Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns all.
Rated M for several reasons. THIS is one of them!
Chapter Twenty The King and I
RPOV
There's a moment, when you have to decide whether or not you're going to do something.
And I think, that I actually could tell him.
Given what he's shared with me, I probably should tell him.
But, and it's a big but now, how's he going to feel about me when I do tell him?
He's not an idiot and with his hearing he must have been exposed to a few stories like mine in his time, hell his little sister hasn't exactly sailed through life unscathed and he loves her. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to shock him. But he's not going to see me the same way afterwards, is he?
I mean, I know I'm not the slut they said I was but, I could have done more, should have done more.
...
Richard Royce King.
He owned our local car dealership. Blonde and tan, with a sparkling array of teeth that wouldn't have disappointed a horse. Not that they detracted from his overall hotness, we were all in agreement, there was no way home from school that didn't involve a stroll past his lot because the mechanics weren't hard on the eye either. He was also rich and the girls at our school? Rich and hot did it for us every time.
I was impressed when Mom started dating him, her previous choices had all seemed a little pathetic compared to Dad. I mean, I didn't see him very often but he was good looking, filled out a uniform rather well and all her friends joked about standing in line for her ex to notice them.
Rich King was always very complimentary toward me, and I did like to be admired.
Did I flirt with him?
Oh yeah. Mom would often come downstairs, ready for their dates, to find the pair of us nose to nose on the couch.
I was fifteen and he was a witty and urbane man.
Did I fancy him?
I guess, but not in any serious way, I mean, he was 'old'. And he was Mom's. As they got closer and closer and I was both happy and impressed. She'd seemed so old and faded in the last few years and suddenly she'd blossomed with his love and attention.
He showered the both of us with gifts.
And I felt the warm fuzzies toward him. Especially when he introduced Mom and me to people proudly as the two beautiful women in his life. I was thrilled for Mom, though she never told me why she left Dad it hadn't been easy for her after we moved to Phoenix. And Rich was okay, beyond the wealth and generosity. A girl in my class, her Step was a total douche, never stopped telling her she was a financial burden he didn't want and if she didn't get into college she'd better find a nice big cardboard box to live in. Rich went out of his way to reassure Mom and me that we were a two for one deal and I'd always have a place in his house.
Their engagement party was a lavish affair, his house was amazing and the dresses he'd gifted us with were unbelievable. For once I didn't feel like the poor girl in the mix, there was a band, lights, awesome food and he didn't have a problem with my friends and me quaffing his champagne and then throwing ourselves in his pool.
I was so happy that night as my BFF and I passed out in his pool house that I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
...
"You sure you want to hear this?"
"Its time." He murmurs, setting the old chair to rock.
Maybe it is, before this goes too far.
Better to rip the band-aid off quick, right?
...
I woke up in the dead of night with his hand on my breast.
It was time to pay the piper he said.
My Mom's future happiness was intrinsically linked with his, he said.
His lips were warm and flabby as they closed over mine.
I couldn't help it, flinging him away from me was instinctive.
He wasn't pleased.
We told everyone I was drunk and broke my wrist falling over in the pool house . . . .
I'd thought, naively, that unpleasant though that was, it would be the end of it, I mean, I was hardly victim material, was I? I wasn't a little kid and we'd established early on that I was gonna fight back.
I know, now, that I should have told Mom then, but I didn't. I didn't want to hurt her, she was so happy and I truly thought I didn't need to. I handled it. As horrific as it was, hell I was even a teeny tiny bit proud of myself for handling it.
I don't know what you'd call him. He was neither all molester nor all fists. He was some kind of . . . .
Things went back to normal and though I was obviously a little less inclined to be around him we'd moved into his house after the wedding so I guess it was a new kind of normal.
And then it happened again.
Mom left for work early one morning and he offered to drive me to school, I didn't see why not.
He grabbed me in the garage, well, technically he grabbed me in the ass.
We tussled, I got a black eye, and he laughed as he drove away and left me lying on the garage floor.
Maybe it would have been okay if I'd told Mom then, but I didn't and not just because he'd made it clear how badly she'd suffer if I did.
Of course I didn't want to let my Mom down or ruin her life.
So he had me.
He'd feel me up and beat me if I fought back.
It became a sort of 'Hobson's Choice'.
And the longer it went on the more I became aware of how 'disappointed and hurt' she would be if she knew what a 'dissolute whore' I was, how little she or anyone or else would 'think of me' if they knew.
Whatever happened I was always in the wrong.
I tried on one of her dresses for a school dance, I'd have asked before I borrowed it. She still thinks I ruined it because I was a spoilt bitch, acting out. We never told her that Dick caught me revolving in front of the mirror and ripped it off me, we never showed her the welts down my back, left by his nails.
We didn't tell her why I really started to come home in the middle of the night, better she believed I was a normal slut and wastrel than knew the truth. She wasn't the only Mom at the time whose teenage daughter was going off the rails and I sometimes wondered if she 'enjoyed' having what she thought of as a problem child. I was kind of fashionable for a while I suppose.
Did I always manage to avoid him?
No.
I was blind drunk when I broke my leg falling off our balcony onto the deck. No need to add that Dick's hand was down my pants at the time and the fucker was lucky he didn't tumble over after me.
He leant on my leg in the emergency room, before they set it, just to remind me that certain aspects of my accident were private. Like I didn't know well enough by then.
In those days it just was, it isn't right to say I accepted it, but I don't know how else to explain it. Molest me, beat me, blame me, threaten me. It was the new new normal.
It got harder and harder to simply to exist, so much for me not being a victim.
I wanted to kill him.
Don't misunderstand me. That's not teenage angst talking. I. Wanted. To. Kill. Him.
And, sometimes, her. For being so oblivious to what was going on under her nose. She was disdainful of my frequent trips to the emergency room, telling everyone she couldn't understand how she'd come to acquire such a graceless daughter.
But the thing was, I was learning, the more I tried to avoid him, or sought to fight back in some way, the worse he got.
But if I thought it was getting worse I wasn't prepared for what happened the first time she caught him feeling me up.
We were going to a dance at the country club, I made the mistake of getting ready and being downstairs too early.
He was busy telling me what a whore I was, groping my breasts and pressing me so hard into the fireplace I'd have bruises later, when Mom came down and caught him. Us.
Her slap hurt more than anything he'd ever done to me.
Things definitely got worse after that.
Dick wasn't the only one calling 'whore' in the house.
I drank, I smoked, and I stayed out late every night rather than whenever I felt I could get away with it.
And I thought it was working.
But then she stayed out late one night with her cronies and he made good on his oft spoken threat to show me what a real man could do to me.
I fought. I really did.
But he did it anyway.
My already falling grades plummeted to new lows.
The police brought me home more often than the taxi service did. I couldn't drive myself anymore, I'd already totalled the little blue BMW he gave me, I was so trashed I missed the tree I was aiming for and hit a parked car, they yield more, unfortunately.
Mom started talking to Dad, about what a problem I was.
But I hadn't actually given up and I finally started talking to my BFF, who was all over my erratic behaviour, and had been for while.
...
I stop talking for a moment and look up at Em.
Silent and immobile.
I'm fervently glad that I don't know what he's thinking.
...
It felt so good, cathartic.
She cared and though she couldn't understand, luckily for her, she seemed to want to.
And I thought . . . .
Silly, silly Rose.
It took a week or two for me to find out, but she'd spun what I'd told her, into a whole new story, one that Dick would have wholeheartedly agreed with. Rosalie Hale, slut, whore, step father seducer. Liar. Thief.
It was hell at school, kids love a good story, and a good victim, especially a haughty, unobtainable, rich one like me.
But that was nothing compared to when it got back to Mom, as shit does.
It wasn't pretty.
The screaming was epic and pretty much constant.
Until they were leaving for a party one night and he leant in to kiss me goodnight, his lips warm and wet against my cheek. He was 'trying so hard' to show Mom that I could be redeemed, be normal.
I was drunk, inhibitions down, and I freaked the fuck out.
Finally.
I twatted him one, knocked him on his ass, and knocked a couple of his horse teeth out. He couldn't beat the crap out of me this time, not in front of Mom, so he had to settle for backhanding me in righteous self defence, the bruise had pretty much faded when Dad picked me up from the airport in PA. My knuckles weren't so great but Dad didn't ask to shake hands with me so they weren't a problem.
Anyway, I digress.
Mom flipped her fucking lid when Dick laid it on with a trowel about how I was all over him like one of his cheaper suits, rubbing against him, feeling him up, flaunting myself at him at every opportunity.
She was never going to disbelieve him so I didn't even bother to defend myself.
She screamed at me for what felt like hours, and she seemed far more worried about my betrayal than the bruise that was forming on what turned out later to be my fractured cheek bone.
The guys at Breaking Dawn let me doss in the club until I caught the flight to PA a few days later and it was them who took me to the emergency room, posing as an employee with medical insurance, to get my face looked at.
Dick met me at the airport and handed me my solitary suitcase.
He clearly wanted to say stuff but we were well past that, not to mention surrounded by armed security personnel, so I just snatched it and walked off.
If I had a dime for every time my own Mother told me I was a slut I would have at least been able to get a coffee while I waited for my flight.
But I didn't.
...
I fling myself off the bed, heading for the door and completely unable to look at him . . . .
"Oh no you don't, Rosalie Honey Hale." He growls, catching me and easily enfolding me in his big arms so I can bury my face in his hard chest.
The change will come, but just for now, I can pretend, I need to pretend, oh how I need to pretend . . . .