Jess > Recent Status Updates

"I'm just happy, that's all." He took another lick of his ice cream and turned his attention to the water. "Today was a good day" He rested his hand on my knee and sighed in contentment. "A good day, baby."
Yeah, it was. "I love being here, I told him, feeling my body soften right along with my heart. "With you"
"Me too, Liz." He gave my knee a reassuring squeeze, "Me too."

"You know these changing rooms are unisex."
Snickering, I glanced over my shoulder at him. "I don't care."
"Well, I do."
"Why?"
"Because you're mine to look at." My heart slammed in my chest. "Not anyone else's."
I turned around to face my towel-wielding bodyguard and grinned. "Then look."

"You already got your birthday present," he replied, gesturing to the shiny new semicolon charm attached to my bracelet.

"Because you're a little rebel." A shiver racked through me when Hugh placed his hands on the armrests of my chair and leaned in close, caging me in. "Aren't ya?"
"Maybe," I breathed, heart bucking wildly, when my legs opened of their own accord, and he slid between them. "But I'm your rebel."
"No." His lips brushed against mine as he spoke. "You're my baby"😭

That was also how I found the strength to be here, in his home, enduring the discomforting company of a boy who made both my skin crawl and the voices in my head grow louder.
I was doing this for Hugh.

That's how I knew that I would never get over this boy.
For the rest of this life and whatever followed —be it heaven, hell, purgatory, or a thousand reincarnated lifetimes —my heart would eternally beat for Hugh Biggs.

Startled, I moved to pull my hand away, but he was unyielding. Turning my hand over, Hugh continued his mission of killing me with his touch, thumb tracing the jagged edges of every self-borne scar I had inflicted on my flesh. He didn't falter and he didn't recoil. He touched my skin with a reverence that could never be matched. Not in a hundred thousand lifetimes.

My eyes drank in the sight of him and made the rest of the world seem to fade and quieten. His tanned fingers, so much longer than mine, trailed over my flesh, sending sparks of life back into my body. His thumb traced over each one of my knuckles before moving to the inside of my wrist.

Feeling restless, I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted the familiar tang of copper.
Relief flooded me.
It was almost euphoric.
Because the pain weakened my mind's grasp on its rage.
It was how I had learned to function.
To bury it all down.

Smothering my frustration at his presence with personal aggression, I discretely settled my hands on my lap under the table and used my long nails to scratch at an itch I was sure I could never fully sate.

It didn't matter how well things went or how hard I tried.
I would never be enough for them to be happy.
I would never be enough for my father.

"Keep going, Hugh. Please, please! Make me better."
Make her better?
It was a strange comment to make in the throes of passion, but I was too drunk and too fucking lost in the moment to care. Overcome by lust, I relished how tight and hot and wet she felt.

"You belong in this bed" Fisting my hair, Hugh angled my chin up to his and traced his tongue over my bottom lip before pulling back to look in my eyes. "You belong with me."

"Thanks for coming home, baby."
"Home?" My heart skipped four solid beats, and a violent shiver racked through me. "How am I home, Hugh?"
With a heated expression, he pulled up on one elbow and reached for me with his free hand. "Because you belong in this house.” Cupping the back of my head, he drew me closer.

"Like I'd be thick enough to let her go, Hugh chuckled, tucking me into his side.
He dropped a kiss to my head before adding, "Liz is the one, Granda." Oh God.
My entire body burned with heat. The way he so openly claimed me as his, even to his grandfather, made me feel like I might be actually worth something.

On the rare occasion I had to address him by name, I used the only word that seemed to come out: the childhood pet name I had given him.
It hurt a little less that way, and I could manipulate my mind to separate the two.
Because the monster never said the name Thor.

The sight of her straddling me in nothing but a frilly white bra and matching knickers caused a groan to escape. "Jesus Christ, you're so beautiful, it hurts to look at you. There's not another girl in my world that can hold a candle to you, and that's not an exaggeration because I haven't taken my eves off you since I saw you on the school bus in first class."

"Christ, don't ever stop."
I didn't plan to.
Not until I left my mark on him, at least.

I managed to find the first-year locker area without asking for directions, but just before I reached my locker zone, I was hauled inside an emergency exit stairwell by a boy donning Tommen's number-ten rugby jersey. "Finally, my boyfriend growled when the emergency door slammed shut, cloaking us in darkness. "I’ve been waiting here all morning for you."

That made her laugh, and I was glad because it was important to me that this girl never lost her shine. Like I did.

"You've got this, Claire Biggs." I promised, pulling her closer. "Give it a month, and you'll be the school's sunshine sweetheart."
"You really think so?"
"I know so."
"What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, what will you be?"
"You can't have sunshine without rain," I offered with a shrug. "I’ll be the school raincloud."

I couldn't remember destroying my room, ripping Caoimhe's pictures off the walls, or running naked through the fields at the back of our house. But that's what they told me happened. The worst thing by far was hearing that not only did I tie a horse rein around my neck and throw myself off the upper loft in the haybarn, but Hugh broke his elbow when he fell over the ledge trying to cut me down.

It wasn't right how much both of my parents had relied on Hugh in the past two and a half years, but he never complained. Worse was my inability to function withouthim, but again, my boyfriend never faltered or shied away, and Iknew with absolute certainty that the salvageable parts of my body, heart, and mind would forever belong to him.

Yeah, and I didn't deserve it. Her pride was misplaced because if she knew the real me, she wouldn't feel that way. If she knew about my bad thoughts or the things I craved, she would be repulsed.

Everything went dark once the monster crawled into my bed. There were only glimmers of hope, fleeting flecks of sunshine that teased my soul. Until she died and took my last flicker of trust to the grave with her.

"Have you always been this mistrustful?"
No.
There were moments in time, back when I was a little girl, that 1 thought I could be happy. Back then, contentment felt attainable. But darkness had a way of sweeping innocence up in the riptide.
That's what happened to my innocence.
To me.