Bad Love Lingers (Book Three)

Chapter Nine

                                                                                            Callen

            “Where the f**k have you been?” My dad asked as he stumbled into the living room, having to hold onto furniture to keep from toppling over.

            I tried to move past him, but he pushed me hard up against the front door. “Oh, great. It's in the middle of the afternoon, and you are already drunk!”

            He punched me in the face, not showing a lick of remorse. “You will learn to hold that damn tongue of yours, boy. What I do is no concern to you. Now, where have you been all day? I hope you haven’t been parading around again. The last thing your mother needs is to get another report of how you continuously f**k up everything.”

            They say that you aren’t supposed to hate anyone, that hate will ruin someone, but I hated this man that called himself my dad. It was because of his abusiveness that I got into as much trouble as I had. Every time he would drink, he would turn into a raging monster with only one goal in mind, to ruin me. My mom, on the other hand, was my rock, but she has let herself slip into drugs again as a way to shut out what my dad does to me. In ways, she is just as bad as he is. She will turn her eye every time that he lays his hands on me because she is too afraid to stand up to him, but not me. I will challenge him over and over again because all that has happened has been his fault.

            “I was at the skate park, so you need to chill. I haven’t done anything wrong since we moved to this damn place. The only thing I’ve done is try and stay away from you!” I buckled my chest to him, threatening him to hit me again. He might be my dad, but one more hit to the face like that again, and I wouldn’t be able to hold back. The only reason he isn’t on the ground now was because of my mom. “Where is mom?”

            He backed away from me, wiping the saliva from his mouth. “She is upstairs resting.” That was his way of saying, don’t bother her because she is strung out. “You need to clean up this mess of a house. What good are you if the only thing you do is run the streets day and night? Your mom needs some damn help around here.”

            “Oh, yeah? Then how about you get a job, dad? No, that isn’t going to work for you, considering you can’t stay sober long enough to get one. I’m not your little maid to be put to work when you lie around on your ass all day getting high and drunk. Clean the damn house yourself.” I pushed past him, knocking my shoulder into his, nearly making him fall over.

            I ran upstairs to my room, punching a hole in the wall the second I closed the door. After that, I turned my radio up as loud as it could go to drown out his screaming. This has been what my life has been like since I was ten. My mom used to be so full of life, and my dad would do anything and everything for her. My life was perfect then. Then one night, my mom is coming home from work. My dad was picking me up from school on his way home from work. We arrive at home to see it full of police cars and an ambulance. She had been shot, and we were robbed of everything valuable we had. My mom lost more that night, though. Since then, she hasn’t been the same woman and uses drugs to suppress the memory of what happened. My dad tried for a long time to keep going, but he lost something that night too. The pain was too much for them both, and slowly they spiraled into being these two people who I barely recognize as my parents.

            My childhood was ripped away from me. That night I not only lost a mother and a father, but my mom was pregnant. The injuries she sustained were too much, and it caused her to lose the baby. Now, I have spent the last seven years living in hell, trying my best to take care of them. The last four years have been the worse, and it was when my dad started laying his hands on me every time he put a drop of liquor to his lips. Mom turns a blind eye to it all because deep down, she blames me. Don’t ask me why, but I can see every time that she looks at me.

            “Open this door, Callen!” My dad yelled from the other side of the door, beating his fists against it. “Turn that damn music down! Your mother is trying to rest!”

            Sure, she was, I thought to myself. That woman was so out of it right now that even my loud music wouldn’t wake her. I didn’t want to stay here another minute. I opened my window and climbed down the side, and ran off. If I didn’t get out of there when I did, he would have broken down my door and hit me again. That would have been the last straw for me, and I knew with how pissed off I was, I would have beaten him to a bloody pulp. As much as I despised him, I didn’t want to do that to my mom.

            I found myself walking to Isabel’s house after asking someone in town if they knew where she lived. Apparently, everyone knew who her dad was, which made it easy to get the address. Her house was a decent size, much bigger and nicer than mine. I hesitated when I got close. My body froze in place a few feet from her house then my eyes traveled to the upstairs bedroom window. When I saw her figure pass by, my heart thumped against my chest. Damn, she was perfect. Isabel might not see it, but I could. What was I doing here? If her dad was as bad as everyone says, then I was in for it. She would probably get in trouble if her dad caught a guy like me knocking on the door asking for her.

            As I started to turn around, my phone started ringing. Isabel’s name flashed across the screen. “Hello?”

            “What are you doing outside my house, Callen?”

            “Um, nothing. I didn’t know this was your neighborhood,” I lied.

            Isabel paused for a minute, smiling through the phone. “Do you want to come in?”

            “No, I don’t want to get you in trouble with your parents or anything.”

            The next thing I knew, the call had ended. I turned around, and Isabel walked toward me, grabbing my hand and dragging me inside and up to her bedroom. “My parents aren’t home. My mom is at her clinic, and my dad is out of town until Tuesday, but my brother is in his room across the hall, so be quiet.” She turned around and shut the door, snapping the lock into place. When she turned back to me, her mouth opened wide. “What happened to you?” She asked while lifting my chin.

            “Nothing important. I just got this overwhelming feeling that I needed to see you. When I see you, it helps to calm me down.”

            Isabel smiled, pulling her hair back out of her eyes. It was the first time I had seen her with her hair down like this. “Oh, well, I bet you say that to all the girls that catch your attention, Callen.”

            I put my hands on her waist, staring straight into her eyes. “There are no other girls that catch my attention, only you. By the way, you look beautiful. I like your hair down like this.”

            Her grin made me grin. “You just saw me a few hours ago.”

            “Yeah, I did, but your hair was pinned up like it usually is. Is there a reason why you keep it pinned up all the time rather than keeping it down?”

            She moved away from me. I could see that my question made her feel uncomfortable. “I told you how my dad could be. The less attention that I can draw to myself, the better. Let’s just say that he is a bit controlling and overprotective.”

            “So, you are telling me that I have my work cut out for me?”

            She laughed. “Yeah, right. You will not be meeting my dad, and he will not be meeting you. If he knew that I was even talking to you, he wouldn’t ever let me return to school. He would start homeschooling me.”

            Great! She had one of those dads. I have met my fair share of dads like that, but my charm was to be underestimated. I did not doubt that I could win him over. “He can’t be that bad. Besides, give me a little credit. I’m not that bad of a guy.”

            “So, no bad boy qualities at all?”

            That question got my attention. “Do I look like a bad boy to you, Isabel?” I inched closer to her, backing her into a small corner in her room.

            She gulped loudly in my ear. “You do have that aura about you. I saw it the first time in the mall. You are a little shut off around me, but I get the impression that you aren’t typically like that.”

            Isabel was spot on with her assumption. I have done many things in my past to give me the bad boy reputation, but with her, I didn’t want to be like that. It was the strangest feeling, but Isabel made me feel normal like my life wasn’t a complete s**t show. No other girl has ever been able to make me feel like that before.

            “Um,” I hummed while stroking the side of her cheek with the back of my hand. “Maybe your right, but right now, I’m whoever you want me to be.” I inched my lips closer to hers, and just like earlier, she reached in first, placing soft-pedal-like kisses on my lips. I placed my hand up above her head, against the wall, while I pressed my body into hers, trapping her against me and the wall. “You are dangerous for me, Isabel.”

            “Me? Dangerous? Why makes you say that?”

            “Because when I am around you, I feel like you could make me do anything you wanted. I am under your complete control.”

            She blushed slightly, hearing my words. Damn, this girl was going to be the end of me. Our lips met again, and Isabel glided her hands up my shirt and over my bare chest, making me moan from the exquisite feel of her soft and gentle touch. My hands moved from above her head down her cheek and over her breasts. Isabel sucked in a breath of air as my fingers traced over her n*****s through her shirt and bra.

            I pulled away, tilting my head at her. “The way that you just acted when I touched you…”

            Isabel shook her head back and forth. “I know what you are going to say. What did you expect, Callen? My dad has never let me date before.”

            “I knew that, but I expected you to have run around behind his back. Have you ever kissed a guy, then?”

            “Can we talk about something else?”

            She bent over to pick up something from underneath her bed, and I nearly lost my mind. I hadn’t noticed how round her ass was before. I walked up behind her and placed myself against her behind without thinking, and pulled her hair back until the back of her head rested against my chest. “Don’t ever bend down in front of me like that again unless you want what will happen next.”

            Isabel turned around with tears prickling her eyes but not shocked. “See, there he is. That bad boy is peeking through.”

            Her words cut through me like a knife, and I knew that I needed to get out of here before I did or said anything else that would jeopardize my relationship with her. “I’m sorry,” I said before turning around and rushing through her door.

**And for those wondering, there will be Levi's and Samantha's point of view later on in the book that will go into somethings with dealings around Landon**