We worked shit out in the best interest of Jessie, or so I thought, and I went off to my next deployment with her heavy on my mind. I was in essence the new father of a pre-teen girl who I knew nothing about, but those eyes; they haunted me.
Over the years I’d go see her. In the early days I’d even taken her on trips and shit when I was home in between deployments. She was a shy little thing back in those days, but as time went on she started coming out of her shell.
She was never too talkative, but she wasn’t shying away from me as much, and she felt safe enough to ask me a few questions here and there. Once she opened up she was a regular little chatterbox, but funnily enough, she never mentioned the old man and never talked about her life before me.
It never crossed my mind to bring her to live with me on post when I was stateside. Plus the fact I was moving around a lot back then with the army and their bullshit, and she needed a stable home.
I didn’t know much about kids, especially the female kind, so I wouldn’t have known what to look for if anything was out of whack, but I knew the times I saw her she seemed happy enough, and I grew to love those times.
I’d especially grown to like the way she’d run and jump into my arms whenever she saw me coming, until she remembered her shyness and would back away again. But in that split second of recognition her barriers would come down and I’d see what she really thought of me.
I always kept her close at those times, because I knew she needed it. We’d come to mean the world to each other even though we spent so much time apart.
I saw so much of me in her back then. The unwanted orphan that had everything stacked against us. It’s why I’d gone overboard with everything when it came to her.
I never wanted her to know hunger and want the way I had. Never wanted her to feel that shame like the rest of the world was looking down on you.
I’d bought her every device known to man so we could keep in touch when I was gone, and had kept up with her schooling and the things that I could handle as a man. The rest of that female shit I left to the aunt.
When I was told about her having her period I walked into the neighborhood with my gun on full display on my next leave to let the young fucks around there know that she was off limits. I’d wanted to bundle her the fuck up and put her somewhere safe.
Back then she was still my sweet little babygirl, even though her body was changing and she was outgrowing her babyish ways. It was plain to see that she would always be a little bitty thing though, which I used to think was cute, but now found sexy as fuck.
It’s when she hit eighteen that shit went south on my ass. The little scrawny kid had blossomed into a fucking knockout on me practically overnight.
The only thing that saved my sanity was the fact that she was still that sweet shy little girl that I’d acquired in that parking lot, or I would’ve fitted her ass with a chastity belt.
She didn’t seem to have any idea about her new appeal, and I’d had a talk with Dee about teaching her certain things without divulging too much. Although I wanted her to embrace her new womanhood, I never wanted her to lose that innocence that was so fucking beguiling.
I didn’t want her dumb enough to fall for some lame fucker’s bullshit lies either, and that’s why I’d asked Dee to have the talk with her, fuck I know about teenage girls and hormones and shit?
I read some books but that shit didn’t make any damn sense. At least they didn’t seem to be describing any of the females I’d been acquainted with. I’d been fucking since the age of thirteen and it wasn’t just thirty year olds I was fucking.
I didn’t want that shit for my little Jessie. I wanted her life to be ten times better than the fuckery I’d endured, and so I’d gone above and beyond to make sure she had every opportunity. Boys were out though. I let her know that shit in as many ways as I possibly could. Maybe that’s why she was still so skittish around males. I’d maybe sheltered her too much.
In my mind she was still the same little urchin I’d met that night. I never had a wayward thought about her. I’m no fucking pervert, and would’ve maimed any motherfucker who’d looked at her cross-eyed. But then shit had changed up on me when I was least expecting it.