by Kelly Rimmer
“I think I was a different species altogether,” I laugh weakly.
“So Garrett was Tristan’s father?” Jake asks me.
“No.” My throat feels tight. Jake must pick up on the tension because he shifts so that he can rub my back. “I had one friend from school that my parents trusted. Her name was Tansy. Garrett and I gradually drifted apart, as kids do, I suppose. And when Tansy and I would hang out at her place, her brother E-Eric gradually started to pay attention to me.” I stumble on his name. I pause to draw in a breath, trying to shake off the vague fear that lingers when I bring him to mind. That he has power over me even now is frustrating and irritating. The deep breathing doesn’t work, but focusing on Jake’s strong body against mine does. After a minute, I can continue. “He was a lot older—eight years, actually—and he didn’t even live with Tansy anymore but he was suddenly at his family home all of the time. But by the time I was seventeen, I was lying to my parents. I’d tell them I was going to see Tansy, but Eric would pick me up and we’d go to his place instead. He was charming and possessive and handsome, and it was a total whirlwind. And it felt so grown-up to have a twenty-five-year-old boyfriend with his own apartment and a job.
“I missed my period just before finals. I was so confused—we’d been so careful. I tried to ignore it until graduation, putting off facing the problem because I just had no idea what else to do. Then the morning sickness hit me hard and it all became so much more real. That’s when I told Eric.
“He seemed so excited,” I whisper. “He was just so calm . . . so supportive and happy. I’d been trying to figure out how to get an abortion, but Eric talked me out of it. He promised me that if I stayed in town and had the baby, he’d help me get to college the following year. My next concern was my parents—I knew they’d lose their minds. But Eric convinced me that my parents wouldn’t care . . . as long as we were married.”
My voice breaks. Jake’s arms lock around me.
“There’s no waiting period for marriage licenses in Georgia, so a few days after my eighteenth birthday, we drove down to Atlanta and got married.”
“And how did your parents react?”
“They were furious. They had no idea I’d been seeing Eric, and they were just so angry about the whole situation. And the ridiculous thing was, when he first suggested we get married, I knew that they wouldn’t give their blessing even if we were married. But Eric was persuasive and so certain that they’d be happy for us as long as we ‘did it right,’ and I was utterly desperate to fix things. Maybe I was a defiant kid, but I was still a kid and I was terrified. In the end, my parents’ panic didn’t help, even though I eventually realized that the reason they were so hysterical was that they could see Eric had manipulated me.”
“He gaslighted you.”
“Exactly. He made me feel like he was the only solution to a mess I had made. And my parents were livid and judgmental and ashamed, while Eric was calm and charming. I stayed with him. I wanted to show my parents that I could manage my own life.”
“You were so young, Jess.”
“I know. But I could have gone home to my parents, and I didn’t. I want you to remember that when I tell you what happened next.”
“I will. But even though you chose him, I can already see that none of this was your fault,” Jake protests gently. I barely hear him. I’m on a roll now, the words pouring out of me. I couldn’t stop explaining if I tried. Maybe keeping all of this locked up inside for seventeen years wasn’t the best idea I ever had.
“He’d cut me off from my whole support network. I don’t know what he said to Tansy, but even his own sister stopped coming around. And once I was in his house, I was completely vulnerable. He had a good construction job, but I had no income. When I first moved in with him, I wanted to get a job, but he talked me out of that too. He said he wanted me to rest. He kept pointing out that no one would hire me anyway because I was pregnant, and my morning sickness was still pretty bad. It felt like concern, Jake, but over time that concern began to intensify, and I was totally out of my depth before I even realized what was happening. Eric decided where we went and what we did. He started taking the keys to my car when he left for work. He said he loved me and just wanted to make sure I was resting. And then once I stopped protesting about that, it was the phone—he took my cell first. He said he didn’t want other men bothering me. His jealousy was constant—all I had to do was look out the window and he’d be flying off the handle. After a while, he was taking the landline to work with him too. I was completely isolated. I had no money of my own. No support. No power, Jake.” I’m shaking now, and my voice is shaking too. It’s not distress—it’s sheer fury. “I was completely fucking powerless.”
“Was he physically abusive too?”
“Coercive, perhaps,” I whisper unevenly. “The lines became very blurry after a while. I certainly didn’t feel like I could say no to sex. He got angry at the drop of a hat, and my whole life became about calming him. And the whole time, he was telling me my family didn’t love me. That no one loved me. It felt so real.”
“Did you have prenatal care?”
“Oh, sure. He’d come with me to my checkups, playing the part of the perfect husband,” I say bitterly.
“Did your family try to help you?”
“My brother came one day while Eric was at work. He told me that Mom and Dad would probably forgive me if I came home and apologized.”
“Jesus.”
“Besides, I was so confused by that stage. I had no idea who to believe. What to believe. I actually felt like this worthless piece of shit who deserved to be where I was. You have no idea how quickly it can happen. One minute, I’m the most popular girl in school, class vale-dictorian headed for a college scholarship, the world at my feet. A few months later I’m asking that asshole for permission to buy toilet paper.”
I break off and take a series of deep breaths. Jake is now massaging my back and neck, his hands kneading me gently, grounding me. I focus on that sensation for a while, until the torrent in my mind has settled. I can tell he feels the relaxation returning to my body.
“What happened to Tristan, sweetheart?”
I’m still not used to hearing that name, but I love the way Jake says it—with respect and care, with love for my son—just because he was my son. I blink away tears and clear my throat.
“I was eight months pregnant. Uncomfortable and sore. Tired. I’d just had a checkup at the doctor’s and wasn’t due for weeks. But I just felt . . . off. Tristan didn’t seem to be moving as much. I started to worry.”
Eric will get angry if I make a fuss. I can’t make a fuss. I’m sure it’s going to be fine. It has to be fine.
“You have to understand, Jake,” I choke, eyes filling with tears. “My whole life was about keeping Eric calm. I was terrified that if I made a fuss and it was all for nothing, he’d fly off the handle.”
“Jess, I’m not judging you,” Jake whispers. He shifts me so that I’m lying beside him, staring at him right in the eyes, just like I was the night Abby had her twins and we talked in his bed. He reaches up to stroke my cheek with his big bear-claw hands.
“Eventually I panicked, and I asked Eric for the money to go to the doctor just for a checkup and he lost his shit with me . . . told me I was being stupid or something. But over the next day, I realized Tristan wasn’t moving at all, and so I waited until Eric fell asleep and called Grandma Chloe. I hadn’t actually been close with her before that—she was here in Manhattan, I was in a small rural city in northern Georgia. But I’d met her enough times to know that she was nothing like my parents or my siblings, and I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I was so desperate. So terrified.”
Not before or since have I felt fear like that. Even remembering those moments now makes me shake. I was on the landline in the bathroom with the shower running to hide my panicked whispers into the phone, convinced that any second now, Eric would smash the door down and catch me and there’d b
e hell to pay.
“Chloe called my parents and they were at the door with the sheriff within an hour. Eric played dumb when they asked him about the things I’d told my grandmother. He told them he thought I was having some mental problems because of the pregnancy. And they . . .”
“They believed him?”
“Yeah. They took me to the hospital not because the baby wasn’t moving but because they thought I’d lost my mind.” I laugh weakly, bitterly. “They weren’t wrong—I really felt like I was losing my mind. I was a mess. And then of course . . .”
The nurse turning pale.
The ultrasound.
The doctor with his cold hands and his gaze brimming with sympathy.
I’m sorry, Jessica. We can’t find a heartbeat.
“He was already gone?”
“I was too late,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “I knew for days that something was wrong. I had an instinct to save him. It just took me too long to find the courage to call for help. I let him down.”
“You were in an impossible situation, Jessica.”
“I was. But just remember, Jake, I put myself in that impossible situation,” I say bitterly. “In the hospital after the birth, Eric came to see me. I was sobbing, petrified of him and grieving and broken. He told me not to worry. He said I fell pregnant right away when he tampered with the condoms, so it wouldn’t take us long to have another baby.”
Jake sucks in a sharp breath. I can see the fury and the tension in his expression. His jaw is set hard, and there’s a sheen in his eyes, but he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t make my painful past about him and his reaction.
If I love Jake, I love him for this moment, when he quietly makes sure I have a safe space to air my pain.
“I’ve thought a lot about why he did that,” I whisper. “He was always so possessive . . . At first, I actually thought it was romantic. He’d call me ‘his,’ tell me he wanted to keep me forever because I was so special. But soon enough, he was also jealous and insecure, especially about the idea that I’d leave him behind when I left for college. And he was right, you know. I was always going to break up with him and leave town. The only way he could tie me down was to get me pregnant, and once he did that, he owned me.”
I’ve broken out in a cold sweat more than once during a sexual encounter when a guy went to reach for his own protection—I have to use my own condoms, so I know they’re safe. It’s almost a phobia now, and I really thought the tubal ligation would help, but it didn’t. Something in my mind is stuck on this. Maybe it always will be.
“You went home with your parents after you left the hospital?”
“Yes. I was virtually catatonic. I wasn’t eating or talking much. They gave me some tranquilizers, I think. I don’t remember much of his funeral.”
“And then your parents said those things . . .”
“They did me a favor.”
“Fuck, Jess. That was no favor.”
“It snapped me out of my emotional coma. I called Grandma Chloe and told her what happened. She sent me the money to come to New York. Pulled some strings to get me into college midyear even though I hadn’t applied. Gave me a room and held my hand while I cried. You asked if I was the black sheep—well, maybe it runs in the family after all, because my grandmother was so much more like me than my mother. She was wild and bold and blunt, and she saved my life.”
“Did your parents try to come after you?”
“My brother did. It was basically the same conversation we had at Eric’s house. Come home, beg for forgiveness, they might take you back in.” I almost spit the words. This, I’m still bitter about, even now. I cut my biological family off, but it’s fine, because I’m better off now. I left my biological family because they were assholes, but these days, I have a chosen family of friends around me. I have people who love me not despite of who I am, but because of it.
“What did you say to your brother when he came to talk to you, sweetheart?”
“I swore for a while, then I told him the whole family was dead to me. And then Grandma threw him out of her house—I mean she literally chased him out with her walking stick. That was the last time I ever heard from them, and I divorced Eric and changed my name as soon as I was legally able to.”
“What was your name?”
“I grew up Jess Underwood. Then I married Eric and was Jess West. After I cut ties to my family, I took Grandma’s name—my mother’s maiden name. That’s how I became a Cohen.”
“She was your hero, wasn’t she?”
“I lived with her for the first two years of college, then moved in with some friends. When I needed my share of seed funds to start Brainway, she offered before I could ask. When she died, she left me everything. Grandma was something of a stock market whiz . . . Business savvy must run in my blood.”
I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up, but I shuffle closer to Jake and then rest my cheek against his chest. He winds his arms around me and kisses the top of my head.
“So that’s it,” I whisper.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“You had this whole other life before we met. And it was brutally unfair and hard. The only thing I don’t understand is why you’ve never let your friends here support you in all of this.”
“I told you, Jake. I didn’t want to be that girl, the one who was defined by the fact that she’d fucked everything up before her nineteenth birthday. Besides, I couldn’t open myself up when I met you guys. It was too raw, and I knew that once people knew about my past, they’d know my vulnerabilities.”
“You didn’t trust us. And I can understand why. It must have been very difficult for you to trust anyone after what you went through. Everyone let you down, Jessica. Eric, your parents, even his fucking family. You were young and vulnerable, and you deserved better from your community.”
I think about that for a while, then I roll to face him, lying on his chest.
“But do you see now?” I choke. “I’m not the woman for you, Jake. I’m not having kids, and you want them. I’m never getting married again, and you want that. I won’t . . . I can’t ever let anyone own me like that. Not ever again.”
“I’m forty in a few months, sweetheart,” Jake whispers, and he gives me a soft smile as he strokes his finger down my face. “I’ve always been open to the idea of kids, but I’ve long since wrapped my head around the idea that I probably won’t have them.”
“But you said . . .”
“I made a joke I don’t even remember. If anything, I was probably trying to get you to start the conversation with me about what our life together might look like. But I wouldn’t have come into that discussion with a strong agenda. Kids have always been a ‘maybe’ for me, not a ‘must-have.’”
I bite my lip, then search his gaze as I whisper, “It’s not just that. I know I can’t give you what you need. What you want.”
“Monogamy?” Jake whispers hesitantly. I wince and shake my head.
“Trust,” I choke. “Commitment. Control.”
There’s no mistaking the frustration in Jake’s gaze now. He brushes my hair back from my face tenderly, but the gesture contradicts the tension in his voice.
“I do not and would not ever want to control you, Jessica.”
“You still don’t get it,” I whisper sadly. “To me, committing feels like allowing myself to be controlled. It’s saying that you own me, isn’t it? And you and I both know that if I’d come here tonight and told you I wanted to try to have a relationship, you’d have whipped that ring out before I could get my clothes off.”
“I wish I’d never bought that ring,” Jake says with a groan. “You keep coming back to it, like the stupid fucking ring is the sticking point here. It’s a symbol, Jess. It’s a symbol of how I feel about you—not even a symbol about the future I needed us to have. And I bought it before I realized how serious you were about not getting married. I’d never propose to you
now that I understand. Never.”
“But then you miss out on the future you wanted. If we go our separate ways, you’ll meet someone else . . . someone who wants the happily-ever-after you deserve,” I argue. “I want that for you. I want you to be happy with someone. You . . .” My voice breaks, and I shift so that I can touch my fingertips to his lips. “More than anyone else I know, Saint Jake, you deserve a happily-ever-after.”
“Life doesn’t work that way, Jess. No one gets a happily-ever-after. The best you can do is to find someone who fits you, and then you build the life you want. Shit comes at you and you deal with it together. Good times come at you and you enjoy them together. There are ups and downs and struggles and blessings, but when you love someone, the only thing that matters is that you navigate them together.”
I stifle a yawn, and he kisses my fingers, then shifts me so that I’m lying on my side again, close to him.
“Let’s sleep,” he whispers. “You’re staying with me tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll stay tonight.”
I drift off to sleep then, nestled safely in the man-mountain that is Jake Winton.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Jake
JESS IS CLEARLY EXHAUSTED, and she sleeps like a log in my arms. Twelve long hours pass, and in all of that time, she barely moves.
I sleep lightly, and I wake up with a start several times, images dancing through my head of Jessica in the control of that asshole. Of Jessica grieving her son alone. Of Jessica landing in New York, putting on a brave face and building a fucking empire on her own.
I’ve loved her for a long time. Tonight, I just want to worship at her feet. I’d do it every day for the rest of my life if she let me.
I’m in utter awe of her just because she survived.
You still don’t get it. To me, committing feels like allowing myself to be controlled.
I want a commitment from her. That’s certainly true, but it’s only true because I want her to choose to stay in my life. I’d love a promise from her that she intends to try to be in this for the long haul.