Page 39 of All of My Life

I stared at Chasin as he pulled the seat next to my hospital bed closer, and I wasn’t sure when I had fallen in love with him, but I’d had somewhere along the way. However, instead of the revelation bringing me joy, all I felt was regret. It felt as though the entire first chapters of my life were regrettable ones, and I was just so damn tired of the story not changing.

Chasin finally spoke. “I’m not doing a very good job of holding it together, so I’m going to ask you some questions, you’re going to answer them with the truth, and then we’ll go from there. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Who’s been hurting you, Jett?”

My chest felt tight, my stomach felt hollow, and my throat felt dry. This was the moment that I’d been trying to avoid since I could remember. This was the truth that I’d been trying to keep from everyone in this town. I felt like I was confessing to my priest, but there’d be no salvation for me. I was about to ruin everyone’s lives with my words, and if I didn’t tell the truth now, Chasin would find it out for himself later.

“My father,” I answered, finally saying the words out loud.

“For how long?”

“Since I was seven,” I admitted.

“Does he abuse your mother, or just you?”

“Both of us,” I answered. “That’s why…”

“Jett, I swear to God, I’m about to take a match to this fucking city,” he swore. “Do not fuck with me right now.”

“That’s…that’s why I have no friends,” I finally confessed. “My mother told me that I couldn’t make friends because…because they might figure out what was happening in our house if they ever came over, or…or I ended up trusting someone enough to tell them.”

Chasin let out a dark laugh. “Oh, but she didn’t need to worry about that, did she? I’ve been fucking you for almost two years, and you sure as fuck didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”

He was hurt, but that wasn’t my fault. “Maybe if we’d been doing more than fucking, then I would have.”

“Except you made sure that all we’d been doing was fucking,” he fired back. “No wonder you were okay with me just using you whenever I needed you. You never wanted anything more.”

I had nothing to say to that because he was right. “I made the decisions I thought were best for me; the ones that would help me through graduation.”

Chasin clamped his hands together, and it wasn’t until now that I noticed the bandages. As I stared at the bit of blood that had seeped through the white gauze, I thought about how he needed to find another way to deal with his anxiety.

“How often does he beat you?”

“A lot when I was younger, but not so much nowadays,” I answered. “Usually, it’s only when I’ve upset him or made him worry about his image.”

“You’re eighteen,” he pointed out. “What the fuck are you still doing there?”

“I need my high school diploma if I have any hope of doing anything with my life,” I told him. “Honestly, I don’t care if I work at Taco Bell for the rest of my life. However, even they require a high school diploma for full-time work. I checked.”

“And your mother?”

“I stopped thinking of her as my mother a long time ago,” I said, feeling the weight of the words deep in my chest. “She might also be a victim, but me being her daughter should have mattered more.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell anyone, Jett?” It was a valid question, but it sounded accusatory. Though it was a simple question, the answer was always complicated for abuse victims.

“He’s Councilman Morgan,” I reminded him. “Who was going to believe me over him and my mother? Who was going to take my word over a man that the entire city thought was the answer to all their problems? Have you seen his polls?” I shook my head. “Yeah, who was I going to tell, Chasin?”

“Me!” he roared, standing up, the chair flying back. “You should have told me!”

I didn’t say anything as Chasin paced the room, swearing a blue streak. It was always worse when it was someone that you cared about being hurt. My reality painted me as a coward, but it painted Chasin as helpless, and that was always hard for a man to deal with.

Chasin walked over to my bed, gripped the railings, then asked, “What happened today after school, Jett?”

I let out a shaky breath, knowing that things were going to get worse for us with the whole truth. “Sierra approached me at school, telling me to stay away from you, and how…how she spent the night with you last night,” I told him. “While I didn’t exactly believe her, it was just…it was too much.” His jaw ticked, and I knew that Sierra Frechere was going to regret ever becoming involved with Chasin Carver. “So, when I didn’t see you waiting for me by your car, I…I took off walking to clear my head. I just…I just needed some space.”

“What happened, Jett?”

---