Broken: The MISTAKEN Series Complete Second Season

by Peak, Renna

  “Yes, of course I remember.” I shook my head. “I should have called. I should have checked on you…”

  She held up her palm to stop me. “My family didn’t come from money. Everyone thinks politicians are all wealthy, you know? But we weren’t, and I think my dad…” She dropped her gaze back to the floor. “Your family has old money. Huge mansions all over the country. You can do what you want, whenever you want. But my family didn’t have that, not until my father got into politics. At least, that was how my mother explained it to me.” I saw her look back out the window. “He got greedy. He wanted a house like yours, to take the trips on other people’s dime. And when you come from nothing and then suddenly have everything, people start to notice. Brandon’s father noticed a long time ago.”

  I let out the breath I had been holding. All of that happened before I was born. Before she was born. Brandon had nothing to do with his own father’s death—he was barely older than the two children running around the yard when his father was murdered. Back when both my father and Polly’s father were Congressman and Brandon’s father had gotten just a little too close to their questionable dealings… Brandon had nothing to do with that.

  “It’s not hard to put two and two together. He just needed some names, dates.” She shrugged. “I was a stupid teenager and you’ve seen him…” She motioned toward the window with her hand. “No sixteen-year-old girl could say no to that.”

  I looked out the window again and drank him in. She was right, except there was probably no woman on the planet who could say no to him. He met my gaze through the window, his blue eyes blazing. I had a sudden urge to kiss him hard, let him know that I wasn’t going to run away. I wanted to run my fingers through his black curls, tell him I would be his for as long as he would have me. He had no reason to blame himself for any of this, and I wanted to make sure he knew it.

  “I told him what he wanted to know. About my father, I mean. Dates, times, names… My father didn’t hide things from me. Not really. It wasn’t that hard to find the information that Brandon wanted. And he was so good to me, so gentle and sweet…”

  I looked back over at her and saw the wistful gaze on her face as she looked out the window. “You’re still in love with him.”

  She shook her head and turned to look at me. “No, not after everything that happened.” She gulped and picked up her cup of tea. “Not after what he put my family through. What he put me through.” She took a sip and looked back out the window. “He’s not completely to blame, though, you know? I lied to him. I told him I was on the pill when I wasn’t. I told him I was eighteen when I wasn’t…”

  I could see she was lying—that she was still in love with him, no matter what she said. But he had taken advantage of her, which wasn’t like him. He was always so careful, so calculating. He should have known better.

  “He thought I was Darlene when we met. And by the time he found out, it was too late. I was already pregnant, and…” She shrugged. “It was too late.”

  I looked out the window again and watched him play with the kids for a long moment. He made a mistake. A huge mistake, and he couldn’t forgive himself for it. He was still making himself pay for it.

  “When my dad resigned and we moved out here, before, you know…”

  I nodded. Before her father had killed himself. It wasn’t just the bribes that were exposed back then. There had been rumors of espionage, that he had sold information to people in other countries. His crimes had grown so much over the years, at least what I knew about him. I still wasn’t sure what her father and my father had really done to draw the attention of Brandon’s father all those years ago, but it wasn’t as big as what Congressman Edwards was eventually brought down for. He was no better than a spy. It was unheard of for someone of his stature in society. Congressmen were supposed to be held to higher standards, and even though I was only a teenager myself when it happened, I remembered how disgusted I felt by what her father had done. Had been accused of, anyway. And then when he shot himself, it was almost like an admission of guilt…

  The words she had spoken finally sank into my brain. “You had a baby? Brandon’s baby?”

  She shook her head. “I miscarried. There was so much stress—my mother was drinking and then my father…”

  I nodded. She didn’t need to remind me of what had happened.

  “He said he’d take care of me and he has. After I lost the baby, I started seeing a guy at my new school. He got me hooked on heroin, then I started doing meth…” She let out a long sigh and turned her gaze to the window. “Brandon has paid for all the rehab. Four times so far. The last one was last year…” She took another sip of her tea. “It was a new treatment program for people hooked on meth. It’s so hard to kick, Jenna. You have no idea.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t. I don’t have any idea, I mean.”

  She nodded in return. “It’s all you think about—the drugs… It’s always there, just underneath the surface, no matter what you’re doing. The craving. The need to have more…” She forced another tight smile. “It doesn’t matter. He wanted me to be able to have the kids back. My sister had them for a while. My brother just got married, and he said he’d take them if I ever relapse again.”

  I didn’t know what to do with this information. It was a lot to process in the ten minutes or so that I had been sitting in her living room. All I could think about was what she had been like in high school. How she was heading down this road before she ever met Brandon.

  “But Brandon has done everything he said he would. He bought us this house, he got me the job in the governor’s office so I can take care of the kids…”

  My heart sank. That was why I couldn’t work there? She was why? I flicked my gaze back to hers. “What are you doing there? In the governor’s office?”

  She shook her head and frowned. “I just work in the mail room now. It’s barely more than minimum wage, but since Brandon bought me the house, I don’t need much. Just enough to put food on the table.” She looked back out the window. “I’m just one of his minions now. I help him out when I can.”

  One of the people he calls when he needs a favor. I knew exactly what she meant.

  She turned to me and smiled. “I’m sorry you didn’t get your invitation to the convention, but it looks like you figured out you were invited, anyway. As if they wouldn’t invite you when your father is the keynote speaker tonight. I’m not sure how he managed that after everything…”

  My gaze must have betrayed the mixture of emotions I was trying to hide. “Brandon asked you not to send the invitation?”

  She shrugged. “He asked me to have your name removed from the guest list, too, but I don’t have that kind of power.” She smiled, tilting her head. “I work in the mail room. I think he forgets that sometimes. It isn’t like I have the passwords to the computers or anything.”

  “Right.” I produced my Hennessey smile. “But I am still on the guest list?”

  I saw her attempt to crease her brow, but the skin stretched across her face was so tight, it was almost hard to tell. “Why wouldn’t you be? Your dad is speaking tonight. It’s supposed to be the highlight of the weekend. I told Brandon you wouldn’t miss this, even if your invitation was lost. But he insisted…”

  I kept the prim smile on my face. “Yeah. He can be that way, can’t he?”

  She chuckled. “Yeah. Definitely.”

  I stood up from my seat on the chair and extended my hand. “It was good to see you again, Polly. I hope everything works out for you.”

  She took my hand and pulled me into a stiff embrace. “It was so nice to see you, Jenna.” She pulled away and looked into my eyes. “I’m glad it was me and not you.”

  My brow furrowed with my confusion. “What do you mean?”

  She smiled. “The day I met Brandon, that day in high school when Brandon and I first met … he was looking for you.”

  8

  We both got back into the car and I sat behin
d the steering wheel for a long moment, not saying anything. I almost wanted him to be the first one to speak—to tell me what the point was in showing me this. Yes, I understood that he couldn’t live with himself for what he had done to Polly when she and I were in high school. We all make mistakes, and while his was big—I mean, knocking up a sixteen-year-old is pretty bad—it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Those twins weren’t his. Polly made some bad choices after she and Brandon had met, but why did he feel so responsible?

  As soon as I began to drive, I saw him turn to face me from the corner of my eye. “Are you going to say something?”

  I stared ahead at the road, unsure of what I could say that wouldn’t come out sounding like the spoiled brat I already felt like. “You aren’t responsible for any of that.” I motioned behind me with my head. “None of what has happened to her is your fault.”

  He turned away to look out the window. “It is, Jen. There are things you don’t understand…”

  “I think I understand more than you give me credit for. I know you didn’t cause that … whatever it is she’s become. She was on the road to becoming that person long before you ever knew her.”

  “She was a little girl. I took advantage of her.”

  I shook my head, trying to keep my focus on the road and trying to ignore the growing sense of anger that was welling deep inside of me. Polly had taken advantage of him. Not the other way around. Why couldn’t he see that? “I knew her, Brandon. She wasn’t a little girl. She lied to you, and that doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “I thought she was her sister…”

  “Her sister was a bitch. She teased me for years about my father, what a man-whore he was, and suggested disgusting things about incest. Even though everyone knew her father…” I stopped. He already knew about the Edwards family, and I didn’t need to remind him. The entire story made me sick to my stomach, thinking that if he hadn’t gotten to Polly first, he might have gotten to me. Tried to take my family down by seducing me. I looked over at him, a thought flashing through my mind. Has he known who I am all along?

  “It doesn’t matter, Jen. The choices she’s made … she made them because of what I did to her. What happened to her.”

  I lifted an eyebrow and turned to him, but he was still turned to the window, unable to see me. “Really? Are you sure that kid was even yours?”

  He turned back to me then, not saying a word.

  “Because I seem to remember Polly Edwards being an alcoholic before the end of her sophomore year. There were only, I don’t know, maybe forty of us in our school, and she’d slept with every guy there. She’d made her way through the prep academy down the road, too. I’m thinking that even if she told you that you were her first…” I turned to face him for a moment, meeting his gaze. “You weren’t. Not even close. You were just older and better-looking than the other guys she’d slept with.”

  I glanced over and could see he was trying to hide a grin, the way he sucked on the edge of his bottom lip when he didn’t want me to see it. “It’s the truth, Brandon. There’s no way you were her first. And whatever it was she told you…”

  The smile fell. “She told me enough to ruin him. And I didn’t even hesitate, Jen.”

  I shook my head. “The man was going down, Brandon, and we both know it. Whether you helped to speed it up or not, his career was already over. He was so brazen about what he was doing—everyone knew it. Even the kids. The fact that he let it go on so long, was so up front about it…” I shook my head again and glanced at him. “Not your fault.”

  “He killed himself, Jen. His family was destroyed…”

  “And you’re positive that was because of you? Absolutely sure that wouldn’t have happened anyway?” I glanced at him again before making another turn. I knew exactly where I was going to take Brandon today. He wanted me to see his fears—see his demons head on, and now I was going to make him see mine.

  “Does it matter? I had to make it right…”

  “It is not your responsibility to fix everything. Their family was fucked up beyond belief before I even met them, and I’ve known Polly since I was in middle school. Hell, they were screwed up before either of us was born. I knew she started drinking, doing drugs…” I shook my head. “All of that happened long before you knew her. She was the biggest slut in Virginia before we were even in high school. So, yes, it matters. And there was nothing for you to make right, Brandon. Their family was fucked up long before you came along.”

  “I don’t think you understand.”

  I lifted an eyebrow and turned to meet his gaze before turning back to the road. We were almost there—to where I was taking us, and damn it, I was going to make him squirm just as much as he had made me squirm on the couch in that woman’s house. “Really? Because I think you don’t understand, Brandon. She was already headed down this road. She says she fell in with the wrong crowd after they moved back here, but what she doesn’t tell you is that she probably went looking for them. She is the wrong crowd. She is the one who made bad choices. It doesn’t surprise me that she lied to you and told you she was Darlene. You make a girl wet just looking in her direction—I can’t imagine that was any different seven years ago.”

  “Jen, I need to tell you about that time. About when I went there. It wasn’t Congressman Edwards I wanted to take down. I wasn’t stupid—I saw his downfall coming. You’re right about that. But what you don’t know…”

  I interrupted. “Is that you came there looking for me?” I wish it even surprised me. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t been thinking it all along—that he had known who I was since the day we first met. I just wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

  I pulled up to the parking attendant and handed him a bill from my wallet. I looked around the exterior of the convention center—I remembered there was a VIP entrance somewhere, and I knew I might as well park nearest to it if I could. I found the entrance and pulled into a stall, turning off the engine. I turned to look at Brandon. “So if you had knocked me up instead… If you had knocked up seventeen-year-old Jenna—if you had ruined my life instead of hers, then what? You’d feel better about yourself now? You wouldn’t feel like you had to support two children who aren’t even yours?”

  “You were eighteen. You would have been legal, capable of making your own decisions…”

  “Wrong. I didn’t turn eighteen until after I graduated. And if you were wrong about that, can’t you admit to yourself that you might, just might, be wrong about Polly?”

  “I wasn’t wrong.”

  “Well, if you thought I was eighteen and still in high school, you were wrong. I was there for my birthday party that year, right before I went to Georgetown. My dad bought me a car…”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been so careful. I know you were eighteen…”

  “And you were wrong about how old I was, wrong about mistaking Polly for Darlene. Wrong, Brandon. You were wrong. It isn’t impossible for you to be wrong, to make mistakes. It happens to everyone, even to you. You screwed up. I forgive you, but Jesus fucking Christ, you need to forgive yourself. Stop punishing yourself for it. It happened. It’s over. You might or might not have fathered a child with her—a child who wasn’t born. But you didn’t make her poor choices for her, and you damned well didn’t have anything to do with who she is today.” I shook my head. “But you have to stop using her. As your minion in the mail room. I don’t think…”

  “She told you about that?” I saw his cheeks flush red. I don’t think I had ever seen Brandon embarrassed before, but he was definitely feeling it now.

  “Yes, she told me. And now I understand why I didn’t receive an invitation to the convention. Where my father is the keynote speaker in a few minutes. You wouldn’t know anything about that, though, right?” I opened the car door and got out, slamming it behind me. My hands balled into fists, my fingernails digging into my palms.

  He exited the passenger side and slammed his own door. “We can’t go in th
ere, Jen. It isn’t safe in there.”

  “I’ll be fine. Have you seen the security at these things?” I glanced over my shoulder at the entrance. “It’s insane.”

  “It isn’t safe. And I don’t mean for you.”

  9

  I checked my phone. A normal family would have called their daughter to tell her that they were going to be less than a hundred miles away. But not mine. Not even a single message. I’m sure their thinking was that I had received my invitation, so I didn’t need something as inane as a phone call from my mother or father to be sure I was there. I suppose they didn’t realize I had someone who “cared” enough about me to keep me away from these things, even though I hadn’t missed one in the fourteen or so years that my father had been a senator.

  I had been so preoccupied, so wrapped up in what had happened in the last six weeks that I didn’t even think about the convention going on this weekend. That this had been why there were no hotel rooms available in town. If my “friend” here wasn’t so worried about protecting me—or maybe he was just protecting himself—I would have known what was going on this weekend, and I still might have chosen not to come to this convention for the first time in my life.

  There was just something about this that made me want to go and see it firsthand. If Brandon didn’t want me here, I wanted to rebel and do it anyway. If he didn’t feel safe, he could wait for me in the car. Or he could drive himself home and I’d take the bus back to San Francisco that night. I didn’t even care at that point. What I wanted—really wanted—was for him to come face my parents with me. If he had felt the need to make me see what had happened to Polly up close and personal, it was the least he could do for me. He could stand next to me while I faced my fears, my mistakes and misgivings. Maybe it was immature, maybe it was downright stupid—but I wanted him to know what it was like for me to talk to my mother. To my father. I wanted him to see it first-hand, exactly how they treated their precious little girl, and there was never going to be a better opportunity than this one.