Corruption - Leigh Lennon Page 0,41
even know if I breathe at the realization that my father somehow knows about my life as a submissive.
He barrels down the stairs with my mother crying at him, and a part of me knows I should retreat to the truck, but I’m stuck. My brain isn’t working or firing the correct neurons to get me to move my rear out of the way of his.
“What have I done in this life to have raised a whore?”
My father would never take this decision of mine well, but this is not what I thought he’d say to me. He’d disown me, certainly, but to call me this word, that name. I know tears are running down my face, but it’s not what’s going through my mind.
“Imagine my shock when a blond man in an expensive suit knocked on the front door today, informing me that a man at some sex club is taking advantage of my daughter. Then he told me that you were willingly choosing this life.”
Drake. He had to hurt me, as he was hurt. “Daddy, let me explain.”
I don’t see his left hand when he backhands me. I fall against the heap of my life with my parents. “You have thirty minutes to leave my property. And don’t think for one minute that you’re taking my truck.” He starts toward the house when he turns around. “You have until tomorrow, and your cell phone will be disconnected.”
He goes around to the side of the truck, takes the keys, and throws my phone at me. “Get the hell off my land.”
He stomps toward the house, my mom screaming my name and asking me not to leave, when he grabs her by the arm and pulls her into the only place I’ve known as home.
I call the closest person to me. She picks up on the first ring, and I don’t give her a chance to say hello. “Tori, I need you now.” The voice that comes from me can’t be mine. It sounds like a scared little girl, one I wouldn’t recognize, except I’m the one speaking. I don’t like this change in me. All I want is Maddox, but he’ll barrel in here, most likely putting my father in a hospital bed.
“Jewel, you’re not making sense. Honey, what’s going on?” Tori begs on the other end.
“My dad, he found out, please come get me from my house. And quick.” I’ve returned to the truck. I can’t stand next to all my earthly possessions outside. I set my head on the steering wheel, tears continuing to fall, and wait, wait to leave the only place I’ve known as home.
Not only does Tori pull up to my house, but her mom and dad are also in his truck. We stack everything into the bed of her father’s truck. It took fifteen minutes. I stare at what my life had been reduced to.
Her mother takes me in her arms, and I cry because this isn’t the way it’s supposed to go down.
On the way to Tori’s house, I call Maddox from her car.
“Hey, precious, I was starting to worry. I wasn’t expecting a phone call… but I won’t say no.”
When my cries make it through to the other side, his tone changes. “Gem, what’s wrong?”
Tori takes the phone from me.
“Hey, Maddox, I’m Tori, Jewel’s best friend. She’s physically fine, and she’s safe with me and my parents. But apparently her father found out about her lifestyle choices, had her shit in a pile, and gave her thirty minutes to vacate his property. I think she called me ’cause I’m five minutes down the road. My parents have all her stuff in the back of my dad’s truck.”
She stops as I’m sure all this is information overload for Maddox. “Yes, she can keep her stuff with us as long as she wants. She can stay with us, too, as long as—”
I hear Maddox on the other line to know that he’s cut her off. “Of course, I understand. I have to warn you, she’s broken. I’ve never seen her like this.”
Broken is a good word for what I am. And I don’t know how I’ll be whole again.
I slightly remember being moved from Tori’s car to the living room where Mrs. Crimpson had laid me with a fluffy blanket over my shivering body. I don’t think I’m cold. Maybe it’s more like I’m numb.
I hear them talk around me, and although Mr. and Mrs. Crimpson think they must be out of earshot,