Free A Wicked Choice by Calinda B Page B

he’d taken a different road. What he really wanted to do was become one of those Outward Bound leaders…take kids out into the world and change their lives through physical adventures…something like that. He liked creating change in people. He also loved physical challenges, craved them, and was good at them. Like when he was rock climbing, his hands knew where to go, where to reach. When he touched the wall, his mind raced with the information his hands provided.
    Again, he thought of Chérie. He just loved stroking her tender skin, kneading her muscles, sore from all that exercise. Most of all he really enjoyed stroking her with parts of him that he would not share with anyone else…those parts that were stirring in his groin right fucking now.
    He wondered why it was so hard for her to let go with him sometimes. Couldn’t she feel how much he cherished her? Didn’t she believe she was truly adored? It was probably her lack of self-confidence and her inability to say NO to him, to anyone. She groveled and shrank from people. She thought everything was her fault and that she had to fix it or just suck it up and chew on it. Like last night: he was pissed when he had come home from group. He’d taken just about enough of last night’s collection of men. Those men were just buying time in the class. Since the only reason they were there was to avoid jail time, they’d show up and sit through week after week, with no change in their behavior. He was so sick of it, he was, well, let’s face it – when Chér came in, he was having a tantrum, pitching books on the floor and stomping about.  He slammed a book on the table, right when she entered the room. He wasn’t proud of himself in that moment; he was just letting off steam. But she probably thought he was mad at her. He threw a newspaper across the room, and she had scuffled over to clean up the mess.
    “Don’t do that. It’s my mess, not yours,” he had told her. He strode over and started picking up the pieces of newspaper, angrily crushing them into a wad.  Then he’d apologized, like he always did. He could be such an ass. But then he’d become mad at her subservience. That was just the way his mom had been with his dad. Mom just took it, night after night. So then he and Chérie got in another argument, like they’d been doing lately. He wanted to do right by her, he really did. But he wanted her to act differently, assume her strength. She was too good to be run over by the world. She had this spark of something inside, he could feel it.  And he wanted her to feel it too. He wanted her to be different. She just made him so mad sometimes. Man, he was starting to sound like the men in his groups. “She asked for it.” “I didn’t want to hit her.” Well, she, by god, was not going to feel anything but fear if he kept being a shithead. He knew he could do better than that. Fuck, he had better man up and act differently, or he and Chér were going to hit the skids. And he didn’t want that, not by a long shot.
    He got up with resolve, picked up his brown leather jacket, and strode out to his forest green 1998 Range Rover, prepared to be a better man when he got home.

Chapter 7
    “You got some mail, from your mother.” That is what Cam first told me when I’d entered the door after hanging out with Michael.
    I looked over on the table where we sorted the day’s mail.  Sure enough, there was one of Mother Clarice’s snail-mailed envelopes, stuffed full.  When she was drunk (which was often) and the mood struck (which was also often), she had this habit of sending me odd bits of news clipped from the paper, pictures, and articles from magazines – anything that caught her fancy and carried the message of the day. I made my way over and picked it up, frowning. What stupid thing did she want me to know about today? I pitched the envelope into the junk drawer to be opened at a later date.
    I looked over at Cam. “Did you eat?”
    “Yea, I