by Chloe Walsh
But it's not helping me, I wanted to shout, it's not enough for me.
I held my tongue.
Arguing with him about this wouldn’t give me the answers I needed. It would just add to the long list of growing problems we were facing.
So, I smiled at him instead before turning back to look at the television.
I had no clue of what was happening in the movie we were supposed to be watching and I cared even less.
I managed to keep my mouth shut for a good ten minutes before losing the battle with myself.
Reaching for the remote control, I snatched it up and switched off the television before turning to face my husband.
"I can't do this, Jordan," I told him as I knelt on the couch beside his stiffened frame and reached for his hand. "I can't keep walking on eggshells around you wondering if the next question I ask is the one that pushes you away." I shrugged helplessly, willing him to understand my point of view. "What am I doing here, Jordan?"
"What do you mean?"
"This isn’t right," I bit out. "None of this feels right to me."
"Don’t say that."
"It's the truth." I shook head and exhaled a weary sigh. "I feel like I'm bending over backwards to make this work and you're just…slotting me into your world when I've moved mountains to make you happy."
No response.
"I'm your wife." I emphasized the word, praying that title still meant something to him. "I deserve to have my questions answered." I held one of his hands in both of mine and squeezed. "For better or worse, remember?"
Jordan remained completely motionless. He didn’t respond or turn his face to look at me. He just continued to stare at the now blank television screen. He didn’t squeeze my hand back. It was like dead weight in my hand.
The only clue I had that told me he was listening to my words was his increased breathing and the slight flair of his nostrils as he clenched then unclenched his jaw.
"I told you," he finally bit out, still staring straight ahead. "I don’t want to talk about her."
"Well, I do!" I all but screamed, and the shrill sound surprised me. "I want to talk about her," I added in a gentler tone. "I want to know, Jordan. Every damn thing. I want to know about your mother. I want to know about your thoughts, and how you feel? I want to know it all." My voice was rising again, but I couldn’t help it. I had finally plucked up the courage to confront him on the life he kept hidden from me and I didn’t dare stop now. "And Paul," I choked out. "I want to know how much time in prison he got." I was shaking now and so was Jordan. Maybe I had crossed the line bringing up his evil bastard stepfather, but I needed to know, dammit! "I want to know that rat bastard paid for what he did to you. I need to."
"Why?" Jordan roared, finally losing his cool. Leaping from the couch, he put as much space from me as the small room allowed before looking at me with the angriest expression I'd ever seen him wear. "So you can go running back to Thirteenth Street and report every fucking detail of my life to your parents?"
Every ounce of blood drained from my face. My mind was reeling. "How did you…" I began to say, but my words faltered when I saw the look of betrayal in my husband's eyes.
"How did I find out you told your parents about my business?" he offered in a harsh tone. "Because of your mother."
"My mother?" I gasped.
Jordan nodded. "She showed up here back in March like Mother fucking Teresa, begging for forgiveness." He ran a hand roughly through his hair before hissing, "I trusted you, Hope!"
"I know," I choked out, mortified. "I'm so sorry."
"That wasn’t your story to tell," he continued to say, furious. "It was mine, and if I wanted the whole fucking world to know about what happened to me, I would have said. It wasn’t your fucking call!" He ran his hand through his hair once more, but this time he yanked hard on the ends. "Who else did you tell?" He turned and glared at me then. "Noah and Teagan? Do they know, too?" he demanded. "And that felon they live with – how about him?"
"Who?" I gaped. "Lucky?"
Jordan nodded. "What about him? Does he know my business, too?"
I opened my mouth to say no, but quickly snapped it shut, knowing full well that Jordan could see through my lies. "I'm sorry."
Fury blazed in his green eyes. "God fucking dammit, Hope!"
"I'm sorry, okay?" I squeezed out, feeling winded. "I was trying to help you."
"Help me?" He laughed harshly. "Well, thanks for trying. I feel a lot better now."
"Jordan," I spluttered, feeling physically wounded by his verbal outburst. "I love you. I'm trying to help –"
"It's got nothing to do with you!" he roared, visibly shaking. "So, stop, Hope. Stop trying to help! My past doesn’t affect you so stop asking goddamn questions. It's my damn business, Hope. Not yours. Mine!"
"How can you even think that?" I demanded, his words causing me to lose control. "Of course it affects me, too." Was he fucking serious. "I’m your wife, Jordan!"
"And I've told you everything I'm willing to tell you, Hope," he countered shakily and I could tell he was holding onto his temper by the skin of his teeth. "So, do us both a favor and stop fucking pushing for more."
"No!" I screamed, not backing down one bit. I couldn’t believe this was happening. How had this escalated so quickly? "You stop! Stop being so selfish and fucking stubborn," I hissed. "And talk to me, dammit."
"Selfish?" he repeated, paling. "SELFISH?"I watched in a mixture of shock and horror as Jordan moved towards the television and yanked it clean off the wall mount before tossing it against the wall opposite me. When that didn’t completely satisfy his need for violence, he kicked over the coffee table, but not before knocking all the photo frames off the mantel piece. "Jesus fucking Christ!" he roared in a voice he had never used with me before. His tone was frightening, but my anger overrode all the fear inside of me
"You have some fucking nerve calling me that when everything I've ever done was to keep you safe–" His voice broke off and he rubbed his jaw, obviously trying to calm himself down.
It wasn’t working though.
Jordan was still thrumming with fury. It was emanating from him in waves, and red flags were flying up around me.
But I didn’t move.
Instead, I stood my ground and faced him.
Jordan wouldn’t hurt me.
As furious as he was, I knew he would never put a hand on me.
"You're going to regret doing that when you calm down," I bit out, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill.
"Then I'll add it to the long list of mistakes I've already made," he sneered. "Including coming back here!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" I countered shakily.
"Nothing," he spat. "Forget it. You've probably never regretted anything in your life."
"I have regrets," I shouted out shakily. "I regret keeping your secrets when we were children. I regret being the one person with the knowledge and power to save you and not using that knowledge. I regret not saving you from becoming the heartless monster in front of me."
I flinched at the cruel words that came out of my mouth and tried a different approach.
"Look," I said in as calm a tone as I could muster given the circumstances. "We're both acting like teenagers." Raising my hands up in the peace motion, I added, "Let's both just cool down here and talk about this like mature adults."
"You're still not getting it, are you?" Jordan snarled, pinching the bridge of his nose like he was in pain. "I don’t want to talk about it with you, and I'm not going to talk about it with you. Not now or ever! Do you need me to write it down for you, hot shot author, so you finally understand? Or are you actually going to listen to me for once in your fucking life?"
Yeah, I was so not staying here to get chewed up and talked down to like I was a piece of shit.
Snatching my purse off the coffee table, I jumped off the couch and rushed straight for the front door.
"Shit, Hope, I'm sorry – wait," Jor
dan called after me, but I didn’t respond and I didn’t stop walking.
Apologies in the heat of the moment meant nothing to me. They were automatic words thrown about to settle both pride and conscience. I had too much respect for myself to fall back into his arms right away after he spoke to me like that.
I needed a time out and, from the looks of the trashed televisions set back there, so did Jordan.
Jordan
"I fucked up," I whispered, clutching my phone in my hand like it was the only thing keeping me rooted to the ground. I stared in horror at the trashed living room and the carnage I'd caused after Hope left and hung my head in shame. "I fucked up so bad."
"Where are you?" Annabelle's familiar voice filled my ears and I sagged against the couch. "At the house." I clenched my eyes shut, forcing every bad image and memory that was threatening to overwhelm me away from the fore point of my mine. "She's gone."
She ran.
She fucking ran out on me and didn’t look back.
Even when I called her name, even when I begged her to stay, she just kept running.
A part of me wanted to let her go. If she couldn’t handle me now, what was the fucking point? This was mild. I could be worse. I could be so much worse.
I never wanted to be responsible for making Hope look at me like that again. I could see the devastation in her eyes earlier. It ruined me. Disgust and self-loathing filled every inch of my body. I wanted to drop to my knees and beg her for forgiveness. I knew she would forgive me. Problem was, I would never deserve it and couldn’t promise her that an incident like today wouldn’t happen again. My mood swings were unpredictable. I couldn’t understand them myself. And right now, I was plummeting fast into the pits of despair.
"You warned me this would happen and I didn’t fucking listen," I choked out, forcing myself to breathe through the pain that was threatening to overtake me. "I'm done, Annie. I need to get out of this place. I'm so fucking tired of this."
"It's going to be okay, Jay," Annie soothed. "Just stay where you are. I'm on my way."
"How?" I whispered brokenly. How was anything going to be okay? "They all know." Anger fused inside of me. "She fucking told them about him!"
Nothing was going to be okay again.
That was the only thing I was sure of.
Chapter Forty-Three
HOPE
I was used to feeling heartbroken.
It was a feeling I had become familiar with many years ago.
A feeling that had followed me throughout my adult life.
I had lived with the feeling for so long that I thought I might actually miss it if I were to wake up some morning and not have that gaping, unifiable feeling in my stomach – in my heart.
What I was feeling now, though?
This was worse.
I was hurt.
Badly.
The knife Jordan had stabbed me through the chest with was causing me problems. It was making it hard to breathe.
I felt like a fool; giving him everything I had only to receive coldness in return.
Why should I allow him into every corner of my heart when he obviously wasn’t offering me the same in return?
His earlier words continued to swirl around in my mind over and over again. He was trying to hurt me with those comments.
I got that it was a defense mechanism. I understood.
But that didn’t mean it hurt any less.
He called me a hot-shot author and he'd said it in such a way that it was supposed to be an insult.
Call me crazy, but that hurt worse than everything else. My being an author was something I was proud of. I had accomplished that career without help from my father or him. It was all mine and I hated that he had sullied that for me.
I knew where I was going.
Home.
Realistically, I knew this wasn’t a huge deal.
Teagan and Noah fought like that all the time. I couldn’t count the number of plates that had been smashed off the kitchen walls by one or the other of them during their fights.
But I wasn’t Teagan.
I was Hope.
And I didn’t roll like that.
I wasn’t a violent person and I didn’t want to be in a relationship that produced toxic behavior. He smashed the freaking television set. He threw it at the wall right by me. It had been this freaking close to my face.
That wasn’t normal.
Maybe it wouldn’t bother other women, but it certainly bothered me.
I wasn’t into that. Not in the slightest.
Call me old fashioned, but I preferred to use words to deal with my problems.
I knew he was upset and he had every right to be, but if I had stayed, then it would have given the reaction that I condoned that type of physical violence.
I didn’t and would have no part in it.
When I arrived at my parent's house, I had every intention of giving my mother a piece of my mind.
Why did she have to do that?
Why?
I wasn’t stupid, far from it, and had quickly come to the conclusion that the reason Jordan had been freezing me out was because he didn’t trust me anymore.
I had broken that tiny piece of faith he had put in me. I felt horrible over it, but not enough to stay in a house where television sets were thrown against the walls and ugly words were used in anger.
I parked my truck in its usual spot and stomped up the porch steps towards the house. When I let myself inside, I headed straight for the kitchen.
When I rounded the doorway, the last person I had expected to greet me was Hunter Casarazzi.
But there he was, with his ass perched on my mother's kitchen table, shirtless and entertaining my little brothers.
Whatever he was saying must have been funny because Cash and Casey were laughing uncontrollably.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, gaping at the sight before me. "Where are my parents?"
Hunter swung his gaze around to face me and smiled an honest to god, carnal looking smile. "Morning, HC," he purred before shoving a mouthful of dry cereal into his mouth.
I rolled my eyes at the sight.
The man had an obsession with dry cereal. He always ate it straight from the box without a bowl or milk and spoon.
Come to think of it, Hunter did everything differently. I could never predict his next move or what would come out of his mouth next.
"Hungry?" he asked, shaking the box of Cheerios towards me.
I shook my head and placed my hands on my hips. "Care to explain why you're sitting on my mother's kitchen table half naked?"
He raised a brow and smirked. "Would you prefer I be fully naked?"
"Don’t start," I warned, not in the mood for his bullshit flirting right now. I was too damn mad. At Jordan. At my mother. At myself! "Just tell me, what are you doing here?"
"I'm babysitting," Hunter replied in a casual tone.
"You're babysitting?" My brows furrowed and I gaped at him. "You?"
Hunter raised a brow. "And what's wrong with me?"
"You just don’t look like the babysitting type of guy," I muttered, blushing deeply.
"There's a lot you don’t know about me, HC," Hunter shot back with a flirty wink. "I happen to be a great babysitter. Isn't that right, boys?"
"Yeah," my little brothers hooted in unison. "We love Lucky."
"Cute," I bit out, feeling a little taken aback by all of this. "So, my father trusted you to babysit them?"
"Why wouldn’t he?" Hunter countered evenly. "I take care of my responsibilities, sweetheart. Your father knows as much."
Dammit, that was true.
Hunter did take care of his responsibilities and my father seemed to respect him – had from the moment he walked into our lives with Noah.
Dad had always treated Hunter like a man.
Like he wasn’t the same age as his children.
Maybe it was because of the way he had stepped in and taken care of his brother when th
ey were in prison.
Or maybe not.
I didn’t get it, but then again, I never truly understood what my father was thinking.
Mom was like an open book. She wore her heart on her sleeve and was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside, but Dad?
Dad was a deep one.
He was hard to make out.
Or maybe my father respected Hunter because he had something very dark in common with him.
They could butter it up and throw technicalities around the place, use money to bury the truth, but it was a well-known family secret that my father had killed Jimmy Bennett twenty-five years ago. And he had done so in a blind fit of rage to avenge my mother.
It was also pretty well known around here that there was no level my father would stoop to or no mountain he wouldn’t climb to keep her safe.
My mother was walking and breathing because of my father's actions all those years ago, and he had survived the un-survivable – a knife to the throat – not only because he was a stubborn bastard, but because he was incapable of leaving her behind.
The love they shared for each other?
It was an insane, delirious, once in a lifetime kind of love and the reason I wrote romance.
Hell, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience in the love department, but my parents?
They humbled me.
The sound of my little brothers laughing and joking with Hunter brought me back to reality and I balked. "Where's Mom and Dad?"
"Mom and Dad had to go out of town for the weekend," Casey informed me with a small smile.
"And they left Lucky in charge," Cash snickered, clearly delighted with our parents' choice of babysitter.
For the whole weekend? "And they left Lucky in charge?" I repeated, dumbfounded. "Why didn’t they ask me?"
"Because he's badass and way more fun than you?" Cash offered sarcastically, rendering a frown from me and a high-five from Hunter. "And he lets us eat cereal for dinner."
"How would you like to get grounded all weekend, Cash Carter?" I shot back, glaring at the cheeky little fucker. "Because that's where this conversation is leading."