Read Behind Closed Doors Online
Authors: Tamara Lee
Behind Closed Doors
| Behind Closed Doors |
| Lee, Tamara |
| (2014) |
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
by Tamara Lee
Behind Closed Doors
Copyright
©
2014
by Tamara Lee
Cover design by OtherSide Design
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, distributed or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Table of Contents
For all the Dreamers
“SOMETIMES THE STRONGEST PEOPLE ARE THE ONES WHO LOVE BEYOND ALL FAULTS,
CRY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
AND FIGHT BATTLES THAT NOBODY KNOWS ABOUT.”
- Author Unknown
Chapter 1
I was either coming down with something or had a serious case of Mondayitis. My head was cradled in my hands as the pounding continued, to the point where it hurt to open my eyes. All I wanted to do was go to bed.
I was fine an hour prior, when I caught the bus, heading to my office located in the center of Seattle’s business district. There was no logical reason for my sudden bout of illness.
My weekend had been less than exciting. Saturday had been spent doing housework and running errands. On Sunday, I met my best friend, Rebecca, for brunch and then went grocery shopping. I fell asleep on the lounge at around ten, while my boyfriend, Brody, flicked through the sports channels.
“I need the Parker file by midday, Kyla, no excuses.” I opened my eyes, breaking out of my trance to find my boss, Malcolm Reid, standing in the doorway to my office. He stared at me, awaiting some kind of confirmation that I heard his order.
He was the perfect example of the boss every female despised. He was friends with all of the men in the office, only to bark orders at the women, not before perving on their tits and ass.
Of course, he was a balding middle-aged man with a rounded gut whose wife had left him a few years back, but that didn’t stop him from pretending he was God’s gift to women. Despite his vulgar appearance and clear chauvinism, he ran one of the most prestigious law firms in Seattle,
Reid & Winters
, and I had been fortunate to land a job there as an intern three years prior.
I never imagined myself living life as a lawyer, but it’s what my parents had wanted. They were the kind of people who judged someone by what car they drove, the clothes they wore and the title that followed their name on a business card. It didn’t matter to them what my passion was in life. They would not let their daughter, their only child, have a career that didn’t require a college education. And true to their wishes, there I sat on a rainy Monday morning, in my office, doing a job that I was less than passionate about.
I looked up at Mr. Reid, squinting my eyes as the bright ceiling lights made my head thump and my eyes water. Nodding my affirmation, I proceeded to shuffle some papers around on my desk in an attempt to look busy.
“Very good then.” His wandering eyes landed on my cleavage before he walked away.
I dressed conservatively for work, my wardrobe consisting of skirt suits, blouses and fitted pants, but there was no hiding my curves. Much to Mr. Reid’s liking of course, but the thought of him ogling me was utterly repulsive.
I finished collating the file Mr. Reid had asked for by eleven o’clock and handed it to him by 11.05. I threw on a black blazer over my white blouse in an attempt to hide any exposed skin.
“It’s finished?” he asked, looking at me over the reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
“Finished. Collated. And I scanned a copy and sent it to your email,” I said matter-of-factly. I wasn’t bragging. I just wanted to get out of his office as fast as possible.
“Thank you,” was all he could manage. I knew that meant the big guy was impressed.
“If it’s okay with you, I would like to go home now. I have a bad headache and I think I’m coming down with something.”
“It’s called a hangover,” he snorted at his own joke. I didn’t bother to respond and he didn’t notice the eye roll he earned for being a presumptuous dick.
“Go home then, but don’t think about calling in sick tomorrow. I need you to meet with a new client and then help the interns with some research. This bunch need a lot of direction,” he sighed, unimpressed.
I nodded as I made my way out of his office before he changed his mind. I couldn’t wait to get home, have a hot shower and get into my nice cozy bed.
I hailed a taxi from the front of my office. The last thing I wanted was to be sitting on a jam-packed bus, especially since it was yet another rainy Seattle day.
Pulling my cell out of my purse, I emailed my boyfriend to let him know I had gone home ill. I mentioned it was probably best if he didn’t come over that night, unless he wanted to cook me some soup. I knew he would avoid visiting at all costs, as he couldn’t cook to save his own life. Even warming a tin of soup would be pushing it.
I sighed when I thought of Brody, my boyfriend of over two years. I loved him. Even though sometimes I wondered what my life would be like without him. Would I still be living in the same city, with the same job? Would I be married? Or would I be living a single life, partying with my girlfriends?
It scared me to think about those things, but I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I felt as though I was living in the future, always planning for someday and I was forgetting to live my life in the present.
Despite my reservations, Brody and I were getting serious. We were talking about moving in together. Well, him moving into my suburban townhouse with me. He still lived at home with his mother, and as juvenile as that sounded, he was doing it for her benefit more than his own. She was lonely. Her second husband having up and left her eight years ago. Brody, like me, was an only child. The difference being, he was extremely close with his mom, whereas my relationship with my parents was civil at best. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but being the only daughter of a judge and a criminal defense attorney had its own challenges. Nothing I ever did was good enough and no matter who I dated, the poor guy couldn’t measure up to the man I was supposedly meant to marry.
The taxi pulled up in front of my townhouse and I paid the fare before running to the shelter of my porch. There was no point. I was already saturated and I could feel the water pooling in my ankle boots.
Letting myself inside, I took my shoes and jacket off, leaving them in a soggy, wet pile next to the door. Moving toward the kitchen, I heard a noise. It sounded like music. I looked around and realized the music was coming from the second floor.
The song became louder as I climbed the stairs. It was a song by Jason Mraz playing on my iPod dock.
I’m Yours
, I recognized when the chorus kicked in.
I walked toward the bedroom to turn it off and that’s when my world came crashing down around me.
My boyfriend. In my bed. With another woman. A red haired woman with small tits and a rounded ass. I stopped in the entryway as if frozen in time.
He didn’t notice me straight away. He was too busy licking
Red’s
neck. As he proceeded to lick down to her shoulder, he caught sight of me standing in the doorway and jumped out of the bed. In his haste, Brody threw
Red
off his lap and she almost fell to the floor. I would have laughed if my heart weren’t breaking into a million different pieces.
“Oh no,” Brody said. “No, no, no, no, no....” Over and over again, he kept saying
no
as if the word would make the situation vanish into thin air.
He approached me, his tone pleading. “Kyla, no. This isn’t anything.”
His hand touched mine and I flinched away. “Please, baby, I love you. This is nothing. Right here, it means nothing.”
During the chaos,
Red
had gotten dressed into her short little skirt, barely there top and knee high come-fuck-me-boots.
Is she a prostitute?
The thought crossed my mind, but I couldn’t ask the question because at that point, I had no power over my voice. I stared at
Red,
really studying her face and found some solace in the fact that I didn’t know her. She shuffled past me and exited the room. I could hear her ridiculous boots clicking down the stairs, one by one, and then the front door slammed shut.
Minutes passed, or maybe hours, I couldn’t tell. But finally, I regained some composure. I realized my headache had disappeared, superseded by a pain deep inside my chest.
“Get out.” It was barely a whisper, but he heard it. He was sitting before me, fully clothed, on the edge of my bed. The bed he just used to screw another chick.
“No, Kyla. Don’t do this,” he pleaded. He had tears in his eyes and I wondered how he could cry over a situation he created.
“Get out!”
“I’m not going anywhere until we talk about this.” He stood up, but didn’t approach me.
As I looked at him standing before me, I realized I wanted him gone and out of my life for good. It dawned on me how quickly love could turn to hate. In my case, it took just one single second.
I walked to the side of the bed. The sight of the crumpled sheets and askew pillows sickened me. I grabbed the cordless phone from the nightstand and turned to Brody.
“Either you leave or I’ll call your buddies at the police station to come and get you.”
I held the phone in front of me, ready to dial. He rushed to his side of the bed and grabbed his phone and wallet.
“No, don’t do that. I’ll leave.” His voice was shaky and I could see the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. “I’ll leave, but we need to talk about this Kyla. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you.”
He stood in front of me, trying to take my hands in his, but I backed away.
“Leave now,” was all I could say as I turned on my heel and stormed into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.
I leaned against the back of the door and slid down to the cold concrete floor, finally letting the tears fall. I don’t know how long I sat there crying, but it didn’t matter. I needed to mourn the end of my relationship. The only way I was going to recover was to cry every tear I had and then I was going to get up off the floor, and be a better, stronger person.
My mother had always told me, life was nothing but a series of choices and we chose our own path and ultimately our own destiny. In that moment, as I sat broken and defeated on the bathroom floor, I decided it was time for me to really live my life and focus on the one person who truly mattered. Myself.