Walking as quickly as possible, I make fast work of the maze of hallways and enter my room. Only when the door closes do I let out my breath and allow my body to relax. Ever since I’ve been old enough to know the difference, I’ve known that my parents don’t like me. No, they don’t just ‘not like’ me . . . They hate me. I am the accident that should have been terminated, or so they remind me often enough. I don’t even think my mother cares either way. She just wants the life my father has given her, regardless of the fact that even her own daughter knows he is sleeping with the hired help.
And my father? My father is the reason that I know you can never trust a boy. Never allow one into your heart. They only care about one thing and one thing only. Themselves. Every man in my life has let me down. My grandfather died before he was successful in taking me away from my parents. My father is as evil as they come. And just today, my boyfriend, Toby, said he wanted to go out with Malinda ‘I have bigger boobs than my eighteen-year-old sister’ Monroe.
There will never be a boy in the world that can make me forget that the only person I can count on is me. I can’t wait to get away from this place. The day I turn eighteen, I am running as fast as I can. I’ve made sure that I get good grades, and will have my pick of schools to choose from. Because the first day I leave this hell, I am going to be a new person. I am going to be happy. I am going to be loved. And, I am going to find people to share my life with that want to be around me.
But I will never, ever, trust a boy.
PART ONE
Meetings
&
Beginnings
CHAPTER 1
Dee
There has never been a moment in my life when I’ve felt well and truly loved. Accepted and wanted. My parents hadn’t wanted me. I’m the accident that should have been ‘taken care of,’ the disgraceful child whose silence they bought. After all, when you have as much money as my father, why should you actually show emotion or feelings?
My father, Davison Bennett Roberts, III, is a third generation banker. His father’s father opened up the local branch, and the rest was, as they say, history. I don’t remember my father ever really ‘liking’ me. Hell, I don’t even really remember him liking my mother, either. He worked and worked, and when he finished he worked some more. When he wasn’t at the bank, he was in his office at home. And when he wasn’t consumed with whatever it was that he did, he was off screwing the hot little secretary, or teller, or college co-ed slut.
Always absent from my life.
Always reminding me, sometimes without his words, how un-important I was.
He was the first strike against mankind, in my eyes.
All the resentment that I held towards men, and my reluctance to start a relationship now, could all be traced back to the man who called himself my father.
The worst part, though . . . with all his busyness, and lack of care, he still made time to bring the wrath of Davison Roberts, III down on me at every opportunity. My 4.0 grade point average was never going to be good enough to please him. The extracurricular educational clubs that I was allowed to join were never going to help me amount to anything. Plain and simple, I was just never going to be enough.
He didn’t want me, but he still wanted to sling his holier than thou attitude and self-righteousness my way. I’m not sure, even to this day, what he was attempting to teach me. He made it clear from early on that he would never allow a woman to run his company, so I was convinced he just liked to beat me down.
Literally.
He didn’t take his hands to me often, but when he did, it wasn’t pretty. And that was strike two against mankind.
Growing up, I didn’t have many people that I would consider real friends. I had plenty of playmates who were the children of my father’s associates. Those were the sort of children that my parents had allowed me to befriend. Those friends didn’t want me because of me, but because of who my father was and how much money he had. You know, the kind of kids that walked around in their designer clothing, their backs so straight you knew that they had to have a rod shoved so far up their assholes that there was no way that they would be anything but fake.
As I got older, I was once again reminded that people only saw what they could gain by being around me to get closer to my father. Boys never wanted to date ‘me’; they wanted to date my family’s money and connections. The closer I got to graduating high school, the more painfully obvious it became that the boys I dated would never really like me. They were only there to hopefully gain something towards their future careers by being with me.
The only people that mattered to them were . . . themselves.
And there you have strike three.
I could only trust myself. I made a promise to myself that when I was old enough, I was going to get out of here and finally, be me. No one was going to tell me whom I could have as friends. Men wouldn’t know who my father was so they would love me as me, and not as the daughter of Davison Bennett Roberts III. I would find people who loved me . . . for me.
And I was never going to need a man.