When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
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THE THING ABOUT BEING with someone who loves you more is that you need them to complete you but the guilt of using them swallows you whole inside. She hated herself, the disgusting part of herself, who needed Caleb Parker to fill the gaping hole in her chest.
The disgusting part of herself who thought, if they kissed and kissed and she ate the sugar-coated words which rolled out of his tongue, she could feel something other than this sadness and anger. She was foolish to think Caleb Parker could complete her.
She thought he would call her pretty and perhaps she could believe it, she thought if she were an accessory hanging from his arm may be she would feel wanted. Suddenly, it felt like an ugly pit had opened up somewhere in her stomach.
Kissing Clyde Parker was an eye-opener, amongst other things. With Clyde Parker, she wasn't just testing the waters anymore; she was headfirst scuba-diving in it. With him, she couldn't just say the three words and not mean them, with him she couldn't just hold-hands and not feel anything. And oh did that scare her.
Clyde Parker made her feel everything they talk about in books. There was Fourth of July in her stomach and a new year's party in her panties. And her heart, her heart didn't feel like hers anymore. She felt like a spinning toy in his hands, like he could tell her to jump off a cliff and she would jump. Hell, he could tell her the earth was flat, she would buy his bullshit with a generous gratuity.
And it was scary, letting someone else hold that much power over you, especially someone like Clyde Parker who walked with death between his lips, who looked death in the eye and flipped the bird on its face, someone like Clyde Parker who didn't have a kind bone in his body, and not even a minuscule of his being gave two fucks about anything or anyone for the matter.
Someone like Clyde Parker who walked into people's hearts and built a home out of it, only to leave it abandoned and never return, he was careless with people. He splashed around big-heavy-words like puddles only to make someone feel wanted but never want them back.
Her mind and heart were at war, every atom of her being was telling her it was a mistake. She had witnessed this kind of manic love tear her family apart, she had heard her mother cry over it for months. She had heard heartbreak in the cracking of her mother's voice.
Yet, somehow even when she knew she was setting herself for the inevitable, she couldn't help but dance with the devil for a little while.
She let her eyes wander off about her room, a broken bottle rolling back and forth on the fuzzy cream rug now stained with red wine, chairs toppled over on the floor, pillows strewn around her bed, a cracked photo-frame lying beside the bedside table, curtains swirling down the rod that was dangling limply off the bracket. Three white buttons sitting on the ground.
It was all a mess-the girl, her hair, her thoughts and her room.
She touched her swollen lips and it all came crashing down. His lips on her mouth, tongue down her throat. His hands on her thighs, on her waist, her legs curled around his torso, fingers tugging his soft hair. Buttons popping into the air, against the white wall and on her bed they kissed and the traces of his touch was like fire on her skin.
