Damage Done Read online

  DAMAGE DONE

  by Virginia Duke

  Copyright - 2013

  Damage Done

  Virginia Duke

  All Rights Reserved

  [email protected]

  facebook.com/VirginiaDukeRomanceErotica

  twitter.com/WritingVirginia

  Shout Outs

  Bananza, Lee Anna & Ms. Lopez,

  my e-book whore know-it-alls.

  Mindy & Heather

  Oh For Fuck’s Sake

  Mom (my Ginny)

  All my ladies from D-town to G-town,

  and Austin to Baton Rouge!

  A Romance Novel in 60 Days or Less.

  I did that.

  (with two kids and a dog.)

  For Wilkie,

  my happily ever after.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Dammit," she muttered, frustration beginning to peak.

  The beat up SUV idled loudly in the visitor's space. Rachel rolled down the windows, cursing the south Texas heat and the deafening humidity it invited in from the Gulf Coast, then closed her eyes and concentrated on loosening her vice grip on the steering wheel while the air conditioning to kick in. It was a short distance between the classroom and the car, but the sweat dripped down her neck. She sought the spare rubber band she kept handy on her wrist and reached back to pull her mousy brown hair into a ponytail. A dozen long dry strands broke off, her once thick, attractive locks had started to thin.

  She heard her mother's voice threatening to bring in a psychiatrist because she'd started letting herself go, "Now dumplin', if you're not looking good on the outside then something must be wrong on the inside." Rachel’s mother didn’t believe in mental illness unless it manifested in dry skin and hairy legs.

  She jerked toward a shrill voice that yelled, "Hayeeee Rachel! How y'all?"

  Oh gross. Harriet Whatsherface.

  Rachel hated Harriet Whatsherface, and every other two-faced talks-too-much snot she’d had to deal with since grade school, but she forced a smile, "Hey Harriet! We're well, thanks!" then rolled up the window and quietly sang through her teeth, "Not that you really care, biiiiitch!" The last thing she needed was one of those sanctimonious PTA rags running off to tell everyone they'd seen her dissolve into tears in the elementary school parking lot.

  "Mommy, we don't say 'bitch,'" Lauren lectured disapprovingly from the backseat.

  "No, ma'am, we do not," Rachel agreed, reaching into her purse to dig around for the cheap sunglasses that were never where they were supposed to be. Lauren went back to her little ponies and Rachel swallowed the rising lump in her throat, the conversation she’d had with Kenneth the night before was still too fresh.

  The evening had gone by uneventfully, she sat in her corner in the kitchen waiting for him to come in from the den. She let him know the kids were asleep, she'd be in the kitchen waiting to talk. She doodled in her notebook until the television clicked off and Kenneth made his way toward the guest room.

  "Kenneth!"

  "What?"

  "I asked you to make time to talk to me after the kids went to bed.”

  He came in, a sour look on his face as he opened the fridge and stood looking over the shelves. Rachel had spent weeks trying to build up the courage to tell him how she felt, his constant need to keep space between them hadn’t made it any easier.

  "Will you come sit down with me, please?" she asked.

  "I can hear you just fine, Rachel," he’d said, leaning against the counter with a liter bottle of root beer.

  "Fine. I think we need counseling, Kenneth." He stared straight ahead.

  "I’m just really unhappy," she continued, "And I don’t think you’re happy either, we can’t live like this." He twisted the lid back onto the bottle and turned to put it up, then shuffled through a drawer and pulled out an apple.

  "Kenneth, say something."

  “I’m not going to counseling, Rachel,” he said right before he turned to leave, “It never seemed to do you any good.” And then he’d gone to bed and she’d stayed up far too late scratching away at her notebook, banging out all the ugly things she wanted to say, all the things he’d said that hurt her feelings, listing all the things she needed that she was too afraid to ask him for.

  Now she sat in the parking lot at the school trying to get the hell over it and focus on being grateful the morning's meeting with Hunter’s teacher had ended more quickly than the last. If only he'd stop leaning back in his chair and bossing other kids around, she might make it through the week without having to hear about what the principal called his 'powerful personality.'

  She'd been mortified to hear those veiled criticisms, but Kenneth never seemed to be bothered by it. He took an arrogant kind of pride in hearing things like that about their son, "Well, goddamn, I'd rather he have a powerful personality than be an insecure little sheep who just bah bah bah's all the time."

  Kenneth hated if she went running when they got reports about Hunter giving his teacher a hard time. He wasn't from Harrison Township, Kenneth didn't understand the residual effects a child could face in a small town when their teacher ran around telling everybody what a pain in the ass they are.

  Rachel worried Hunter would slip through the cracks, maybe teachers down the road would hear about his powerful personality and they'd write his history before he'd have a chance to prove what a good kid he was, maybe they wouldn't care to build up his confidence or push him to excel because they’d be too busy trying to make sure his personality never colored outside of the lines.

  Rachel's husband disapproved of her perpetual worry when it came to their kids. He no longer cared to entertain the constant questioning of whether it was normal for their kids to do this or say that.

  "He's a boy, that's what boys do, Rachel," he would say, and, "Stop babying him," and "When I was a kid, boys were expected to be hyper and rambunctious. These days a kid has to have some disability just because he talks too much."

  He was right, and Rachel knew she worried too much, but she didn't know how to stop. She appreciated the price a child could pay if their parents weren't paying attention, weren't looking out for their best interests. And she was determined to do whatever it took to make sure her kids were happy, to keep them safe.

  Even if that meant sucking up to cocky teachers who treated her like some neglectful asshole parent incapable of raising her own kids.

  Kenneth never got it, it made him resent her. He'd grown up in a television sitcom kind of home with two doting parents who lived for their kids and whose greatest fight was whether to have Chinese take-out or pizza delivery on Friday nights. Dave and Barb Daniels were the Hallmark Greeting Card of healthy and well adjusted coupledom, always smiling and kissing and making the miserable couples around them even more miserable. It was one of the reasons she'd been attracted to their son in the beginning, Kenneth was safe, and dependable. And he'd promised he could make her happy.

  "Mommy! Let's go!" the little voice demanded.

  "Don't tell me what to do, Lauren. I'm the grown-up here," she said, shooting her a dirty look in the rearview mirror. She found the elusive sunglasses then, in the mirror, sitting on her face.

  Jesus, Rachel.

  Lauren wrinkled her nose and threw her curly brown hair behind her shoulder in qui
et indignation. The humidity had given it a gorgeous Shirley Temple quality, something old ladies loved to discuss whenever they happened upon her.

  "Oh my goodness gracious," they would coo, "Just look at those beautiful curls."

  They had no idea how hard it was to manage, or how little it helped in tempering Lauren's three year old ego. She'd give them what Rachel called, "the burlesque shuffle," shaking her shoulders like a showgirl, smile coquettishly and then launch into what she wanted for her fourth birthday. Rachel was shy and reserved as a child, even awkward, but Lauren was born charming the adoring crowd around her.

  She threw the gear shift into reverse and fumbled blindly to find her cell phone, eager to call Kenneth and let him know how it went, that she'd once again refused to be bullied into putting their son on Ritalin. At least that was one thing they'd agreed on lately, not medicating their son just to make life easier for his teachers.

  No answer. She reached down and turned off her cell phone in case he tried to call back.

  Fuck you, too.

  He never answered, even if he wasn't out on a call. She didn't know why she bothered, he hadn't shown any concern over Hunter's school problems for months, refusing to leave the fire station and come down to the meeting that morning, he wasn't interested in having the same conversation he'd already had four times last year.

  The truth was, she hadn't even wanted him to go, she'd worried he would tell the teachers they were lazy or ill-equipped for their jobs. And Rachel was terrified of confrontation, she'd never been able to regulate her emotions during conflict and always found herself flustered. Or crying.

  So she'd gone alone since she couldn't count on Kenneth to keep the conversation constructive, diplomacy was never one of his strengths.

  Kenneth's strength was playing hero, Captain America meets the Hulk, an unapologetic superhero who never owed anybody an explanation for the million dollar building he destroyed while protecting the city. He was always saving somebody, and not always while he was on the clock. It was like a code written into his DNA that he couldn't turn off.

  A year after they were married, they'd seen a late night movie, and on the way back to the car Kenneth heard something that made him pause, alarmed. He'd posted up like a dog sensing danger, his entire body on full alert. She waited under a light post while he checked it out, and he came running out of the alley minutes later chasing a man he'd found attacking some woman.

  For Christmas that year, Rachel made him a long blue cape and sewed a large red letter K on the back. She'd thought it was clever and spent a lot of time on it. He thought she'd been mocking him. Looking back now, maybe she was.

  Stuffing the cell back into her purse, she pushed past dozens of receipts, toddler toys and half-eaten cereal bars to feel around for the last piece of chewing gum she knew had to be in there. She was still searching when she pulled into the parking lot at her office, Jake was pulling a large black duffle bag from his pickup truck, probably more film equipment. He smiled and waved, and she rolled her eyes at his freshly shaved head, designer jeans and the black t-shirt that accented biceps he spent hours sculpting every day at the gym around the corner. If she didn’t love him so much, she’d have hated him. Few men could pull off his kind of physical perfection without being total dicks, but Jake was more benevolent, more authentic, than any person she'd ever met. And he loved Rachel and her kids dearly.

  Lauren scrambled out of her booster seat before the engine was off, and the moment Rachel opened her door she went running up the sidewalk calling for Jake to wait.

  Rachel imagined her flying off in the other direction and getting hit by an oncoming vehicle, her body flying through the street, having to explain to Kenneth how it had happened, she envisioned the tear-filled funeral and felt the pain of having to live without her baby.

  Stop it already.

  She shook away the dark musing and cursed how her mind worked, plagued lately by the fear of something terrible happening. She hadn’t always walked around imagining worst case scenarios, it was a habit that came and went over the last fifteen years or so, and though she knew she should examine why she'd started doing it again, it was safer to simply distract herself. She needed to find that chewing gum.

  She dumped her crowded purse onto the passenger seat and shuffled around until the gum appeared, then popped the soft hot spearmint in her mouth and reached up to shift the rearview mirror, wiping away bits of mascara the heat sent running under her eyes.

  She was still an attractive woman, but the soft wrinkles she'd noticed around her thirtieth birthday were deepening now that she'd hit thirty-four. She couldn't remember the last time she'd put on any moisturizer or sunscreen, and the dark circles didn't do much for her either. Rachel spent her whole life hating her body, and it pissed her off that it started to look old as soon as she’d started to develop an appreciation for it.

  She looked like crap, and if Jake started asking too many questions, she might break down. She snatched a melted concealer stick from the enormous pile of crap on the seat and tried to make herself fit for an audience with the biggest fashion whore in Texas.

  The wooden door made its familiar creaking sound as she entered the historic building just off the tiny town square. An old storage annex for a general merchandise store built in the late 1880's, and one of the first brick and mortar structures erected in Harrison Township, it survived the fire a hundred years before that burned down most of the town. The building sat empty for forty years before they signed the lease, and it had taken more than three months to clean up. Jake hated it, he'd argued about the updates they'd have to make to accommodate the equipment needed to run their website.

  But Rachel had fallen in love with it straight away. Exposed brick interiors, wood pier and beam ceilings, its rustic charm was classic Texas. The rooms were raw and unpredictable, so much different than the polished, controlled atmosphere she'd grown up in. During the cleanup she'd found a newspaper article outlining the details of a Wild West style shoot-out that took place around the turn of the century. Jake complained she was fixated on tragedy, but she had it framed anyway and it hung surrounded by the dozens of heavy oil paintings she'd painted over the years.

  Lauren settled into the corner with the toys and television, whatever Disney movie she was obsessed with that week played on the screen. Her fever had passed, but Rachel decided to bring her into the office instead of risking getting the other kids at her preschool sick. Lauren wanted to go to the stables to see Sugar Babe, but Rachel promised to make it up to her later, she had too many other things to do.

  She paused on the way to her office and thanked the universe for the last cold can of diet soda she found in the mini-fridge.

  "Are you fucking kidding me?" Jake yelled down the hall from her office, "Rachel Daniels, this is unacceptable." He threw his hands around, repulsed by the state of her desk. It was a disaster, piles of useless manuals and Guides to the Perfect Grant Proposal she swore she’d get around to reading one day. Chocolate bar wrappers overflowed from the empty Loetz flower vase her mother had pawned off on her, burnt orange and tacky as hell.

  "Back off, you cow. It's been a rough day," she said taking her seat behind the desk and resting her cowgirl boots on the clutter.

  "Rachel, it's 8:30 in the morning. The day just started." He'd already organized the contents of her inbox and shoved a couple of documents her way, "Here, you were supposed to proofread these days ago."

  "Sorry, love. I was distracted."

  "You’re always distracted. Proof it so I can get it over by noon, they publish Saturday."

  The Houston Courier had offered to do a piece on their small non-profit, ReachingOut, and their work throughout the state. Traffic to the website was growing, more people were coming to them for help leaving abusive relationships. The cover of the LifeStyle section was a huge score. The press was sure to get the word out on their annual fundraising gala and, if they were lucky, bring in new donors.

  "I'm on i
t, boss."

  He wasn't her boss, but he took it upon himself to help keep her on task. Jake had been around since they were both kids, but he'd been outgoing and popular with tons of friends and she'd been the reclusive horse riding art nerd who never hung out with anybody but her boyfriend. They met again years later after she'd moved back from Dallas with Kenneth. He'd taken the seat next to hers in a grant writing seminar and yelled in her ear, “Hey! You went to school with me!”

  Jake was a techie genius, so when Rachel told him she wanted to start a website to help battered women network safely online, he'd jumped at the chance to help her build it and quickly become her dearest friend. ReachingOut was as much his baby as it was hers.

  "Tell me about Hunter, what did his teacher say?" he asked. She could always count on Jake to show an overbearing interest in her kids, which only made it more painful when she couldn't get Kenneth to answer the phone after parent/teacher meeting.

  "Same ole. He won't stop talking to his friends, he fidgets too much, he never raises his hand to be called on, if I were a loving parent I’d march his little ass down to the pediatrician and get him some Act Right pills so the overworked and underpaid teachers of Adams Elementary don't have to be burdened with the antics of my eight year old."

  "Shut up, they didn't say that. Did you tell them to eat a salad and just do their job?" Jake was always complaining that people would be happier if they would just eat well. A healthy diet meant a happy life, or something like that.

  "I said I understood their frustration, that Kenneth and I would take their concerns to his pediatrician again, but that she hadn't felt he needed any medication when she saw him three months ago."

  "Did you tell them about all those kids on drugs for hyperactivity, how their hair falls out and it stunts their growth?" he asked excitedly.

  "I just said that if Hunter were having any problems academically we'd be happy to consider how medication might help, but until he exhibits some problems in that area, or starts stabbing kids in the face with pencils, we’ll just talk to him about chair safety and talking out of turn."