ARROGANT PLAYBOY (23 page)
Authors: Winter Renshaw
DESCRIPTION
The last time my father beat me to a bloody
pulp was the night he walked in on me banging his woman in his bed.
To be fair, she seduced me. And to be
honest, I liked it. But to CPS, I was a victim.
They shipped me to Utah where my estranged
mother lived with her husband and two sister-wives. And that’s when I met her.
My innocent, wholesome, perfect step-sister. Well, one of many. But Waverly
stood out because just like me, we’d been fighting a losing battle our entire
lives.
Falling for her was a mistake, but shit,
it’s not like I ever made good decisions.
Fuck being “family.” I must have Waverly
Miller, and I won’t stop until she’s mine.
LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear
Readers,
Although this book deals with modern
polygamy (think
Big Love
or
Sister Wives
) and mentions certain
polygamous subsets of the Mormon religion, it is intended to be read purely for
entertainment. None of the opinions or details mentioned in this book, in
regards to any mentioned religious groups, are meant to be offensive, attacking,
or controversial. This is, after all, a work of fiction.
So sit back, relax, and step foot inside
the modern polygamous world I’ve created. ;-)
xoxo,
Winter
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
-
JENSEN
ONE
-
JENSEN
TWO
-
WAVERLY
THREE
-
JENSEN
FOUR
-
WAVERLY
FIVE
-
JENSEN
SIX
-
WAVERLY
SEVEN
-
JENSEN
EIGHT
-
WAVERLY
NINE
-
JENSEN
TEN
-
WAVERLY
ELEVEN
-
JENSEN
TWELVE
-
WAVERLY
THIRTEEN
-
JENSEN
FOURTEEN
-
WAVERLY
FIFTEEN
-
JENSEN
SIXTEEN
-
WAVERLY
SEVENTEEN
-
JENSON
EIGHTEEN
-
WAVERLY
NINETEEN
-
JENSEN
TWENTY
-
WAVERLY
TWENTY-ONE
-
JENSEN
TWENTY-TWO
-
WAVERLY
TWENTY-THREE
-
JENSEN
TWENTY-FOUR
-
JENSEN
TWENTY-FIVE
-
WAVERLY
TWENTY-SIX
-
JENSEN
TWENTY-SEVEN
-
WAVERLY
TWENTY-EIGHT
-
JENSEN
TWENTY-NINE
-
WAVERLY
THIRTY
-
JENSEN
THIRTY-ONE
-
WAVERLY
THIRTY-TWO
-
JENSEN
EPILOGUE
-
WAVERLY
JENSEN
Two
days ago
“Jensen.” His voice embodied the throaty,
animalistic warning of a lion about to annihilate his prey.
Juliette, my father’s woman,
scrambled beneath me, pushing me off her as a look of fear in her eyes clashed
with the orgasmic flush that colored her cheeks. We’d imagined this scenario a
hundred times before, but talking about it was different than playing it out in
real life. It was a lot funnier in our minds, probably because he was such an
asshole. Maybe I deserved some of it, but she sure as fuck didn’t.
And if fucking me made her feel
better about her pathetic little puppy-on-a-leash life, than who was I to
judge? She was hot as sin and scarcely old enough to be my mother. I had no
problem plunging myself inside her on a weekly basis.
Juliette had been moaning my
name for the last thirty minutes, but now all she could scream was, “No, no,
no, no!”
I didn’t realize I was within
an inch of my life until my father’s fingers curled around my neck. I couldn’t
breathe. He slammed my back against the wall. I was naked. I didn’t remember
being pulled off the bed, but all of a sudden I was on the other side of the
room, face-to-face with the man who’d brought me into this world. He was two
seconds from ripping my balls off and shoving them down my throat.
How
long had he been watching us?
“You
arrogant little bastard!”
he seethed, his nostrils flaring as
venomous spit accompanied his words.
I couldn’t breathe, but damn if
my lips didn’t twist into a smile. He called me
“little.”
I towered over that son of a bitch, and he knew it. Plus,
according to Juliette, height wasn’t the only way in which I outsized my
father.
He clenched his hand harder
around my throat, pressing against my windpipe as I gasped for air. Within
seconds the room began to darken, and Juliette’s hysterical shrieks echoed off
the walls.
“Josiah, stop! You’re going to
kill him!”
JENSEN
The social worker’s state-owned
Suburban pulls to a gentle stop, waking me from my Codeine-induced, six-hour
nap. I wipe the drool from my mouth and glance out the window. My eyes are
still black and blue and they hurt when I squint, but I’ve learned over the
years to ignore the pain; eventually, it goes away.
“We’re here, Jensen.” Her voice
is annoyingly soft and sweet like cotton candy. Judging by all the photos on
her work desk, she is one of those Mother Teresa types, only she’s married and
she and her husband have adopted a whole orphanage-worth of system children.
Brad and Angelina would be proud. Guess they didn’t have room for me. “Is that
your mother?”
Standing on the front steps of
a picturesque yellow colonial is a woman who resembles my mother. She’s wearing
jeans and a blue sweater, and her hair is long and pulled back. It’s still the
same shade of shit-brown I vaguely remember.
“Come on,” the social worker
coaxes me with her voice, like it’s some kind of magical lullaby. It probably
works on little kids, but not grown-ass eighteen-year-olds. “She’s excited to
see you.”
Bull-fucking-shit.
I sit up, raking my hand
through my dark hair and combing it into place. I don’t know much about my
mother besides the fact that she left my father when I was seven, and she never
came back for me. Dad told me all sorts of salacious stories, none of which I
fully believed. None of what he said mattered, anyway. Her actions spoke for
her.
The social worker—who I
think is named Mercy, or some shit like that—climbs out of the Suburban
and waddles to my side, pulling open the door until I melt out like liquefied
boredom.
I glance up at my mom again.
Her hands are clasped at her waist, and her mouth keeps dancing into a reserved
smile, which fades and reappears like it’s on some kind of loop. She’s nervous.
I just want to get this whole awkward reintroduction thing over with, be shown
to my new room, and walk a straight line for the next few months.
Then my life can finally
fucking start.
I just need to graduate from
high school in a few weeks and crash here for the summer, and then there’s an
apprenticeship waiting for me in Los Angeles with one of the best tattoo
artists in the world. He called me himself the day he received my unsolicited
drawings and told me there’s a spot for me in his shop this August.
I amble up the sidewalk, the
earth a little unsteady from my Codeine-stupor, and approach my mother for the
first time in eleven years.
“Hi, Kath,” Mercy says to her.
They shake hands like they’re conducting a business deal and my mother gingerly
approaches me. At least she’s willing to meet me in the middle, because this is
awkward as hell.
“Jensen.” She stares at me like
she’s looking at a goddamned ghost. Her trembling hand rises to my cheek and
grazes the spot where my father’s gaudy wedding ring cut into my flesh during
the last beating. Kath pulls her hand back quickly and covers her mouth. Her
eyes well.
She cares.
I think.
“Oh, my goodness. That man is a
monster
.”
“Shall we head inside?” Mercy
eyes the front door and Kath scans around like someone’s watching. “It’s
standard procedure. I just need to ask a few questions, make sure Jensen has
his own room, gets acclimated, and then we’ll sign a few things and I’ll be out
of your hair for the foreseeable future.”
Kath releases a breath and
nods. I’m willing to bet living with my father from age eighteen to twenty-five
made her submissive and agreeable.
We head inside where two
tow-headed kids are zoned out to public television cartoons. They sit
cross-legged in front of a small flat screen in the living room. The walls are
decorated with crocheted art knitted into sayings like “Bless This House” and
“Home Sweet Home.” Not a speck of dust resides on the floors, and judging by
the lack of clutter, there’s an OCD-grade cleanliness thing going on—it’s
almost the exact same way Juliette kept our house in Arizona.
Must be another one of my
father’s persuasions.
“Welcome to
our—my—home.” Kath’s words are robotic and carefully chosen, tinted
with a slight tremor.
What
the fuck is she so scared of?
It’s dusk now, and the
curtain-covered windows let in little light. Maybe in the shadows I remind her
of my father. I can only imagine the horrible shit she had to endure. I could
cut her some slack.
But then I remember she left me
there to be raised by that monster and never looked back.
She saved herself from a
lifetime of hell and no one else. She deserves no slack.
The three of us head toward the
family room. Kath grabs a remote and turns down the volume on the cartoons. The
white-haired
Children of the Corn
turn around with wide, brown eyes and slink up to the sofa next to her. Their
stares freak me out. They look damn near identical, but one’s clearly a girl
and the other a boy.
“Gretchen, Gideon,” Kath says,
slipping her arms behind their backs, “this is your big brother, Jensen. Can
you say hello to him before you go wash up for bed?”
The kids say nothing. They’re
small. Maybe five or six. Kath titters, twisting the gold cross around her
neck. I don’t give a fuck. They don’t have to say hi. The girl can’t stop
staring at my swollen eyes. I imagine I look scary as hell.
“It’s all right.” I’d wink, but
I can’t.
Mercy and Kath make some kind
of small talk. I tune them out, scanning my perimeter. This is my new home.
There are doilies on the backs of the armchairs and a big, oak table in the
dining room. I count twelve chairs. Why the fuck would she need twelve chairs?
“Shall we go see Jensen’s
room?” Mercy stands up, clutching her clipboard and clicking her pen.
“Well,” Kath says. Her gaze
shifts from mine to Mercy’s and back. “This was all short notice… a-and while
it’s certainly a wonderful blessing… we… I’m not quite prepared…”
Mercy nods. “Understandable.
Does he have a bed? A place to sleep?”
Kath leads us down a hall and
up a set of stairs to the second level. “There’s an extra bed in Gideon’s room
he can use for now… until we figure things out.”
I don’t want to bunk with a
six-year-old, but Mercy doesn’t pry, and it’s not like I have a choice.
I check my reflection in a
nearby mirror, cringing, and grip the railing as we file upstairs. A moment
later, we’re standing in the middle of a kindergartener’s room, complete with dinosaur
wallpaper and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Two twin beds rest
opposite one another: one outfitted with dinosaur bedding and the other with a
white comforter and a single, flat pillow. I assume that one’s for me.
“I always wanted a room like
this,” I say, monotone. It’s a dig at Kath, reminding her of the childhood I
never had, but I don’t think she picks up on it. She’s flighty and oblivious,
like a hummingbird. I wonder if my father made her that way.
Mercy laughs. “This will do
fine for now. This okay with you, Jensen?”
I offer a tightlipped nod,
favoring the side of me that doesn’t currently have a row of bruised ribs.
The second we leave
Dinosaurland, Kath points me toward a hall bathroom and shows me how the light
switch is on the outside of the door, and then she mentions the linen closet is
at the end of the hall. When we’re all downstairs again, Kath and Mercy linger
at the door, talking like old friends. I’ve known Mercy a whopping twenty-four
hours, but I’ve seen how she’s good with people like that. She has a way of
making anyone comfortable, and I suppose that’s why she does what she does.
Mercy, with her cotton-candy
voice, chubby mom hands, and warm smile, reminds me not everyone is filled with
darkness.
“I better get going,” she says
before sighing, as if she regrets having to leave. The smallest sliver of me
doesn’t want her to go because now shit’s about to get real.
Real awkward.
“Feelings
make you weak, boy
.
”
My
father’s words echo in my head. He raised me on toughened quotes mixed with
scripture, which he conveniently twisted and turned to suit his lectures.
Kath shows Mercy out and shuts
the door. She turns and our eyes meet. The two kids have disappeared upstairs.
It’s just us. No social worker. No bullshit niceties required. I expect her to
let her guard down and morph into someone else entirely, but she doesn’t. She
stands there, shifting from one foot to the other, her fingers intertwined like
she’s knitting a goddamned sweater with her hands.
“I remind you of him, don’t I?”
I place a hand on my hip and cock my head, studying a face that hardly
resembles mine. Her features are soft and bland, not hard and angled like
Josiah’s and mine. Josiah’s hair is as dark as his heart, and I take after him
in that regard as well. We’re built of muscle and brute, though I’m bigger than
him. We wear our strength like a second skin.
She brushes past me, heading
toward the kitchen where she fills a teakettle with water and nestles it on the
stove.
“Tea?” she asks. She must want
to talk. I’m not in the mood to hear her bullshit excuses as to why she
abandoned me and walked away from her own flesh and blood. I’m not interested
in hearing how sorry she is.
“I’m kind of tired. Been a long
day.” I point toward the stairs and paint a regretful half-smile on my lips.
“Please.” She’s not asking. Her
eyes snap toward the kitchen table. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this
conversation. There are things you need to know, Jensen. About the past. About
the present, too.”
The tea kettle whistles. She
grabs two mugs and two bags of tea and I take a seat at the table amongst one
of the twelve chairs.
“I’m sure you have questions,”
she says, setting a white coffee mug in front of me.
Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.
None of which matter at all anymore. Maybe at eight or twelve or even fifteen,
I’d have wanted a chance to ask them. I lost my ability to give two shits years
ago.
“Your father,” she says,
blowing on the steamy liquid in her mug, “is a very powerful man.”
You’re
tellin’ me, lady.
There’s a reason he beat the
living shit out of me and walked away with a slap on the wrist. He’s got the
whole town of Charter Springs, Arizona wrapped around his pinky finger. He
drives around in the church’s Lincoln Town Car like he owns the city, and he
sort of does. The man’s never met a traffic ticket he couldn’t get out of, and
he’s never met a local he couldn’t convince to come to one of his sermons. The
man could sell ice to an Eskimo, just like the way he sells his version of God
to a congregation of over two-thousand people. Back in Charter Springs, Josiah
Mackey is a hand-picked-by-God, modern-day saint.
“I ran off with him at
eighteen,” she says, averting her gaze. “We never married. You came along
quickly, and then something in your father changed. He became controlling,
physically abusive—manipulative. I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t
please him.”
Her hands tremble as she wraps
them around her mug. Josiah Mackey put the fear of God into his congregation
each Sunday, but he put the fear of himself into his women twenty-four-seven.
“I tried to leave him several
times. I took you with me each time, and each time he’d find me. And so I
stopped fighting. I made him think I was happy. I had to get him off my case
for a while. But right after your seventh birthday, I announced I was leaving
him for good. He told me if I took you, he’d kill us both.”
“I don’t doubt that.” I stare
at my tea. I haven’t touched it yet. Not much of a tea-drinker, and it stinks
like mulch and barley.
Kath blinks away tears and
wipes the ones that fall anyway. “I wanted to come back for you, Jensen. I did.
He made it impossible.”
If she wants me to feel sorry
for her, it’s almost working.
Almost
.
“I tried to go to the police in
Charter Springs. No one would listen. No one believed me. And by then, he’d
trashed my name all over town. Told everyone I ran off and had an affair. Said
I had mental illnesses and I was a danger to you.” She sniffs and turns away.
“The threats didn’t stop until he knew I was good and scared. I was afraid if I
tried anything else, he’d hurt you.”
“I was a weapon,” I mused. “The
only weapon he had to hurt you with.”
She wipes her nose on the side
of her wrist and nods, her blue eyes softening as if we’re sharing a special
moment. I’m sure it’s a special moment, in her book.
“I wish things would’ve been
different,” she says. “There’s nothing you or I can do about any of it but move
forward. I’m just glad to have you in my life again.”
Her hand slides across the
table, covering mine. She’s not shaking anymore. I drag my eyes toward hers,
and for the first time in a long time, I don’t completely hate her.