Underestimated Too (6 page)

“My grandfather was my mother’s stepdad. When my
grandmother went off the deep end, ending up in a psych ward, she was made to
take her place. She was thirteen.”

I gasped.

“Drew is your mother’s stepdad, your father?” Deidra
tentatively asked.

“Yes.”

I audibly gasped that time. I couldn’t help it.
Deidra gave me a look, wanting me to keep it together trying to keep him
talking. I didn’t know what to think. Drew kept this bottled up inside him all
these years. His step grandfather was also his father. Holy fuck!

“How old was your mother when she got pregnant with
you?”

“Fifteen. My mother was a little sick as well. I
mean, who wouldn’t be after that, right?” Drew asked as he continued. He never
turned around to look at either of us. It was almost as if he wasn’t talking to
us at all. “My mom used to tell me this story. Who does that? Why would you
ever tell your child things like that? I will never put anything like that on
Nicholas’s shoulders—ever. She told me how when my grandmother would have a
spell and have to go to the hospital her stepdad would tell her that it was her
job to take care of him while she was gone.

My mother had to sleep in the same bed with him,
cook for him, pack his bucket, he even made her bathe him. My mother wasn’t
your average looking girl. My mother was gorgeous, mind you. She’d always been
a beautiful woman, right up to the day she died. Can you imagine telling your son
these things? She never did tell me that Carson Boyce was my father, not in so
many words, anyway. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. I mean, come on, she
told me about sleeping with the bastard. I knew why we left, I wasn’t born
yesterday. I always felt dirty, like there was something wrong with me because
of who my father was.”

 “He wasn’t blood,” I pointed out, trying to make it
better for him. He acted as though he didn’t hear me, and continued. Deidra
placed her finger over her lips, telling me not to talk.

“I remember being on that bus for what seemed like
days. I don’t know what she was thinking. We had a paper sack with clothes and
no money. I vaguely remember sleeping in a shelter and then in the apartment
above the drugstore.”

Drew turned and looked right at me. “I don’t know
what it’s like to eat popcorn for supper. I never had that luxury. I ate
spaghetti from a can, day after day after day. That’s what my mother made for
me: spaghetti from a can.”

Drew hated spaghetti. That explained it.

 “My mom never worked a normal job. Her job was done
at home. She explained to me that she entertained men to pay the bills. I was
too young to know what that meant until I was around ten.”

“What happened when you were ten, Drew?” Deidra
asked.

Drew got quiet and stared out the window with a
lovely view of an alley full of dumpsters. “She started entertaining Michael.
Michael got her a job at the jewelry store down town, moved us to an upscale
apartment, and demanded that he was the only man she’d be entertaining from now
on.”

“That’s when I started taking care of myself. She would
go to his house in the weekends, and I wouldn’t see her until he dropped her
back off at our door.”

“Who stayed with you?”

“No one. Michael insisted that I be a man and take
care of myself. This was our life until we moved in with him a short time
later, very short, like three months. Michael had taken us to a summer fest for
wedding planners. That’s when I met Randal Callaway. Randal loved my mother
from that first day. I think he really just wanted Michael to settle down and
give him a grandchild. At least with my mom, he’d sort of have a grandson,
although he never treated me that way.”

“Is that when you moved in with him?”

“Yes, he’d always tell my mother that he was going
to marry her, but even at ten, I knew he wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t
the only one that entertained Michael Callaway. She was just the one that was
kept in his house.”

“A kept woman?”

“Yes, Michael lavished her in expensive luxuries,
and she did everything he told her to do.”

I wanted him to stop. Drew was talking about my
father, Michael Callaway. I didn’t want to think of him this way. He was
ruining the image of the good-looking man that swept my mother off her feet. He
was supposed to be my knight in shining armor.

“You said you started taking care of your mother
around the age of ten. What did you mean by that?” Deidra asked.

“My mother was sick, she needed her medication. When
she didn’t have it, things happened to her, she saw things. Before we moved to
the estate, I made sure she took it religiously. Michael didn’t. He used it as
a form of punishment when she didn’t do what he wanted.  Michael would keep it
from her sometimes and then call the medics to come and get her. She’d be gone
for a few days and then he’d bring her back, keep her on her meds until she
pissed him off, or didn’t do what she was told.”

“She was schizophrenic?” I softly questioned.

“Yes. She’d see demons, thinking they were coming for
her for having a devil child. Sometimes the demons would send allies, spiders,
snakes, and armies of insects. She’d hide in a corner, kicking her legs, trying
to get them off her. That’s when Michael would call for help and she’d be gone
for a few days. I hated when Michael made me go to that hospital. It gave me
the creeps, and it was exactly the way my mother described it to me when she
had to visit her mother.”

I attentively listened to Drew describe the crazy
house, the other patients, and the way his mother would tell him he was a devil’s
spawn. She blamed him for putting her there, not Michael. My heart was breaking
for him. I’d spent all these years thinking poor me. I never knew. I always
thought of Drew as a poor little rich kid.

“Good job, Drew. I’m proud of you, and I feel like
we’ve made some progress today. I think that’s enough for one day. We’ll pick
up here next week,” Deidra proposed. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to
keep talking. I wanted to know.

Drew looked at me, realizing what he’d just said in
front of me. He didn’t like it.

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

I followed Drew’s quick pace to the car. He was
upset; he never walked in front of me. “Drew,” I softly tried, touching his
arm.

“Don’t! You fucking happy? Is that what you needed
to hear? You can look down on me now. You can take me off your fucking
pedestal,” he yelled, jerking his arm away from my touch.

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
Drew got in the driver’s seat not opening my door and tapped the steering wheel
with his fingers. I was afraid, really afraid for the first time in a long
time. He drove like a crazy person, weaving in and out of traffic all the way
home. We rode in silence with me being terrified of my husband and Drew pissed
off at the world.

“What?” he answered Celeste through the car speaker.

“You on your way? We have a briefing, remember?”

“I’m not going. You go. You can handle it, can’t you,
or do you need me to come and hold your fucking hand?”

“Drew,” I tried calming him. He shot me a look to
shut up. I did.

“Damn, sure no problem. Call me when you get your
shorts out of your ass.”

Drew hung up.

“Go upstairs,” Drew ordered, parking the car.

“No, Drew. You’re upset. I’m afraid to be alone with
you.”

“You should be, and you don’t want to defy me right
now,” he assured me through gritted teeth and a terrifying, hateful glare.

I didn’t want to go upstairs with him. I was afraid
of what he would do.

Marta met us at the door with Nicholas. I took him
from her and kissed his cheeks. He squealed, seeing Drew behind me. Drew didn’t
even talk to him, he took him from my arms and handed him back to Marta.

“Take him,” he ordered, shoving me towards the stairs.

“Morgan?” she called after me.

“It’s fine. We’ll be down in a little bit.”

Drew answered his phone, stopping me at the bottom
step. “Go upstairs and take your clothes off. I’ll be there as soon as I take
this call,” he quietly ordered in my ear.

Of all times that I wanted to protest, this was it.
I could put Drew in his place just like Celeste and Deidra did, but not now,
not like this. I was afraid to defy him in his current state, knowing I’d only make
it worse.

I sat naked on the bed, waiting for what seemed like
hours for Drew to come and do what I knew he was going to do. It brought back a
flood of emotions and memories. I used to hate waiting naked for Drew to come
to me. What the hell was I doing? I didn’t have to deal with this. I could walk
away with Nicky and never look back. Why couldn’t I do that? Why didn’t I just
get up, get dressed, and take my baby out of there?

Because Drew had just opened up a new can of worms,
that’s why. I’d just learned some pretty messed up shit about his upbringing. I
felt sorry for him. He was hurting and needed to vent. I wish he could vent in
other ways, like let me be there for him, tell him we were going to be okay,
and make him feel secure. He wasn’t the type to do that, not yet anyway.
Hopefully, Deidra would get us to that point, but right now Drew needed me to
be somebody else. I would be that person for him. I could take the fucked up
sex. I just hoped he didn’t feel the need to hit me.

“You like thinking about Celeste licking Alicia’s
pussy?” Drew asked, slamming the door behind him. What the fuck? I wasn’t
expecting that. That had been weeks ago. I hadn’t mentioned it at all. “Get
up,” he demanded.

I stood, trying to feign a hurt look, wanting him to
see what he was doing.

“Answer me. You like that, Morgan? Is that what your
problem is? You want your pussy licked by Alicia, or is it Celeste?”

“No,” I quietly replied, taking the blow to the
corner of my mouth. I could taste the blood before I saw it.

Drew grabbed a fist full of my hair and pulled me to
him. “You know I love you, don’t you, Morgan?” he asked, fighting with
everything in him not to hurt me.

“Yes, it’s okay. We’re okay, Drew,” I tried soothing
him.

He shoved me away from him, backhanding me again,
and then again before throwing me to the bed. I was scared. I hadn’t seen Drew
like this in a very long time. He wasn’t Drew at all. He was out of control. I
screamed when his belt came down hard across my ass. After five very painful
blows, I breathed a sigh of relief, hearing the belt hit the floor.

I felt the sting across my ass when he told me to
roll over.

“Spread your legs. Isn’t that what you want, Morgan?
You like being a little slut?” he asked, running his fingers up my pussy. I
wasn’t wet like I would have normally been. I was in too much pain to be wet. I
could feel my swollen lip with my tongue, still tasting blood. The dull ache in
my eye reminded me of his knuckles, and my ass felt like it was bleeding fire.

I couldn’t answer, I couldn’t talk. I was in my own
state, hell, I couldn’t even cry. I didn’t know what I was feeling: hurt,
anger, betrayal, wounded. I had so many emotions going on at once, I didn’t
know how to feel. I didn’t want to feel that, I thought, watching Drew emerge
from our closet with the rod that I didn’t want. I didn’t want to come, I
didn’t want to come close to coming, and I didn’t want him touching me.

“You honestly don’t think you’re going to come, do
you?”

Again, I didn’t answer. I grabbed the covers in both
my fists as he touched me with the electrical current, bringing me to the brink
of an orgasm that I wouldn’t be having. Nine agonizing jolts later, he was
finally tired of playing that game. Thank god. I didn’t know how much more I
could take without begging him to stop.

“Roll over, bad girl.”

I moved to my stomach, accepting his soothing hands
on my sore ass. “Why do you make me do this?” he asked, rubbing the soreness
from my ass cheeks.

Again, I didn’t answer. He wasn’t looking for answers.
I felt him spread my ass cheeks with his hands, exposing my puckered hole.
Closing my eyes, I used my senses to figure out what he was doing. Listening to
the cap being popped on the tube, and feeling the cool liquid run down the
crack of my ass, he massaged the lubricant around my opening before inserting a
finger, and then two. Relying on my senses, I heard the tear from the condom.
He only used a condom when he was planning on finishing in my mouth. Clenching
my jaw, I felt him slide in a little, and then a little more until he was
slowly moving in and out of me.

“Move up on your knees and spread yourself open.”

I did what I was told as he grabbed my hips and
pulled me towards him, in and out, in and out. Drew picked up speed and vigor,
hissing and moaning as he fucked me. I knew it was just a matter of time. He
slid out of me, pulled me to the floor by my arm and stroked himself on my
lips. Jerking himself to come, he moved me back to the bed, slid into my pussy
and pumped ferociously in an out, trying to make himself come. As soon as he
felt the sensation again, he pushed me back to my knees and I swallowed him.