Behind Closed Curtains (Desires of the Forbidden)

Chapter 1

"Fucking whore!"

Shock widened my eyes. I barely had time to flinch as Zach's hand whipped across my face, imprinting his power into my skin in a slap so unexpected, I failed to scream as I fell in a miserable heap on the ground of the back ally.

Pain exploded through my face as my nose scraped against the pavement, producing unintended tears to burn my eyes as every muscle in my body seized up in blinding, white hot pain. Gravel embedded in between the parts of my cheek where skin had been ripped to shreds seconds prior. 

As I lifted myself up from the unforgiving ground, my hands shaking terribly as I did so, a spot of blood dripped from my wounds to join the dirt and grime on the asphalt. Of all emotions known to the human brain, none of them could describe what I was feeling as I watched my own crimson blood fall and splash across the ground.

An unintended yelp sputtered past my lips as I felt his hand wrap around my upper arm and I was yanked upwards like I was nothing more than a rag doll. 

The face of the one I had loved- still loved- for over a year now came into my hazed vision.

"Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again! You fucking got that, Leah?" Zach screamed in my face, spit spewing from his mouth and hitting my fresh cuts.

"Yes!" I cried out, desperate for this moment to end.

I continued to stare up into the raging eyes that I had fallen so madly in love with as he looked down on me with nothing but hatred and disgust. In the silence of our locked gazes, I begged him to tell me why he was doing this, what had changed, how it had come to this. Though mostly, I pleaded with him to let me go. My lips remained shut but my eyes begged him as obvious desperation rolled down my cheeks in pathetic drops. Please let me go. Please...

Just let me go.

And then he did. Without another word he tossed me back down onto the ground, my hands scrambling to catch my fall as he did.

I watched him walk away , half petrified that he would come back and half hoping he would turn around and apologize. He did neither. Zach walked until he reached the back ally entrance into the restaurant where we were celebrating my high school graduation. Without even a glance spared my way, he yanked the door open and disappeared inside.

That was the first time Zachary Holloway ever hit me.

Zach and I had been dating just over a year at that point and we were out with our friends and families celebrating our graduation from high school.

Not Zach's graduation since he was two years older than me and was already in his sophomore year of college when we met, making our relationship somewhat forbidden and all the more enticing.

I'd never forget the first time I met Zach and how in an instant, I felt that pang of emotions swarm in my chest that told me he would be someone important in my life. I wasn't sure how I knew- I just knew.

I lived in a reasonably small town in Georgia named Senoia. It was the sort of town where most families knew one another, kids still played in their yards with their neighbors, and everything from the smell of the breeze on a cool fall night to the dark blanket of night illuminated with thousands of stars above was peaceful.

Nothing bad ever happened in our tiny town. So, when I had a chance meeting at the local movie theater one Friday night with the most handsome man I'd ever seen in person, I never considered anything less than wonderful would come from this perfect stranger.