that started at the point of contact and shot down my entire body, all the way to my toes. I couldn’t move. I stood there, paralyzed, staring at him like an idiot. Again. Breathe, you moron!

  “Breathe, you moron!” Wait, was that last one out loud?

  “The fuck?” he said, his voice laced with a hint of laughter.

  “I’m a little light-headed,” I lied. Why couldn’t I say things coherently like I did with everyone else?

  He cupped the sides of my face gently and stared into my eyes. Well shit, now I really was light-headed.

  “Is that why? You sure it’s nothing else?” he muttered.

  “Nope. That’s…eh…that’s all.” Yeah, even I wasn’t convinced by how I sounded. And his stare, it stripped me bare, and my tank top and yoga pants suddenly became unbearable to wear. His eyes strayed to my cheek, and I was sure he noticed me blushing.

  He leaned in closer so I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. I couldn’t take it. His smell was strong and uniquely him, pine mixed with a hint of mint, and it filled my nostrils and took over all my senses. I knew I would forever remember his smell, his touch, his warm breath on my face. I started to take a step back, but he anticipated my withdrawal within a split second and matched my steps. My heart started racing, and if he moved forward anymore, I was sure he would be able to feel it. I was scared shitless, not because I thought he would hurt me—no, I was scared because I wanted this so very much. This was confusing. This fear was something I was not used to, but I loved it, the way my heart picked up a beat the closer he got, my body reacting to him. All I could hear was his breathing and the beat of my heart.

  His breathing.

  My heart.

  His breathing.

  My heart.

  I tried to step back again, and found myself up against the side of a building, the coldness of it hitting my back. Dammit!