by Lia Lee
“Where are you staying?” Jim asked.
I knew without a doubt that Jim would lose his shit if he found out Farrah was staying with me.
“She stays with me,” Hannah said, stepping up to the plate.
“Yeah,” Farrah said, running with it. “Hannah is my friend.”
Jim narrowed his eyes. “You’re friends with a pub owner?”
Farrah didn’t answer him, but he seemed satisfied with what he knew.
“If you don’t come tomorrow, I’m coming to find you,” Jim threatened, some of his anger returning.
“I’ll be there, don’t worry. I’ve never lied to you, have I?”
Jim thought about it for a moment before he shook his head. “No. You do a lot of things wrong, but you don’t lie.”
“Right,” Farrah said, and I could see the effect his words were having on her. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Go on.”
Jim shot me a nasty glance before he turned around and marched out of the pub. When he was gone, the atmosphere immediately calmed down as if everyone had been holding their breath. Hannah shook her head.
Farrah looked at me with an apologetic expression.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said to her. I pulled her into a hug. “It’s fine. We’ll figure this out.”
She nodded and walked around the back to find her apron before she started serving tables. I stood behind the bar where I started serving drinks, but my mood was blacker than black. He was here for her. What the hell did he want? Farrah had said they’d been broken up for over a year. But he had come searching for her, knowing she was here. He’d been keeping tabs on her, obviously. He couldn’t have known otherwise.
I didn’t want her to see him tomorrow. I watched her as she moved around, and saw that the little light inside of her had been snuffed out when she’d seen him. I knew she was going to go see him. She was going to that motel tomorrow to talk to the man who had the ability to strip her of everything that made her, her. He had done it in a few short sentences.
And I couldn’t stop her from going. There was nothing I could do about it. It pissed me off. It pissed me off so much, I wished I had started a fight with him after all.
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.
Chapter 25
Lee
Farrah stopped talking. She shut down, shrinking in on herself the way she had when she’d seen Jim at the bar last night. She had turned inward. She wasn’t looking at either me or at Jim. Something was seriously wrong. I didn’t know what was going on and what she hadn’t told me, but something was up and I didn’t know what it was.
“Look,” I said to Jim, very tired of this shit. Farrah was deteriorating fast and I had to get her away from this guy or I was going to lose her completely. “Farrah and I are together, but seeing that you’ve been creeping around town, sticking your nose in my business, you already know that. You have no right to be here. You’ve got some nerve bothering her, not to mention chasing another man’s woman. Especially after you walked away a long time ago.”
“What did you say to me?” Jim asked, and there was a threat in his voice but I’d had it. I was sick and tired of this asshole and his intimidating ways.
“You heard me,” I said, looking him in the eye and not backing down. “You’re not welcome here. You’re not welcome in Farrah’s life and I’m taking it as a personal offense that you think you have some kind of right to her.”
Jim shook his head. He didn’t answer me but the arrogant smirk on his face suggested that he thought I was full of shit with my little speech. It only pissed me off more. I wanted to beat up the piece of shit so badly. I wanted him to get the hell out of town before I stopped trying to control my temper and did a number on his face.
Farrah was still silent next to me. It was as if she had just switched off. I was worried about her. What had happened that she knew how to shut down like this?
“What kind of a man goes after a woman who is pregnant with another man’s child?” I asked.
“People adopt children all the time,” Jim said.
Next to me, Farrah made a small sound. It was the first reaction I had heard from her for a while. She started trembling, and she was on the verge of a meltdown. It was time this came to an end. Jim was pushing his luck and there was no way I was going to let him get away with this. I had no claim to Farrah, she was her own person. If she wanted to go back to Jim, she could do that.
But she didn’t look like she wanted to go back to Jim. She looked like she would rather die. She was already wilting away. I had never seen someone go backward so quickly. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours and the person sitting next to me was a whisper of the woman I had been spending my time with.
Still, it wasn’t my call to make what she chose. But I could lay claim to the baby inside her womb. I wouldn’t force Farrah to do something she didn’t want to do, but that was the one thing I was allowed to stand on. I was that baby’s father and as such, I had certain rights. This wasn’t about Farrah’s choices, it was about Jim and how he was trying to take what was mine.
“I think it’s time you leave,” I said to Jim. “This conversation isn’t going anywhere.”
“Farrah, sweetheart, talk to me,” Jim said, turning his attention back to her. He was ignoring me again.
“Don’t talk to her,” I said.
Jim pretended I wasn’t there. It was a slap in the face, a worse insult than anything he could have said. He carried on, trying to get Farrah to talk to him.
“Don’t do this to me, babes,” Jim said. “You know how much it kills me when you do this to me.”
Judging by Jim’s tone and how he was trying to get Farrah to respond, this wasn’t the first time this happened. I didn’t get the feeling Farrah was giving Jim the silent treatment, either. She had shut down for self-preservation. She was taking care of herself, not manipulating Jim. Which meant there was a hell of a lot about the dynamic between Farrah and Jim that I didn’t understand.
Jim was looking like he wanted to reach for Farrah, but he glanced at me and thought better of it. Wise man. If he so much as touc
hed her I was going to lose every shred of self-control I had.
“Farrah,” Jim said, and his voice was calm. The contrast between who he had been a few minutes ago and who he was now was ridiculous. There was no doubt that this man knew how to play the game. He knew what he was doing. Maybe this got through to her before, but it wasn’t doing much, now. Farrah was still trembling next to me. She was keeping her shit together, not falling apart, but her eyes were cast down and she didn’t look at me or at Jim. She sat there, a shell. I wasn’t sure if she would hear what was being said, even if it was me speaking.
I was sick and tired of this shit. Jim was obviously a master at the game he was playing, and maybe it had worked in the past, but I wasn’t in the picture in the past. Everything was different now.
“That’s enough,” I said to Jim. “We’re done here.”
“Come on, babes,” Jim said again and he motioned to reach for Farrah. She glanced at me, pleading with me. Her eyes were lifeless and their dullness floored me, spurring me into action. She needed me and it was time to step up and do what I needed to do.
“Listen, motherfucker,” I said, and jumped up, grabbing Jim by the collar. “Leave my girlfriend the fuck alone.”
I punched him in the fact so hard he spun around and crashed to the ground. I towered over him, but I wasn’t one to kick a man when he was down.
“If I ever see your face again, I’m reporting you for harassment. This town may be small but we’re all friends here and you’re not welcome. Get the fuck out of town.”
I turned around and took Farrah by the hand. She was fragile and her hand was freezing when I touched her. I helped her up and walked to the car with her. She looked over her shoulder where Jim lay on the floor, blood pissing out of his nose. He cursed and shouted but he stayed down.
Good boy.
When we were in the truck, I backed out of the parking bay and drove away from the motel. Farrah had to tell me what was going on. She hadn’t told me anything about Jim, but by the looks of things, she was going to have to. Her reaction to Jim was a problem. She had been on the verge of a mental breakdown back there and something like that didn’t just happen without a good reason.