I pulled out and took the route to Josh’s place. It was later than I would have liked, but there had been countless nights when I used his bedroom window to go inside and play video games long after his momma sent me home.
I parked close to their driveway without being noticed and cut the engine. The rocky road of his driveway crunched beneath my shoes, and when his daddy’s dog, a German Shepherd named Ralph, came around the side of the house and toward me, I was never so happy that instead of barking at me, he tried to jump on me and lick my face.
“Down, Ralph,” I whispered.
He followed me to Josh’s window, which thankfully was on the front of the house facing the main road. Going to his window, I went up on my tiptoes and tried to peek through the blinds to make sure no one was in the room with him. The light was on, and from what I could see, no one was inside the room.
Josh never locked his window. So, when I slid my palms along the glass to lift it, it popped out of the windowsill easily and slid up. I pushed the blinds to the side and used the muscles in my arms to lift myself up and into his bedroom. Once inside, I shook out my shirt and sat on the edge of his bed. If his light was on, then he wouldn’t be gone long.
Two minutes passed before his door opened, and he limped inside. He was naked from the waist up with a towel wrapped around his hips. His broken arm was in a plastic sling, keeping his cast from getting wet, and my eyes went to his chest and the healing cuts and scars that weren’t there before.
He closed the door and turned when he finally noticed me there.
“What are you doing here?” he snapped. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
What was going on?
I understood he had been through a lot, but none of this was making any sense.
I stood and started toward him but stopped when he held out a hand.
“Don’t come near me,” he spat.
“Josh, I want to be there for you. Let me back in.”
He shook his head, his hand going to the doorknob to leave.
“Wait,” I called out, stopping him. “I need to tell you something. It’s probably terrible timing, but you should know that I’m …”
“I said get out!” he screamed, interrupting me just as I was about to tell him I was pregnant. “I don’t care about you. Don’t you get it? I never want to see you again, so just get the fuck out of my room!”
“But Josh, I need to tell …”
Just then, his dad came bursting through the door, having heard Josh’s screaming.
“What the hell, Jenny? We told you it wasn’t a good time.”
“I understand, sir, but …”
“No buts. Come with me,” he said, reaching out and pulling me by the arm.
I couldn’t leave yet.
Josh needed to know I was pregnant.
I needed his opinion on what we should do about it.
“Wait, Josh, this is about us!” I called out, pushing my hand against the doorframe to stop Mr. Black from pulling me out of the room.
Josh reached out; his eyes angry with me as he roughly pulled my fingers from his doorframe. “There is no us. There will never be an us. Let it go.”
And then his dad pulled me out of the doorway, and Josh slammed the door in my face.
The fight left my body, and my brain went numb. I didn’t fight as Mr. Black showed me to the front door.
“Just give him time,” he said as he pulled the front door open for me to leave.
I stepped onto the porch in shock and nodded. I couldn’t use my words. Nothing would come out. I stood there staring back at Mr. Black as he slowly closed the front door in my face. Once the door was closed, I crumpled. Tears soaked my face as I walked across the front yard and back toward Dad’s truck.
I had never felt this kind of pain before. Heartbreak was a bitch.
When I got back to the house, the lights were out, and Dad was in his room. I locked up and went to my room. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Tears soaked my pillow until exhaustion set in, and I finally fell asleep.
I woke the next morning to find Devin sitting at the foot of the bed. His head was in his hands, and his breathing was accelerated. I knew my brother. He had spent the night stewing, and the anger had reached the boiling point.
“Dev?” I sat up on my elbows and blinked the sleep out of my eyes.
“Who is he? I’ll kill the motherfucker with my bare hands.”
“Dev. Don’t be like this.”
“I don’t want to hear another word, Jennifer.” I gasped at his use of my full name. He never called me by my full name. No one did. He was pissed. Livid. “The next word that comes out of your mouth better be his name. That’s all.”
I tossed my blanket back and stood from my bed. “Devin, I’m nineteen. What were you doing when you were nineteen, huh?”
“This isn’t about me!” he exploded, jumping from my bed. “This is about my little sister, whose future is now fucking ruined. College, Jenny. You were there. You were about to change the world. And now …” he paused and shook his head.
“And now, what?”
He chuckled; the sound eviler than anything I had heard in my life. “His name. I want his fucking name.”
“Why? What will you do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll drive to Texas and rip his fucking balls off. That’s what!”
Texas?
I didn’t even think about everyone believing I’d gone to school and got knocked up. An idea formed in my mind.
I couldn’t tell him Josh was the one. Josh had already been through so much, and it wasn’t technically his fault. I told him I was on the pill, and I was. I was the one to climb on top of him, not the other way around.
This was my fault.
I didn’t want Josh to find out this way. I didn’t want anyone to find out this way, but it was happening, and if I could do anything to keep Devin from going to Josh’s house and breaking even more bones, then I would.
“I can’t give you his name.”
“What do mean, you can’t give me his name?”
“I can’t give you his name because I don’t remember it.”
Devin’s eyes grew wide, his mouth curling up in disgust.
“Excuse me? You’re trying to tell me you fucked some random dude, and you didn’t even know his fucking name?” he yelled, telling the entire house for me. “That’s not like you, Jenny. Try again!”
Tears pressed at my eyes, threatening to spill.
The crying thing was for the birds. I had never cried or felt the need to cry so much in my fucking life.
Stupid pregnancy hormones.
“It’s the truth,” I whispered, suddenly feeling exhausted as if I hadn’t slept at all the night before.
“Explain right fucking now.”
“I went to a party with my dormmate. I wasn’t thinking, and I was homesick. So, I drank a lot. The next thing I know, I woke up next to some guy. I didn’t wake him. I got up, dressed, and left.”
“You don’t know the father?”
“No.”
His face was fire red, his nostrils flaring with his heated breaths. If I didn’t know Devin, I would be scared to death, but he would never put his hands on me. Especially knowing I was pregnant.
The word pregnant rang through my mind, pinging against the nerve endings until I felt like my head was going to pop. Then my stomach flipped, and nausea began to turn. I covered my mouth and gagged before I took off toward the bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet before I threw up everything from the day before.
I heaved, clutching the sides of the cool toilet bowl until nothing was left. I felt a cold washcloth slip across the back of my neck and looked up to find Lilly smiling nervously down at me.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard my dad ask behind Lilly.
“She’s lost her fucking mind, that’s what’s wrong with her,” Devin replied.
“It’s morning sickness. Can you guys please give us a mi
nute?”
Lilly’s soft voice worked magic, and I heard the guys leave and the bathroom door shut softly.
“Feeling better?” she asked, her dark brown eyes searching my face.
I nodded.
I sat back against the bathtub and rested my head against the cold porcelain.
“Are you going to tell them the truth?” she asked, making me look at her.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Jenny. We both know there was no one in Texas.”
“We do?”
She grinned and nodded. “Was it Josh?”
I nodded, not able to say the words, and then I broke down. She pulled me into her arms and rubbed my back. “Shh, it’s okay. We’ll get through this. I’m here for you. Give Dad and Devin time.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t worried about my dad and Devin. I knew they would forgive me. It was Josh I was worried about.
“They can’t know. No one can know until I tell him. He’s been through too much. He won’t even see me right now.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
“I’m serious, Lil. Promise you won’t say anything.”
She reached up and swiped a tear from my cheek. Her sweet smile calmed me. “I promise.”
And I knew she would keep that promise until I felt the moment was right.
If the moment was ever right.
I didn’t go back to school right away even though Lilly and Devin begged me to. I couldn’t leave South Carolina knowing Josh was barricaded in his house and injured. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to see me. I wanted to stay close in case he needed me, but that didn’t happen.
I could do nothing but stress over him and miss him, and meanwhile, he had no desire to even see me or at least answer when I called. It was as if we hadn’t been anything to each other. Like we hadn’t spent almost a lifetime together. Obviously, he considered our last night together a mistake, and this was his way of letting me know. That was the only thing that made sense to me. And with that realization, my heart broke so hard it hardened. I wasn’t sure it would ever soften again.
Two days later, Josh left South Carolina.
Without seeing me.
Without even speaking to me.
He was gone, and no one would tell me where he went.
Why was I sitting around waiting on him like this?
One night together and he thought he could treat me like shit?
I didn’t think so.
If he didn’t want a relationship with me, whether it was romantic or friends, then I certainly wasn’t going to force one on him. I would have to be satisfied in knowing he was safe and alive. I had no idea where he was, but at least I knew he was okay. And even though my heart broke every morning that I woke knowing we were no longer anything to each other, that would have to be enough. It would have to get me through.
Two days after he left, I went back to school. I couldn’t stay and finish my degree from Texas A&M, but I could finish my prerequisites and maybe transfer them to a school in South Carolina. I wasn’t going to let things fall apart for me. I could do this. I could do anything I put my mind to, and while my dad and Devin still weren’t being chatty, I knew they would have my back.
I didn’t need Josh.
I had a piece of him, and I had a family who loved me and wanted to see me succeed.
Fuck the rest.
I would show them all.
18
Josh
Hurting Jenny was killing me—tearing me apart worse than the shrapnel from the IED blowback. The look in her eyes when I screamed at her. The way her lip trembled when I lied and said I wanted nothing with her. It was destroying me.
I was hurting her by refusing to see her, but she wouldn’t understand. She would push, and I was too afraid to be pushed by anyone anymore. I didn’t trust myself not to flip the switch, and knowing I no longer trusted myself with the girl I loved was the thing that pushed me to take my next step.
I was only home a few days before I found myself on a plane yet again and headed to Texas to enter the Warrior Transition Unit. That fact was, I had a severe case of post-traumatic stress and a possible Traumatic Brain Injury. Until I was better, I couldn’t bring myself to pull Jenny down with me. Her future was too bright. She had too much to experience, and I loved her enough to make sure she would get those experiences. Even if I had to disappear from her life.
Which was what I did.
I did it for her even though it killed me and hurt me far worse than any injury I had ever received.
I was in the Warrior Transition Unit for three months before they medically turned me out. I was no longer a soldier. I had a brief stint doing the one thing I was most passionate about, and that was all I got. I couldn’t find it in myself to go home, and since the only thing I really knew was football and farming, I found myself a job on a local dairy farm in Waco, Texas.
The good news about working on a farm in Waco was that it was less than two hours away from Texas A&M. Sometimes after a hard day’s work, I would find myself in my work truck and making my way to her. I would park out front, watching the college students and hoping that I would get just a tiny glimpse of her.
And then one day I did.
She was walking across the courtyard with a guy, and the smile on her face was so brilliant it sucked the oxygen from my body. I gripped the steering wheel and watched as they talked and walked toward the front office building.
She was wearing a pair of sweats and a large T-shirt. She looked different. Fuller in her face and she was glowing. I smiled, glad she seemed to be happy without me, yet burning inside to be close to her.
She looked toward the farm truck I was driving, and I paused, worried that she might have seen me, but she turned away yet again when the guy she was walking with started to talk.
He was tall. Probably a bit taller than me, and he wasn’t a bad looking guy. Jealousy burst through me, ripping at my skin and making me feel irrational. I could feel the anxiety rushing against my spine, working its way into my brain to send me over the edge.
Like they had taught me at rehab, I took several deep breaths and tried to focus on five things. I took my attention away from Jenny for just a second to gather myself, and when I looked back, she was gone.
That night, I drove through my new town, taking in the views and missing home so fucking much my chest ached. I was afraid and nervous everywhere I went, but I had no one I could turn to.
Pulling out my cell, I called Ashley so she could talk me down. She understood. We had gone through the same thing. Hell, she had been right beside me in the convoy. Her injuries had been mostly mental, but still, an injury was an injury. She answered on the second ring.
“What’s up, Black?” Every time she called me Black, it made me think of Jenny and the guys on my old football team.
“I need to talk.”
I heard her shuffling around in the background.
“Can you talk, or is a bad time?” I asked.
“Yeah, I can. Tell me what’s going on?”
Without giving too many details about Jenny, I told her someone from my past had triggered an anxiety attack, and I was having a hard time shaking it.
“Just breathe. Do you want to come over?”
“No. I think I’m good enough to go home.”
Even though going home to my empty apartment was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. If I was being honest, I just wanted to go home and be with my family. I should have been working my family farm, not making some other man rich with my time and experience.
But going home wasn’t an option. I couldn’t find it in myself to leave Jenny. Even if she had no clue I was lingering around her.
“Are you sure? I’m just hanging out here at my place. I could use the company. Trevor is at work, so I’m kind of bored.”
“Yeah. I think I’m just going to go home and get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.”
“Okay. Well, if you c
hange your mind, let me know. I’ll be here.”
“Thanks, Ashley. I appreciate that.”
After hanging up, I drove through town once more before heading back to my place. Once I was inside, I undressed in my room and climbed into bed. Sleep would make it go away. If I could keep the nightmares away anyway.
My injuries had taken so much from me.
Jenny.
My family.
Children I was no longer able to have.
I had never thought about kids before, but being told you couldn’t have them changed things. Suddenly, I desired a family with Jenny. I wanted the entire package. A ring on her finger and three wild ass boys running around Daddy’s farm, which would be mine one day.
No.
It would be ours.
But I couldn’t offer her those things anymore. What kind of man would I be if I took those things away from Jenny?
She had never mentioned kids before, but I saw the way she looked at her niece, Emma. She loved that little girl, and I knew she would want her own one day.
I could never give her that. I was half a man, and Jenny deserved a whole person to share her life with. That was my final thought before sleep stole me away, and the nightmares rushed through my broken brain.
A few days passed before I found myself parked in front of Jenny’s school again, but after the one time, I never saw her there again. Even though I started going every day. It wasn’t until I got a phone call from my mom that I decided to give up Jenny.
“Hey, Mom,” I said into my cell.
“Hey, hon. How are you feeling today?”
“I’m good.”
I was lying.
I was miserable.
I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t leave Jenny. I wanted to see her face so badly it hurt, but it seemed as if she had disappeared from the campus.
“How are things back home?” I asked.
“Everyone’s good,” Mom responded. The sounds of her washing dishes by hand filled the line. “I wish I could say that same about the Michaels, though. Poor Harold is beside himself over everything happening with Jenny.”
Thick & Thin (Chubby Girl Chronicles Book 3) Page 12
