The Broken Beginning Part One Novel – I am pregnant. Ready to tell the neighbor brother Damon. The door creaked noisily when I pushed it open, and there was no holding back the loud gasp that left me at the sight. It looked like Brinley and Damon were well on their way toward getting laid in an actual bed. “Oh, look honey, virgin Lily was probably hoping you’d pop her cherry for her since she’s so in love with you.” The snide remark stopped me in my tracks. “He already did, and now I’m pregnant with his baby, honey!” I lashed the words out in front of me like a weapon and they struck true. Damon hadn’t cared that it was me. “Sugar” was probably what he called all the girls who got undressed for him. It wasn’t special. I had not been special.
Tiger Lily “Isn’t it time you gave up on your little crush?” Madeline sniped at me in an acidic tone that had me bristling. It wouldn’t be until much later, and far too late, that I would understand she also had a crush on the same man. “I already know he doesn’t see me like that,” I whispered while turning away from watching Damon flirt with one of the cheerleaders – Brinley – who only wanted to walk on the wild side with him for a minute. There was no way she planned out her wedding to him the way I started doing when I was twelve. Her dad would never allow that to happen anyway. “More like he doesn’t see you at all,” Madeline jeered, my narrow-eyed gaze not bothering her in the least as she stood to leave. “I’m getting another spirit, and maybe I’ll go screw your crush while I’m at it. I stand a better chance of getting somewhere anyway.” She glanced back at me after two steps, as if what she’d just said shouldn’t faze me, and I should be following along like a good little dog.
That would happen over my dead body! She had just proven, once again, that she was a terrible friend, and I didn’t think staying at the party with her was in the cards any longer. Madeline rolled her eyes as she continued off in the opposite direction looking for her next drink. I swiped at the traitorous tear that slid down my cheek because there was no going back from this. I’d just lost a friend. Even if she had proved to be a terrible one, and my dreams about Damon were crushed once again. I dropped my half empty cup onto the bed of someone’s truck and started for the road. Madeline, who had failed third grade, was seventeen, already had her driver’s license, and had been my ride to the party. Garret Branson held these parties in the field on the back side of his dad’s farm. It was the only place where no one ever complained or called the cops to bust up the party, so everyone always trekked out there. Unfortunately for me, it meant that the walk back home was going to be a long one.
“What are you doing down the lane by yourself?” His voice was almost enough to bring me to my knees. I never heard it directed at me, so to hear that voice – all deep and hot in the middle of the night – had my knees quivering. “Walking home.” “What you say? Home is twelve miles away, sugar.” I guess the snakes would get a feast tonight, because I had to have been knocked out, dreaming on the side of the dirt lane because there was no way I heard that correctly. Damon had just called me sugar. Somehow, I managed to play it cool though, despite the fact that the endearment made me go wobbly on the inside. “Come on,” he insisted. “Get yourself in the truck. I’ll take you home.” For the first time, I peeked inside his truck.
Honestly, I’d expected to see the cheerleader inside. Brinley Jacobs had been all over him all night long. There was no way I’d ever sit next to her for even a second, let alone a twelve-mile ride back home. She had never been kind to me and being a senior this year just seemed to make her behavior worse. “Don’t have all night, sugar. In or out, but I gotta go.” “Fine.” I moved quickly and grabbed the handle on his truck and then yanked hard because the door wasn’t budging with a gentle pull. He chuckled as it released and flung backwards causing me to stumble a bit. I hauled my butt into his truck and shut the door with a rusty creaking sound before I finally turned to look at him. “You wanna tell me why you were planning to walk all the way home?”
My shoulders bobbed up and down again as Damon shook his head. “You know what kind of people are on the road this late at night, sugar?” He asked and when I didn’t answer he proceeded to tell me. “Besides all those drunk idiots back there, who will be driving home sooner than it’ll take you to walk the distance, there’s all kinds of freaks and perverts who would love to pick up a sweet young thing like you.” I rolled my eyes at that. “No one would even notice me walking,” I argued. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the way Damon’s head turned in my direction, and then he slowly allowed his eyes to drift over my body. “You’re barely wearing clothes. Short shorts and your papillae are hanging out your shirt.” I gasped at his ridiculous description of my outfit.
I was wearing some cutoff denim shorts. Maybe the pockets hung down a little lower than the actual shorts, but everything was covered, and it was more than I could say for what Brinley had been wearing tonight. Her skirt barely hid her hip cheeks from view. There was nothing wrong with it, so long as I didn’t lean forward too much. “The only sensible thing you did tonight is wear tennis shoes,” Damon grunted, and I wanted to kick him in his teeth. Seriously? My years-long crush finally notices and talks to me, and he was speaking as though I was an idiot. “You know what? Why don’t you pull over and just let me out since I’m so awful?” “Already told you, there’s all kinds of bad people out there who would pick your hips up in a heartbeat.”
“So what! Let them! I’m not your problem.” We had made it to the highway by then, but Damon took the next exit off Highway 17 and pulled us into what looked like a deserted driveway that went straight back into a cluster of trees that was too thinned out to be considered a forest, but still thick enough that someone might get lost in the woods if they weren’t paying attention. Once the truck was out of view of the road, Damon slammed it in park and then did the craziest thing ever. He reached across the bench seat and grabbed hold of my leg, sliding me closer to him. That didn’t suit him though, so he manhandled me until I was sitting between him and the steering wheel with my legs straddling his. “Let’s get something straight here. I never fuckin’ said you were awful. I said you looked like something a man might pick up on the side of the road and take home with him.”
Nothing. I had no response. In fact, I was relatively certain that my eyes were far too wide, and my panties were in danger of soaking through my too-short shorts. And that was before Damon pulled me forward and pecked the silence right out of me. By the time his tongue retreated, and he nipped playfully at my bottom lip, a moan vibrated out of me without my permission. His eyes twinkled in the sparse light cast by the dash lights in the truck. Then his lips pulled up into the sexiest grin I’d ever seen on another person. “Sugar. Didn’t think you had that in you.” Before I could even wrap my head around his words, let alone question what he really thought of me, Damon dipped back down, tilted his head at a bit of an angle and laid another peck on me that turned my body to liquid.
I melted against him, and those papillae that he was worried might fall out of my top at any moment were suddenly squished against his hard chest. All the while, his hands grabbed hold of my hips so firmly, I knew there were going to be finger-tipped sized bruises on it tomorrow. “Oh God!” The words hissed from my mouth as he pulled back once more, leaving me near breathless before my tank top was ripped up and off my body. Damon then twisted us so that he could lay me down across the cracked leather seat. His door creaked open, and before I knew what was happening, my hot neighbor – the boy I dreamed of marrying – had my shorts and panties pulled free from my body. His own pants were quickly shoved down around his knees and then he was back in the truck lying on top of me. “‘Oh God’ is right,” he told me as our eyes locked.
“You can yell that out all you want, sugar.” And then, before I could take my next breath, Damon Donovan took my first time in one harsh thrust. He filled me to the point of pain and then backed out and did it all over again. His face was buried into the crook of my neck where his mouth sucked at the sensitive skin. The boy of my dreams proceeded to place sweet, shiver-inducing pecks all the way to my shoulder. As good as it felt, I was glad he did it because it meant he missed the tears that leaked into my hairline. My hands gripped onto his shoulders, fingernails digging hard into his skin despite the fact that he was still wearing his shirt. “Sugar,” Damon grunted, bringing me back to the moment. His hand slid up my side and palmed my chest before he slipped the cup of my bra down so that he could grab flesh instead of cotton and lace.
“Damon,” I hissed as my hips rocked up, slamming myself against him a little harder. In theory, I knew I had to be chasing a climax. “Oh my god!” Damon shouted before he started slamming himself into me harder and faster than before. “God, yes!” The words were torn from my throat on a scream as lights flashed behind my eyes, and sparks ignited throughout my whole body. My back arched and Damon grabbed hold of my hips with both hands and pumped even faster, if that was possible. “Jesus, sugar, you’re about to squeeze my schlong off.” The words were grunted and punctuated by each thrust he made before finally, I felt him swell even larger inside of me, if that was possible. He seemed to realize this too and pulled back almost in a panic.
The moment his schlong was free of my body, his releasing was pumping out onto my pubes and then all over my stomach. For a moment, we both just stared at the mess he’d made of me. “You were a virgin?” He asked hesitantly. My answer was a simple nod of my head because I was honestly too stunned by everything that happened to make coherent conversation. “God!” The word was a moan, and not a pleasant one. Damon moved quicker than I’d ever seen after that. He jumped out of the truck backward, as if I was on fire and he needed to escape. Then he leaned down, picked up my previously discarded clothing, and tossed them in for me. “Get dressed. We have to get you home.” I just went to my bed and collapsed down as the tears began to spill free from my stupid head. Damon hadn’t cared that it was me.
“Sugar” was probably what he called all the girls who got undressed for him. It wasn’t special. I had not been special. My heart felt like it was going to break into pieces as I lie there in the dark smelling of him and of what we had done in his truck. Part of me wanted to jump in the shower and scrub myself free of the memories, but the other part of me just wanted to wallow in them for a little bit longer. That way, I could pretend that things had turned out differently. I wanted to pretend that it was the beginning of us. … Tiger Lily If I thought the previous night had been just a dream, then what I woke to was nothing short of a nightmare. Screaming. Yelling. Cussing. Then the sound of glass shattering finally pulled me from my uneasy slumber. The clock beside my bed blared the red numbers at me, letting me know that it was only four in the morning. “What is wrong with you?” I heard my dad yell.
I slowly creeped out of my bedroom, to the banister at the top of the stairs where I could peek through the spindles of wood to see down below. Everything down there was all open from the entryway through the living room and straight to the kitchen. There wasn’t a single part of the downstairs that couldn’t be seen from this vantage point except the hallway that went back to the master suite that was my parent’s bedroom and the garage door on the wall opposite them. It was a weird setup, but one my dad had specifically planned out because he could be closer to his bikes in case of an emergency with the club. “I don’t know,” my mom cried. She was sitting there on the old couch that had once been a weird, barn and flowers pattern that was done with brown, gold and orange tones on top of a beige canvas. It had probably been hideous when it was brand new, and they had inherited it from my mom’s parents, but now it was just worn out and dingy.
You couldn’t even see the cabin in the design on the back of either side of the couch where people sat the most. The one in the middle was really the only one you could still make out. “He was my brother!” My dad didn’t have any actual blood brothers, so he must have been talking about a man from his club. “What do you want me to say?” My mom yelled at him as she angrily swiped the blackened tear trails from her face. Mascara smeared across her cheeks as she did, making her look worse. “I want you to say that I didn’t see what I saw! I want you to say that you haven’t been spreading your legs for my club brother.” Silence greeted my father’s accusations. That couldn’t be right. Could it? My mom would never cheat on him.
They had been in love with one another since high school. That’s what my mother always told me. Something must have shown in my mom’s face that I didn’t catch because my dad took in a sharp breath and stepped back as if he had been physically attacked. “It wasn’t the first time, was it?” Mom shook her head back and forth and sobbed even harder. “I’m so sorry, Robbie.” “You’re sorry?” He asked, and it was my father who was sobbing now. He stumbled until the backs of his legs hit his recliner and then he just plopped down on it as if his body could no longer hold his weight upright. “How long, Mary?” “Please!” She pleaded with him. “Please, can we just forget…” “Forget?” His anger was evident in the tone. “Forget that I caught you screwing one of my brothers at the clubhouse tonight when you thought I was in a meeting?”
He scoffed and then launched a coaster across the room where it broke into pieces. “Or should I forget that you don’t seem to want to answer my question? How long, Mary?” “Three years,” was her answer. No way. My parents were in love. There was no way that my mom had been cheating on my dad for three years with a man from his club. “When?” My father’s broken voice crashed into the silence of the room. “Robbie, please, don’t do this,” my mom begged. He laughed, though the sound was anything but humorous. “You don’t want me to do this? You don’t want me to ask the tough questions? Or is it that you don’t want to give me the answers? You say three years, but now I’m wondering. Should we go back even further? What about Lily?”
“What about Lily?” My mom’s startled voice cried out. “Is she even mine?” “How could you ask that?” “Because you are a disloyal, cheating bimbo! After what I saw tonight, I have every right to ask that.” “Lily is yours, Rob. You were the only man I was ever with back then.” “Back then,” he scoffed again, hanging on those last two words. “I’ll be getting a test done, just to be sure. She’s mine now, no matter what, but you better believe me when I say… She is the only female that is still mine.” “Rob, no!” My mom yelled, clearly understanding the meaning behind his words. “We can work through this. It was a mistake. He was just a mistake. You were always gone so much and…” Her voice trailed off as she looked away from him. I think even she knew there was no excusing a three-year long affair as ‘just a mistake’. “I don’t want to hear it.
All the years we’ve been together, I’ve never stepped out on you. Never even let a club bimbo look at me sideways, let alone touched one. Never in a million years would I have disrespected you that way. Not only did you disrespect me, and what we had, but you did it in front of my club brothers. You did it with one of my club brothers.” He grinned then, an evil look that I would have never associated with my father because all I had ever known of him was the good man that he was to me and my mom. “You know the punishment for screwing another brother’s old lady?” He asked my mom and whatever color she still held in her face under the mascara-laden tear tracks drained away. “You can’t!” Her insistence broke my father a little more. I could see it in the bend of his shoulders. The bow of his head. The way he seemed to curl in on himself spoke volumes.
“Pack your things and go.” He finally told my mother. “Where am I supposed to go?” She asked him. “Don’t fuckin’ care, but you’re not staying here.” My mother stood, her long blond hair a waterfall coming down on either side of her face, hiding some of the sadness I knew she felt. She waited, watching my father with absolute devastation swimming in her eyes. I had no doubt, seeing her in that moment, that she regretted her actions. It was too late though. There was also no doubt of that when my father wouldn’t even look at her. “You’re banned from the clubhouse.” “I figured,” she answered meekly. “And Whisper will be gone by morning.” “Please, if you ever loved me, don’t kill him because of this.” My father stood right in her face then.
“If you ever loved me, it would have never happened. This is on you. And him. Don’t appeal to my love when you betrayed it.” “What am I supposed to do?” “Not my fuckin’ problem anymore, Mary.” “So, your daughter isn’t your problem now?” She asked snidely. “My daughter ain’t going nowhere. She’s safe and sound in her bed, in my house, where she belongs.” “You can’t take my daughter from me too!” “Bimbo! I didn’t take anything from you! You are fuckin’ lucky that I have to answer to that girl upstairs or you’d be suffering the same fate as Whisper. Instead, you get to live with the fact that you killed that man and lost everything you ever had too.” He turned to walk away from her then. “Now, get out of my house and don’t you ever come back here.”
My mom picked up her purse and walked out the door with her head hung low, shoulders slumped, and not one single other possession to her name. There wasn’t a thing she could do about it either. My father had spared her life and that was all she was allowed to walk away with. It was the price of her betrayal. In a way, I understood it because my father was hurting, and she did that to him. On the other hand, I knew there were plenty of married men in the club who cheated on their old ladies with club whores or even other women who came out to the clubhouse to party with the bikers. They never suffered any punishment for their disloyalty to their women. It didn’t seem fair to me, but then again, I couldn’t fathom cheating on someone I loved.
My mind flashed to the other drama of the night, to being with Damon, and then to him so coldly walking away from me. Tonight, I learned a lot of cold hard truths. People couldn’t be trusted. Love didn’t matter. A heart could break and still function. My mom walked out without even asking to say goodbye to me. I didn’t even get to have a mom and daughter talk with her about losing my first time to the boy across the street. The same one she knew I’d been crushing on for years. The same one that she had tried and failed to talk me out of falling in love with. Mom always said he would only break my heart, but she never warned me that she would break it too. … Tiger Lily Six Weeks Later “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” The chant fell from my lips as I sat there stunned, staring at those two pink lines on the test. I didn’t even have to wait for the requisite amount of time.
No, instead, I watched as the first line appeared and then the second one developed only seconds behind it. How could this be? It was my one-and-only time getting laid and Damon never spoke to me again afterward. It was like I suddenly developed a fatal disease, and he was afraid of catching it. I am pregnant. I stood up, grabbed the test and plopped it into a plastic bag, because ew – I’d just peed on it – and then headed across the street to Damon’s house. Knocking on the door didn’t work, but I could hear music somewhere inside the house so I tried the knob, thinking he just couldn’t hear me. It was unlocked. With my heart beating wildly in my throat – where it had lodged, as if trying to expel itself from my body – I took one dreaded step after another toward the room I knew to be Damon’s. His bedroom was on the first floor.
As I crept down the hall toward his room, the music grew louder. When I finally got there, the door was cracked open, as if someone attempted to shut it, but it didn’t latch all the way. The door creaked noisily when I pushed it open, and there was no holding back the loud gasp that left me at the sight. Brinley, the cheerleader from inferno and bane of my existence at school, was in Damon’s bed with him. His hands were on her boobs, under her shirt. Her hand was inside his pants that were already unbuttoned and unzipped. It looked like they were well on their way toward getting laid in an actual bed. Something I had yet to experience. Their mouths came apart as they both swiveled their heads to see who had the nerve to interrupt them. I planned to back up and just bolt out of there and tell him some other time when my arch nemesis wasn’t around, but her words stopped me cold and kicked in my fight response rather than the flight I had been leaning toward.
“Oh, look honey, virgin Lily was probably hoping you’d pop her cherry for her since she’s so in love with you.” The snide remark stopped me in my tracks, and I turned narrowed eyes on the bimbo while she laughed at her own joke. The joke was on her though. “He already did, and now I’m pregnant with his baby, honey!” I lashed the words out in front of me like a weapon and they struck true. I watched momentarily as all the color drained from her face while she shifted her attention from me to Damon. I hadn’t planned on sticking around after dropping that bomb, especially considering my feelings were about as fragile as blown glass.
So, I turned and walked right into mine and Damon’s fathers. The pair stood there with jaws hanging open, shock clear in their expressions, and that fragility I just spoke of had me breaking right there in front of them. I wasn’t ready. Not for them to know. My father immediately pulled me into his chest, and if I wasn’t mistaken, Boone – otherwise known as Mr. Donovan – was rubbing my back reassuringly before he stepped away. “Boy, you better get rid of that pricey bimbo of yours and get yourself out here now!”