Opening the door, she steps inside. Her dress is low on her back and heels prop her up to my level. She turns, red lipstick still perfect on her lips. I cannot help myself; cannot take it anymore. She notices and leans in before I can. We kiss, touch, pull as I walk her into the hall. To the door with the pink frame. I open it, turn on the light, but she does not break free from me. First, her shoes, then my shirt, then her dress. Her body sits on top of me and I can feel the soft cotton of the light pink sheets rubbing on my back. Her head pulls up, staring into my eyes until they turn to look around the room.

“What room is this?” Her body goes limp.

I grab her waist, turning her underneath me, holding her wrists above her head.

“Ben, wait.” She squirms as I kiss her neck, “Stop!” She’s raising her voice now.

One hand holds her wrists while the other reaches toward my pants. She’s screaming, but I don’t know what she is saying. I don’t stop; I can’t. My hand holds her mouth as I push. Her legs kick and body shakes. Muffled screams continue, as do I.

She sits in a small brown chair. Her right hand is placed around the handle of her coffee mug. Her left is placed on top of a large book, flipping the pages as she reads. Her shiny black hair is behind her ears and down her back. Her lips are parted far enough so I can see her perfectly straight, white teeth. She looks up at me with confusion in her deep brown eyes. I realize I have been staring at her from my table which is across from hers.

I clear my throat and speak in a shaky voice, “Hi.”

Her skin is fair and face clear as day. The true definition of perfection. She smiles at me. “Hi.”

“Could I sit with you?” I asked after a moment. She nodded her head while sipping her coffee. I stand, grabbing my bag and black coffee and walk to her table. I sit across from her, not breaking eye contact the whole way down. I take a sip of coffee. The warmth flows throughout my body along with confidence. “What is your name?” I ask.

“Isabelle.” She folds the page of her book in and closes it.

Her eyelashes are curled up long and black. Her eyeshadow only a shade darker than her skin. I cannot look away from her. “I am James.”

She gives me a soft smile. “Nice to meet you, James.”

“How old are you, Isabelle?”

She takes another sip of her coffee, white foam still swimming around on the top. “I am twenty two. And you?”

I pause a moment before responding, “I am thirty.” My heart beats faster as I watch her tuck her long, beautiful hair behind her ears. “Would you have dinner with me tonight?”

“Like a date?” She raises her eyebrow.

“Yes.” I say in a hopeful tone.

She thinks for a moment and smiles. “Yes.”

She gives me her phone number and we talk for a little longer before we both leave. I drive home, excited. Once I am finished getting ready, I drive to the restaurant I am meeting her at. My heart beats faster than ever before the second I sit at the table. I wait only a few minutes before I see her walk in. She wears a short, red dress and her hair flowing down the sides of her face. She smiles once she sees me and I stand up. I pull out her chair for her as she sits down and push it in before I take my own seat again. We talk for a while before the waiter arrives. She orders pasta and I do the same. We drink wine and talk and laugh. We both had an amazing time. After we finish eating, I ask if she would like to come to my house, she agrees. I pay and we get in the car.

“That was lovely, thank you for dinner.” She says kindly.

I look to her and smile. “You are welcome.” Once we arrive to my house, I get out of the car and open her door for her. She smiles and steps out. We walk to the door and I unlock it, allowing her to step in first. Her dress is low on her back and she stands tall in her high, black heels. She turns to me, her red lipstick still perfect on her lips.

I step closer to her and grab her hand. “Come with me.” We walk through a hall and I open a door with a pink doorknob. She walks in first. I walk in behind her and turn on the light. She looks back at me, giving me a confused look.

“What is this?” She asks with a slightly shaky voice.

I smile. “It’s your new room.” I grab her throat and slam her against the wall. I hold my hand over her mouth and nose. She tries to scream and hit me, but I stay in my place until her body goes limp. I strip her of her clothes and put them in the hamper in the corner of the room. I grab a pink dress in the closet and put it on her, then lay her on the small, pink bed. I walk to the door and turn off the lights. I close the door and lock it.

—————

I wake up and everything around me is black. I am laying on a bed it feels like. I stand on shaky legs and feel my way across the room to where I remember seeing the door. I feel on the wall until I find the lightswitch. I turn it on and try to open the door. Its locked. I turn and look at the small room. There is a little bed with pink covers and pink pillows and dolls laying on the floor. There is a desk with a mirror and pictures across it. I walk up to it. My hair is tangled and my makeup is smudged across my face. I am wearing a pink dress far too small for my size. I bend down to look at the pictures.

“Oh my God.” I whisper to myself as I pick one up. It is a picture of James with a small girl with the caption ‘Dad and Lydia’. She has long pitch black hair with dark brown eyes and light skin. The door opens and I turn, dropping the picture onto the ground. He stands at the door with bright eyes. “Who are you?” I ask.

“You look so beautiful, darling.” He starts to walk towards me. I stand and back up to the far wall of the room. He stands inches from me as he reaches his hand up to my face, moving a piece of my hair from in front of my eyes.

“I missed you so much, Lydia.” He kisses my forehead.

Years of anger are piling up inside of me. People breaking my heart and lying and cheating. Broken promises and hurting me. I sit alone in my room in a white chair facing the corner of the white wall. I sit with my hands under my thighs and my feet moving quickly up and down, banging on the white carpet. It is night. All I can do is think. I think of those who hurt me. I think of me hurting them. I think of piercing a sharp knife through the side of their neck and watching as their red blood streams down their neck. I think of wiping up that blood up with my finger and putting my finger into my mouth, tasting their blood. I think of the look of terror that would form on their face and I smile. I think of pouring boiling water over their legs and watching them scream in pain as their skin turns red and forms blisters. I sit in my white chair and throw my head back to look at the white ceiling. I close my eyes and let out a small laugh. My anger forms a little more at the thought that I cannot do these things. An anger large enough to make a person go mad.

I hold the brush in my hand, eager to start painting. I ponder on what should be put on the canvas. I smile as I figure it out. My dear love. I think of him as I dip my brush into a small container of paint. Oh, how he fills me with joy. I stroke the color along the blank space. I think of him coming home to me every day. He will sit at the table across from me with his narrow eyes. He will eat my food and tell me what needs fixing. He tells me he only wants what's best for me. We go into the bedroom after dinner and he kisses my cheek. He used to kiss my lips, but he says the cheek is more sincere. Oh, how I miss his soft lips upon mine. I fall asleep to his phone's bright light on his face. He wakes earlier than I and goes to work extra early to make his boss proud. He even stays extra late. He says the woman at the front desk and him are good friends and hang out when the boss is away. He comes home smelling of her some days. She smells of lavender and vanilla. Once he comes home again he will tell me of the laughs they share in the office. I ask why he stays late if no one else would be at the office. He says the woman at the front desk stays with him. I dip my brush back into the container to get more paint. I ask why he would stay alone with her. His eyes get cold and annoyed. I apologize. He gets angry. I tell him I do not like him alone with her. He lays his hand on my cheek that he kisses in such a manner that it stings. I do not like it. I apologize again. The next day he would come home and we would not speak. I would admire his face from across the table as he takes a bite into the food I prepared him. He does not look satisfied. I do not speak. He asks me to get him something to drink. I get up and do as ordered. I hand him the bottle and our fingers touch ever so slightly for only a moment. It was so warm. It was so smooth and soft. I want to touch it again. Instead, I sit across the table and continue watching him. Oh, how much I love my husband. My hand shakes as I continue painting. I bend down to the ground to put my brush into another color. I paint the new color onto the old. He comes home angry one day. He paces and mutters things to himself. I ask what was wrong. He says nothing. I ask if it is the woman at the front desk. His silence tells me it is. I ask more questions. He has not spoken to her in a few days. He walks up to me and yells in my face. I do not move. I am not scared. He grabs my arm tightly. I do not make a sound of pain, no matter the amount I want to. He said he would never hurt me. Therefore, I am not hurt. He says he loves me. Therefore I will forever love him back. He lays his hand upon my cheek once again stinging my face. I walk out of the room. I walk out of the house. I get into our car. I drive. I get out of the car. I walk into a building. I lock the door behind me. I grab a paintbrush. I begin to paint. The painting continues. Only one more stroke until I am finished. I bend down to the pool of red color sticking to the hard floor. I ignore the body it is coming from. Her long black hair lies over her face, covering her terror. She still breaths. She is still alive. I smile at her, but she cannot see me. She cannot move nor speak. Her white shirt covers with the bright red I am using. It is the perfect color for my canvas. I am done. I back away. The canvas is painted black. On top of the black is the perfect shade of red lines. A tear trails down my face. Oh, how beautiful he is.

Chapter One

When we are seventeen years old, we are expected to have most of our life already figured out. We are expected to talk to strangers in complete sentences without complications. We are expected to get good grades and know what we want to do for a living. We are told we do not know how to love and we are too young to fall in love. We are told to make our own decisions, yet told that we are too young to know what we truly want yet. We are faced with problems that adults claim they have been through and understand, yet they do not live in the world teenagers today face. They talk down on technology that our generation feeds on and will starve if deprived. It is a bit overwhelming. They swear they understand. They swear they can help us. They promise life will get better. God knows my life could only get better from here. My name is June Barrett. I was also born in June so that tells you how creative my parents are. I have long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I am an only child and live with my mother and my stepfather. My father died when I was a baby, I never knew him. My best friend, Mia, has always been there for me. She has short brown hair and dark brown eyes and is about half a foot shorter than me. We are literally inseparable. We have known each other our whole lives and know every fact about each other, from pimples on our asses to boys we fantasize about. She does not ever not have a boyfriend, whereas I get bored too quickly to have one. At least that is what I like telling people. I have been hurt mentally and physically by boys too many times to be able to trust any. I told Mia I broke up with them because they cheated on me or got too clingy. I only wish. There is a point in a friendship where you two know so much about each other, it almost becomes distrusting. Not in the other person, but in yourself. I need my own secrets. I cannot live knowing I share every one of my thoughts with another person. I am pretty sure I am the only one who thinks this. Mia tells me things from who waved at her in the hallway to what she ate for lunch to whatever other irrelevant fact or situation that happened to her that day. I don't think she believes in secrets. Every secret that is told to her gets to me, but that is how best friends work. We have to tell eachother every bit of drama that comes ur way, it is basically an unwritten definite rule in the Best Friend Rulebook. Ask any teenage girl who has a best friend.

Back to the part about boys hurting me, it is not something I enjoy talking about, but I have to admit it at some point. A boy will tell you he loves you while slipping his hand down your pants and you think he is telling the truth because you are thirteen years old and your parents haven’t thought to tell you this yet. Apparently you are supposed to figure out the bad things on your own. Like when you let yourself believe you are in the wrong when he is slapping you in the face because you talked to another boy at school. You then go to school and ignore the other boy entirely because you are fourteen and believe that you cheated just because you had a question on the homework. Then you let another boy steal your heart. As in your heart is in his palm and is gripping it so tightly, you have no control left and you fall. You fall so hard that you do not think you will ever be able to get up again. Instead you let him hold his foot to your chest and play with that heart in his palm as blood seeps out and trails down his forearm. You look at his forearm with your blood covering it and think of how muscular that arm is. You trace the arm to his expanded chest and his neck that is attached to a chiseled jaw with perfect, green eyes that hover towers over you. His eyes are narrowed and cold. They told you an order and you followed, for he would squeeze tighter onto that pounding vessel in his hand if you did not. I think you get the picture. Now enough about stupid boys. Let’s talk about school. Oh, the wonderful place of joy with the kindest people you will ever meet. There are cliques. Everyone is in one unless you are a loner, of course. There are the popular girls, jocks, band geeks, chorus people, those girls who literally no one likes yet sill end up getting invited to every party, and those other people who aren’t exactly in a group who have their own group, no one knows what to even call them. Mia and I are in the popular group. With my witty and sarcastic charm and her willingness to blow any guy that asks it of her, we are basically on the very top. I used to be shy. I used to lower my head in my arms and hunch over my desk. I rarely talked and was so used to being quiet, I could barely get two words out when someone spoke to me. I thought they made a mistake and meant to ask someone else. Instead, I sat there with a red face and crazy look in my eye as I groaned, looking for the answer they wanted to hear. I got over that come freshman year. I forced myself to try out for cheerleading and talk to more people and just be more social. Apparently people actually like it when the quiet girl turns out to be quite the badass. Come sophomore year, I had tons of friends and life was great. Then junior year, everyone knew me and wanted to be my friend and life was great. Now it’s senior year and life is great. I actually like school. I don’t necessarily enjoy it, but it isn’t terrible. I am basically best friends with all of my teachers, I get good grades because my they love me and give me tons of extra credit, I have some really smart friends who sit next to me in class and let me copy their answers on tests, and it is always fun to shoot down the guys that hit on me. Today is the first day back from Christmas break. I am not nervous or anything, I am actually pretty excited to be back. I want to see all of my friends who I didn’t get to see over the break and ignore a special someone as much as possible. You know, the one who kept my heart captive for nearly two years. That special someone. He was the one who hurt me the most, not even the one who left bruises on my cheeks and arms.

I skip down the stairs and run into the kitchen. My mother jumps at the sight of me coming out of nowhere, clearly scaring her. She puts a hand to her chest and catches her breath as I give her a huge, forced smile.

I jump onto the chair of the island in the center of the kitchen. “Where’s Steve?” AKA my stepfather. She looks at me with annoyance in her eyes and stops making breakfast. I roll my eyes, “Fine. Mr. Stepfather. What else am I supposed to call him?”

She turns back to the stove and continues making eggs. “Well you don’t call him Steve. That is disrespectful.”

“It’s his name. I’m not calling him Dad.”

She sighs, for we do this just about every morning. “I never said you had to call him Dad.”

I get up and walk up to her. “Then he is Steve.” I hug her and run to the door.

“What about breakfast?” She calls from behind.

I open the door and turn around. “No thanks. Love you!” I close the door and go to my car. I throw my bag into the passenger’s seat and sit in mine, turning the car on. As I drive down out of my neighborhood, I listen to upbeat songs to get me in a good mood for school. As I arrive, I park near the entrance to the school. I turn off my car, grab my bag, and get out. I was confident. Excited. Happy. I was wearing light skinny jeans with a black cami under a black leather jacket and black booties. My hair was braided around my head and down my shoulder. Kind of a bold look with the leather jacket, but I was known to be quite bold. I walked to the door and walked inside, still holding the door open for a few juniors who were walking behind me. They thanked me then walked to their class, as did I. The second I stepped inside I was bombarded with hugs from Mia and her speaking at least seventy five miles per hour. I stand and cross my arms, giving her the YouAreTalkingTooFastSlowTheHellDown look. She finally notices after multiple eyebrow raises as to ask what on earth she was talking about. She stops talking and takes a deep breath.

“It’s Stephen.” This is the first thing I understood her say.

“That whole time you were talking about Stephen?”

“Yes now stop interrupting.” She continues talking and I zone out as she begins. I look around the room. There he is. The pompous, arrogant boy with the charming smile and ability to rip your heart out of your chest.

“Uh, hello?” Mia is crossing her arms now. “What are you looking at?” She turns around before I can say anything. She slowly turns with a smirk on her face. “You are totally still in love with Liam.”

“Shut up. I hate more than anything in the world.” I give him one more glance and start listening to Mia.

“Okay sure. Anyway, as I was saying. Me and Stephen broke up.”

“What? You guys were together for like seven months.” I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t feel bad, either. She would easily find a replacement within the next week or two.

“Yeah, but then he told me he loved me so I clearly had to break things off.”

I laughed. “Clearly.”

We walked to our desks right next to each other and across the room from Liam.

Mrs. Peterson walked into the room. “Welcome back class!” She said with an enthusiastic tone and a bright smile. She started writing on the bored and talking about triangles and I zone out.

I have to be in here for an hour. A whole hour. I might just say I feel sick and hang out with the nurse for most of the class. I do that sometimes when not even Mia can't entertain me. I felt a nudge on my left shoulder and look at a piece of paper that Mia passes me.

Someone is looking at you.

I look at her and she is smiling down at her desk. I look around the room and end up stopping at a boy who is not even looking at me, but I have never seen him before. He has blonde hair that is short and slightly pointed up towards the ceiling with hair even shorter on the sides of his head. His lips are parted slightly, but open enough to see perfectly straight and white teeth. Even from across the room I can see his dark brown eyes looking back and forth from the board to his desk, taking notes. He has olive skin with rosy cheeks. He looks my way and lightly smirks at me, crossing his arms on the desk and leaning forward. He tilts his head while still giving me a smirk that sends an uneasy emptiness in my stomach. I smile on accident and quickly look away to prevent him from noticing, but I think he saw. I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from smiling.

Mia leans over to me. “Did you see him?”

“Uh, no.” I look down at my empty desk.

“Huh. Well he still has feelings for you.”

Wait. “What?” I look up at her.

She points to the other side of the room. I look and see Liam looking at me. He is sitting three seats in front of the boy with the dark brown eyes. He smiles his normal smile that I used to bow down to. I stare at him with a vexed expression on my face. He laughs quietly and looks away from me to the board. I look to the board and fume. How dare he smile at me. Although I got my heart back, he knows he still has my blood marked on his skin. I sit, angry, in my seat until the bell rings. Mia and I stand and walk to the next class together. We pass her class first so I walk alone until I get to mine. Before I step inside my class, Liam steps in front of me, blocking me from getting inside.

I look up at him. “What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.” There is that smile again.

“Move.” I demand.

He backs up a few inches. “Woah. Don’t have to be so mean.”

“Are you going to move?”

He runs his hands through his curly, blonde hair, then puts his hand to his chin, thinking. After a few moments of thinking, he lies his hand back down by his side and steps closer to me. “Nope.”

I get closer to his face and speak in a stern tone. “You need to get out of my way before I-”

“Is this guy giving you trouble?” It’s the brown eyed boy. He is looking at me.

I step away from Liam and look at the boy. He is tall. Taller than Liam. “I’m fine.” I say with a calm voice.

“Good.” He smiles at me, then turns to Liam with a look of anger. The awkwardness gets out of hand and I speak up, “I’m going to go to class.” I look to the boy as he smiles, watching me walk in. I go to my seat and look out the door to see them talking, but cannot hear them. They both look mad. After they leave, my day goes on and I don’t see either for the rest of it, even in my other class I have with Liam. I am slightly relieved he wasn’t there, though. I walk out of the school and to my car, wondering who he boy is. Just because I’m not interested in seeing anyone right now doesn’t mean I can’t think about anyone. I drive home, thinking of those dark brown eyes.