Chapter 24
Farrah
Since Jim had shown up at the pub, things had been tense with Lee. I could tell he was pissed off about Jim showing up. I was just as upset about it. I couldn’t believe he had found me. I couldn’t believe he had even tried. The proof that he had hunted me down was that he’d said he’d been asking around about me,
Why now? Jim had been the one to walk away from me. I had tried everything to keep him happy, to give him what he wanted and I had still hadn’t been good enough for him. He had left me, and his last words had been that he’d wasted five years of his life with me.
Now, he was back, and he wanted me to ‘come home?’ What the hell did that mean?
I cursed the man for coming here and messing up the perfect life I was starting to live. But that was who Jim was. It was what he did. He came into my life and messed everything up. I hadn’t known that about him when we met, but slowly he had methodically pulled everything apart until I’d had nothing left. Not even myself.
By the time he’d walked away I’d become less than nothing. And now? Now I was finally happy again. I was building a life, and I liked myself. It had taken me months and months to get to this point. And now Jim was back to screw it all up for me. And I knew all too well that he knew how to do it. He knew exactly what to say and what to do to make me feel small and insignificant.
Last night after we had left the pub, Lee had asked me if I’d rather stay with Hannah, like I’d told Jim.
“Why?” I had asked.
“Because he’s looking for trouble and I don’t want to make things harder for you.”
I had feared that Lee didn’t want anything to do with me now that Jim was back. It was what I’d been afraid of since I’d gotten involved with Lee. I was afraid that if Lee saw who I really was he wouldn’t want me anymore.
“Do you want me to leave?” I asked in a small voice, unable to stop myself from reverting back to that scared little girl that Jim always reduced me to.
“Of course, not,” Lee had said and pulled me against him. “Never. I just don’t want to make things harder for you. But if you want to come home with me, you can.”
So I had gone back to the cabin with Lee and we had laid in bed together. He had wrapped himself around my body the way he always did, but this time it had felt like he was miles away. I knew he must have had Jim on his mind, thinking about my promise to meet him.
And today was the day. I had to go see Jim to get him out of my life for good. I had to find out what he wanted and determine the best way to get rid of him.
But I was terrified go alone.
“Lee,” I said, finding him on the porch, staring into the trees. He turned to me and his face was serious. “I have to meet Jim soon.”
He nodded slowly. I hated how this had driven a wedge between us and Lee felt so far away, now.
“Will you come with me? I’m scared to go alone.”
His face changed, becoming sympathetic.
“Of course,” he said.
“I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I can’t face him alone.” I took a deep breath and let it out with a shudder. I wasn’t just nervous, I was scared. “Too much has happened.”
Lee nodded. “I understand,” he said. But there was no way he could understand. He couldn’t know what I had been going through and what it meant now that Jim was back to claim me again. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, it had been a blessing when Jim had decided he didn’t want me anymore. It was the only way I’d been able to get away from him.
Now that he had changed his mind I was scared he could take me away again. I needed Lee to help me, to save me.
I didn’t know what to wear to meet Jim, either. I didn’t want to look good so he thought I had dressed up for him, but I wanted to look like I was okay without him. I wasn’t sure what to do. In the end, I wore jeans and a blouse with my hair pulled back and no makeup. It was as much as I could manage.
In the car on the way to the motel my stomach ached. I was so nervous that every muscle in my body was clenched and I could barely breathe. Lee was silent next to me and I wondered if he knew how I felt.
As if he knew what I was thinking, he reached across and took my hand, squeezing it. Maybe he had an idea. But he would never know the full extent. I hadn’t told him anything about my past other than what he needed to know. I hadn’t wanted to talk about Jim. I hadn’t wanted to go back to that and I hadn’t wanted to tell Lee who I had been. Now that Jim was back and I had to face him, I wished I had told Lee something so that he understood what I was going through. Even though Lee was with me and I felt physically safer, I was in this completely alone.
I didn’t know if I had what it took to face Jim. I didn’t know if I could talk to him. He always managed to reduce me to nothing and I didn’t want that. He had no right to do that to me anymore and I didn’t want to let him win.
If he won now, everything I had done for the past year and a half would count for nothing.
When we arrived at the motel, Lee parked in a parking bay and we climbed out, walking to a picnic table under one of the trees. There was no way I was going into one of the rooms to talk to Jim. He could come out to meet me.
We sat down. Lee and I sat together on the one side. We waited in silence. I hadn’t arranged a time with Jim, but I didn’t doubt that he was keeping an eye out for me. He had obviously been keeping tabs on me for a while now if he knew I was here. Packwood wasn’t the most obvious place for me to be and I didn’t have any friends or family that knew I was here that Jim could have asked.
After a while, one of the doors opened and Jim stepped out. My stomach turned and I felt like I was going to throw up when he walked toward me. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, but I was still terrified of him.
He ignored Lee when he sat down and he smiled at me.
“Good to know your word still means something,” he said. He didn’t say anything about Lee being there with me and I was glad he wasn’t looking for a fight the way he had last night. I hated it when he drank, he became aggressive in a way that no one could control.
“Of course,” I said. “I told you I would be here.”
Jim nodded. He looked around.
“This town is a shitty place for you to choose to hide out, you know that?” he asked.
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to rise to the bait.
“Do you want to tell me why you’re here?” I asked. I wasn’t going to ask him how he knew where I was. He had always known where I was. He had his ways of finding things out. Jim had always known everything I had planned, no matter what it was. He used to challenge me about where I went and why.
“I heard you’re pregnant,” he said.
My body ran cold. “Who told you that?” I asked.
“I heard from the doctors you went to visit.”
I shook my head. “That’s private information.”
Jim chuckled. “Not if they think I’m the father. We went to them together enough times for them to think it’s all me, all the time. When I went to them after you did, it wasn’t hard to get them to talk without asking questions like I was a fucking idiot.”
I shook my head, struggling to wrap my mind around what Jim was saying to me. It wasn’t a shock that he had followed up on my doctor’s visits. I was shocked that he had known I’d been there in the first place.
“Have you been watching me?” I asked.
Jim tutted. “Come on, babes. Someone has to keep an eye on you.”
Lee stiffened next to me when Jim called me babes.
“Actually, that’s stalking,” I said. “You’re not entitled to keep an eye on me.”
Jim sighed. “Farrah, sweetheart, you can’t keep trying to get away from me. You know you can’t do this alone. Come home, we’ll raise the baby together.”
Lee was still silent next to me and I commended him for his self-control. I could feel the anger radiating from him. I wanted to put a hand on his arm or his leg to reassure him, but I didn’t dare touch him in front of Jim.
“I’m not going with you,” I carefully said to Jim.
“But you’re pregnant,” he said. “It’s the only reason I walked away. When you wouldn’t give me a child you broke my heart, babes. You know that.”
I shook my head. He was trying to rope me back into his control. If I went with him again I would never get away. It would be the end of me. I tried to fight all the systems he had put in place in my mind.
“It wasn’t that I wouldn’t,” I bit out. “It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t.”
“Whatever makes you happy, sweetheart. You can now, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”
Thank God, the child was Lee’s. It was an anchor, holding me down, stopping me from blowing away. I didn’t know what to say anymore. I was unable to make my case. I had been strong until now but Jim was winning. I couldn’t fight what he did to my mind. I had thought I was stronger. Dr. Boyer had been working with me for over a year to get my mind right about this, but it was all crumbling now that Jim sat in front of me, making demands and accusations.
I couldn’t believe he still had this control over me. I thought I’d gotten away from it. It turned out that had only been an illusion. I hadn’t gotten away from the control, Jim had merely chosen not to exercise it. Now that he was back and tugging on that leash, I realized it was still very firmly attached to my neck. The knowledge that months and months of fighting him had been for nothing was nearly enough to break me. I felt myself falter, felt all the walls I had built over the past year begin to crumble. I was falling apart and there was nothing I could do about it.
Jim sat in front of me laying claim to my life again and I wasn’t able to fight him. It was the same as it had been the first time. Nothing had changed. I hadn’t changed.
The knowledge made me want to curl into a ball, turn my face away from anyone who might be looking and wither away.