Loving Tessa (January Cove)

by Hanna, Rachel

  "Here we are," Aaron said as he pulled onto a long gravel driveway.

  "What is this place?" she asked as they went around the big curve and faced a large, white antebellum house.

  "This is a place that my mother owns. It's actually an investment property that used to be a bed-and-breakfast. Right now it's empty, with the real estate market being what it is. I thought we could come here and spend some time talking without being interrupted. There are few people who even know this place is back here these days," he said.

  "It's beautiful. I've never seen an antebellum house up close like this. It's very majestic," she said.

  "I've always dreamed of living here, but that would require me to move away from the campground which I really can't do right now."

  "Why can't you move away?

  "Well, first of all I have no one there that I trust to run it by themselves. And secondly, I don't feel like I need a house this big unless I'm going to have a family of my own. Now I seem to be further away from that goal than I ever was, so I really don't need all this space."

  "Maybe things will change. I hope they do, Aaron, because you deserve all good things."

  "Thank you," he said as he reached over and squeezed her leg lightly. The touch of his hand sent shock waves up and down her body. She’d never felt such a spark from a man's touch before, and it almost made her shake.

  "Shall we go in?" she asked trying to break the tension in the car that was building. How was she so attracted to this man that she'd only just met, and how could she ever be sure that her ability to choose a man was correct?

  Aaron unlocked the front door and waved Tessa inside. The home was beautiful and ornate, and a bit sad from being empty. The winding staircase in the foyer reminded her of Gone With The Wind, and she could imagine the regal parties that were hosted in this house during the Civil War era.

  “Let’s go into the parlor. We still have some furniture in there,” he said pointing to a room on the right.

  “The parlor?” she said with a chuckle.

  “Hey, that’s what my mother calls it. I don’t feel very manly saying it, but…” he said with a shrug. Tessa sat down on the red velvet sofa and Aaron sat down next to her, putting his leg up onto the couch so he could face her.

  "Okay, I guess this is as easy as it's ever going to be for me to give you this information. My biggest concern is that you're going to think less of me, and I wouldn't blame you if you did. My story only shows what a weak woman I am."

  "That can't be, Tessa. I've already learned so much about who you are, and your past doesn't matter to me. As far as I'm concerned, you have a clean slate with me."

  "Thank you for saying that, but I'm not sure you'll feel that way once you hear the story," she said as she took in a deep breath, steeling herself for a moment. "I met Ethan when I was nineteen years old just after my father died in prison. He was ten years older than me at the time, so I guess I looked up to him. Ethan was a new officer on the police force in our town, and he had run ins with my dad on multiple occasions. My dad hated him, and I hated my dad at that time. I felt like he'd screwed our lives up and he made my name mud in our small town by all of his antics.

  Right after my father passed away, I was living in this little efficiency apartment that I could afford while waitressing at the local diner. That's when Ethan came by one day to express his condolences, or at least that's what he was pretending to do. It wasn't long after that when he asked me out on our first date and we started being known as a couple around town.

  Things moved really quickly for us, but the abuse didn't start immediately. Looking back now, I can see he was grooming me for what was to come. He always had a problem with anger, but it wasn't directed at me until much later. After we had dated for two years, he proposed to me. By that time, I knew he wasn’t who I wanted to spend my life with, but I was afraid to tell him. His anger was getting worse and worse, and he had this power trip thing going on.

  I finally agreed to his proposal, but we never set a wedding date. Instead, I found out that I was pregnant and things went downhill quickly. The abuse actually started while I was pregnant with Tyler. He didn't care that I was pregnant, but he didn't really want us to have a baby. He pushed me down the stairs a couple of times in an effort to try to make me miscarry, but thankfully it didn't work."

  Aaron’s face crinkled up as he listened her story. He didn't interrupt, but instead allowed her to keep talking no matter how hard it was for him not to reach over and comfort her or scream or yell about the idiot that she’d been with for all those years.

  "When I was pregnant with Tyler, he started holding me captive. He told everyone that I left him and left town. But that wasn't true. I was actually locked in our basement. He'd set it up so that I couldn't get out, couldn't have access to the outside world and I didn't even have medical care for Tyler. He wanted me at his beck and call, and that included fulfilling any of his sexual needs at any time. He was very rough and violent with me, and because I didn't have any extended family left that I was in contact with, no one was ever looking for me.”

  Aaron couldn’t hold back anymore. “Dear God, Tessa, I’m so sorry. Why on Earth would he have become so angry with you?”

  “Around that time, an old friend from middle school, a guy, found me on Facebook. We were chatting about old times, nothing major. In fact, my friend is admittedly gay. Ethan still got jealous. He said I wasn’t going to make a fool out of him. He was very impressed with what he perceived as his ‘place’ in the community, and he was sure that I had slept with this old friend of mine and gotten myself knocked up. I offered a DNA test, but he said no way, he didn’t want his name dragged through the small town mud. So, instead, he concocted this plan to punish me and keep me locked away from being ‘social’ with other men.”

  “This is just so unbelievable to me…” Aaron stammered. She kept talking for fear of chickening out.

  “As I got closer to delivering Tyler, it became apparent that he was going to have to allow me to have the baby. But again, he didn't want any of his police buddies or anyone else knowing that I was still around and he certainly didn’t want anyone to know that I was having a baby. So, I gave birth in a bathtub in our basement and had to take care of Tyler by myself. I had a very difficult delivery, but he didn't even come downstairs. I felt like I was in some kind of a third world country where a woman is forced to give birth on her own. Thankfully, my body cooperated with me and I didn't bleed to death, but I never did get any medical care that I needed for Tyler.”

  Unable to contain himself, Aaron spoke. “I can't believe what you're telling me. Why would this man want to hurt you so badly? Why wouldn't he love his child? Surely he knew it was his if you offered a DNA test…”

  “Aaron, you're thinking like a normal man. He's not a normal man. In fact, I believe he’s sociopathic. He seemed to take great joy in keeping us captive there, and watching me go from an outgoing woman to a shell of my former self. It was awful, but I tried to get away so many times when I was pregnant. Once Tyler was born, my options were limited as I couldn't get both of us out of there easily without being noticed. He had us locked down like prisoners of war.”

  Aaron asked why her coworkers weren’t looking for her.

  “You’ve got to understand, I was from a small town just like January Cove. You see, everyone there really respects law-enforcement, as they should. No one had any idea that he was so sick and demented. Plus, there's a lot of incestuous relationships in the police force there. Everyone is family. In fact, his father and brother are both police officers, so I knew they’d never believe what he was doing. They all really thought that we’d broken up and I'd moved on. I had no options because I knew if I got out of there and tried to run, he’d just find me and kill me. He said so many times. He had no problems killing me and Tyler.”

  “So that's why you ran. You didn't feel like you had any options to go to the police. God, Tessa, you must’ve felt so alone and terrif
ied when you saw daylight after three years…”

  “It was… and is… terrifying. If I’d gone to the police there, it would've only resulted in me getting killed. He would never let his name be smeared like that.”

  “So how did you finally escape?”

  “I overheard him on the telephone saying that his father was in the hospital. His dad had a heart attack, and I knew he would go to be by his bedside because they were very close. So, I knew that was my only opportunity to try to get out. He had everything locked down and nailed shut. I had to work very hard over the course of several hours to pry open the door leading upstairs. I was terrified.”

  “I'm sure you were,” Aaron said as he slid closer and put his hand over hers. Suddenly, she felt a wave of safety come over her that she’d never felt in her life. He might as well have thrown his body over hers to shield her because that’s exactly what it felt like.

  “Once I finally pried the door open, I gathered together what little belongings we had. He would occasionally buy us clothing from a thrift store that was two counties over, but we never got anything new which is why I'm always wearing these old, unfashionable clothes,” she said as she pulled at her skirt. “I had also been putting away a little bit of money here and there that I stole out of his wallet when he was asleep. Of course, I'd have to have sex with him in order to get him to go to sleep anywhere near me.” She cringed as she said the words.

  “He never noticed you were stealing money?”

  “No. But, you have to keep in mind that I was stealing very little at a time. A dollar here or five dollars there, but nothing big. I didn't want to tip him off. It took me months to get enough money to take with us, and I was able to find that nasty old camper for a very cheap price. I literally bought it as we were walking out of town.”

  “How far did you have to go on foot?”

  “We walked about three miles before I saw the camper parked in someone's front yard with a for sale sign on it. Believe it or not, he sold it to me for two hundred bucks just to get it off his lot. I put a little money in gas, and it brought us all the way here to January Cove. We stopped here because this is as far as I could go on the gas money I had. Then, I bought a little bit of food at your store and paid the lot rent in advance for three weeks at your campground. I don't have any money left, so I don't know what we're going to do next.”

  “You know I'm going to help you, right?” Aaron said looking into her eyes as he took her hand between both of his. He was strong and masculine and steady, and she desperately needed that right now.

  "You don't have to. As I said before, this isn't your problem. You wanted to know what happened, and I'm telling you. I think you deserve that much after all that you've helped us already."

  "And as I said before, I'm doing this for you and Tyler. He's never had a normal life, and that boy has a light inside of him that deserves to shine. I intend to do everything I can to make sure that happens."

  “So what do we do?” she asked sighing as she leaned back on the sofa. His hands slipped away from hers, and her heart sank when she no longer felt his touch. What was that about, she wondered to herself.

  “The first thing I'm going to do this call my sister,” Aaron said standing up as he reached into his front pocket in search of his phone.

  “Your sister?”

  “Yeah. She actually used to date a private investigator. I think the first thing we need to do is get a track on this guy to make sure that he's not heading toward this area. Do you think he'd hire anyone else to do his dirty work?”

  “I certainly wouldn't put it past him. After all, he has access to criminals anytime he wants, but I think he'd rather do the job himself. He's probably extremely angry at me right now and feeling like I got one over on him. He won’t just allow that to happen. He's going to come after me. There's no question about that.”

  “Then we need to get on this fast. Here, I brought this notebook. Write down his full name and as much personal information as you have. I'll call Addison and we'll get to work on this.”

  Tessa looked up and smiled. “Thank you. No one has ever tried to help me. I don’t know what I did to deserve finding you as a friend, but I will thank God everyday for it.”

  “Well, get used to it. That's what friends are for, right?” Aaron whispered as he handed her a pen.

  “I think this is going a little beyond the typical friendship,” she said without thinking.

  Aaron fidgeted for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that I've never had a friend who is willing to help me protect myself from a deranged ex,” she said with a laugh trying desperately to change the subject.

  “Oh,” Aaron said. Was that a hint of disappointment in his voice?

  “Do you have any idea why he wanted to hold you captive rather than just letting you get on with your life?”

  “He was highly jealous. He didn't want anyone else to have me if he couldn't. I wanted to leave, to get out of the situation I was in, but he wasn't about to let that happen. He would date women and actually bring them home, have sex with them and then come force himself on me. It was a power trip.”

  “But why wouldn't he have wanted Tyler?”

  “I don't know, he was angry with me I guess. He also didn't want anyone to know that he was holding me captive, so he would've had a hard time explaining this new baby boy. As time went on, I noticed he was drinking more and I'm pretty sure he was taking drugs too, so he was just out of control all the way around.”

  “Tessa, I'm so sorry that you had to deal with this. I promise I'll do whatever I can to help you. You’re not alone anymore.”

  “Aaron, I don't want you to put yourself in harms way because of me. It's bad enough that Tyler and I are always in danger, but you and your family don't deserve this. I'm telling you that he's crazy and will do anything to get back at me. You can still walk away from this. You can still forget you ever met me. Because there is a chance you could get hurt trying to protect us.”

  “I'm willing to take the chance,” Aaron said looking in her eyes as he reached out and touched her hand again. “Don’t you know you’re worth fighting for, Tessa?”

  She stared at him and then looked down without answering. The emotions building up in her chest were overwhelming her ability to speak or think. “For now, I'm going to go make a call to Addison and give her this information. Hopefully, her friend will be able to help us out and find out where he is right now. As long as we can keep track of him, you'll at least have some semblance of peace.”

  “I suppose, but there's always the chance that he's got one of his goons after me. It might not be him, but I really think he would want to do this himself.”

  “Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and he won't seek vengeance,” Aaron said with a shrug.

  “We won't get that lucky.”

  ***

  As Tessa sat in the living room, she could hear Aaron on the phone in the kitchen. He was talking to his sister who was giving him information on how to get in touch with her friend. A few moments later, she could hear him making that all important call to the friend whose name was Stan from what she could understand.

  After a five-minute conversation, Aaron came back into the living room with a smile on his face.

  “What? Is there news already?” she asked.

  “ No, it just feels good to have something underway.”

  “Yeah, it actually does. What did you tell him?”

  “I didn’t go into specifics. The less that people know, the better. I just told him I needed to keep track of someone, so he’s looking into it right now. While we wait to hear back from Stan, I had a plan for us to do something,” he said smiling and rubbing his hands together.

  “A plan?”

  “Yes. There is a part of this property that I'd like to show you.”

  “Okay…”

  “Don't worry. We’ll be safe way out here. No one knows this place is back here, and we can see them coming before
they ever get to us.”

  “I'm not worried, Aaron. I feel safer right now than I have in years.” She looked up into his gorgeous face and he reached out to pull her up from the sofa.

  “And don't worry about Tyler. I just texted my mom and she said he's doing fine.” He squeezed her shoulder as if to comfort her.

  “I'm not worried about Tyler either. You have to understand, I haven't had a family in a long time, and I never really had a normal one. It feels good to have people helping me for once. I know it won't last long, but I really do appreciate it right now.”

  “Why do you say it won't last long?”

  “Because you're not my real family. I don't expect you to take on my problems and help me out in the long term.”