Wrecked (24 page)

He smiled and dragged me by my arm into the massive building, which was nestled in a busy area of lower Manhattan. Once we approached the clerk’s office, the sign read
Marriage Licenses,
everything else blurred from my vision. I froze in my spot. No, he couldn’t be serious. I looked at my skinny dark denim pants, my cowl neck sweater, and my brown leather jacket that matched my knee-high leather boots.

He can’t be serious.

“My’.” He snapped my attention from my mini dilemma.

I was completely giddy with the idea of marrying Damien, other than the clothes being wrong. Marriage should have scared me senseless; then the reality came barreling through washing away the little color of my skin. I paled and stood completely frozen in the vast hall.

I, Mylie Mier, was irretrievably, entirely head over heels for Damien James. He had become my savior, my reason for breathing, and my soul mate, which was exactly why having to tell him this was the hardest thing I would ever say.

“I can’t marry you,” the words came pouring out like daggers into his heart where I could literally see the pain as each one hit him.

Then he was back, the asshole. It had been a long time since I had seen him, but he was there, just waiting under the surface. His whole demeanor stiffened before my eyes as I watched in awe as he shook his head, and like taking off a bad coat he was back to my Damien.

“Baby, I love you. You love me. We will get married but not today. As strange as this all looks, trust me. I would never have you wear that outfit on the day I marry you,” he simply said. What the hell was wrong my outfit? “And you look gorgeous, but you will be wearing some insanely expensive designer wedding dress with even more expensive shoes. There is no one in this world that deserves the best more than you. You deserve your happily ever after.” He grabbed my face and kissed me deeply.

A woman’s nasally New York accent broke our kiss, “Aw look honey, they are so in love.” She smacked her man in the back of the head. “That was us once, until you cheated you son of bitch!” She stormed off.

The man looked towards Damien, and jerked his head towards me. “She Puerto Rican?” Damien shook his head. “Good, cuz they love fiercely and will try to cut off your balls if you cheat.” He walked off awkwardly as Damien laughed. I stood still as I crossed my arms over my chest and quirked my brow.

“What? It was funny.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” His shoulders were stiff; I could see his tan slowly pale. Although I should’ve felt guilty about how scared he was, I didn’t. It only made the troublemaker in me revel with mischief, which I enjoyed immensely.

“I am.” I smiled inwardly.

“You are what?”

“I am half Puerto Rican. My dad was Puerto Rican; are you sure you don’t want to recant your former statement Professor James?” I grinned, and then laughed when I saw Damien’s body noticeably relax. He pointedly glared; he pulled me by the waist as his full lips skimmed the sensitive flesh on my ear.

“You’re going pay for that, Ms. Mier.”

My senses when it came to Damien had heightened tremendously which only tortured me more since he refused to have sex with me again. He wanted to wait until it was the right time. I let out a slight whimper which only made him chuckle.

“Asshole!”

Damien

I won’t deny when I heard Mylie say she couldn’t marry me, it had hurt. Everything in me wanted to be cold and callous, but I quickly realized that part of me had put Mylie in grave danger, and I refused to do that again. She was scared, not of marriage, but of Xander. The idea of me living a life without her was unthinkable, and I refused to believe I would live a day without her; we deserved our happily ever after, and Xander be damned, I wouldn’t let him stop me from having it.

“Come on,” I said breaking the sexual tension.

She had no idea how hard it was for me to feel her body against mine, but I loved her, and when we made love again, I wanted her to feel every bit of it. I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the clerk’s office. There sitting behind the desk with frizzy red hair was my Aunt Opal. Her purple glasses slid down the bridge of her nose as she bit into the pencil that spread across her face while another was tucked behind her ear. She had her knitted angora sweater over her crisp white shirt that was buttoned to the top. The beep alerted her that we had entered the small office across from the Marriage Certificate office.

“Just a minute,” she called out in no particular direction. I watched in awe as she typed away and sniffed satisfactorily when she hit the last word. “How can I help--,” she stopped midsentence as her bright blue eyes that match my own filled with tears.

My dear Aunt Opal. She looked towards Mylie and looked back to me. I gave her a slight nod, and she gave us her mega- watt smile.

“Damien, my boy. How it pleases me to see you.” I walked to the counter, and she grabbed my face and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

“Aunt Opal, this is my girlfriend Mylie.”

She smiled broadly, and Mylie gave her a shy smile and extended her hand. Before I could stop her, Aunt Opal grabbed her hand and read her palm. Another trait of the James women, they think they are psychic. I rolled my eyes, but when I saw the fear flick through eyes, it scared me. She was never wrong. Ever.

She knew about Jen, and when I refused to believe her, she said I would only come back when I brought the true Mrs. James. Here I was, ready to introduce her to the real Mrs. James to be.

“You must be careful Damien.” Her words of caution scared both Mylie and me. It was like a bad omen that lurked among us. She gave a tight smile. “She is precious, like porcelain. She can break at any time, but it will be at your hand if you are not careful.” I heard the warning clearly. Mylie laughed thinking it was sweet. She had no idea. “Now, let’s have lunch, but I have to stop at the bank.”

We left the courts office and walked into the bank where my aunt had asked us to wait outside while she went in quickly.

“It’s so gorgeous here; how could you ever leave?” Mylie asked as she watched the cabs driving by and the people pushing each other as they walked briskly towards the Brooklyn Bridge subway station.

“It gets old. Don’t get me wrong, I love visiting, but after a while you grow to appreciate the quiet life.” She nodded, and just like that, she was gone in her memories, of the dreams she never speaks about, recluse in the fear.

“Did you know that my parents lived here?” That shocked me; she never spoke of her parents.

I shook my head, “No, I didn’t. Where?”

“My dad is from South Jamaica Queens, he would say it proudly. My mom was from California. She moved here when she was twenty. Her family completely freaked, but she always did what she wanted from what Gram said.” I listened and stayed quiet. “From what Gram said, my parents were leaving Westchester County, where they lived with distant relatives of my parents. They had kicked them out after a misunderstanding, and it was winter, so instead of living in a shelter, they chose to go back to Phoenix.” I nodded again.

She stood quiet, and then she closed her eyes.

“On that drive back to Phoenix, I saw my parents die, and I have seen it every night for the last seventeen years.” And there it was, her nightmares given to me on a platter, and I didn’t have a clue what to say.

“What happened?” We turned around. Aunt Opal was standing close and watching Mylie curiously.

“Uh it was a car accident in Pennsylvania.”

I knew it before she said it, In the Poconos.

“Near the Poconos area.”

What do I do?

Chapter Thirty-One

Mylie

I finally told Damien the truth, his Aunt happened to hear, but strangely, it felt like she already knew. She made me nervous, but she was sweet yet eccentric.

“I am so sorry for your loss.” She grabbed my hand, and once again she held it for a little too long for my comfort and her eyes widened. “Damien may I speak to you a moment?”

“Not now Aunt Opal.” Strange. “We’re going to be late for lunch.”

He grabbed my hand away from Opal, as he dragged me down to the subway station that smelled of mildew and stale air. I clearly expected to see rats.

“Where are we going for lunch?” I asked, curious.

“Upper East Side.”

“Oh okay. Is it close to Central Park? I have always wanted to see Central Park.” Opal giggled but said nothing.

“Yes, it’s close,” Damien, said in a clipped tone, which was odd for him.

We rode the train, and Opal began to speak about Damien as a child and how he announced that he was going to be a lawyer when he was fifteen years old. I smiled at how dedicated he was to his passion. Our passion.

“What is it that you do Mylie?” she asked smiling broadly.

“I am working on my Juris Doctorate; I want to be a professor.”

“Isn’t that interesting.” She stared at Damien, silent conversation happening between them. He shook his slightly, but I already knew what she was thinking.

“I am not his student.” Her wide eyed expression clearly indicated that I hit the nail on the head. “And no I didn’t know I was working towards the same profession as he, but I don’t mind it, yet.”

“Yet?” He looked startled.

“Yes yet. You took my dream job, which means I have to find a job somewhere else.”

“You’re not staying in Pointe Hope?”

“Well, how can I work as the law professor when the current professor has tenure? It’s okay honey. I can work in Morganville.”

“Morganville is an hour’s drive Mylie; that is a long commute.”

“I know, but I will just buy a house in Morganville.”

He shook his head.

“You can’t be serious? We have two perfectly good houses we can live in. Why would you buy a house?”

“No, I live in my grandparents’ house, and Nik will live there until he is done with school. You have a house, but I do not have one. I would like something that is my own. Why are we even discussing this?”

“We are discussing it because it’s important. This is our future we’re talking about.”

“What future Damien, I could be dead tomorrow if Xander finds me!” I snapped, fighting the urge to cry.

He pulled me into his embrace and the tears slid down my cheeks. I had always been a fighter and hated to cry, but lately it’s all I was doing. I didn’t care that his aunt was here, or that my makeup was smearing, or that there were people in the train station staring. I was going to die, and I was tired of living in fear where I couldn’t plan my future. I hated Xander. He was ruining my life, and there was nothing I could do.

“Mylie, I love you, and I will spend the rest of my life loving you. We will figure it out, and we will have a future. You’re not going to die.”

He kissed my hair as I inhaled his wonderful intoxicating scent. I just nodded my head. The Number Six train had come and gone, just as the Five, and finally the Number Four train arrived. Why, I couldn’t say, but Damien insisted that we ride the Number Four train.

We rode silently, people standing holding the bars above us as we sat in the blue plastic seats. Others the subway’s interior stripper pole, but I cringed at the thought of all the germs that lurked. The train was clean, filled with advertisements for schools and businesses across the lighting. Other people read their e-readers, but what caught my eye was a book.

I saw from a distance someone reading a book called
Hopeless
by Colleen Hoover. The irony was perfectly situated in my tattered life because everything felt hopeless, and I knew it would get worse before it got better.

Damien

Shit. Shit. Shit. This was so fucked up. What the hell was I going to do? She would freak if she knew. Shit!

Opal just stared at me, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. This wasn’t my fault, but how did I explain this to Mylie? She would think the worst, she always thought the worst, but she loved me, right? So she would listen to reason. It wasn’t my fault, so she couldn’t blame me, right? Fuck!

We rode the Express Number Four train because I refused to ride the Five or Six because it reminded me of Jen. I wanted nothing that I had done with Jen to be in the same case with Mylie. She was my future. I replayed Opal’s warning.