Hyeonverse: A Ticket to Nevada Ch. 02 of 02

My deepest appreciation to Cw5523729, Grania2, Xpoerotica, Decal_last and Gonzo437a for helping me with their hard work, editing and advice. Thank you for putting up with my mindless ramblings, guys, with your help and a LOT of luck, maybe one day I'll become a better writer.

*****

ANNIE'S STORY

Sara is always with me.

I carry her here, in my dimples.

When I smile, those are her thumbs pressing on my cheeks: "Smile, mommy!"

I love you so much, my beautiful baby girl.

Sue has Bill, they're soulmates. One says "jump", the other says "five bucks." I wanted that. I would've loved to have that. But yeah, that's theirs.

Bill knows the lyrics of Kim Possible. Bill tag teams with her on their Beat A Map and Shoot A Map games. Only Bill would pick those awful sandals her mommy bought and glue wings on them to create Super Sue, the Messenger Goddess, and fastest runner in all of Olympus.

I used to be Bill's goddess too.

I would uncover my legs when he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, grunting at the IED shrapnel wound on his back. He'd come back, notice my feet and softly rub them with those warm paws of his before covering them so I wouldn't catch a cold. Sometimes, he'd just stand there in the dark, staring at me while I pretended to be asleep, bursting inside with joy.

There was a yellow book on the nightstand where Bill would write down the stupid things I say in my sleep. "Screw your jello veggies. Nuke the entire site from orbit. Mercury pow." I would get so mad. One day, we got into a fight over disposable diapers and I threw it away. The look he gave me when he came back from the store and saw it in the trash, it's as if someone had killed his brother.

There were a lot of fights after Sue was born.

We were just two stupid kids playing mamas and papas, arguing bitterly over whose turn it was to go check on the baby.

Slowly, we learned how to be grownups. It was hard, but with our parents' help, we built a home. For a moment there, we were happy. Maybe even happier than we'd been at the beginning. Wiser, at least. There was hope for us, I got to roleplay Arcee, Cheetara...

And then I lost Sara.

My beautiful baby girl. Listeria, the doctor had said. An internal infection in my uterus, from drinking unpasteurized milk back at the farm. I had flown home in tears after I misheard Bill calling me a blimp. He was poking fun at the wimp, after six years old Sue beat me at video games.

My stupidity cost us our Sara, I killed our baby girl.

My world ended on that day.

I turned to Bill for comfort, but I couldn't stand to look at the pain I had caused. Listening to him quietly crying in the bathroom at night, when he thought nobody was awake, crushed me. My love, my best friend was hurting because of me. I had one job and I'd fucked it up.

We drifted apart.

Bill found refuge among his buddies; I had the girls' nights out three times a week.

I'd sit there with the bomber squadron, as Bill called us, watching Julie and Trish Cavendish make a fool of themselves on karaoke nights while Carla cheated on her husband with her boyfriend Rollo, three booths over. Watching them making out seemed so mean, stupid and meaningless, just meat rubbing meat. How could someone do something so selfish and cruel to a loved one?

One night, her husband caught them.

Carla was furious with me, I had ruined her life. I was supposed to be on lookout, the eyes of the whole operation.

I never was, I just went out to drown myself in the faces in the crowd and numb the pain I had caused Bill.

Rollo ambushed me weeks later in the club's bathroom.

He stuck his tongue down my throat. It tasted of bad coffee, cheap cigarettes and Tequila. I struggled and he twisted my wrist, making me shriek in pain. I screamed, again and again, his hand covering my mouth. Nobody heard me over Depeche Mode.

Enjoy the Silence.

My throat was sore from screaming when he opened his fly and I was transported back to Dutchess with Todd all over again, the week I quit college. At least Rollo didn't break my nose.

My mind fled to my little angel Sara and I pictured this brute, this monster ejaculating in me, his filthy seed desecrating my baby's sanctuary tomb. I threw up on his face and shirt, on his pants and shoes. Rollo slapped me and ran away in disgust.

My baby girl had saved me.

Carla's still apologizing to this very day. Too little, too late. The squadron broke off; Trish couldn't stand to look at her. Julie got married again, swearing up and down to anyone who'd listen to her that two time's the charm. Me, I continued to go out at night, walking around the streets alone, afraid to go home and face the destruction I had inflicted on my family.

That's when Robert Rice entered the scene, about a year ago.

Maggie was head over heels with her suave outside consultant straight outta Centaur One Media.

Bill found his nerdy gigolo vibe both hilarious and just sad. One time, during hay season, he saw Robert sneeze and nicknamed him Moustatchoo Bob; it caught on in the office.

I felt so sorry for him.

I continued to call him Robert, of course. Every time I met him, I'd apologize for my husband and his stupid nicknames. He must have seen it as an opening to make his move on me. And he got me.

Oh, he got me real good.

He kissed me while groping my breasts in a dark booth over at Mathilda Cafe. I slapped him for taking advantage of my sympathy. Robert wouldn't take no for an answer. He doubled down on his advances, groping me any chance he got. I couldn't rat him to Maggie, whose side would she pick? Some administrative assistant or her top guy who had shown her how to snatch the great E. M.Parker? My work began to suffer. At home, there was Bill lumbering about.

Life had officially become Hell.

It was a month ago.

I was rushing a reviewed sample page from E. M. Parker's manuscript to the Raven Skies' website admins when Robert ambushed me.

"Hey, Annie, I love the perfume you're wearing today," he grinned, pinning me against a wall.

"Let me go, Robert, I won't tell you again," I hissed. "I will report you, I swear!"

A mocking voice boomed from across the hallway:

"I dunno, Annie."

We turned to find a tall, dark stranger staring at us in our compromising position: "I think you are missing an opportunity here. He really is one handsome hunk of a man."

Robert stood up straight ready to fight when he noticed the guy's size.

"Are you sure you don't wanna hang out with this superfine piece of man meat?" The stranger limped in like a wounded pelican, smirking, clenched fists.

Towering over Robert, he grinned while his hands reached for Robert's crotch.

"Nice tool," the stranger smirked, grabbing his cock through the fabric and Robert's face went white as a sheet.

"You should really try it, Annie." He joked, his eyes carving into Robert's. "No? Then... can I have it?"

Robert practically ran away screaming, that was the last time he had tried his moves on me.

"Hi, sexy, I'm Josh! Josh Allen!" my guardian angel introduced himself.

He extended his hand to lift me up and I've never let it go since.

Wherever Robert and I went, Josh went. His eyes, like a bird of prey tracking Robert's every move. Josh taught me how to smile again. His boyfriend Johnny was a family counsellor and little by little, they showed me how to forgive myself for killing my Sara. It still hurt. But I could almost pretend to be a normal person now.

And then, hope returned.

I was sitting at Mathilda Cafe watching them make out and I wished I could have that.

"So, why don't you?" Johnny turned to me. "You do have one of these at home too, don't you?"

"Do I?" I mumbled, tearing up.

"Oh, baby you still love him, don't you?" Josh smiled. "Then, that's all that matters."

"I can't... I can't look him in the eye, all the pain I caused him..." I sobbed. "How do you drown it out?"

"Well..." Johnny whispered, smiling. "Have you tried fucking his brains out?"

My eyes swelled in shock. God, men are disgusting.

"Fuck his brains out, baby," Josh yelled, startling a nearby waitress with his rallying cry. "Make hubby squeal!"

I became their pet project for days; the two perverts bombarded me with an unrelenting motivational barrage of pep talks and ego boosts until I finally caved in to their depraved taunts.

That night, I practically raped my husband. It was easily the best, most amazing sex we'd had since Sue was born.

As I watched his face distorted with pleasure, I realized for one brief moment that there was no pain in his eyes. Not anymore. He had forgotten our baby girl.

Bill had Sue, after all. And so, I would have Sara.

She is always with me, now.

Like Josh, she is my guardian angel.

AKRON, OHIO

The night was chilly when we exited the Akron-Canton airport looking for a cab.

"Guuurl!" A familiar voice shouted. "You are looking hot too-night!"

I turned to find Josh sitting on his unapologetically red Kawasaki Vulcan, grinning at me with his arms spread. He had driven all the way out here, over four hundred miles after I told him not to. If that's not a real-life superhero, I dunno what is.

"Gah-dayum, Akron sure is chilly! Let's fuck so I can steal some of that heat for myself." He grinned. "I could use some of those wifey tits on my face."

"Fuck off, Josh," I smirked before hugging him. "Johnny lets that scrawny ass out alone at night?"

"I told him I wanna go straight from now on, get myself some pussaay," he grinned. "Can I borrow yours for a couple hours? My twelve inches need some tight, warm tucking."

"Sure, go ahead. God knows if I'll ever get laid again," I sighed, telling him all about Bill's accusations.

Listening about the storm at home, Josh burst into his delightful laughter:

"Bitch, you know this is all on you, right? You straight up done fucked up, girl, you could have defused that bomb in one swoop, just by telling hubby that I only play for the home team."

"I guess..." I replied, feeling unbelievably stupid now. "But there was so much hatred in his eyes; it's as if I was looking into the eyes of a stranger. He actually spied on us; I saw a video of that stupid kiss at the warehouse loading docks. How can anyone hold so much anger inside? For the first time, I realized I don't know Bill at all. Maybe I never did."

"Maybe he doesn't know you at all either, have you thought about that?" Josh held his hands on my shoulders, his eyes boring into my soul. "Have you ever thought about telling him about the Rollo episode? Or your college boyfriend Todd who made you quit Dutchess? Did you tell him about Robert? How you felt and still feel about Sara? He's supposed to be your best friend in this whole world and you've kept him in the dark all this time. We've talked about this, men are not mind readers, you dumb fuck. We fix things. But we can't fix things if we don't know which are broken."

The night grew chillier around me. Bill too had a stranger sleeping in his bed this whole time.

"He got a video of us, huh? What, he hired a P.I.?" Josh ruminated to himself. "Dayum, maybe I did go a bit too far marking my territory in front of Bob."

"You're not completely at fault, I did tag along," I commiserated. God, it was beginning to dawn on me what we must have looked like together, to outsiders. The private things I had told him, the texts we had shared about how Bill had taken me for the first time in his Impala, the car his Dad bought him; the car where Bill himself had lost his virginity at age 17.

"Listen, I'm gonna catch some ZZZs, been driving all day. Anything happens, drop me a line. I can get to the Lindy Lodge in well under eight minutes." he said, putting back his helmet. "Geez, Annie, I wish you'd just go to Maggie and get HR involved. Fuck, get Bill involved."

"I can't. Not now, with this E. M. Parker mess. Not when I have no evidence to show for. There's too much at stake, the future of Raven Skies Press is on thin ice; I can't rock the boat now."

Josh stood staring at me as if I was insane.

"Don't worry, nothing is gonna happen," I moaned, resenting being treated like a damsel in distress. "He wouldn't come to Akron just to catch me away from you. Robert is crazy, not stupid."

"That's what scares me." He crushed me in a bear hug before lowering his helmet's visor.

His red bike roared, its lights speeding away into the night. My very own private superhero drove over six hours on a hunch, to my rescue.

He was right on one thing, though. Akron was Robert's playground, he had the home advantage.

An adorably cute little girl bumped me as I joined Maggie and the hordes battling for a cab. Asian kid, Sue's age. Blue butterflies in her dress. I was gonna decorate Sara's crib with blue butterflies just like those. I still carried the designs on my cell phone.

"Sowrry," she mumbled. Didn't even look up at me, she just walked away playing on her mobile. Kids...

Maggie had gotten us a cab and soon we were in our way to the warm comfort of the Lindy Lodge.

"You like the place?" I asked her, to take my mind off Bill.

"Never been there," Maggie replied. "Robert told me about it; it's where he used to house his authors whenever they came to Ohio. He told me he grew up a couple blocks from there, used to work at the lodge as a bellhop in his youth."

"You really like him, huh?" I struggled to smother my revulsion for the prick. "How long have you known each other?"

"Ah! We met at Kent State; he was dating my roommate Sharon at the time. He married her later. God, Robert was already such a huge E. M. Parker fanatic, used to drive me up the walls! Who'd think...?" Maggie laughed, reminiscing about her youth. "We lost touch over the years. It was a shock when he walked up to my table at Oslo Olaf's one day. I almost didn't recognize him with that stupid mustache and dyed hair, not even a Hello, just 'How would you like to bring E. M. Parker under the umbrella of Raven Skies Press?'"

"I still can't believe you managed to get him," I smiled. There's no publisher out there who wouldn't trade their own mothers for the award-winning Elliot Michaels Parker.

"Yeah, Robert really did deliver on that one, it's like he has a window into Elliot's soul. I mean, blue Moroccan tiles? Who would think about that one!" Maggie smiled. "Good guy, dependable. But God still drives me up the walls after all these years."

Robert had joined Raven Skies as Maggie's special consultant only, strictly off the books. Mostly, he kept a low profile around the building but once we had sunk our teeth in E. M. Parker's latest novel, Alexander Waiting, he went off the rails. Interference with editorial, always trying to get his greasy hands on the latest chapter out of his idol's typewriter, writing notes on the margins... one time, he covered whole paragraphs with his red marker.

Maggie went batshit crazy.

Things escalated about six months ago when he went postal, screaming at an assistant editor:

"No! No! No! Send that crap back, that is not E. M. Parker, that's commercial junk Macfood! That's Burger King! Pizza Hut! It's an insult to his legacy; send that crap back to him! Tell him to rewrite it, that is not who he is!"

Maggie cut off all his access to Alexander Waiting right there, only she and a select few editors could read the manuscript from then on. It was about that time that the harassment had started. For a moment, I wondered if he really was after me all along or the E. M. Parker prints I carried back and forth between Maggie and the book's ultra-secretive editorial inner circle.

We arrived at the Lindy Lodge shortly after. Gorgeous place, even at night, though a bit removed. I pictured Robert working as a bellhop here in his youth, annoying guests with his opinions on the latest E. M. Parker novel.

It was a cold night and we quickly settled in our rooms. The sound of Maggie's heels walking back and forth in the next room worried me. Raven Skies Press' lawyer had no strategy for the Centaur One meeting. We were so screwed...

"Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-Wonder Woman," The Lynda Carter 70s show's theme song snatched me out of my misery. Josh's ringtone heralded a text message mocking me:

>>Watch and learn, bitch.

He had sent me a video file of him sucking a cucumber. I broke into laughter, it was even bigger than the banana he and Johnny had tag teamed fellating over at Cafe Mathilda to teach me how to suck Bill.

I typed a comeback filled with fake umbrage:

>>Fuck off, discount value Sensei; I suck cock better than that.

Still laughing, I sent the reply before putting down my purse on the bed; it was heavy.

It had been heavy for a while, now.

A yellow taser gun rested inside when I opened it. My heart raced. Where, how did it get in there? I stared at it for a while, scared. What did this mean? The walls closed in on me, it's as if I was being watched.

"Heee.Heee," Michael Jackson hollered on my cell phone, startling me.

Someone had tampered with it; I had never heard that ringtone before. My mind unearthed the image of Bill at Pegs' birthday party, combing the room where the moms had left their bags and coats. The room where I had left my cell phone unattended.

Paranoia seized my brain.

My thoughts went to the footage he had shown me of my stupid kiss with Josh at the warehouse loading docks. Was he still spying on me? There was one message, sender unknown:

>> He is here.

MONDAY, THE 14TH

"Hey, bunny, how are you? Is Akron treating you well?" Bill's dad Mike called me in the morning, as I exited the bathroom in my best work suit. "Is everything alright with you?"

"Hi, Dad, yes, everything's fine," I replied. Something was up, maybe they had found out about the fight between Bill and me? "How are you, how's Mom? How are her eyes?"

"We're fine, darling, it's just that..." Mike hesitated. Bill's Mom Steph yelled things from a distance. 'Tell her to put on mittens, weatherman says it's gonna be cold tonight.' Mike resumed: "Bill was here, last night. He dropped Sue. There was something weird with him, are you two fighting?"

"When are we not fighting, Dad?" I joked, alarm bells ringing in my ears. Bill had dropped Sue at his parents' on a school night? What was he thinking? "Listen, I'm sure it's nothing, Bill's got a lot in his mind with the new milling machine and all. I'll call him to find out what's going on and hurry home after the meeting."

"We've tried it, but he's not answering his phone." Mike continued "Goes straight to voicemail."

"I'll see what is going on, we had a fight yesterday, maybe he needs some time to cool off with his buddies," I tried to defuse his concerns. "I'll call Pete to find out what he knows."

"Okay, sugar. I've gotta head out, drop by your house to grab Sue's school bag and take her to school. Boy, that is one ninety minute drive I'm not looking forward to," Mike sighed, I could sense his worry. "You let us know anything, OK?"

"Sure! Meeting's starting soon; I'll call you when I get back."

"Okay. Break a leg!"

"Bye, Dad."

Mike was right; Bill's phone went straight to voicemail. Pete's news left me worried, my husband had taken two days off. I couldn't picture what he was planning to do; the chasm between us had grown so big. The message kept coming back to me.

'He is here.'

Who was here, Bill? Robert? And who had sent me the message?

Not Josh, I had his number. I thought about calling him, but if it was Bill who had landed in Akron, he'd go ballistic seeing me with Josh together after our fight, the confirmation of his suspicions. I was on my own.