Where Loyalties Lie
By
Chloe Dupree
© 2015
Elite Ink Publishing. All rights reserved.
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Chloe Dupree
Where Loyalties Lie-1st Edition Elite Ink Publishing
©
Where Loyalties Lie
Prologue
Olivia was exhausted yet excited as she unlocked the door to the apartment that she shared with her boyfriend Mitchell. She’d gotten out of class early, which meant that they could finally spend some time together. Both being fulltime students and working fulltime didn’t leave the couple much time to spend together.
She quietly crept into the apartment and sat her backpack down on the floor near the couch and kicked her Nikes off before heading down the hall to the only bedroom. She could hear moaning sounds coming from behind the door and she laughed, thinking she was going to catch Mitchell watching porn and pleasuring himself.
She quietly twisted the knob, still smiling. Her smile faded as she took in the scene before her. Mitchell wasn’t alone and he wasn’t watching porn, but he did seem to be having a pleasurable experience.
He was completely naked, standing behind a woman who had her hands planted on top of the dresser. He had his hands over the woman’s breast and Olivia couldn’t see the woman’s face until she titled her head backwards a few seconds later.
Their eyes met as Olivia stared at the reflection in the mirror. Olivia blinked a few times; sure that she was seeing things. The face was familiar and smiling back at her. Unaware of their audience, Mitchell continued to drill into the woman.
Olivia was sure that Jessica had seen her, yet the sex didn’t stop until Mitchell reached a climax and stumbled back onto the bed. He lay back and only then did he see a crying Olivia standing in the doorway.
“Liv, baby,” he said, jumping up from the bed. “I can explain,” he said, walking toward her.
Olivia shook her head from side to side.
“Get out! Get out! Both of you!” Olivia yelled.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he told her, reaching for her hands.
“Get away from me!” she screamed, slapping at his hands.
The same hands that had touched her friend so inappropriately just moments ago.
“I told you he was a dog, just like the rest of them,” Jessica said as she leaned against the dresser.
Olivia couldn’t believe what her best friend was saying to her.
“I told you that no man is faithful. No man will ever be faithful to you,” Jessica went on.
“Leave!” Olivia demanded.
“All right. But don’t get mad at me. It’s just the way life is,” Jessica said, pulling a shirt on over her head.
Olivia continued to cry as Jessica and Mitchell appeared to be moving in slow motion.
“I saved you years of wasting time with him,” Jessica said as she walked toward the door. “You’re still my heart.”
Olivia grabbed the half of a heart that hung from a necklace around her neck and flung it at the door. It hit the wood and slid down onto the carpet.
A few minutes later Mitchell was dressed and hoisting a gym bag full of clothes on his shoulder.
“I hope you die,” Olivia spat in disgust as he walked out of the door.
Less than an hour later he was dead, the victim of a gun wielding liquor store robber. Olivia would never forgive herself for whishing death on the first man that she’d ever loved.
Chapter 1
FIVE YEARS LATER
Tears caused her mascara to run down her face as Jessica used all of the strength that she could muster to hold onto both sides of the door frame as Ryan pulled at her legs.
“I ain’t playin’ wit’ yo’ ass,” he warned her before giving her legs another forceful tug.
Some of her acrylic fingernails were torn away from Jessica’s fingertips as she lost hold of the wooden door frame. He dropped her on the ground like a pile of trash and, his chest heaving up and down as he looked down at her.
“Ryan, let me explain,” she begged from the cold concrete in front of their apartment.
“Ain’t shit to explain, bitch!”
Ryan walked back into the apartment that they shared and slammed the door. When she heard the lock clicked into place Jessica knew that she was in trouble. It was the middle of January in Cleveland, Ohio and she didn’t have on anything but a thin, men’s, cotton button up shirt and a pair of sweatpants that she’d managed to pick up from the bedroom floor at the start of the argument.
She should have been ashamed as her neighbors poured out of their apartments and peeked out of their blinds and curtains, but she wasn’t. She was too upset and surprised, not to mention cold, to be embarrassed. She pulled herself up from the ground and walked over to the door.
“Open this damn door!” she yelled, beating on the door with her fists. “Let me get my stuff, you bastard!”
Jessica beat on the door for almost five minutes before finally giving up.
“Do you have someone that you could call?” one of her neighbors who’d been watching the whole time asked, gently placing her hand onto Jessica’s shoulder.
Jessica spun around and looked up at the taller woman. The concerned neighbor was an older woman, in her early fifties or so, who Jessica had seen around.
Ryan had grown up in Cleveland, so he had lots of family in friends in the area, but Jessica had no one. She’d moved from Los Angeles to Ohio with Ryan just a few months ago, but it didn’t matter where she lived. Jessica didn’t have family that cared about her in any city or state.
“No,” Jessica said, shaking her head.
“What about your mother or a cousin or a sister? Anyone?” the woman asked.
She was concerned about the young lady and wanted to make sure that she had somewhere safe to go for the night, but she wasn’t going to welcome her into her home. She didn’t need the drama and she watched enough TV to know that not everyone could be trusted.
Jessica could only think of one person that she might be able to call on, but she hadn’t seen or even spoken to her in years. She didn’t even know if the phone number was still the same.
“You should call someone,” the woman insisted, extending her cell phone toward Jessica.
Jessica took the phone and dialed the number that she still had committed to memory. Her heart almost stopped when it started to ring. Her hand began to tremble and her mouth became dry as the soft, familiar voice entered her ear.
***
Olivia’s thin fingers fumbled over the alarm clock and the smooth wood of the nightstand until her hand landed on top of her vibrating cell phone. She picked the phone up but it slipped from her hand and thumped against the nightstand. She picked it up again and lifted it above her face so that she could read the screen. The phone number was unfamiliar but it was three o’clock in the morning, so she figured it must have been some kind of an emergency.
“Hello?” she answered, doing her best not to wake her husband, Darren.
“Olivia?”
The woman on the other end sounded familiar but her voice seemed to be hoarse which made it hard for Olivia to identify her.
“Yes. Who’s this?” Olivia asked.
“It’s me… Jess.”
Olivia shot up in bed.
“Jessica?” she asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t mean to wake you up, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
“It’s all right. What’s wrong?” Olivia asked, her heart pounding in her chest.
Jessica closed her eyes, trying to fight the tears, but they escaped anyway. Olivia was still just as loving and supportive as she’d always been.
“Ryan, my boyfriend, put me out,” Jessica sobbed.
“Do you have somewhere to go? Like a hotel or a friend’s place?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t have anything. My phone and purse and everything are in the apartment and he won’t let me in to get anything and I don’t know anyone out here.”
Olivia sighed. This was so typical of Jessica; needing to be bailed out of a bad situation, and at the most inopportune time.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Cleveland.”
“Jess, I… I can call a hotel and get you a room for the night or…” Olivia hesitated as she looked over at her sleeping husband. “Or I can get you a plane ticket and you could come here.”
She knew that this was the kind of thing that she and Darren should have discussed, but it was an emergency and she knew that Jessica didn’t have anyone else to turn to. They’d both grown up in foster care and neither had even one family member that had been willing to take them in.
“You’d do that?” Jessica asked.
“Of course. Just tell me what you want to do.”
Jessica was quiet for a few moments.
“I want to come there. I can’t do this anymore,” Jessica told her, fighting back tears.
“Okay. Can you get to the airport?”
Jessica looked over at her neighbor.
“Do you think you could take me to the airport?” she asked.
“Yeah, I can do that,” the woman assured her.
“Yeah, I can get there,” Jessica told Olivia.
“Okay. Find a phone at the airport and I’ll give you the flight information.”
“Okay. Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Olivia sat the phone back down on the nightstand and stared at the wall ahead. She was a cocktail of emotions. She still loved Jessica, but things had been tumultuous the last time they’d been in the same room. There had been yelling and cursing and she’d vowed to never speak to Jessica again.
She wanted to help her friend, which was obvious, but she didn’t know how she’d feel when she saw Jessica in person. She had a feeling that all of those old emotions would come flooding back, but she hoped that she’d be able to suppress them in Jessica’s time of need.
“Who was that?” Darren asked, turning onto his side and placing his hand onto her thigh.
“My friend, Jessica,” she mumbled.
Darren frowned.
“I didn’t know you had a friend named Jessica,” he told her.
He’d known Olivia for over four years now and he knew most, if not all, of her friends.
“I know. I never talk about her because we lost touch some time ago,” she explained.
“Let me see,” he told her, holding his hand out.
Olivia reluctantly placed her phone into his hand.
Darren pulled up her call log and looked at the last number that had called her.
“What’d she want?” he asked, returning the phone to her hand.
“She’s having trouble with her boyfriend.”
“Why’d she call you if you all lost touch?”
“Because she knows I’d never say no.”
Chapter 2
Olivia left Darren alone in bed and went into his home office. She purchased a plane ticket on the next flight that was going from Cleveland to Chicago. The flight wouldn’t leave for another couple of hours and was an hour and a half long, which meant that Olivia had time to go back to bed for a couple of hours. She couldn’t go back to sleep though. She was too anxious to sleep. Instead, she quietly went into the guest bedroom and closed the door.
The room hadn’t been used in months so the sheets were clean but she changed them anyway. She then dusted the room and made sure that everything was clean and neat.
Once the room was ready she went down into the basement where she’d left some laundry in the dryer and started to sort through it. Jessica said that she’d been put out with none of her belongings so Olivia picked out some of her clothes, assuming that they still wore the same size, and folded them.
She sat the clean clothes, a wash cloth and a bath towel at the foot of the bed in the guest bedroom and looked around. She’d done all that she could. The only thing that was left to do was to meet Jessica at the airport.
***
Olivia was anxious as she watched the strangers pour out of the airport. It was early in the morning, a little after four, but there were a lot of people coming out of the busy building. She tapped on the horn of her Aston Martin Rapide as she recognized her childhood friend walking out of the glass doors.
The wind whipped Jessica’s hair back past her ears as she searched for her ride. She nodded her acknowledgment when she saw Olivia sitting behind the wheel of the luxury vehicle. She quickly made her way across the street and climbed into the front seat.
She was shivering like a wet cat and glad that Olivia had the heat turned to full blast.
“Where’s your coat?” Olivia asked.
“In the apartment.”
“My God. Did that asshole hit you?” Olivia gasped, immediately noticing that the left side of Jessica’s face was red and swollen.
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts Jess. I’m glad you called me. How long has this been going on?”
“Not long, Ollie. I promise. Thanks again,” Jessica said as Olivia checked the mirror on the driver’s side door before pulling away from the curb.
“It’s not a problem, really.”
Jessica knew that it was a problem. She knew that she was a headache at times and that Olivia had great reason not to ever even speak to her again.
“You cut your hair,” Jessica noted, taking in Olivia’s pixie cut along with the rest of her flawless appearance.
Every strand of her hair was in its proper place and her makeup was to be envied. Her skin looked airbrushed and was blemish free. Her blue eye shadow would have looked foolish on a lot of women, but it looked beautiful on Olivia. She’d always taken pride in her appearance and would spend money on the best of everything from MAC cosmetics to Gucci shoes.
“Yeah. You did, too,” Olivia replied, nervously running her hand over her head.
“Not as short as you.”
Jessica and Olivia had both spent their teen years growing their hair. At the longest, both of them had grown their hair to the middle of their backs.
“When did you cut yours?” Jessica asked.
“Earlier this year.”
“So, you like it?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I cut mine a couple of weeks ago,” Jessica told her.
“It looks good on you.”
“Thanks. Yours, too.”
“Are you hungry? Do you want to stop and get something?” Olivia asked.
“I’m all right. I’ll find something at your place,” Jessica replied, staring out of the window.
The car was quiet as they took the drive back to Olivia’s home. As she maneuvered through the streets Olivia couldn’t help but steal a glance at Jessica from time to time. She looked like she’d had a long night and had quickly fallen asleep.
Olivia had a lot of questions for her friend but they’d wait. Olivia was just relieved that she’d answered that call a few hours ago and that she wasn’t consumed with hate for Jessica anymore.
Chapter 3
Jessica sat up in her seat as the car slowed to a stop. She was impressed but not surprised as Olivia pulled into the long driveway. The house was a beautiful two st
ory brick home surrounded by unnaturally green grass.
Olivia opened the garage door and pulled inside. She lowered the door again and led the way into the house.
“Nice place,” Jessica commented, looking up at the vaulted ceilings and huge picture windows.
“Thanks.”
Olivia watched Jessica as she looked around at the living room.
“I got the guest bedroom ready for you. You can take a shower and a nap. I left some clothes on the bed for you.”
Jessica followed Olivia up the stairs and down the hall, past a couple of closed doors.
“There’s a bathroom down the hall. I’ll be in my room lying down if you need anything,” Olivia told her friend, nodding toward the door at the end of the hall.
Jessica nodded her understanding before heading into the guest bedroom.
The queen sized bed was covered with a yellow bed set adorned with blue flowers. The room was small but not cluttered. She looked through the outfits that Olivia had left on the bed. She decided on a pair of black and blue Lycra pants and a white tank top. She headed down the hall to the bathroom and took a quick shower.
Olivia’s bedroom door was closed when Jessica headed back into the guest room. At first she thought that Olivia was sleeping, but when she heard her laughing, then talking she realized that she must have been on the phone.
Jessica went back into the guest bedroom and took a much needed nap.
***
“You hungry?” Olivia asked as Jessica walked into the kitchen.
Jessica had only slept for a few hours and wondered if Olivia had slept at all. Although she still felt tired Jessica hadn’t been able to fall asleep again after getting up to use the bathroom.