Second Thoughts Read online

  Second Thoughts

  ALSO BY KRISTOFER CLARKE

  _________________________________

  Less Than Perfect Circumstance

  ‘Til It Happens To You

  Second

  Thoughts

  Kristofer Clarke

  Second Twin Publishing

  Landover, MD

  Published by Second Twin Publishing, LLC

  Copyright © 2012 by Kristofer Clarke

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, business, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover Photography by Emmanuel Fisher

  For Photography by Emmanuel

  www.photographybyemmanuel.com

  Cover design by James Jefferson for

  PlatinumPixels, LLC

  ISBN 13 – 978-0-9851528-1-9

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  May 2012

  First Edition

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

  ____________________________________________________________

  GOD is good. I give thanks to Him for giving me the gift of creativity and for allowing me to entertain through words. I really enjoyed watching this story develop from the first letter in the first word to the final period, and everything between. Thank you to my team for such a smooth production. Thank you to Jenetha McCutcheon, my editor, for helping to create consistency and continuity throughout. Thank you to my graphic designer, James Jefferson of Platinum Pixels, for creating another classy cover. To my models Ebony Bush and Alex Holmes, thank you for your energy, your commitment, and for another fun photo shoot. My photographer, Emmanuel Fisher, you are magic behind those lens. Thank you for an excellent shoot.

  To my family and friends, as always, you were there with understanding, your encouraging words, and your wishes for my success. To all the readers, book club members, reviewers, and other supporters, thank you for allowing me to take you on another literary journey.

  Prosperity, Happiness, Love

  Kristofer Clarke

  Visit me at www.kristoferclarke.webs.com

  Second Thoughts

  Chapter 1

  Patrick…

  Here Comes the Pain Again

  “I slept with a knife under my mattress. I had made up my mind. I was going to use it the next time he showed up in my bedroom door, posing as if he’d been invited. I didn’t know where I was going to stab him, but I was not going to stop until I was sure he felt the very pain I felt because of him.”

  “And how did those thoughts make you feel?” Dr. Kendrick asked as she finished the last set of notes on her leather-covered notebook.

  Men had just about the same hatred for psychologists they had for a routine visit to the doctor’s office. The last thing we wanted to hear was the regret in our doctor’s voice as he shared some bad news we had been avoiding, or to admit to a total stranger that something was wrong with us. Dr. Aiden Kendrick was no stranger. I was surprised I had gotten so comfortable with her so fast after only one month and three weeks─seven sessions, to be exact. She had been carefully vetted. If I were going to trust my feelings and secrets with any other woman, I had to know something about her other than the degrees that sat framed and proudly displayed on the off-white wall behind her desk. Though there were some exceptions and limitations, I knew the privacy and confidentiality laws protected me.

  “Mr. McKay, are you still with us?” Dr. Kendrick questioned when I failed to respond.

  “I’m sorry, Doc. What was the question?”

  “Those thoughts you had about harming your father, how did they make you feel?” Dr. Kendrick repeated.

  She had crossed her legs and rested her chin on a fisted right hand, her elbow pressing into her leg, just above her knee. She listened intently, and kept her focus on me. She had eyes the color of a coconut shell, and I avoided looking at her as often as I could.

  “I mean, it was either kill him or kill myself, right?”

  “And was that a thought that often crossed your mind?” I knew she wasn’t going to agree with my previous statement. “And I’m referring to you hurting yourself.”

  “I don’t think I ever thought about that. I mostly wanted to kill the visions I saw whenever my eyes were closed. For a long time, I slept awake, my eyes staring into the darkness of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. That was when the thoughts came. Yeah, I hated that they occupied my mind-space, but the thought that my first sexual experience was with my father did so many things to me. What it did most was drive me crazy. Lucky for him, I never got a chance to enact that plan.”

  “Lucky for us!”

  “What do you mean, Doc?”

  I lifted my head and looked into those very same eyes I’d been avoiding.

  She removed her glasses and held the tip of the earpiece in her mouth, briefly, and then she spoke, “I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet such a remarkable young man.”

  She had made a grown man blush, but I kept it inside. She replaced her glasses on her face, picked up the signature ballpoint pen she had rested on the inside of her binder and continued. “You said he was being released in three days. How does that make you feel?”

  “Besides wishing they had given him life, I don’t think I feel anything.”

  I got up from the milk-white sofa and walked over to a bay window I had been staring through for over a month now when my eyes weren’t closed. I stood preoccupied with childlike fascination with an innocent woodpecker that had visited on more than one occasion.

  “That man ruined me.”

  “How so?” Dr. Kendrick asked.

  “Look at me. I’m not here because I got it all together.”

  “But you’ve done something right in the ten years since you’ve admitted your father raped you.”

  Dr. Kendrick sat with her pen gripped loosely between her teeth. She fixed her glasses that slid down closer to the tip of her nose.

  “Why? Because I can count the number of men I’ve screwed over, or women I’ve lied to on one hand?”

  I turned and rested my behind on the window’s edge, almost sitting. I folded my arms across my chest. Dr. Kendrick glanced at her watch.

  “Well, Mr. McKay, we have about five minutes left in our session. Why don’t we pick up from here next time?”

  Dr. Kendrick placed the pen in the fold of her notebook and closed it. She removed the glasses from her face, reached for the pink leather eyeglass case and snapped it shut after folding the glasses neatly inside. Before responding, I slowly walked over to the chair and sat with my hands clasped between my knees.

  “So, I’ll see you week after next Thursday?” I asked.

  “Same time, same place, Mr. McKay,” Dr. Kendrick confirmed.

  She walked over and stopped in front of me. I looked in Dr. Kendrick’s eyes because this time I had no choice.

  “I wish you had come to see me sooner. We are going to get through this. I know this isn’t easy for you, but you have taken some great steps. I’ll see you in two weeks. If you want to come back sooner, I’m sure we can clear some space in my schedule for you.”

  “Thank you, Doc.”

  As Dr. Kendrick turned to leave, she gave me a warm, tight hug. It was something I hadn’t felt in a long time from someone who barely kn
ew me. It was something I needed. As I reached for the doorknob and opened the door, Dr. Kendrick called out to me.

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “I’m bisexual, Doc.”

  She smiled at my admission.

  “That wasn’t the question I had in mind, but thanks for being so forward. I wanted to know if you ever blamed yourself.”

  I wasn’t sure how I was going to respond. I stood quietly and thought about it. My heart was pounding. I hadn’t shed a tear since I met Dr. Aiden Kendrick, but my first tears were quickly forming in the corners of both eyes. Without a sound, I allowed the tears to stream down the sides of my face. I did nothing to stop them. As if someone had stolen my feet from beneath me, I slowly slid down to the floor and sat in a stoop with my head between my knees, attempting to hide the shame I felt every time I looked into the mirror. When I looked up, Dr. Kendrick was stooping next to me. She extended her hand across my back and cradled my shoulder. When I felt her embrace, I lifted my head and rested it on her left shoulder.

  “I…I…”

  The words struggled to escape my mouth.

  “It’s ok, my dear.”

  It seems Dr. Kendrick went from therapist into mother-mode as she began stroking my head.

  “We don’t have to discuss it now. Whatever you felt was normal.”

  “I…I…” I stuttered.

  The words were still nowhere to be found. I wanted to tell her and get it over with.

  “Listen, Patrick. Look at me.”

  Dr. Kendrick took her hand and lifted my head gently. “This can wait until our next session, and if not, then just know that it’s something we have to discuss, though not until you are ready. It’s obvious you’re not.”

  I didn’t respond. We sat in silence, and I took the time I needed to regain composure before driving home. Dr. Kendrick stood up, extended her hand, and helped me to my feet. I felt like a kid. We hugged again and Dr. Kendrick held the door open for me to leave.

  Our walk down the hall towards the elevator was surrounded by silence. One side of the wall was decorated with framed replicas of Van Gogh and Picasso paintings. The blue painted wall, which was supposed to provide a sense of calmness to the visitors of this state-of-the-art office building, did little to settle my rattled nerves, but I knew I had to pull myself together.

  “Listen!” she said as she took my hands in hers, “don’t forget to call me if you need to talk.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

  I pressed the down button on the elevator. The door opened immediately.

  “I’m sure you will be, too,” she said in an assuring voice.

  She stood facing the elevator doors, watching them close me in.

  Chapter 2

  Taylor…

  All I Need Is Your Love

  I hated nights, especially the ones that found me in bed with only my pillows to keep me company. Tonight, after washing the mud mask from my face with cold water, I slipped on the light blue silk nightshirt I had laid across the bed. I liked the sexy feel against my smooth skin. I rarely thought about him─except on nights like this─and I wished my selfish ways, my it’s-all-about-me attitude hadn’t affected my relationship with him the way it had.

  I knew I wasn't going to get the kind of sleep I needed tonight, or even asked for before my head was cradled by my Durafirm pillow. I could still hear the rain falling softly on concrete outside my window. I heard it whispering in puddles I hoped would be gone when morning broke. I could even hear it drumming on the top of my car since I was too damned lazy to park inside the garage. With my head resting in the palm of my left hand, my right hand between my legs, just above my knees, my feet one on top of the other, and the comforter and sheet pulled over my shoulder up to my neck, I attempted to fall asleep.

  It was an unusually cool night. I slept in one of the two guest rooms on the first floor of my sister’s three-story mini mansion. Quinton slept in the other. My room was a comfortable seventy-three degrees─I had checked the thermostat before climbing into bed─but under my comforter and sheets. I was missing the warmth that a man's body provided. Secretly, I wished Chad were lying beside me. I turned on my right side and quickly settled into a similar position as before. My eyes glanced quickly at the fluorescent green numbers on the digital clock. Damn, I thought, 12:35 and I still can't sleep. I, again, settled on my back, into what I hoped was my final position.

  The rain was still whispering sweet nothings to me, and sleep was still, seemingly, a ways away. I wanted someone to make my love come down like rain. Now, instead of thinking of sleep, I couldn't get Chad off my sleepy mind. My left hand had made its way down to my purple panties; my right hand cupping my right breast. I imagined my hands were Chad's, pleasing me like I knew he would, like I wish he could this very moment. My middle finger glided back and forth over my clit, and I imagined this feeling I felt this very moment was exactly how Chad's unusually long tongue and sexy soft lips would make me feel. Tonight my middle finger was just a tease. I wanted the real thing. I wanted Chad. Since I couldn’t have Chad, or the real thing, Adonc would have to do. I reached under the bed and pulled out the box where Adonc slept most nights.

  Besides my BFF Darrin, no other man knew of Adonc's existence. And Audrey only knows because my big, brown power tool was her idea. She figured that I had gone long enough without a nice stiff one between my legs. And guess what? This tool couldn’t be purchased from a Sears tools department. I’ve tried to explain the name for my “dwab”, dick-without-a-body, but I hadn't quite concluded if "Adonc" was short for a donkey dick, or an anaconda. Either way, one of the two would be giving me some kind of pleasure tonight. Tonight, Adonc would be my substitute lover, and it was one hell of a substitute.

  I heard the soft vibrating sound as I brought the brown color dildo to my already moist and gyrating crotch. I was determined to get all its inches inside me, and that’s exactly what I did. I brought my legs up and allowed them to fall open, showing flexibility I knew Chad would still be impressed with. "Deeper", I told myself, as I moaned softly from pleasure. I hated doing all the work, but tonight I would have to be pleaser and pleased. Louder, Adonc vibrated as I turned the white knob once more. "Yes, right there," I whispered my directives, and I obeyed, keeping the dildo in the place that was sure to make my pleasure juices flow. I moaned even louder as my right hand slid over and between my breasts, down my stomach, and eventually, I began to massage my clit. Still pounding the 9-plus inches of chocolate-brown hard plastic, I came.

  After I showered, I washed Adonc as I’ve always done after I’ve had my way with him, stored it back in its box, and then slid it back under my bed. I wished I could have had Chad. I wanted him the way I had him before Danielle happened to him, before I allowed DaMarcus to happen to me. I wanted to be held in Chad's arms until I fell asleep. Instead, I was about to fall asleep alone, with my head in my left palm, my right hand between my legs, just above my knees, with a nice smile of quasi satisfaction on my face, and a hint of disappointment in my heart. I lay in bed for a few moments, waiting for sleep to invite himself in. But just like that man I wish could have been between my legs, sleep was nowhere to be found.

  Damn! Sex has a way of turning a horny woman into a hungry bitch, I thought. I sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating how I would battle this state of insomnia. Although my sexual play had left me exhausted, I had the sudden urge to settle another craving. A familiar dryness had settled in the back of my throat. I got up and made my way to the door, but not before glancing at the clock one more time. Damn, I thought, 2 a.m. Sleep, where are you? When I opened the door, I jumped back with my hand over my chest, startled at the sight of him. Even in the late of night, he was a beautiful man. He was tall, with skin the color of copper and facial hair of the same color. He came from a family of equally beautiful brothers and sisters. He stood against the wall, his hands in his pockets, his legs spread apart, and a wide grin on his face, seemingly satisfied,
for whatever reason. I’ll admit, there were nights I wished it were Dillon deep inside me. There was a time I was dangerously in love with him. After our very first kiss, I remembered not being able to find myself. In time, part of me had let him go. But on some nights, it was the part of me that didn’t that had me wishing his hands were caressing every curve of my body that made me irresistible to men; married and otherwise.

  Dillon Aldridge has his own storied past. With my help, he had managed to keep the most damaging parts from my sister. He had been a known womanizer, up to the day before my sister took his hand in marriage, and I didn’t expect marriage to change him, either. He was rumored to have had a short-lived romantic fling with Shelby Quinn, one of my sister’s closest friends. Shelby is the woman she had asked to be her second maid of honor. One should have been enough, but I guess it would have looked bad had she not asked her only sister, though I’m not sure who she asked first. Of course, proving that rumor true wasn’t my priority. I had to put a little fear in that heifer’s heart. I already didn’t like her, and I’d be damned if I let this bitch, who found it impossible to keep her legs closed, stand before God and beside my sister, smiling in her face, when my sister was marrying the man she was secretly screwing. A few days before the wedding, Shelby became too ill to walk down anybody’s aisle. I had to make sure we had enough time to change the programs for the wedding ceremony and the reception. I assured my sister she had nothing to worry about. You’d be surprised how good I am under pressure.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked with that look in his eyes, as if he enjoyed my sexual play more than I did, even though I seriously doubt it.

  “Where’s Nessa?” I asked.

  That was a more appropriate question.

  “She had an emergency at the hospital.”