This Love of Mine (Raine Series #1)

CHAPTER 1

Kayla

"Kayla Anne James, you get your sorry ass down here right this instant."

I rolled my eyes knowing damn good and well I was in for it again. "Coming Momma." I quickly tugged my Aerosmith shirt over my head, and buttoned up my jeans. I double checked my makeup and tied my shoes, before I went flying down the stairs. If her tone of voice was any indication as to how much trouble I was in, then I wasn't about to make her wait any longer than absolutely necessary.

As soon as my converse covered feet hit the last step, I felt her hand connecting with my cheek. My hand instinctively went straight to my now burning skin, and fell into defensive mode.

"Momma, what the hell?" Before I could get the last word out of my mouth, her hand was reared back and ready to let loose. I knew all too well, that fighting back wouldn't help, so I let her unleash her wrath upon me.

"How dare you embarrass me like this! You and that no good, drug-dealing a*shole have pushed me too far this time. I found these in your room, you little slut!"

I felt the bag of weed and strip of condoms push against my heaving chest. Part of me was pissed off that she had the audacity to go through my things, but another part of me was glad. This just meant I would be gone sooner rather than later.

Every summer for the past five years, my mother has been shipping me off to my grandparent's farm in Texas. I used to despise her for doing it at first, but slowly came to feel more at home with them, than at my own home with my mother. My mom was your typical country club wife, except for the wife part.

Right after my fifth birthday, my father decided to leave. He never told me his motives or reasoning for leaving us, he just reassured me that it was not my fault and that he'd be back for me. That was twelve years ago, almost to the day.

Despite the fact that my father was no longer around, I was still a daddy's girl through and through. Ever since he left, I made it my goal in life to earn enough money to get back to him. After my fifth birthday, my father hadn't called for almost a year. I willed him too, on a daily basis, but no matter how many times a day I prayed or wished for him to come back or call, it never happened. Momma had been amazing the first year. She took me to and from school, took me to do fun things afterwards, and treated me like the princess I was. My mother never blamed me for my father leaving, and she always reassured me that no matter what happened, she would always be here for me.

Exactly three days after my sixth birthday, I got the first phone call from Cliff, aka my father. I was bouncing up and down and couldn't hold still throughout the entire conversation. I told him how much I had missed him. I asked at least a million questions and didn't give him more than a second to respond to any of them. Momma finally took the phone from me and listened for the answers that I was too impatient to wait to hear.

She quickly handed the phone back to me and within seconds, her demeanor had completely changed. My father explained to me that he wasn't coming back home, but he would be calling me every Wednesday to "catch up," whatever that meant. The only details I had remembered from that conversation, was that he was currently living in London with his new wife who was pregnant with their first baby, and when he could, he would come back for me and we would be a family again. This made Momma mad. She never outright told me that it did, but I could tell that she would have hit him, had he been standing in front of her.

When I turned twelve, I think I finally came to the realization that he was never coming back, and if I ever wanted to see him again, I would have to find my own way to him. I hated that my own father couldn't even make the effort to come see me or even call me. Our conversations quickly went from once a week, to about once a month, if that. I understood, but in a way I felt as though I wasn't a good enough daughter to have around, now that he had his "new" family.

The day I turned sixteen was one of the best and worst days. The morning of my party was amazing. Momma wasn't drunk, which was a shock and she actually had taken the time to go and get me a gift. This was a feat all in itself seeing as she was rarely sober enough to drive. When I opened the box containing my new Chanel purse, I screamed out in joy. I ran straight to my momma's arms and squeezed her as tight as possible. And for the first time, in almost ten years, she reciprocated my affections with a smile. It ended up being one of the best days of my life. But as they say, you have to take the good with the bad. There was nothing but bad that followed.

As the years passed, Momma's grip on me became suffocating. She started dating a new guy six months before my party and he was about as upscale as you get. He was a defense attorney for the state of Arizona and she never let me, or anyone else forget it. They were your typical high power couple, minus the fact that Momma didn't work anymore. She was what my friends and I like to call a "country club rat." She spent everyday at that damn country club, drinking and who knows what else. I tried to stay as far away from her business, unlike her, who had to be all in mine.

My junior year in high school started out well, but was easily tarnished once my momma got wind of who I had decided to keep company with. I met Wren through one of my best friends when I was fourteen, but hadn't seen or run into him again until he started going to school with us this year.

My entire world flipped upside down and inside out when Wren and I started hanging out. I went from being an over achieving, good girl, to chew 'em up and spit 'em out bad girl within months. The worst thing I had ever done before meeting him, was smoke a cigarette. Now I was finding myself doing drugs, sneaking out to raves and being the getaway driver for his small thefts. I knew what I was doing was wrong and I even threatened to leave Wren if he didn't calm his shit down, but he never would have let me leave anyway. This was my life now, and I just had to make it work until I turned eighteen and could leave.

Momma hadn't noticed my reckless behavior at first. She was usually too wrapped up in Richard, the attorney. They had been together for some time now, but I knew deep down that Richard had no intentions of marrying my mother. I don't know why I say that, but I just felt like Richard wasn't exactly genuine. He was always unbelievably nice to me. He'd always buy me things and even take my side in many of Momma's and my arguments, which only made matters worse, but he deserved more than my mother. She was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but she was an alcoholic and honestly why would a successful attorney want to be with an alcoholic, who let the whole world know all of her shit?