by Kylie Walker
“Chloe?”
“What?”
“Do you know Vince Donovan?”
“No. You said he’s good friends with your father. How well do you know him and his family?”
With a heavy sigh Derek said, “Like I said, he’s been around for as long as I can remember. He has a kid, Jesse.” The sound of his name on Derek’s lips caused Chloe to feel as if someone had just kicked her full-on in the gut.
“He and I hung out some when we were growing up…not a lot. Only when our father’s brought us together for dinners or vacations.”
Every warning bell was going off in her head. Derek knew Jesse! He “hung-out” with him. He had to know about her. If he knew the family that well, how could he not?
Cautiously, she said, “When did you last see his son?”
Derek looked like he was thinking about it. He was silent for a long time and then finally he said, “I guess it was my sophomore year in college. I went home for a weekend and Jesse, and his father were over for dinner one of those nights. He was still in high school. He was kind of an arrogant little punk by then. Mostly I remember him getting on my nerves. I guess I thought I was “too mature” then to be hanging out with a high school kid, so it may have been as much me as it was him. Anyways, his father was at my graduation, but Jesse didn’t come with him, and I may have seen him once or twice since then at fundraisers or parties or whatever but that was the last time I recall having a conversation with him.”
“Where is he now?” she asked. If Derek knew them so well, how would he not know Jesse was in prison?
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years. Chloe, what is this about? Why are you so interested in Vince and Jesse?”
She didn’t answer him. She wasn’t even looking at him now. She thought he was lying— no, she knew that he had to be. Jesse’s arrest and conviction were huge because of who his father was. How could Derek not know about it?
“Damn it, Chloe! I answered your questions. I think it’s only fair that you answer one or two of mine. What is your interest in the Donovan’s?”
“I have no interest in them,” she said, flatly. She was doing her best to control her breathing. She was alone with a man who knew Jesse. She was so angry that she had put herself in this situation. She trusted Derek. She had let herself have feelings for this man, and she had started to believe that she might even be able to have some kind of future with him. She almost believed that a “normal” life was within her grasp and now this. Her thoughts were running rampant through her head, and she didn’t realize that Derek had gotten off the highway until she felt him stop suddenly.
She looked around and realized they were along the side of a country road. “What the hell are you doing?” she said, suddenly very afraid.
“You need to tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“Or what?” she said, taking his words as a threat. She had her hand on the door handle, and she was reaching for her seatbelt buckle. Derek reached for her hand, and she batted his away. “Don’t!”
He looked like he was afraid she’d had a mental breakdown or something. “Chloe please stop this. I’m not going to hurt you. Is that what you think? You think after all the time that we’ve spent together that I would ever hurt you? Have I ever been anything less than gentle with you?”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “People don’t always show their true colors right away. Sometimes they wait until they have you good and fooled before they throw the first punch.”
She let her finger fall on the catch for her seatbelt and opened the car door simultaneously. She jumped out, almost falling on her dress. She kicked off her heels and gathered her dress up in her hands and started to run. She heard Derek curse and then the sound of his car door as he got out. She wasn’t stupid. She was sure there was no way in her bare feet and snug dress that she would be able to outrun him…but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
“Jesus Chloe! Stop! What the hell is wrong with you?”
Chloe ran along the fence line towards the lights she saw coming from the house. They were in front of a horse ranch. She could see the dark outlines of the horses in the pasture. She suddenly wished it was the old west and she could just run and jump on one of them and ride away. She was probably less than a hundred yards from the house when she felt Derek’s hand on her arm. She stopped running and turned towards him, ready to fight.
CHAPTER TWO
Derek stopped and looked at her in her fighting stance. His mind was blown. What the hell had happened between that dance they’d shared and the kiss— and now? This was insane. Was she mentally unstable? He wanted to believe that she wasn’t, but looking at her now in the middle of nowhere in her pretty dress and her bare feet with her fists up like they were going to box begged to differ. If he wasn’t so worried about her, it might even be comical.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I’m not going to fight you. You need to calm down.”
“You need to stop touching me.”
“Fine, but you need to tell me why. Why all of a sudden am I not allowed to touch you? And why did we have to leave the party? And most of all why are the Donovan’s so fascinating to you?”
She suddenly seemed to crumple from the inside out. He could see tears filling her eyes even in the dark, and she was trembling. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her. He wanted to make it all better. That would be easier if he could touch her and if he even knew what was wrong.
With a quivering lip and a tremble in her voice, she said, “I can’t tell you. Please, I just want to go home.”
Derek thought about giving in. He considered just letting it go and taking her home. He hated seeing her like this. His heart was aching for her. He was afraid if he took her home now though that she would just close him out and he couldn’t leave her alone to deal with whatever had her so incredibly upset.
“I will take you home, Chloe and safely, I promise. But first, you need to tell me what’s going on. I’m not going to drop this until you give me some details. I want to help you.”
One of the tears spilled over, and she wiped it away, angrily.
“I don’t want your help! I don’t need it! You say you want to help me, but you’re lying. If you wanted to help me, you would let this go and just take me home.”
Derek felt the anger returning. He had done nothing to warrant being treated this way and he was beginning to get pissed off.
“You can spew out all of that anger and call me whatever you like,” he said. “But, until you tell me what the hell happened back there, we’re staying right here.”
He took a deep breath and forced himself to soften his tone as he said, “Chloe, I care about you. I thought you knew that. I would sooner cut off my own arm than hurt you. I thought you’d started to trust me. I’ve bared my soul to you about Sarah, and I’ve told you the truth about how I found you…I’ve told you everything I found out about where I’m sure you came from. I will do whatever I need to do to help you through this, but for Christ’s sake, I need to know what it is that I’m dealing with and I need you to trust me.”
She was shaking hard now. He could hear her teeth chattering together. “At least let me get you back to the car baby, please.”
She stared at him, and he could tell that she was trying to make a decision, so he stayed silent until she finally nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you, but not here.”
“Okay, that’s fine, that’s good. Let’s get back to the car, and we’ll figure it out from there.”
He started to reach for her but thought better of it. He forced himself to let her do it herself. They made it back to the car, and he let her open her own door and climb in. When she closed the door, he picked up her shoes out of the deep brush and got in on his own side. When she saw the shoes in his hand, she broke down into big, heaving sobs. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached for her, and this time, she didn’t push him away. He put his arm around he
r and pulled her into his shoulder and sat there silently and let her cry. He let his other hand rest on the side of her face gently, doing his best to convince her that all he wanted to do was help.
When she could finally speak again, she pulled back and said, “I’m sorry, Derek. I want to trust you. I want to trust you worse than I’ve ever wanted to trust anyone.”
“Then just do it, baby. Just trust me. You won’t be sorry.”
“Can we find a diner or something?” she asked. “I would just feel better somewhere that there are other people.”
He knew that meant she didn’t fully trust him, but it was a start. “Yeah, of course,” he told her.
He reluctantly let go of her and started the car. He got back on the highway, and they drove in complete silence. About five miles up he saw a sign for a twenty-four hour truck-stop and took the exit. They pulled up into the parking lot of the run down looking little diner. The SUV looked out of place in the lot, but not quite as out of place as they were going to look in his tux and her party dress. Chloe took a compact out of her purse and used the sponge to wipe away the streaks on her face.
She slipped on her shoes and said, “Okay, I’m ready.”
She got out of the car, and Derek picked up her wrap and got out his side. He was going to drape it over her shoulders but thought better of it. He held it out to her, and she thanked him and took it. When they reached the door of the diner, Derek pulled it open. Bells announced their arrival and every head in the place turned to look at them. There were three men at the counter that looked every bit the part of a long-haul truck driver in their jeans and flannel shirts. A haggard looking man sat in one of the pink booths with a teenaged girl that looked pissed at the world, and an elderly couple sat two booths away from them, eating their senior special and talking in hushed tones. Derek led Chloe to a booth near the window as far away from the others as they could get. The waitress in her pink uniform and white shoes came over right away with two glasses of ice water and the coffee pot.
“Hey you two sure do brighten this drab old place up,” she said with a smile. Derek smiled back at her. Chloe was staring at a spot on the Formica table. “Y’all want coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Derek told her. She flipped over their cups and filled them and then Derek told her, “That’ll be it, for now, thank you.” She smiled and went back behind the counter. When she was gone Derek said, “Now, can we talk?”
Chloe pulled her head up and looked at him. She seemed to be searching his eyes or his face, trying to see something there that convinced her she could trust him. He didn’t know if she found it or if she just resigned herself to the fact that he wasn’t going to let this go, but she started talking.
“I do know Vince Donovan,” she said. Her voice was so low that Derek had to lean in to hear her. “I did, anyways, in my former life.” She paused there, and Derek waited a bit before saying, “What do you mean your former life?”
She brought her blue eyes up to meet his and said, “Chloe Green is not the name I was given at birth. It’s the name that I chose when I changed my identity. My name is Chloe now, she’s who I am now, but it used to be Kelly Ward. Does that sound familiar to you at all?”
She watched his face closely as he said, “No, not at all.” He was trying to wrap his head around the fact that she’d changed her identity. Why? Was she running from the law? He didn’t want to ask any questions yet. He was afraid that if he did, she would stop talking. He waited for her to go on. When she did, she asked, “Do you really not know where Jesse Donovan is right now?”
“I really don’t,” he said, honestly.
He had heard something about him getting into some trouble with the law. His father mentioned how embarrassed Jesse’s father had been through the whole ordeal but Sarah died right around the same time and Derek was plunged headlong into a world of pain and grief that he truly believed he wasn’t going to survive. He was concerned for Sarah’s parents and himself. He had no room in his head at the time for thoughts of anyone else, or what they might be going through.
“He’s in prison,” she said, flatly. Derek wanted to ask how she knew that and why. He wanted to hurry her up, but again, he kept it in check. He took a sip of his coffee and watched as she poured creamer into hers and stirred it for way too long and then she finally said, “He will be getting out this week.”
“Oh,” he said, not knowing what else to say. She kept stirring her coffee. He wanted to reach over and take the spoon out of her hand, but he resisted.
After what seemed like an hour she said, “His father knew who I was tonight; I could see it in his eyes. He recognized me, and that’s why I panicked.”
Panicked? Why would seeing the D.A. of New York City cause her to panic? Again, he held back his questions and waited.
“He’s going to tell Jesse where I am. He’s going to tell him that I’m with you and Jesse is going to come looking for me. When he finds me, heaven help us all.”
Derek finally had to ask, “Why, Chloe? Why are you hiding from Jesse Donovan? What was he in prison for?”
She looked at him hard again, like she was trying to read his mind. At last, she said, “You really don’t know?”
He told her then that he’d heard Jesse got into some trouble, but because of troubles of his own, he hadn’t really cared to hear the details. Now that he knew it had something to do with her, he wanted to know, “Why are you so afraid of them? What did they do to you?”
Derek felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him when she said, “Jesse tried to kill me.”
CHAPTER THREE
“He tried to kill you?”
Chloe could see in Derek’s eyes that he was genuinely shocked. He really didn’t know. If he didn’t know that, then maybe he was telling the truth, and he wasn’t really involved with Jesse and his father. Maybe it was a horrible, twisted coincidence that she had ended up falling for a man who knew them so well. It was some kind of cosmic joke. She wished that it was funny.
“Yes. I’m sorry,” she said. She was suddenly having a hard time breathing. It was stuffy in the diner, and the smell of grease hung heavy in the air. “Can we go outside?”
“Of course,” he said. He left a twenty on the table, and by the time he stood up, she was halfway to the door. She went through the door and hit the fresh air. She stood there for a few minutes just drinking it in. She needed to walk. She wasn’t going to be able to sit still while she was talking about this. She wasn’t even convinced she’d be able to get through talking about it at all.
“Can we walk and talk?” she said. Derek nodded, and she started walking.
The diner was located on a small frontage road. It was dark, but the moon was almost full, and the stars were out in force, so as they walked along the side of the road, their way was somewhat lit.
“I’m going to start at the very beginning,” she said. “I can explain it all better that way, I think.”
“Sure, whatever is best for you,” he said. God, she wanted so badly for this man to be everything he seemed to be…but she had been so wrong before.
“I was adopted as a baby, I’ve told you that. My adoptive parent’s names are Tom and Marg Ward. They had another daughter, Daphne. She was a year older than me.
Tom worked in the city as a contractor. He had his own business, and we were pretty well off financially I guess. I didn’t reap many benefits of that, but we lived in a nice house and in a nice neighborhood. My first real, clear memory is of the day Daphne started kindergarten. I remember being sad and wanting to go with her. I don’t remember why but I remember being afraid of being alone at the house. My father was a drunk. I didn’t really know that until later either. Some days were good, normal, I guess is the word. I never felt like I fit in, or that any of them even particularly liked me but some days he was sober, and he left me alone.”
They came to the end of the frontage road. It was a dead end and blocked off with a white fence and orange reflectors. The
re was a dirt road that stretched along behind it. Chloe barely paused before going around it and continuing on her way. Derek followed her. When she hadn’t spoken for a long time, he said, “He left you alone? Was he abusive, Chloe?”
“To say the least,” she said. “I’ve thought a lot about why they even bothered adopting me in the first place, and the only thing I’ve ever been able to come up with is that Marg wouldn’t let him hurt Daphne. I was his whipping girl and then, later on, a lot more disgusting things.”
She looked at Derek’s face. She’d never told another living soul about the sexual abuse. It made her sick and ashamed to think about it. She wondered if it was going to make him sick too. She wondered if it would make him so sick that he’d never want to touch her again. She took another deep breath and told herself there was no going back now and she pushed on.
“The first real beating I remember was when I was about five. It may have happened before that, but I was too young to remember, or I blocked it out. I was always afraid of him, so he was probably hurting me all along. Anyways, the first time I remember…my mother and Daphne had gone to Daphne’s school for an open house or something. My “father” was already drinking, and I was scared to death to be alone with him. I remember begging her to take me with her. I cried and clutched onto her leg. She peeled me off and told me to “be a good girl.” She said “Daddy” had a bad day and I should do whatever he needed me to do to make it better. When they left, I went to my room. I hoped that I could hide in there, but he followed me.” Chloe was suddenly thrust back into the past. Her eyes lost all focus, and she was once again that scared little girl. She was Kelly Ward.
“Come out and watch TV with your daddy,” he said. His face was too close to hers, and the smell of alcohol and cigarettes made her sick to her stomach.
“I’m just going to listen to the radio,” Kelly told him.