Free to Dream Read online

  Free to Dream

  Tracey Jerald

  Contents

  The Legend of Amaryllis

  Prologue

  1. Cassidy

  2. Caleb

  3. Cassidy

  4. Caleb

  5. Cassidy

  6. Cassidy

  7. Caleb

  8. Cassidy

  9. Caleb

  10. Cassidy

  11. Caleb

  12. Cassidy

  13. Cassidy

  14. Caleb

  15. Cassidy

  16. Cassidy

  17. Cassidy

  18. Cassidy

  19. Caleb

  20. Cassidy

  21. Caleb

  22. Caleb

  23. Cassidy

  24. Caleb

  25. Cassidy

  26. Cassidy

  27. Caleb

  28. Keene

  29. Cassidy

  30. Caleb

  31. Cassidy

  32. Keene

  33. Cassidy

  34. Cassidy

  35. Cassidy

  36. Cassidy

  37. Caleb

  38. Keene

  39. Caleb

  40. Cassidy

  Epilogue

  The End

  Where To Get Help

  Coming Soon

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Free to Dream

  Copyright © 2018 by Tracey Jerald. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-7324461-0-6 (eBook)

  ISBN: 978-1-7324461-1-3 (Paperback)

  Editor: Trifecta Editing Services (https://www.trifectaedit.com/)

  Copy Editing: Holly Malgeri - Holly’s Red Hot Reviews (http://hollysredhotreviews.com)

  Cover Design: Amy Queau – QDesign (https://www.qcoverdesign.com)

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  To my husband for believing in us enough to try, to wait,

  and to show me love every day.

  My heart.

  My soul.

  My beloved.

  The Legend of Amaryllis

  There are variations regarding the legend of how amaryllis flowers came to be. Generally, the tale is told like this:

  Amaryllis, a shy nymph, fell deeply in love with Alteo, a shepherd with great strength and beauty, but her love was not returned. He was too obsessed with his gardens to pay much attention to her.

  Amaryllis hoped to win Alteo over by giving him the one thing he wanted most, a flower so unique it had never existed in the world before. She sought advice from the oracle Delphi, and carefully followed his instructions. She dressed in white, and for thirty nights, appeared on Alteo’s doorstep, piercing her heart with a golden arrow.

  When Alteo finally opened his eyes to what was before him, he saw only a striking crimson flower that sprung from the blood of Amaryllis's heart.

  It's not surprising the amaryllis has come to be the symbol of pride, determination, and radiant beauty. What’s also not surprising is somehow, someway, we all bleed a little bit while we’re falling in love.

  Prologue

  Cassidy

  I am haunted by my dreams, particularly when the glory days of summer start to feed into the longer days of fall. As the sun comes up later each day, casting its shadows deeper across my bed, I feel imprisoned by nightmares that torture my psyche.

  In my sleep, I have no sense of reality versus imagination. All of this occurs in the narrow void of time between sleep and awake, where all I see are my impressions of Heaven and Hell.

  I often wonder if Morpheus hovers in the shadows of my bedroom in his long, black and white coat, fighting with his brothers Phobetor, Phantasos, and Ikelos over who gets to play pinball with my dreams on any given night.

  Seeking to rid myself of my nightly trauma, I’ve read every book about control dreams. I’ve talked to doctors. I resolutely stay away from known triggers. I’ve documented my daily habits to such a degree and kept a regimented order over my life, I could tell you what I ate last year on this same exact day for breakfast.

  I’d like to think I could exert some control over my damn dreams rather than letting them control me.

  Control is apparently an illusion.

  I was forced to give up control long ago.

  Control over my life.

  Control of my emotions.

  Never again.

  In the hours just before dawn, my head tosses restlessly on the pillow and my lips part, feeling dry.

  I look at the door with no handles, just a keyhole.

  No one can get in and I can’t get out.

  There’s nowhere for me to go.

  So I sit, day after day, in this tiny room.

  After he had to kick in the door the last time, he removed the bathroom door as well, making the smell of the air bad all the time.

  I pull my knees up to my chest in the corner.

  The air is too hot. My skin sticks together where it touches, even between my fingers and toes. I wiggle them just to get the sweaty feeling away and let out a small breath.

  I don’t dare touch the air. I remember what happened the last time I did and my stomach churns.

  He made me pay for it all right.

  I look longingly at the faucet, missing the water. He said it was my fault. If I had just done a better job, we would have had enough money to pay for it.

  I won’t complain, I don’t dare. He made it hurt so much worse the last time I did.

  I rub my hand over my legs, noticing that they’re more tender than usual. I pull up my shirt and find fresh bruises from last night. My little finger runs over the indentations, picking out the individual teeth marks.

  Maybe he won’t come back, the almost dead part of me whispers in my head. Maybe he’s finally done.

  Maybe you can go home.

  Time passes. The heat is so unbearable, I’m panting. Like…what’s that phrase? A bitch in heat? That’s what I am now, right? What he made me?

  My stomach rumbles. Food is a privilege, one I have to earn. It could be hours or days before I get anything that might resemble food. Maybe it won’t have worms crawling in it if I’m really good. Though, if not, I have gotten used to them.

  The shadows start to cross the floor. No! As much as I dislike the hopelessness I feel in the heat of the day, it’s the wicked night I dread with everything I am.

  Maybe the sun will burn through so hot, it will burn me to ash.

  Maybe I can suffocate under the smell.

  I’d rather die than face the night again.

  If there’s little hope in the day, there’s no hope in the night.

  None.

  I don’t know how I ended up here in this place called Jacks. I don’t know if there are others. I don’t know how to escape. I don’t know how to die. I do
n’t know… I don’t know… I don’t know…

  When the night falls, I remember what I do know.

  I do know how to fear. I do know how to cry. I do know pain.

  I know how to scream.

  My bloodcurdling scream wakes me from my dreams.

  Breathing heavily, I pull my knees up to my chest and begin to rock, the motion instinctively comforting as I try to ignore the torrent of tears dripping down my face.

  What did I do that was so wrong? Isn’t it enough that I’ll always be alone because no one will ever understand what happened to me?

  My arms slide away from my knees and clutch around my neck as bile begins to churn in my stomach.

  Is this my punishment for wanting to be “normal” and finding comfort in someone’s arms? To not be alone anymore?

  I start taking deep breaths, just as my therapist had taught me.

  One…Two…Three…Four…Five…Six…Seven…Eight…

  As the panic starts to recede, I reach for the water on my nightstand. My hand is shaking so bad, I’m afraid the water in the glass is going spill on my bed.

  I’m marked by what happened to me forever.

  I have no escape.

  I throw my legs over the side of my bed and stand on shaky legs. Walking to the bathroom, I flip on the light and shuffle to the vanity to stare at myself in the mirror. The memories from my dream leave me wondering if I’ve truly been living since I survived the storm of my past.

  1

  Cassidy

  More days pass with night after night of lost sleep and more dreams.

  Clutching my pillow to my chest, I watch from my bed as the midnight sky slowly lightens by indiscernible increments. A combination of purple and rose colors spread over the lake outside my bedroom window as I curl into myself for warmth and comfort.

  Listening to Ray LaMontagne sing an old favorite of mine, I stare blankly at the pearlescent sky, knowing that there is nothing I can do to save myself from my thoughts.

  Having no one, I always feel alone, even when I’m surrounded by people.

  Rolling over, I turn on my bedside lamp and glance at the clock—it’s only a few minutes before six. While it’s not much earlier than I normally get up, Sundays are reserved for sleeping in. Since I don’t sleep, the luxury of lounging around on a Sunday morning lacks any excitement for me.

  In the sanctuary I’ve created here in my home, I sit up in bed, pulling my pillow tighter for a moment longer, giving myself time to push away those indulgent feelings I so rarely allow.

  Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I shiver in the early morning air as I step into my fleece-lined slippers. Rather than turn on the heat to ward off the chill inside my house—resulting from the crisp fall weather outside—I quickly grab my sweatshirt lying on the foot of my chaise and throw it on before heading downstairs to make coffee.

  As I make my way down the stairs, I pass family photos I’d carefully arranged on the stairwell walls. Each one is in black and white, meticulously framed. The earliest photo dates as far back to the day that Em and I won our rights to be declared legally emancipated minors. My eyes land on the photo that was taken the day Ali, Corinna, and Holly all graduated from their schools, and then to the one of us closing on the formerly dilapidated mansion on Main Street which, for a long time, served as not only our office, but our home.

  Phillip, Emily, Alison, Corinna, Holly, and I aren’t what you would call a conventional family. We adopted one another as we found each other, gradually becoming a cohesive unit. You’d never know that it all started when a thirteen-year-old boy ran into a room one night and rescued a nine-year-old girl from the kind of torture people keep hidden from their children in polite households. Until we found each other and believed that the promises we made to one another were steadfast and true, none of us believed in the concept of anything.

  Not pride, not beauty, and sure as hell not love.

  Which is what makes the fact that the six of us own and operate Amaryllis Events, a wildly successful wedding and event service in New England, astounding.

  Every single one of my family members are brilliant. From Phil and the way seasonal hues are embraced in his floral arrangements, to Em’s magical skills in finding just the right design for every bride and groom. Corinna’s sinfully decadent cakes, Holly’s stunning memories captured on film, and Ali’s deft capability to keep all of us out of every possible legal and financial mishap there could be, my pride in my family knows no bounds, even when I want to strangle them for being dramatic and overbearing. Even when I’m being driven to the edge of insanity because every one of them are lunatics in their own right. Their goal in life is to break me of my obsessive habit of organizing everything. Yet nobody minds when we’re on schedule for the weddings we plan and coordinate. My OCD isn’t going to change anytime soon.

  I plop my chin in my hand and look at the list I left on the counter last night of things I have to complete today. Working out is the first item on the list. I figure that joyous task can wait until the sun starts to rise over the Berkshire Mountains. Items like reviewing my work calendar and grocery shopping, as well as laundry, are also listed. The final reminder for today is our family dinner.

  I thump my head on the counter. While I normally love spending time with my brother Phillip, his husband Jason, and my sisters, they’re observant as hell. Phillip will take one look at me and determine that I’ve had less than six hours of sleep. He will undoubtedly ask about it, and that will spark my entire family into the fray.

  It’s not the questions I mind. To be honest, I'm just weary of answering them again. The nightmares are always more frequent this time of the year. Probably because it was around this time, almost twenty years ago, that Phillip picked me up and saved me from a life worse than death.

  I have no memory of my life before Phillip found me in that rancid little room. I had been bound and beaten, and so defeated. My wrists and legs were so bruised from the tape, from trying to pull away. My body was shaking from the repeated sodomy I’d endured that particular night and from the energy I expelled kicking the thin wall, praying for a miracle. Phillip picked me up gently and carried me away, having to soothe me like I was a wild animal. Twenty years later, there’s a part of me that still can’t wrap my mind around why he did what he did. I’ll just forever be grateful he did.

  We’re free, but we weren’t supposed to be. No one would have believed that six individuals, children at best, surviving together under the circumstances would be safe. It’s a good thing we weren’t a bet. We never would have made the odds board.

  Mentally berating myself for thinking of the past, I decide it’s time to stop reminiscing and check off another item on my list for today, starting with the laundry.

  Rinsing out my coffee cup, I place it in the dishwasher before going upstairs. After starting a new load of laundry, I change into my running gear and head back to the kitchen.

  Before I step outside of my home, I check the towels with a red pen.

  Hours later, I’ve long since cooled off. I’m inside my office in leggings and a sweatshirt. After I returned from my torturous three-mile run and cleaning up, I quickly made my way into our office located in a converted mansion off Main Street in Collyer.

  Collyer, Connecticut, population 21,522, is the sleepy little town the six of us had been looking for our entire lives. In our wildest dreams, as kids trying to survive, we never could have imagined the beauty of this town. Collyer is close enough to New York City when we need some excitement, or to celebrate some milestone in our lives. Gorgeous oak-lined streets boast several hundred-year-old trees whose colors are already turning a gorgeous bouquet of gold, red, and orange to celebrate the coming of fall.

  After Phil—at age twenty, Em and I at age eighteen—finally helped Ali, Corinna, and Holly become emancipated, we started talking about where we would move to get out of the South. As someone who used to help him study to get his GED, I think it was the longest amou
nt of time Phil had ever spent in a library before or since. Since we lived on such low overhead and with all of us working (including Ali, Corinna, and Holly, per their emancipation requirements), we had amassed a fairly substantial amount of money to put down on the start of our dream.

  Now, sitting at my desk with my planners in front of me and my iPhone synchronizing with my Outlook calendar, I take a moment to look out my window, admiring the view I rarely get a moment to enjoy.

  I admit it, I’m freakishly organized. It also makes me feel in control knowing company meetings are marked in blue, unmovable events are marked in pink, phone calls in green, and family events in purple. I find my spirit calms when my lists have items marked off and are not rolled over to the next day. I like knowing events are completed, on time, and under budget. My Erin Condren planner and iPhone calendar play off each other, making me highly effective. Adding an “rsvpBOOK” entry makes me one happy little Chief Executive Officer for our company. I lead my siblings, whose talents are many, though they lack the organization gene that is directly related to how our business flourishes.

  Take Phillip for instance. I mean, what’s so hard about using the family calendar feature on our iPhones to indicate when Jason’s parents will arrive in town for your wedding so we can have the guest room at the farm ready for them? Leaving a sticky note under the windshield of my car during a summer storm so it’s blurred to resemble a Rorschach test is not an effective way of communicating important information. Hello? We’re a wedding planning service! Call and leave a message on our work line! He’s often an absentminded artist, but for all that is holy, there are days I’m amazed our business has stayed afloat.