Bound to Me

This book is dedicated

to everyone that doubted me

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1

As I lay in bed, I could hear the yelling downstairs in the antiquated brownstone vibrating through the walls as it reached my room. To most this would have been strange, but for me this was an everyday thing in my house. I despised the day my dad left five years ago, maybe then my mother wouldn’t have ended up a drunk and married for the third time.

Ben was a middle aged balding overweight man who could have possibly been attractive, but now gravity and alcohol made him look decrepit and foul. You would think living in New York City, Olivia would have better suitors to pick from. That was never the case with Mom. Her choice of men always fell along the same lines; drunk, oblivious, and bitter, which always led to divorce. I got up from the bed and turned the music all the way up, blasting Evanescence so that the music would drown out all the yelling going on below, which typically meant that Ben and my mom were arguing over who drank the last beer.

Feeling disgusted, I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten in the morning. It seemed lately that time just dragged on for me, especially since last month when I graduated from high school. I no longer woke up early with the tedious routine of sitting through boring lectures or the constant prattle of gossiping hormonal adolescents in the hallways. I made sure that I achieved good grades and attended my classes on time, which guaranteed a high school diploma, and a one-way ticket out of this crazy lifestyle. It was not like I really had a choice in the matter. There was no way I would want to be stuck here with my mom, and her new abusive husband. Abusive in the sense that his fist and I had a love hate relationship when he wasn’t hitting my mom.

There was a pounding on my door, which could only be Ben, because he loathed this type of music. Although I knew it was childish, I would purposely find ways to annoy Ben. Only because revenge was sweet, and I wanted to dish it out whenever possible. If I had to be here with the drunken duo, I made sure I would find my entertainment. I achieved great pleasure out of seeing him upset, it was my way of getting him back for all the slaps, punches and kicks he would gift me. I had opened the door cautiously, and lo and behold to my utter revulsion stood the infamous Ben looking extremely irritable.

“What do you want?” I screamed out obnoxiously over the music which I am sure was heard on all five floors in the building.

Ben stood there wearing a dirty, stained, foul smelling white tank top with crusted looking jeans that saw better days.

“Will you turn off that God forsaken music Ronnie,” he said a little too calmly for my liking, but you could detect the malice in his tone. Not liking the fact that Ben had once again called me by the nickname given to me by my father. I sent shooting glares at him, and only stood there looking at him like he had two heads instead of the decrypted one that sat upon his shoulders. By now, he was feeling a little too comfortable being my stepfather, and I had the sinking feeling that he wanted a little more than that.

Not that I could ever fathom the idea was mutual but the thing was, Ben might have married my mom, but he had always had a disgusting thing for me. It wasn’t like I could tell my mother. She was always drunk, so when she sobered up in the morning she barely remembered anything from the night before. I felt dirty even thinking about it; literally bringing the acid in my stomach to the back of my throat as I tried to say the words.

He rubbed his protruding belly with his overly burly dried cracked hands, which only grew bigger over time after consuming nothing but beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

“Why should I? It’s better than hearing you two bicker over nothing” I shouted again, but this time not caring at all if the neighbors could hear me. I made sure to hold the door towards me so that Ben couldn’t see inside my room.

Ben was creepy like that; he would tend to go snooping around my things when I was not home, and the only reason I knew, was because I found my under wear sticking out of the dresser drawer once. I learned early on to be a neat freak and made sure my room was immaculate and organized; so when I saw that my panty drawer was rummaged through, the realization was clear that he had touched my panties. I threw all of them away and immediately bought some new ones. Just the thought of that disgusting excuse of a man having had his hands all over them, would thoroughly creep me out.

“Because, I will go in there and break every god damn thing, that’s why,” he said screaming over the music and slamming his calloused palm against the doorframe to get his point across.

“Okay sweet baby Jesus, it’s not that big of a deal.” I responded slamming the door in his face and locking it. At least I had got him to come up to my room, before the situation with my mother got out of hand downstairs. Had I not interfered, Olivia would have probably been sporting a black eye.

I pressed my ear to the door and waited for him to walk down the stairs. Once I heard the retreating footsteps drift away, I opened the door and made my way to the bathroom to get showered and ready for work. I had decided to take a year off of college to work, and earn some extra cash. Had mom and Ben known this, they would have used all of my hard earned cash for their drinking binges. That was not happening, so I kept my job a secret.

Tomorrow I would be eighteen so I decided that I would spend some of my savings on a tattoo, as a present to myself. I loved tattoos, and I already had two. Pain to take away more pain, was my kind of therapy.

I turned to see my reflection and did a final once over in the mirror. I wasn’t ugly but I wasn’t drop dead gorgeous either. At just 5’6, and slim I was not something you ignore when I walked by. Boobs for days, and a nice rounded backside that I could thank my mom for, was something most guys appreciated on me. A black fitted top and a pair of tight boot cut blue jeans with some black rocker boots, and I was ready to leave. I quickly stashed my uniform shirt in my backpack and ran a brush through my long, straight black hair and headed downstairs to leave.

Just as I landed the final step, I heard my mother call out to me. “Hey baby come sit with us”…but it really sounded more like “
Heyyy Babeee cudsitwid us.”

It was pathetic really, because it was not even noon yet, and she was drunk as a skunk with a slur.  I stopped and glanced over at the scene before me. Olivia was sitting at the small dining table with Ben, eating scrambled eggs and toast with a can of beer as her choice of beverage, as if it was orange juice.

Thing was, my mother was never like that before. There was a time that she was a force to be reckoned with; she had beautiful, wavy, dark brown hair that went to mid-waist and her skin glowed with luminescence. Beauty was in her genes, she radiated confidence and she knew what she wanted in life and how to get it at any cost. Whoever would pass her in the overpopulated streets of Manhattan would stop to gape; her beauty was appreciated by men of all ages. I used to look up to this woman, the one I used to once call mom.

The creature before me was an empty shell of what she used to be, and it would always be a constant reminder of what I refuse to become. The once beautiful wavy, brown, shiny hair was now swept back into a ponytail. I just gawked at what remained; stringy, lifeless, dull hair with no memory of what it
once had been. It felt as if when my dad left, he took her soul with him too.

I never really understood why he left, but I did know my mom’s side of the story, which she constantly reminded me of, and it always went like this: “Your shit head father found himself some new, young, skank to shack up with. He doesn’t care about you or me, so he left us to be with her.”

Truth was I wasn’t saying that I did not believe her, but he was not around to say his side of the story. It doesn’t matter because he made sure he disappeared and stayed away for good. Olivia should have been strong enough for the both of us.

We had no pictures of him, and if there were my mother did a good job at hiding them. The only thing I could remember about him was that he was breathtakingly handsome. I was not saying that because the man was my father, but he was tall, dark and dreamy.

Erick was all about work and his family, or so I thought. He had these amazing bright green eyes which sometimes stared right back at me when I looked in the mirror. Who knew my life would completely change at thirteen?

My mother’s skin was now marked with bruises and cuts left by Ben when he would throw his childish tantrums.

Staring at her with anger and disgust, “No thank you, I’d rather eat out of the garbage.” I said then turned to leave when I heard the chair scrape across the floor, and the banging of a fist slam down on the tabletop. I knew it was a fist, because I could sadly decipher the different sounds that Ben liked to make with his hands. I was suddenly jerked back by a hand wrapped around my hair.

“You will show a bit more respect in this house, you ungrateful little bitch.”

I knew Ben had a death grip on my hair, but I still tried to wriggle free. That only made things worse, and his grip on my hair tightened. Strands of hair were being pulled from my scalp, and my eyes began to water from the pain. I already knew what would be coming next, so I slowly closed my eyes and waited for the unavoidable.

Chapter 2

I got to the restaurant a few minutes late and quickly made a dash to the locker room to change and get ready for my shift. Amber; another waitress and my only friend in the whole state of New York walked in right after I did. It was our place to
come sit down and gossip about everything that has happened since the last time we saw each other.

“Hey girlie I saw you come in, how are …” She stopped mid-sentence with her mouth hanging open, shocked and speechless. By now the black eye I was sporting instead of my mother, was noticed by Amber. The makeup didn’t do a very good job covering my face up in that department. My nerves were shot and I wasn’t in the mood to discuss the situation. I laughed nervously trying to brush it off, and distract her with a different topic.