by T. K. Chapin
“I wonder if you kissed Jax again, if his kiss could magically work like in a movie and make you remember everything else?” Valorie added with a laugh.
“Jax and I kissed?” I asked. My eyes went wide and my heartbeat picked up speed with each passing moment. Furrowing my eyebrows, I shook my head, trying to process the reality. “Why on earth would I kiss my bodyguard?”
“You didn’t tell her, Jonathan?” Valorie asked, her words icier than the sidewalk outside.
“I guess I forgot,” Jonathan said gently, looking up at the ceiling.
She smacked him on the shoulder. “Jerk.” Leaning toward me, she grabbed my hand. “You and Jax had something going on. You two were close, I know that.”
“Why didn’t he tell me? Or why didn’t Rick?”
“I don’t think Rick knew. It wasn’t really known by everybody. Me and Jonathan and then the two of you were it, I think.” Tilting her head, Valorie said, “Why do you think he stayed so long after everybody else had gone home? It wasn’t just because you were his client. It was because he loved you.”
My heart raced, just like it did every time I heard his name. I believed Valorie about the kiss. I even believed her about the feelings too. What I struggled with was how I could ever be interested in my bodyguard and how he could let me be kidnapped if he truly loved me.
Chapter 48 - Jax
AFTER MEETING WITH WINSTON, I hit the weights hard at the gym. My frustration and the hopeless feeling inside were mounting war against my spirit, and I figured a workout might help release some of the tension. After showering and a change of clothes, I pulled my cellphone out of my locker and saw an unknown missed call.
I called it back.
It was the International Adoption Agency of Mexico letting me know the finalization for the adoption had almost been fully processed.
“So, what now?” I asked the caseworker as I paced in front of my gym locker. “Do I just come down and pick him up?”
“I just need you to sign a final paper and he’s yours.”
“No court?”
“Nope. Since his aunt, the legal guardian, signed all rights over to you, there’s no need for court. I was able to rush the order since it was an emergency.”
“Great!” I said, cheering. “I’m heading there on the next plane out of Spokane.”
Hanging up with her, I jumped in the air and swung a fist. I smiled genuinely for the first time in a long while. This was it. He’d be coming to live with me in the States and he’d never have to be subjected to the horrific living conditions at his aunt’s house again. Slipping my phone into my pocket, I shut my locker and then I remembered I was most likely out of a job. How am I going to pay for everything? It took almost all the money I had in savings to pay his wretch of an aunt!
Getting out to my car, I drove home conflicted in my heart and mind over the situation I was suddenly in. I knew just what I needed.
Arriving home, I went straight for my Bible on the bookshelf in my living room. Winston was right. I needed to be in the Word. I wasn’t sure of my finances or where I’d be working, but I knew I served and loved a God that was bigger than all of my problems, no matter how vast they were. Sitting down on my couch, I opened my Bible and began reading randomly. As I came to a particular verse, it jumped off the page and caused me to pause and to ponder.
Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”
Galatians 3:11
Connecting that with verse 10 leading up to it which stated, ‘For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse,’ it dawned on me that I had been living in a partial false reality. The law, according to what Winston told me at WIN, was a set of rules. I had been relying a lot on my own strength and ability, trying to play by a set of rules. Whether it was with my resistance to drinking, trying to find Chelsea, or snatching the little boy from the clutches of his deranged aunt, I was doing it all on my own terms and staying in control. Now, facing unemployment, fatherhood, and the great unknown of the future, I had to place my trust fully in God.
Picking up the phone, I called the airline.
Chapter 49 – Jax
WITH EZEKIEL BY MY SIDE, we headed out from our plane and toward the security gate in Spokane. My heart was overwhelmed with excitement and wonder of what was in store for us as we started the next chapter of our life. I prayed as I walked, asking God for wisdom. That was my heart’s prayer ever since I first boarded the plane from Spokane to Mexico to pick him up. I knew not only my life, but his too, would never be the same from this day forward.
As we exited the security gate, Ezekiel wheeled over to the restroom. As he left my side, I saw someone I thought I’d never see again—Chelsea.
She was standing there with a sign that said, Jax and Ezekiel. She was wearing a yellow and white flowered dress, her hair in a ponytail and a smile on her lips.
The walk over to the smiling woman of my dreams felt surreal. Did she remember me?
When I made it to her, she dropped her sign to her side and laughed.
I let my backpack slip off my shoulder and hit the floor. Picking her up in my arms, we twirled and kissed.
Releasing from our kiss, she looked at me and said, “Does that feel wrong to you?”
Remembering her saying that in the darkness of the night before she went missing, I smiled again. She remembered. Setting her down, I had to ask. “Do you remember everything?”
She shook her head. “No, just bits and pieces of before the day in the park. But even before those pieces came back, whenever I heard your name, I would get this feeling inside my gut that you were something more to me.” Tipping her head to the side, she looked at me. “What we had was really real, wasn’t it?”
“It was real and still is.” The words rushed out quickly. “I didn’t tell you about us because I didn’t want to hurt you, Chels. I worried if I tried to force it, I could potentially force the bad memories back in too. I knew if God wanted us together, He’d figure out a way to work it all out.” Just then, Ezekiel wheeled up to us, smiling at the two of us as he approached.
“Hello again, Ezekiel. I am so glad you’re part of Jax’s family now!” Chelsea looked genuine in her words as she spoke to him, relief at her words coursed through me as I didn’t know how she’d react to me adopting a child.
“Me too!” Ezekiel grinned.
“God figured out a way to work it all out. Didn’t he?” Chelsea said, beaming as our eyes met again.
Turning my head, I looked at Ezekiel. “He sure did.”
Lifting her chin with my finger, I leaned in and kissed her again.
Epilogue-Chelsea
Missions had been in my heart since I was a young girl, and that didn’t change with what happened in Mexico. Winston kept Jax on at WIN with a probation period of a year. Rick did apologize for lying to me, but things would never be the same and I think he knew that. Two months after everything happened he and his wife decided to move to Connecticut. He claimed it was because of the job offer at a church up there, but I think he just wanted to start fresh. Two years after Jax adopted Ezekiel, we got married and became a family. For our honeymoon, we went on a missionary trip to Brazil. My memory from Mexico never did return, but I’m okay with that. In the end, I feel it was God’s love and protection that kept those memories from returning to me.
The End.
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One Thursday Morning (Click/Tap here to view on Amazon)
Prologue
To love and be loved—it was all I ever wanted. Nobody could ever convince me John was a bad man. He made me feel loved when I did not know what love was. I was his and he was mine. It was perfect … or at least, I thought it was.
I cannot pinpoint why everything changed in our lives, but it did—and for the worst. My protector, my savior, and my whole world came crashing down like a heavy spring do
wnpour. The first time he struck me, I remember thinking it was just an accident. He had been drinking earlier in the day with his friends and came stumbling home late that night. The lights were low throughout the house because I had already gone to bed. I remember hearing the car pull up outside in the driveway. Leaping to my feet, I came rushing downstairs and through the kitchen to greet him. He swung, which I thought at the time was because I startled him, and the back side of his hand caught my cheek.
I should have known it wasn’t an accident.
The second time was no accident at all, and I knew it. After a heavy night of drinking the night his father died, he came to the study where I was reading. Like a hunter looking for his prey, he came up behind me to the couch. Grabbing the back of my head and digging his fingers into my hair, he kinked my neck over the couch and asked me why I hadn’t been faithful to him. I had no idea what he was talking about, so out of sheer fear, I began to cry. John took that as a sign of guilt and backhanded me across the face. It was hard enough to leave a bruise the following day. I stayed with him anyway. I’d put a little extra makeup on around my eyes or anywhere else when marks were left. I didn’t stay because I was stupid, but because I loved him. I kept telling myself that our love could get us through this. The night of his father’s death, I blamed his outburst on the loss of his father. It was too much for him to handle, and he was just letting out steam. I swore to love him through the good times and the bad. This was just one of the bad times.
Each time he’d hit me, I’d come up with a reason or excuse for the behavior. There was always a reason, at least in my mind, as to why John hit me. Then one time, after a really bad injury, I sought help from my mother before she passed away. The closest thing to a saint on earth, she dealt with my father’s abuse for decades before he died. She was a devout Christian, but a warped idea of love plagued my mother her entire life. She told me, ‘What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.’ That one piece of advice she gave me months before passing made me suffer through a marriage with John for another five trying years.
Each day with John as a husband was a day full of prayer. I would pray for him not to drink, and sometimes, he didn’t—those were the days I felt God had listened to my pleas. On the days he came home drunk and swinging, I felt alone, like God had left me to die by my husband’s hands. Fear was a cornerstone of our relationship, in my eyes, and I hated it. As the years piled onto one another, I began to deal with two entirely different people when it came to John. There was the John who would give me everything I need in life and bring flowers home on the days he was sober, and then there was John, the drunk, who would bring insults and injury instead of flowers.
I knew something needed to desperately change in my life, but I didn’t have the courage. Then one day, it all changed when two little pink lines told me to run and never look back.
Chapter 1
Fingers glided against the skin of my arm as I lay on my side looking into John’s big, gorgeous brown eyes. It was morning, so I knew he was sober, and for a moment, I thought maybe, just maybe I could tell him about the baby growing inside me. Flashes of a shared excitement between us blinked through my mind. He’d love having a baby around the house. He really would. Behind those eyes, I saw the man I fell in love with years ago down in Town Square in New York City. Those eyes were the same ones that brought me into a world of love and security I had never known before. Moments like that made it hard to hate him. Peering over at his hand that was tracing the side of my body, I saw the cut on his knuckles from where he had smashed the coffee table a few nights ago. My heart retracted the notion of telling him about the baby. I knew John would be dangerous for a child.
Chills shivered up my spine as his fingers traced from my arm to the curve of my back. Could I be strong enough to live without him? I wondered as the fears sank back down into me. Even if he was a bit mean, he had a way of charming me like no other man I had ever met in my life. He knew how to touch gently, look deeply and make love passionately. It was only when he drank that his demons came out.
“Want me to make you some breakfast?” I asked, slipping out of his touch and from the bed to my feet. His touches were enjoyable, but I wanted to get used to not having them. My mind often jumped back and forth between leaving, not leaving, and something vaguely in between. It was hard.
John smiled up at me from the bed with what made me feel like love in his eyes. I suddenly began to feel bad about the plan to leave, but I knew he couldn’t be trusted with a child. Keep it together.
“Sure, babe. That would be great.” He brought his muscular arms from out of the covers and put them behind his head. My eyes traced his biceps and face. Wavy brown hair and a jawline that was defined made him breathtakingly gorgeous. Flashes of last night’s passion bombarded my mind. He didn’t drink, and that meant one thing—we made love. It started in the main living room just off the foyer. I was enjoying my evening cup of tea while the fireplace was lit when suddenly, John came home early. I was worried at first, but when he leaned over the couch and pulled back my blonde hair, he planted a tender kiss on my neck. I knew right in that moment that it was going to be a good night. Hoisting me up from the couch with those arms and pressing me against the wall near the fireplace, John’s passion fell from his lips and onto the skin of my neck as I wrapped my arms around him.
The heat between John and me was undeniable, and it made the thoughts of leaving him that much harder. It was during those moments of pure passion that I could still see the bits of the John I once knew—the part of John that didn’t scare me and had the ability to make me feel safe, and the part of him that I never wanted to lose.
“All right,” I replied with a smile as I broke away from my thoughts. Leaving down the hallway, I pushed last night out of my mind and focused on the tasks ahead.
Retrieving the carton of eggs from the fridge in the kitchen, I shut the door and was startled when John was standing on the other side. Jumping, I let out a squeak. “John!”
He tilted his head and slipped closer to me. With nothing on but his boxer briefs, he backed me against the counter and let his hand slide the corner of my shirt up my side. He leaned closer to me. I felt the warmth of his breath on my skin as my back arched against the counter top. He licked his lips instinctively to moisten them and then gently let them find their way to my neck. “Serenah …” he said in a smooth, seductive voice.
“Let me make you breakfast,” I said as I set the carton down on the counter behind me and turned my neck into him to stop the kissing.
His eyebrows rose as he pulled away from my body and released. His eyes met mine. There it was—the change. “Fine.”
“What?” I replied as I turned and pulled down a frying pan that hung above the island counter.
“Nothing. Nothing. I have to go shower.” He left down the hallway without a word, but I could sense tension in his tone.
Waiting for the shower to turn on after he walked into the bathroom and slammed the door, I began to cook his eggs. When a few minutes had passed and I hadn’t heard the water start running, I lifted my eyes and looked down the hallway.
There he was.
John stood at the end of hallway, watching me. Standing in the shifting shadows of the long hallway, he was more than creepy. He often did that type of thing, but it came later in the marriage, not early on and only at home. I never knew how long he was standing there before I caught him, but he’d always break away after being seen. He had a sick obsession of studying me like I was some sort of weird science project of his.
I didn’t like it all, but it was part of who he had become. Not much longer, I reminded myself.
I smiled down the hallway at him, and he returned to the bathroom to finally take his shower. As I heard the water come on, I finished the eggs and set the frying pan off the burner. Dumping the eggs onto a plate, I set the pan in the sink and headed to the piano in the main living room. Pulling the bench out from under the p
iano, I got down on my hands and knees and lifted the flap of carpet that was squared off. Removing the plank of wood that concealed my secret area, I retrieved the metal box and opened it.
Freedom.
Ever since he hit me that second time, a part of me knew we’d never have the forever marriage I pictured, so in case I was right, I began saving money here and there. I had been able to save just over ten thousand dollars. A fibbed high-priced manicure here, a few non-existent shopping trips with friends there. It added up, and John had not the foggiest clue, since he was too much of an egomaniac to pay attention to anything that didn’t directly affect him. Sure, it was his money, but money wasn’t really ‘a thing’ to us. We were beyond that. My eyes looked at the money in the stash and then over at the bus ticket to Seattle dated for four days from now. I could hardly believe it. I was really going to finally leave him after all this time. Amongst the cash and bus ticket, there was a cheap pay-as-you go cellphone and a fake ID. I had to check that box at least once a day ever since I found out about my pregnancy to make sure he hadn’t found it. I was scared to leave, but whenever I felt that way, I rubbed my pregnant thirteen-week belly, and I knew I had to do what was best for us. Putting the box back into the floor, I was straightening out the carpet when suddenly, John’s breathing settled into my ears behind me.
“What are you doing?” he asked, towel draped around his waist behind me. I should have just waited until he left for work … What were you thinking, Serenah? My thoughts scolded me.
Slamming my head into the bottom of the piano, I grabbed my head and backed out as I let out a groan. “There was a crumb on the carpet.”
“What? Underneath the piano?” he asked.
Anxiety rose within me like a storm at sea. Using the bench for leverage, I placed a hand on it and began to get up. When I didn’t respond to his question quick enough, he shoved my arm that was propped on the piano bench, causing me to smash my eye into the corner of the bench. Pain radiated through my skull as I cupped my eye and began to cry.