Pierced Love (31 page)
Authors: T. H. Snyder
t. h.snyder
is my pen name.
I am a 34 year old single mother to our two amazing kids.
I became an avid reader in spring of 2012 and since have read over 250 books.
My genre of interest ranges from Romance to thrilling Paranormal.
This is more than just a hobby for me, it’s a passion to read the words of great authors and bring life to their stories with my reviews and character castings.
I started writing my first novel in June of 2013 and I am anxious to see where this journey takes me!!
You can continue to show your support by liking and following me on facebook, twitter, and goodreads.
https://www.facebook.com/authorthsnyder
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7152850.T_H_Snyder
Blurb from
Destroying the Wrong
By Evelyn Stone
Alissa Sullivan has got it made -- a supportive, loving family, a cause she believes in, and her new boyfriend. With her best friend Kat at her side, she was counting the days until the end of high school when they could go away to college together. Then she met Scott, a man who wouldn't touch her but would turn her life upside-down.
Katherine Horne is perfectly content being in the background. All she wants is to graduate and get out of the town she's grown to loathe. She'd do anything to avoid confrontation but when she finds herself in increasingly humiliating situations, she realizes some things can't be ignored. Especially when it comes to bullying.
With their carefully planned futures unraveling, Kat and Alissa will come to realize the bond of their friendship will be tested... and might not make it through intact.
Excerpt from Two Weeks With a SEAL
Book 1
The Wakefield Romance Series
By Amazon Best Selling Author
Theresa Marguerite Hewitt
www.facebook.com/TheresaMargueriteHewittAuthor
Links to buy:
Barnes&Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/two-weeks-with-a-seal-theresa-marguerite-hewitt/1114304321?ean=2940044252417
Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/275086
PROLOGUE:
I can’t believe it. It is actually snowing. I have lived in Wakefield, Virginia all my life and have only seen it snow a handful of times and of all the days, it decided to snow today. Today is the day I am saying goodbye to my mom. The day after Christmas and two days after my twenty-fifth birthday and here I am burying my mom. Kind of a huge downer right? I try not to let the tears well in my eyes, but I can feel them there as I look out the glass sliding back door of our double-wide trailer, my fingers resting on the cold glass.
See, my family is far from perfect and now I am the only member left. Well, my Uncle Rick is still alive but I don't give a flying fuck where he is, you'll see why.
My family, the Griggs family of Wakefield, Virginia, have been upon the topics of gossip pretty much my whole life and I know my name will be on the tip of people's tongues today as well. Our downfall, at least in my eyes, started in October of 1992. It’s funny how I remember the date, the image of what I had seen still burned in my retinas. The yells and whispers that came in the years following still echo in my mind at night.
My dad, Robbert Griggs, is a tough man, raised by the whip and other traditional Southern values. He is a big man, standing six foot five, his thick arms and legs making him look even more like a giant, and his large hands easily could palm anything. I remember being a tiny girl, wrapping my arms around his leg and he use to walk around with me like that, finally having to tickle me to get me off, and then swinging me above his head. His dark brown hair was always kept pretty short, his beard growing long in the winter, his grey eyes looking like storm clouds when he was mad. October of 1992 brought that man that I had thought of as this great sense of strength, down to nothing but a nightmare in my book.
My older brother, Randy, had walked me home from the elementary school that day. The leaves had been all over the ground but it was still pretty warm out because I remember that Randy was wearing shorts. We had walked into the house and I remember strange noises coming from the living room, and I ran like every five year old girl would to investigate. Being so young I didn't really understand what I was seeing. But Randy was ten and he knew a little more of the world than I did and he tried to cover my eyes, yelling at my father as he dragged me from the house.
We had interrupted my dad and his mistress, having sex on our family room couch. Randy ran across our road, dragging me crying behind him, to our neighbor Ms. Tillman and he had called our mother at work. Sometimes is still seems unreal and there have been countless time when I wished that is was. Maybe my life would’ve turned out different and I wouldn’t be standing here, wishing my mother was healthy and happy standing beside me.
I would learn later in life that my dad’s 'mistress' was really a hooker, and that my dad paid her in drugs. This man that I had thought of as an awesome giant filled with love, was in fact a dirty drug dealer and manufacturer brought into the game by his brother, my Uncle Rick.
My mom threw him out of the house, making a huge scene to the point where the police had to be called, hauling my dad and some of his clothing away in one of their patrol cars. It wasn't the last time that I saw my father though, oh no, the last time will forever be burned in my memory every time I watch a television show or movie that has a situation where a man slaps a woman.
It had been past our bedtime, on a school night, and Randy was in his room and I was in mine with only the light sounds of our mom doing her before bedtime routine of shutting lights off and locking doors echoing slightly throughout our homey double-wide. We were happy, content even in our meager lives. Randy and I wanted for nothing and our mother showered us with love.
The snapping of the door frame is what brought me out of bed, the screams of my mom bringing tears to my eyes as I raced to my bedroom door only to be intercepted by Randy, pushing me back in and shutting the door behind him; dragging me into my closet. Randy's grey eyes were so much like my father's, watering as he told me to be quiet, putting his hand over my mouth as the slapping sounds bounced off of the walls.
My dad's voice was loud and harsh, calling her a 'bitch' and a 'no good whore' as the fist to flesh sounds filled the night air. Randy's hand tight to my mouth as we huddled together, both with tears streaming down our cheeks.
"Stay here," he had whispered to me, my five year old mind panicking, telling him no, grabbing at his legs as he shut the closet door behind him. He shoved a chair up against it so I couldn't follow him as I put my little hands up to the slanted panels of the door.
I stayed in that closet, my arms wrapped around my legs pulling them close, my tears drowned in my knees till Randy came back to get me, his face all red from the back of my dad's hand.By that time the cops were there, the red and blue flashers coming through the front windows as Randy held my hand leading me out into the living room.
Our mother's best friend since high school and my best friends mom, Cindy Byrd, took us in, ushering us away as our mother was loaded into an ambulance and our father into the back of a patrol car. My mom spent three weeks in the hospital, coming home with a cast on her right arm and bruises all over her face and body. My dad spent a year in jail. His collect calls haunted my mom whenever she picked up the phone to hear that automated message from the Greensville Correctional Facility in nearby Jarratt, Virginia.
My mom, Ruth Griggs, did an awesome job bringing us back together as a family; purging our home of pictures and items that reminded us of that bastard. He showed up every now and then at school, looming outside to try and talk to me and Randy and he was shooed away by the teachers. In 1995, we read in the local paper that he had been arrested in a huge ATF raid, charged with multiple counts of possession and the manufacturing of methamphetamines. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, returning to Greensville, where he still tries to call collect and sends Christmas/Birthday cards every year, addressed only to me, Rhea Noel Griggs.
After that, it was like a dark cloud had been lifted off of my mother's heart. She blossomed into a new woman, growing a back bone and even dating every now and then. She was super active in our childhood, watching every football, baseball and track meet for Randy and every basketball and softball game for me. Randy was five years older than me, so when he graduated it was a huge tear jerker for my mom, especially since he had decided to enlist in the Navy with his best friend Chadwick [Chad] Payne, who I have been unashamedly in love with since I was five years old.
My brother Randy was six foot three, his light brown hair a mix of our father's dark brown and our mother's dirty blonde, always kept buzzed close to his skull. I was only thirteen when he and Chad had enlisted and like every girl who has an over protective older brother, I was kind of glad to have him out of my life.
Our country had just declared war on terrorism, so yes it was scary, but I was young and I wanted to spread my wings without having an older brother hover over me at all times. Saying goodbye to him at the recruiter’s office I cried more for Chad than I did for Randy, both of them hugging everyone. I loved my brother and had told him that for the first time in years as he hugged me that day, a wide smile causing his dimples to show as he grinned down at me. He had winked and waved at me as Chad and he walked to the travel van bound for the airport, and I'll admit I ran and jumped up into the bed of our old Chevy just to wave one last time as they turned out of the parking lot. I swear that Chad had winked at me, both him and Randy waving as they disappeared.
I ran wild at home with Randy gone, my best friend Kendall Byrd and I becoming two little hellions. While my brother and Chad spent a year going through Navy SEAL training, Kendall and I had our first kisses and first 'boyfriends', mending each other's broken hearts when we realized both guys were only interested in one thing and dumped us when we wouldn't give it up.
Another eighteen months brought the ceremony where Chad and Randy were issued their Navy SEAL Trident insignias, both being assigned to SEAL Team 10 based out of nearby Norfolk, Virginia and their first deployment overseas. Over the following three years Randy and Chad only came home a few times, my mom and I taking the little over an hour drive more than a handful of times visiting with them for a few hours at a time.
I graduated high school with honors in 2005, attending The College of William and Mary majoring in Pre-Law, my dreams of becoming a lawyer in my sights. My first semester was great, returning home for Christmas I gushed about all of my new friends to Randy when he came home, dressed in his camouflage and utility boots. A party thrown by some of Randy's high school friends brought everyone in our age group together, the cliques realigning themselves as if we had never been separated, the alcohol flowing freely.
Randy had assigned Chad to be my 'babysitter', having him hover at a distance to make sure I didn't drink too much since I was still underage and I noticed for the first time that Chad actually paid attention to me. That night, in the basement of local beauty queen Heather Rachel's house, I lost my virginity to Chad in a flurry of kisses and muttered un-meaningful 'I love you’s'. We had been drunk and it had happened, not that it dampened the undying love that I had for the irresistible man. I still remember exactly what we both were wearing that night, the way his lips had felt against my skin and the way my hands had shook when I touched him. I wish every night that I had had the guts to tell him what I said was real for me; that I really loved him.