The Damned Read online

  The Damned

  An Unloved Companion Novel

  JENNIFER SNYDER

  THE DAMNED

  AN UNLOVED COMPANION NOVEL

  Copyright 2014 by Jennifer Snyder

  Cover design created by Once Upon A Time Covers

  Editing by H. Danielle Crabtree

  Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the above author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  DEDICATION

  For Lisa Hammond-Ashley, thank you for providing me with the quote that spurred this entire novel.

  Silence is the most powerful cry

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR NOTE

  THE UNLOVED

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  EMORY

  When I was little my older sister, Chelsea, and I used to lie in the backyard and stare up into the sky above, creating shapes out of the puffy, white clouds. It was a game we would play while our father was away at work and our mother was too preoccupied writing her latest how-to parenting book to notice either of us. We would lie there for hours, gazing up at the wispy clouds as they slowly passed by. Sometimes I grew tired of imagining shapes and would just watch the clouds as they floated, thinking to myself how nice it must be to feel that free and weightless.

  Even as a small child, I felt as though I were trapped, ensnared by the life I had been born into.

  Chelsea was prim and proper. She was an overachiever, which seemed to cause my parents to have high expectations for me. At some point, my sister—the one who used to be so perfect in our parents’ eyes—gave up on pleasing our parents, and the weight of that role fell to me.

  At first, this shift in our household made me happy because I loved being the center of attention, but slowly the pressure became to be too much.

  Our mother, Carol Montgomery, was a perfectionist from hell. She was high-strung and obsessive about even the smallest of things, which made me often wonder if it was from her crazed gene pool that I gained my strong desire to be as close to perfect as I could be. As for our father, he was what most would deem a workaholic, but my sister and I knew better. . Scott Montgomery was smart, simply put. He had seen our mother’s neurotic ways early on in their marriage and chose a profession that enabled him to travel. A lot.

  While we knew our parents loved one another, Chelsea and I also knew it was a different type of love. It was far from the kind we saw on TV. It was a type rarely spoken about—a controlled, meticulous type of love. The kind both of our parents could only handle in small doses. If they were around one another for long periods, they’d realize they weren’t meant to be. They were too different and too independent to mesh well.

  What brought them together in the first place, neither Chelsea nor I could be sure, but what they had worked. Sort of. At least to the public eye, it appeared that it did. Divorce was something our mother would never consider. It meant failure, and failure was not an option when it came to anything in her eyes.

  So, Chelsea and I grew up in a house with more forced smiles and awkward hugs passed between our parents than most children would ever see, but we were all right. Perfectly all right. While our parents went about their individual lives, we went about ours, pulled along in their little bubble of a perfect All-American family façade set in place for all to see..

  This was fine…until it wasn’t.

  The funny thing about façades is that eventually they crack. People can only pretend for so long. Everything in life has an expiration date, even life itself. Nothing lasts forever. Not even in my family’s case.

  Before and after.

  Perfect and then not.

  All right until it wasn’t.

  CHAPTER ONE

  COLE

  I could hear her. If she knew this, she damn sure didn’t care. My stomach churned as the moans and sighs grew louder, to the point I swore the neighbors could hear her as well. It sounded as though she was filming an erotic movie in her room, the two of them were so damn loud. I knew exactly who was in there with her without having to see his face.

  Harvey.

  He was the only one my mother would put this porno-style show on for. The only one who didn’t care her seventeen-year-old son was in the next room.

  Rummaging through the crap scattered across my bedroom floor, I frantically searched for my iPod and headphones. When my fingertips brushed against its cool sleekness, I sighed with relief. Blaring music had become the only way I could sleep in this house lately. I swiped my thumb across the screen, and then tapped on my music. I scrolled through until I found Three Days Grace. Born Like This blasted through the tiny earbuds as I inserted them, and I smiled, loving the beat.

  After digging my pack of cigarettes free from the front pocket of my jeans, I pulled one out and placed it between my lips. Once I lit it, I inhaled sharply while trying to focus on the lyrics swimming through my ears. Leaning back against my broken headboard, I tapped my foot as I allowed the beat to sooth my erratic mind and jet-black soul.

  Ten months.

  That was all the time I had left here, all the time between now and the moment I turned eighteen. Then I could free myself from this hellhole, just like Logan and Julie had. My fingers tightened around my cigarette at the thought of my siblings.

  Assholes.

  There was one difference separating me from them. When I chose to leave, I wouldn’t be leaving anyone else behind, knowing the shit they’d have to endure. No, my fucking conscience would be clean because I was the last one.

  The song shifted to something more hardcore as the pounding of my mom’s fuck-fest in the room beside mine picked up pace. Closing my eyes, I turned the volume on my earbuds up to a near-deafening level. It still didn’t block out the noises I knew were there—the ones that had been imprinted in my mind for months now. I swore my mother had turned our house into a brothel recently.

  Tightness griped my chest, forcing the air from my lungs as anger flared to a new level inside of me. Where was her sense of consideration? Where was her fucking self-respect? Why did she have to whore herself out all the time?

&n
bsp; My breaths grew more erratic and rapid as I thought this. Questions burned through me, igniting my blood to a near-boiling level. My mind raced to come up with someplace I could flee to for the night. Luke’s house was the only place I could think of, but I’d been there nearly every night this week. His mom would surely become even more suspicious about my home life than she already was if I stayed there again.

  Everyone in Harper, North Carolina, already knew what a fuckup my mother was. They knew Charlotte Porter was a sex-crazed stripper. They knew she wasn’t in the running for mother of the year anytime soon. What the people in tiny, boring-as-fuck Harper didn’t know was that everything they’d ever heard about my family was true.

  The women of the town had better hold their husband’s hands when my mother walked by, because if there were even a glimmer of interest flashing in their eyes, she would see it, reel them in, and one way or another, they would end up in her bed doing the dirty, just like the guy in there right now.

  Harvey was married, and he was my biology teacher. He had called my mom in for a parent/teacher meeting, because he was oh so fucking worried about my grades and the path my life was headed. All it took was one look at my mother, and his concern for me went right out the damn window.

  I’m not saying my mother is the most attractive woman in town, but I will say she has this special quality about her. With reddish hair, large green eyes, and creamy skin, she sort of resembles a classic pinup. Mix that old school classiness with the desire to perform any sexual favor for the right price, and apparently, you have my mother—and pretty much any man’s fantasy.

  The song blaring through my ears cut off. My eyes bulged out of my head as the battery symbol in the top right corner glared at me with its ugly redness, letting me know the battery was nearly sucked dry. I needed this noise, this beat, and these lyrics to drown out the racket coming from my mother’s room. I bolted off my bed and started riffling through the stuff strewn across my floor until I found the white wire of the charger peeking out from underneath the edge of my mattress.

  My tense muscles loosened as soon as I plugged the thing in. Leaning my head against the wall, I puffed on my cigarette in an effort to sooth my frayed nerves. The nicotine filled my lungs as my heart continued to race inside my chest.

  Catastrophe averted.

  If I hadn’t found that cord, I would have headed to Luke’s place by now, and nothing good could come from that. His mother was as nosey as they came, and I didn’t need her prying into my life.

  While Luke knew all the rumors about my mother, same as everyone else, I’d never confirmed or denied them. Not to him—even though we had been friends since we were five—not to anyone. That was a rule Logan and Julie taught me the importance of when I was younger. We never told anyone how sometimes there wasn’t enough food in the house, or how our mother enjoyed bringing home a new guy nearly every night of the week, and we damn sure never mentioned she was addicted to pills and did any other drug you could think of whenever it was around. We knew what could happen if any of us ever did tell. How we could be picked up and placed somewhere even worse. So we remained silent, which sometimes felt as though it was the most powerful cry.

  I took another drag off my cigarette. Loneliness and misery seemed to suffocate me, pulling me under as I thought these negative things. The realization that I had been discarded by my older siblings, tossed to the wolves and forgotten, shifted through my mind. I was nothing but one of the damned.

  I rolled the sleeve of my shirt up and plucked my burning cigarette from my mouth. Without hesitating, I did what I’d done for as long as I could remember; I touched the cigarette to my forearm in an effort to feel something besides the emotions that engulfed me when thinking about my life.

  A sharp sting pierced my skin. The sensation felt similar to a bee sting at first. It woke every cell in my body and brought a small smile to my face. There was something to be said about gaining pleasure from pain. My mind buzzed with liveliness as I continued to dig the lit end of my cigarette into my arm deeper, harder. My heart hammered in my chest, just like it had all night, swift and alarming, but this time for a reason completely different than the last. This time was for a reason that I could control.

  If someone were to ask me, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint when I first started performing self-inflicted acts of violence against myself. Sometimes I often wondered what possessed me to do such a thing in the first place, but all I had to do to find my answer was look around the screwed up place I was forced to call home, and it was easy to see the reasons why.

  Once the area of my arm felt completely numb and the end of my cigarette had snuffed out, I stared at the damage. Leaning my head back against the wall, I enjoyed the feeling of bliss that swept over me. The song on my iPod switched to something with a different tempo, and I tapped my foot to the beat. After lighting my snuffed out cigarette for a second time, I put it to my lips and focused on the buzz of liveliness flowing through my veins once more.

  The mark on my arm would most likely scar, but it wouldn’t be my first. More than likely, it wouldn’t be my last either. Eventually, I would regret putting it where it was so visible to others, but not right now. Right now, all I wanted to do was stare at it and marvel at how good it felt to create it, to know that I held power over my emotions, to know that I could make myself feel anything I wanted. Calmness washed over me, and I thought that maybe I would sleep well tonight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMORY

  It was book club night. Not my book club, my mother’s. I didn’t necessarily enjoy reading for fun. I used to, I guess, but not anymore. In fact, I might never have enjoyed reading at all. It might have been another thing I thought I liked, but later realized I didn’t. It was my mother who enjoyed it, and I had adopted her hobby as my own because I thought I was supposed to, because I thought it would make her happy.

  “On the saucers, Emory,” my mother reminded me. She stared over my shoulder, watching my every move, like always. “I swear, what has gotten into you tonight? You’re barely here.”

  After picking up the teacup I had just set down, I placed a matching saucer beneath it. I forced my face into a neutral expression before turning to face her. “I’m just tired. I’m sorry.”

  “You look a little flushed. Are you coming down with something?” She reached out and pressed her hand against my forehead, feeling for a fever.

  At the contact, my eyes closed. My mother wasn’t a coldhearted woman who rarely showed me any affection, but nine times out of ten, the affection was for the benefit of keeping up appearances. This display of fondness and general concern was devoid of an audience, so I treasured it because it was real.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling a little run down lately.” This was the truth. I always felt drained. If someone were to jot down my daily schedule on paper, they would clearly understand why I felt this way.

  “Maybe you should skip book club tonight and head to bed early instead. You wouldn’t want to come down with something right before the church bizarre this weekend.”

  All the breath in my lungs left me at her words, but only because it was a rare occasion when I was allowed to pass up an appearance at one of her book club meetings. Generally, I was a server allotted with the task of smiling and looking pretty while providing her stuck-up friends with an endless supply of tea and cucumber sandwiches as they gushed about the boring novel my mother chose for them to read this month. From her statement, it was obvious to me that making an appearance at the church bizarre pulled rank over tonight though. I was fine with that.

  Digging my fingernails into my palms, I attempted to keep any hint of happiness at her suggestion off my face. “Okay.”

  Once I finished setting the last of the teacups and saucers out, I left the study and headed upstairs. My exit wasn’t noticed. My mother was too wrapped up in how she should organize tonight’s spread of finger foods and delicate desserts across the silver platters. My heart shrank a
tiny bit as I started up the stairs, but only because one more hand pressed against my cheek or a simple feel better, sweetheart would have been nice.

  As I passed Chelsea’s room on the way to mine, I paused at the threshold and glanced inside. She was out tonight—probably drinking, smoking cigarettes, and having sex with some random guy she’d just met. My sister was everything my mother detested in a child, and she harbored every problem she wrote about how to solve. Chelsea was my mother’s guinea pig. So far, none of her theories or strategies of reverse physiology had worked with her. I could understand why this infuriated my mother, how humiliating it must be to fail repeatedly at molding your own daughter back into who she used to be.

  Sometimes I wondered if Chelsea hadn’t given up on being the perfect daughter, if she never decided to veer down the path of rebellion she’d been on since as far back as I could remember, would I have taken her place as the rebellious child in our household, or would I have continued with my strive to beat her at everything just to get that much more attention and praise from our parents?

  When I made it to my room, I closed the door behind me and flopped across my bed. Glancing at my cell, I noticed a few missed text messages from Tara. They were just as melodramatic as she was, which made me smile.

  Sam is here. He’s already asked me if you were coming a few times.

  I pulled my pillow beneath my head, and then turned to lie flat on my back. With my smile still lingering, I read her next text.

  I swear he’s scoping the place out for you, Emory. You need to get your ass here. Screw your mom’s book club party. Sneak out the window. You know she most likely won’t even notice once they’ve stuffed their faces with a few lemon tarts and are deep in discussion.

  The idea was tempting. While it wouldn’t be the first time I had snuck out of the house for something, I truthfully was tired. I hadn’t been sleeping much lately. Pushing myself to perfect the routine Coach Karen had created for nationals was not only exhausting, but it was also stressing me out.