by Peak, Renna
He motioned for me to stand against the frame of the doorway. I turned around, placing my hands against the wood. I tried to make eye contact with Jen, but she took a step back, averting her gaze.
Cade frisked me, and stepped away when he found nothing. “You’ll want to get your things, kiddo. Your time in Waterville is done.”
Her face went pale, her eyes widening. “What?”
He nodded. “Your cover is blown.” He gave me a weak smile. “Sorry.”
My brows knitted together. None of this was making any sense. “Will one of you tell me what in the fuck is going on here?”
He motioned toward Jen with his head. “Like I said, Jenna’s cover is blown.”
“Cover?” I looked over at her, tilting my head. “Cover?”
She winced, pressing her lips together to hold back her tears. “Brandon, you don’t understand…”
“You need to get your things, kiddo. It’s a long drive, and you won’t be back.”
She nodded. “I don’t need anything. I’m ready.” I could see she was trying to steel herself against whatever it was that was going on.
He lifted a brow. “You sure?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.” She looked down at the porch. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Me?” Cade tilted his head, confused. “I’m not doing anything to him. He’s coming with us.”
Her brows jetted up—I wasn’t sure if it was in surprise or fear. Maybe both. “What?”
He nodded. “She wants to see both of you.”
She closed her eyes, blowing out a long breath. “Fuck.” She opened her eyes, looking over at me. “I want you to know, Brandon, I think today is the first time I’ve said the f-word in nine months.”
I let out a chuckle. That would be hard to believe—the Jen I knew swore like a sailor. I smiled over at her. “Who is ‘she’?”
She let out another long sigh, closing her eyes again before turning to face me, her gaze steely. “’She’ is the woman formerly known as my mother.”
My mouth fell open at her words. It wasn’t possible—Jen’s mother? The ice cold woman who hated me for reasons I had no understanding of—she was the reason Cade was here? And all these other men?
Cade motioned with his outstretched arm for us to follow him. He turned to me with a weak smile. “Marian Hennessey is … eager to see you, Brandon.”
Taken #2
The MISTAKEN Series - Part Fourteen
1
I looked over at her, trying to catch her gaze with mine, but she was staring out the window. It seemed like she was almost in a daze—like she couldn’t believe we were in the back of a car being driven to God-knows-where. “Jen.”
She blinked a few times and glanced over at me before turning her gaze back to the window. She didn’t even acknowledge that I had spoken her name. Maybe she had been this new person—this character she had been playing—for too long. Maybe it was too late for me to break through to her, even though I was pretty sure I had gotten through when we had been in that dilapidated shack she called a home. Maybe she didn’t want me to remind her of who she had been. Of what we’d had until all of this happened. And I had a pretty good idea now of what had happened.
“Jen, promise me something.”
She shook her head, finally turning her body to look at me. “What?” Her eyes were clouded—almost teary, but different. Tired, maybe. The frown on her lips and the sadness in her eyes almost telegraphed exhaustion. That had to be it—she had to be tired of playing this charade that she had been keeping up for so many months.
I pulled her hand into mine. I wanted to pull the rest of her over to me, but Cade kept glancing into the back seat as we sped along the highway toward what I could only assume was her mother’s family compound. “No matter what you hear tonight, promise me that you’ll let me tell you my side of the story.”
She shook her head, almost wincing, and turned back to the window. She sat there staring out the window for a long time—out at what I could only assume was the sun setting behind the trees that lined that side of the highway.
I couldn’t believe that things had gone this far. I didn’t want to believe that she already knew—that she and the woman who had raised her had somehow come to be on speaking terms and that they might have actually talked about me. I kept telling myself that it couldn’t have happened—that there was no way Jen would have even let me into that place if she knew about the things I had done. Well, if she knew what Marian would have said about me if they actually had ever spoken to each other. Not that it would have been true—not all of it, anyway. But if she and Marian had somehow had some kind of mother-daughter, heart-to-heart conversation, I knew I wouldn’t be sitting here holding her hand. I knew she would have made whatever alarm system they had set up in that podunk town go off long before she ever would have slept with me.
I heard her let out a long sigh, but she still wouldn’t turn to make eye contact. “What is it that you think I’m going to hear?”
I winced. She knew. I knew she did just in the tone of her voice. “Tell me what they told you.”
She shook her head again, turning back to me. “If I believed everything I heard, do you think I would have let you in my house back there?”
“Jen…” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I couldn’t think of one damned thing I could say to her that was going to change anything. I already felt like I was on my way to my doom—there was nothing I could have said that was going to change that.
“You shouldn’t have gone in that gift shop. You shouldn’t have even come here.” She looked back out the window. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. They told me if you so much as came to Maine, they’d find out. I should have just had you turn around as soon as I saw you. This is my fault.”
“Who? Who told you that?” I didn’t want to believe that she actually knew anything. I didn’t want to think that she had been dragged all the way in. It was bad enough that everything else had happened—I couldn’t let myself believe that she had actually found out what was going on.
“I’m not the same naive little girl you left on the kitchen floor back in Montana, Brandon.” She pulled her hand from mine, crossing her arms in front of her. “I’ve figured a few things out for myself in the past few months.”
“I didn’t leave you, Jen. Not willingly, anyway.”
Cade glanced into the back seat, raising his eyebrows at me. I still didn’t trust him. I knew most of what had happened now, but I still didn’t trust him. I hated that he was involved in this at all. I hated even more that it seemed like Jen might know more about what was going on than I did. If she was actually talking to Marian, she probably did know more than me. I still just couldn’t wrap my head around that—that those two might actually be on speaking terms. It was the only reason I had even let myself get involved with her. It was only because I knew that whatever secrets Marian had—whatever she had on me—would never get back to Jen.
She barely turned to me, her voice dropping so that only I could hear her. “I know that. I know you didn’t leave willingly.”
“It was—”
She cut me off. “Melissa and Ryan. I know. I know a lot of things now, Brandon. Like how you work with him.”
I shook my head, trying to correct her. “Worked. And you knew that already. I told you that. It was a long time ago.”
She lifted a brow and turned back to the window.
I knew I was in trouble. She knew. She knew more than she had before, anyway, and it was more than I had ever wanted her to know. “Jen, ask me anything you want to ask. I’m an open book. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, but you need to give me the chance to tell you my side of it. You need to let me explain.”
“Brandon, if I believed them, I would have made the call to Marian myself. I definitely wouldn’t have let you in my bed if I believed everything.”
I knew I had to tread lightly. There was so much—so damned much, and I didn�
��t want to just spill my guts. Not here—not with Cade in earshot. I knew she deserved the truth. What I knew of it, anyway. And I would tell her everything. Eventually. Once I figured out what she already knew. Once I knew how much trouble I was looking at with her. Because even though I may not have been as forthcoming as I should have been about my past, I knew that I loved her. I knew that if she couldn’t believe anything else that came out of my mouth, I had to make her understand that I loved her.
That might have been the only thing I had ever been honest about in my life—I loved the woman sitting next to me. More than anything else, and I knew I’d be willing to go to my grave to try to convince her of that. I also knew that I might have to go to my grave to convince her of that. I still couldn’t believe this—that this was the life I had fallen into. That this was what I was going to have to deal with and that there was no way out. I didn’t want it anymore. I hadn’t ever really wanted it, but ever since I had gotten to know her, it was the last thing I wanted. The lies and deceptions weren’t worth it. There was no amount of money or power that would ever make it worth it.
“Are you still working with him? With Ryan?”
“No, Jen. You know that. Knew that.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Fuck, I don’t know what you know any more.”
She looked over at me, and tears were definitely clouding her eyes this time. “I know that I never chose this life, Brandon. I know that I’m some pawn in a game that’s bigger than both of us, and I know that I never had any choice in it.”
“That might be true, but—”
She shook her head, cutting me off. “I know that I used to dream about living in a small town—having an ordinary life like the one I’ve been living for the past few months. I know that was all I ever really wanted—to be treated like a normal person. To not have cameras in my face and tabloids commenting on every last detail of my life. Fuck, Brandon, that life I had in Waterville was the life I always wanted. Living there for the last five months has been a dream come true for me.”
“I know you don’t mean that.” Damn, I hoped she didn’t mean that. Because if that had been her dream life, I had just swooped in and ruined it.
“They told me if you came near me again, you would die. That we both might die, but you definitely would. And that’s why I didn’t contact you. That’s why I lived there—that and because it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t bad at all. It sucked that people still compared me to her—to Jenna. To me.” She shook her head. “Fuck it, I don’t even know what I’m saying. I just know I haven’t cursed since I moved to Waterville—I haven’t wanted to. But there wasn’t one day I didn’t think about you, Brandon. There wasn’t one day I didn’t fantasize about you coming to find me and take me away. But you had to go and be all cavalier—you had to have been in that gift shop for a long time for Bob to have recognized you.” She shook her head again, looking into my eyes. “Hell, I work there and he doesn’t recognize me half the time. Worked there, I mean.” Tears clouded her eyes again. She had to have realized that her life there was over.
I knew those things about her. I knew how she longed to not be the Jenna Davis. How she just wanted some semblance of normalcy in her life. I had wanted to give it to her. I’d had every intention of actually giving it to her when I took her to Montana. Everything was so messed up—so screwed up that I could barely even recognize it as my own life now. I didn’t know how to make her understand that. “I wanted all of those things for you, Jen. For us. If you had just stayed at the cabin…” I paused, trying to be careful with my words. I didn’t want to upset her even more. I knew she was my only friend in the world right now—there was no one else I could count on. No one else I could trust. There hadn’t been in too long, and I had made that decision. I had made the choice—I chose her. I chose to be with Jenna Davis, knowing what it meant, and now I was paying for it. I’d been paying for it for far longer than she realized, but I was definitely paying for it now. “If you had stayed in the cabin, we could have worked it out. I came back for you. I wasn’t even gone a week, Jen.”
Her eyes widened. “You think I chose to leave? You think—?”
Cade’s glance into the backseat at the rise in her voice stopped her. He gave her a barely discernible shake of his head.
She pressed her lips together to stop herself, turning her body away from me again.
He was in on this. Cade. The man who’d had a hand in kidnapping her—the man who’d had a hand in all of this. I wasn’t even sure whose side he was on now, he seemed to switch sides so quickly. For the right price, anyway. But I could see that she trusted him. For some unknown reason, she trusted that man. I couldn’t imagine anything that could have ever happened in the months we’d been apart that would have ever made her trust him again. She knew. She knew he’d taken a bribe from Ryan and she knew that he’d looked the other way as Ryan all but sold her back to Daniel.
I didn’t know what in the hell was going on. None of this made much sense—Jen and Marian talking made no sense. At all. And Jen and Cade was even worse. I rubbed at my temples, almost wishing someone could just send the knowledge of what in the hell had transpired over here in the last nine months directly to my brain. Thinking about it was almost painful. Thinking about how scared out of her mind Jen had to have been when all of this came down almost brought tears to my eyes.
I blew out a long breath. I didn’t even care if Cade heard us anymore—I just wanted some answers. I needed to know what Jen knew before I had to make my appearance in front of Marian Hennessey Davis—the woman who had been Jen’s mother until a year ago.
I looked up at the ceiling, trying to collect my thoughts. “Tell me this, Jen. If you didn’t leave by your own free will, what happened to the car? The car was gone when I came back. I knew that you’d know I didn’t leave on my own when you saw the car still there.”
She nodded, turning to me again. “It’s not that simple. Nothing about this is simple.”
“I don’t understand.” I didn’t—I didn’t understand a goddamned thing about this. This was the most confusing conversation we’d ever had, and I just wanted her to spill it—Cade be damned. What was he going to do to me? Marian wanted to see me—there was no way Cade was going to get in the middle of that confrontation. I had been surprised the first time that Jen had dragged me in front of her that she didn’t confront me then. I knew this time she was going to eviscerate me.
“I didn’t understand when I woke up in a pool of my own blood. I didn’t understand when I went running into our bedroom, half expecting to find you dead in our bed, but found a bed that I knew was made by Melissa. I didn’t understand that I didn’t see any sign of a struggle, Brandon. So don’t ask me about leaving by my own free will.” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t want you to think I’m still upset about it. I get it. After I heard … everything, I understood.”
“What did you hear? What did you hear that made you understand?”
Her face fell and she looked toward Cade.
“Don’t worry about him. Just tell me. What is it that you think you know?”
Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper—I could hardly hear her over the sound of the car driving on the road. “I know everything.”
I shook my head. “I highly doubt that, Jen.”
Tears began to swim in her eyes. “That doesn’t make me feel any better, Brandon.”
My body tensed and my voice deepened. “Specifically. What is it that you think you know?”
She was still whispering, her voice quivering. “I know we’re both dead if they find us together.”
I had to close my eyes to keep from rolling them. “Don’t be ridiculous. I would never let anything happen to you. Ever. I’d die for you, Jen. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”
Her lips were trembling. “It’s why I stayed away. It’s why I hid here—to protect you. They said if we were ever together again, we’d both die. I didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t want to risk
losing you.”
I rubbed at my forehead. None of this made sense. It definitely hadn’t been what I was expecting when I found her. When I realized she was hiding, I knew I could figure something out. I knew I could come up with a plan to hide her somewhere better than where she was hiding. I guess I just hadn’t realized she was hiding from me. Not from the Agostinos, who really did have a score to settle, and not from her father, who probably would have sold her for any political advantage he thought he could win. No, she was hiding from me—for me, I guess, and none of it made any sense. Not a bit of fucking sense.
I shook my head again, more to try to clear it than for any other reason. “Who, Jen? Who is ‘they?’ Who is it that’s been filling your head with this bullshit?”
The look on her face changed then—I had probably gone too far. “It isn’t bullshit. And it came from a pretty reliable source. One even you’d trust, Brandon.”
I had to restrain myself from raising my voice. I knew I wasn’t angry with her—not really. I just wanted to know who it was that had gotten to her like this. Who it was that was making her believe that I was the villain in this story. “Who? Who told you all of this? Because it isn’t true, Jen. You’re not going to die because we breathed the same air. And if you had just done something—anything—to tell me where you were, I could have told you that. We wouldn’t have had to go through this—”
“Your sister. Your sister told me that, Brandon. Krystal told me—she told me everything.”
My heart didn’t just race in my chest at those words—it sped like it was trying to fly out of my body. I couldn’t even speak—my mouth was hanging open like I was trying to catch flies or something.
It was my worst nightmare. There was only one person in my life who knew the truth about anything I had done in my past. And if Krystal really had told Jen, I couldn’t understand how she was sitting in the same car with me now. I couldn’t understand how she would have allowed me into her bed. She couldn’t know. There was no possible way she knew everything, because if she did, I knew she would never speak to me again.