Alpha’s Virgin Stripper

Lake:

I saw her fight to keep her tears at bay. She sniffed them in and wiped her eyes with the back of her palms. By the goddess, I wanted to scoop her up and take her with me, hold her in my arms, and make all her problems go away. That was a lot of fondness for a ten-year-old I had just met.

“Thank you.” She replied, before fixing her eyes on the floor again.Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

I turned away from her and followed her directions. I walked to the end of the corridor and took a left turn, only to find Jojo seated on a bench at the end of the wall. She had her hands squeezed together. A lady beside her, one I could oddly recognize, squeezed her palm gently.

Once again, my heart squeezed in my chest. Something warm and seemingly soft gripped my heart and massaged it, I found myself swallowing hard, before docking behind the wall, just to watch her from the shadows.

I did not realize how much I missed her until now when she was sitting barely meters away from me. I wanted to move to her, take her in my arms and hug her, press her against my chest so tight that I would feel her dissolve into my skin.

She was shivering, and I could tell that it wasn’t from the cold. Her lips quivered as tears ran down her eyes continuously. When she looked up at the lady by her side, I could see her bloodshot eyes from the corner I stood in. I had never seen Red in such a state before.

Her skin was almost the color of her hair, her face was contorted with rage. She opened her mouth to speak and from where I stood, I could hear everything.

“It’s fine Jo. Believe me, everything is going to be okay. I know that you are sad about her current state, but let’s just try to be thankful she is awake.” That was the voice of her friend.

Red’s smooth voice followed almost immediately, but there was nothing smooth about it today.

“I know, Mel. I know that I should be happy she is awake. I mean, that is the most important right? Any other treatment can follow. But, I am angry Mel, I’m very angry and I cannot even begin to explain why.”

There was something different about her. Red was no longer clueless and soft, she did not speak as though she had no idea how the real world worked. She was angry, she spoke with the voice of a woman who had expectations for something, expectations that had been crushed.

“When I was younger, just an eleven-year-old girl. I used to see my dad hit her a lot, and she used to tell me that he was correcting her because she did bad things, things that made him angry. She knew that I was only a child, and she knew that I would take her lessons to heart, yet she chose to lie to me like that. It was only after I had grown up that I realized a husband, a man that loves you never hits you. He never willingly puts you through pain. He never calls you demeaning names and he doesn’t bring his whores home to rub them in your fucking face!”

My shoulder remained pinned to the brick wall. The emotions emanating from her were as hot and ravaging as wildfire. It spread from her to me almost immediately. I could already feel molten rage crawl up to my stomach from the sole of my feet.

“For eight years, eight years Mel, I suffered in the hands of my aunt and her children. I allowed myself and Valerie to subdued to all kinds and manners of ill-treatment. Several times when I could have been raped, all the days and nights I was brutally beaten by my aunt, by Mykel, I thought that they were correcting me. I did not know that I was being trampled upon, being abused, and I did not know that it was not okay to have your head smashed against the wall for any reason! And it was all because of her, it was all because she was such a weak mother, she raised a weak child.”

My jaw hardened. I found my fists rolled into tight balls, pressed firmly to my sides. Mel placed her hand over Red’s shoulder and tried to pull Red’s head to her shoulder, but Red was adamant and stubborn. She wanted to sit still and speak her mind. I had never seen her so angry before, I had never imagined that she could be so angry.

“Don’t speak like that, Jo. You’re one of the strongest people I know and you know I love you for that.”

“You know what hurts the most?” Jojo cut in. I saw her friend heave a sigh of defeat. For a moment, I pitied her.

“It is the fact that after everything, everything he did to her, everything he put her through, she woke up and the first person that came to her mind was him! She wanted to see him again! She had just woken up from a life-threatening coma and she still wants to look at his face! She still has faith in him! What sort of bullshit is that, Mel? How can I possibly be able to wrap my head around something like that? How?”

“Your mother was in love. She loved your father, Jo. And love, love makes us do things we do not want to do, most of them are often stupid.” Mel replied. Somehow, I could not agree more.

Jade was a typical example. That is if what she felt towards me could be considered love because I called it madness.

“Love doesn’t make you suffer, Mel.” Red bit back.

This time, Mel pulled her hand away from her friend, before inhaling deeply and exhaling loudly.

“What’s the point of love if there’s no pain? No suffering?”

“Then I never want to fall in love, Mel. I never want to have anything to do with any man, because I’ll be damned, damned to hell if I let someone treat me like that just because I want to be with him. I made that decision before, but now I’ll stand by it.”

I found my feet wobbling while they staggered backward. I placed my back flat against the wall, while my heart continued to rise and fall in my chest.

Her last statement had somehow driven what felt like an arrow into my chest, with so much force that it ached. Even though I did not know why I felt that way, it was hard to stop replaying her words in my head again.

Finally, this was another sign I was supposed to reject her. She did not want me and I did not want her.

My rejection would not bother her, nor would it cost me a strand of hair on my head.

Next time, I was not going to miss it for any reason. I could not bring myself to want someone, only to have them not want me.

That was not my style, and that was not Alpha Lake Rush.