Chapter Five
Jenna
Seven years later…
I watch out of the window as Bianca chases my son around the garden. She has become my best friend, even though she is thirty years older than me. My little boy, Cory, is my other best friend.
With his blue eyes and black curls, he is all I have left of Jax Morrison. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder about him. My father beat me so badly that the details are still fuzzy. Hell, it took me two weeks to even get out of bed.
Daddy told me he gave Jax fifty grand to leave town and never speak to me again. According to his story, Jax jumped at the offer. I didn’t want to believe that. But it wasn’t like I could get ahold of Jax to confirm the story. My phone had been taken away from me the night my father beat me. By the time I was able to get out of bed, Jax had left town. I’d tried to call him from the house phone, but his phone number was out of service.
When my father found out that I was trying to find Jax, not only was I blocked from using any type of phone, but the internet was also restricted. My every move has been watched and monitored since then.
Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder about Jax. Where is he? How is he? Did he really take Daddy’s handout? Was it really so easy to get Jax out of my life?
“I told you this would happen,” Daddy had said smugly. “He didn’t care about you. He only wanted your money. He couldn’t stand up to me. He is a loser with no backbone, one who will always back down.”
My father’s words still echo in my head. I had been ready to leave my life behind—the mansion, the money, and my parents. I had planned to escape, but finding out I was pregnant hindered my plans. I didn’t know how to support myself, let alone a baby. Daddy had tried to make me get an abortion. He’d even threatened to beat the baby out of me.
“You’re a disgrace to this family. I didn’t raise you to be a slut! If you get rid of this problem, we can salvage this.”
“I’m keeping the baby,” I sneered at him. “It is my body, my baby!”
I trembled, not knowing what I’d do if he tried to hurt me again, or my baby. Daddy looked at me with wild eyes as he raised the back of his hand to me. I blocked myself and stared him down.
“If you touch me again, I will go to the press with the photos of what you did to me,” I told him in a scathing tone.
That was when my mother had stepped in.
“Martin, calm down. This is our grandchild. Jenna will stay here and have the baby in private,” Mama said.
Her lip remained in a straight line as she spoke. I had almost mistaken her interjection as motherly protection of me. Mama had never stood up to Daddy before. She wasn’t about to start now—especially not over me. She was only concerned with how this all would make her look in the community and at church. She wouldn’t have me embarrass her by running around town with a pregnant belly out of wedlock.
I stayed in the house for ten months. I wasn’t even to be seen outside on the property during the pregnancy. A knocked-up daughter was too much embarrassment for a local politician and an old-fashioned Southern belle. I didn’t fit into their image, nor did my illegitimate son with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks.
Every part of me still misses Jax, but I try to stay focused on Cory. Without our son, I think I would have gone off the deep end a long time ago.
“Mama! Look!”
I turn away from the lesson plan I’m working on and look at Cory. He holds a ladybug in his hands.
“Cool! Are you going to make a wish?”
Cory thinks for a moment.
“I wish we could go to the lake.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say, messing his hair up.
He smiles at me before running past Bianca on the way out.
“You know your parents won’t like you going to the lake.”
“It’s been seven years, Bianca. Cory needs to make friends. I may have signed my life away, but I did not sign Cory’s. Daddy is always going to D.C. or Nashville anyway. He hasn’t been to Bourne in weeks,” I reason.
Bianca winks. “I will talk to the staff and make arrangements.”
I finish up Cory’s lesson plans for the week and head outside to play with him. Home schooling Cory had not been my first choice. My parents had suggested boarding school. They didn’t want questions to be asked about his father and me, if Cory went to a local school. Instead, I’d decided to teach him at home. I didn’t want to ship my son off to some stuffy school. We’re all each other has, and I need to look out for him.
“It will keep you out of trouble,” Mama had said when I’d told her of my plans to teach Cory myself.
By trouble, she meant it would keep me from spreading my legs for any boy they didn’t hand select for me. I have no desire to date, though. Cory is my only concern. I want him to have a happy and normal childhood. He is happy, for the most part, but I know the older he gets, the more he realizes we’re practically prisoners of the house.
A few hours later, Bianca has made all of the arrangements for us to go to the lake. It’s not the same experience I had as a teenager. There are no hordes of kids having unsupervised fun. Jax isn’t here kissing my shoulder and sneaking gropes of my body when no one is looking. I miss the tingles he sent throughout my body. He always found a way to make me feel good, whether it was with his words or with his body.
Now, the lake is quiet. It’s the middle of the day on a Friday. I watch Cory playing in the water. We have a giant pool, but Cory loves being outside with nature. He’s especially fond of frogs and airplanes, and he is always on the lookout for both.
I watch Cory having fun, and I wish things could have been different for us. When I had agreed to stay unseen during my pregnancy, I hadn’t realized my father didn’t want me, or my son, seen at all.
Ever since I told him I would go to the press and tell them what he’d done to me, he sees me as a threat. He keeps me in the house, hidden to the outside world.
I’ve tried several times to get my mother to realize how insane it all is since my father won’t even talk to me. He barely looks at me these days, and that’s when he’s in town and not on his campaign tour, trying to become governor. God, I hope he loses. He shouldn’t be in any position of power.
Cory and I are stuck. The fear of what will happen if we try to leave grows each day. How can we escape? What happens if Daddy sends someone after us? How much worse will he make my life?
Even now, on an innocent drive to the lake, there are three security guards surrounding us. Cory is surprisingly well-adjusted for a kid in his situation, but that’s only because I do my best to look happy around him.
Most nights, I lie awake, thinking of Jax. I imagine what would have happened if I’d just run away with him that night instead of going home. That should have been our plan. Neither of us could have known that would be the last time we saw each other, though.
Sometimes I get angry at Jax—the version of him my father described seven years ago. The one who took the money and agreed to leave town. Then I remember that I don’t trust my father or a word he says.
As much anger and pain I have for Jax, I still have more love and worry about him. I hope he’s happy, wherever he is and whomever he is with. The thought of him being with someone else is too much to bear.
I can’t imagine ever loving anyone but Jax.