One Breath Away by Heather Gudenkauf

Author:Heather Gudenkauf [Gudenkauf, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-06-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 44:

Holly

I’ve always known that I was a little bit different from the other girls from Broken Branch. I don’t mean that I think I was better than them; if anything I wished I would have been more like them. I put them into three categories: the girls who wanted to get married right out of high school and start having babies, the girls who wanted to go away to college and then come back to Broken Branch and settle down, get married and then start having babies, and me. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of Broken Branch. Yes, I ran away with a boy from Broken Branch, but we both knew it wasn’t going to last. It was kind of like jumping off a bluff at the Pits, the sand and gravel pits just south of town that were filled with water. It’s so much easier to leap off a cliff holding someone’s hand. There’s the thrill of being up so high, seeing the jagged, rocky walls of the quarry, of knowing that your body could hit the sides if you didn’t plan your jump just right. The problem was I kept trying to find someone to jump off those cliffs with.

I don’t know what was missing inside of me that I felt like I had to fill it up with just about every man I met. I’d like to blame my father; it’s so exceptionally easy to do this. I’ve never felt a connection to him, always felt that he always loved the farm, my brothers, more than he loved me. But in all honesty, I can’t blame my dad for this aspect of my personality. Ever since I was thirteen I was sneaking out of my house in order to meet up with boys and sometimes men. To be with a different man, to know the different ways that I could be kissed and touched and wanted, was intoxicating to me. Almost like jumping off a cliff.

There are names for women like me. I know. But I don’t feel like a bad person, I just like the way it feels when a man touches me. For me, sex never had anything to do with love, though I’ve certainly been in love before. When I married David, I was in love. We had Augie and we were happy for a long time. Five years. The longest I’ve been faithful to anyone. You’d think that after having a little girl of my own, I would have learned my lesson, tried to be a better example for Augie. I wasn’t. I remember leaving Augie and David at home while I went out with some of the other girls from Bang!—the salon I worked at. We’d go to bars, drink chocolate martinis and somehow I’d end up in a bathroom or a back room or in the back of a car with some random guy. I thought I would just get it out of my system, that one day David would be enough for me.

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