Page 59 of Thick & Thin

Nausea threatened, and my chest ached so badly. I rubbed at the spot, feeling as though my insides were falling apart.

She had done this to me.

She had ripped my heart out.

After everything I had done for her.

Leaving home.

Staying in Texas just to be near her. Even if it was two hours away.

She had forgotten about me like I was nothing, ran off to Texas, and jumped into bed with someone else. Hell, it was probably even before I had gotten hurt.

What kind of woman had she become?

Fuck Jenny Michaels and everything she ever stood for.

She wasn’t worth the heart shattering inside my chest or the broken, unbalanced brain in my head. I never wanted to see her again. I would do everything in my power to make sure we never crossed paths. Even if that meant never going home to South Carolina again.

19

Jenny

3 Years Later

“His dick looks likea little man trapped in a turtleneck,” I said, pulling back from the unsolicited uncircumcised dick pic on Amy’s cell. “Seriously, put that shit away. I feel like it wants my soul.”

Amy laughed as I swatted at her iPhone before she cleared the screen and stuffed her phone in her back pocket. “He keeps sending them. I don’t know how to tell him his penis is the last thing I want to see. We broke up three weeks ago, and he’s just not getting it.”

“I can’t believe you even dated him.”

“Yeah, well, we all make mistakes. Plus, he’s hot.” She leaned over my desk and shuffled through my papers before looking around the garage. “Speaking of hot, where’s Devin?”

“Can we please not talk about my brother or his so-called level of hotness?”

She sighed and fell back into the chair across from my desk. “Oh God, Lilly’s the luckiest bitch in the world. She gets to have sex with him whenever she wants.”

Pausing from stacking the papers in my hands, I looked at her in disgust. “And we’re done here.”

I stuffed the papers in the month’s folder and filed them in Dad’s old black filing cabinet. I had been working the garage with Dad and Devin since I came home from Texas, and you could tell. For one, the office space was organized and clean. I couldn’t do anything about where we worked on the cars, but the office was basically my domain since I started working at the garage full time, which meant it was clean.

That was just one more thing about me that had changed. I had never been a clean and organized girl, but since I had my son, Caleb, it was the only way things would work. Being a single mom was hard work. Sure, my family and Mr. and Mrs. Black helped a ton, but being organized and clean made my days run smoother.

Living at home with Dad made the money situation easier. Not that I couldn’t ask Lilly and Devin for money if I needed to, but I never wanted to do that. Instead, I woke up early every morning, fed and dressed my son, dropped him off with Lilly since she was staying home with their kids, and I went to work with my dad and brother every day.

Whether I was under a car changing oil or filing paperwork and dealing with the garage’s taxes, I stayed busy making money. I kept my head down since the town had done nothing but gossip about me since I came running home with my tail between my legs and a baby in my belly, and I worked, knowing I was doing what was best for me and my baby boy.

“Let’s go,” I said, snatching my keys from the desk.

The garage had been closed for almost two hours, but I usually stayed behind and worked late. Lilly didn’t mind. The boys loved playing together, and it was nice because she always made sure he ate a healthy dinner with them.

Sitting around a table with a husband and wife wasn’t something Caleb was going to get from me anytime soon. I hadn’t so much as looked at another man since Josh, and I wasn’t sure I ever would.

Since Amy and her newest fling had broken up, she would come by most nights with hopes of getting a peek at Devin. Even though Devin was married with two kids, Amy couldn’t seem to let go of her crush.

Amy and I had never been friends in high school. I didn’t have any problem with her, but she was just another chick who was too girlie and boring for me. It wasn’t until I came home and started at the local tech school that we started to hang out. She was going to school for medical coding, and I settled for a degree in business, which honestly, wasn’t very useful since I was doing the same thing I would have done had I not gone to college at all.

The tech school wasn’t Texas A&M, but I couldn’t raise a baby alone in Texas and go to school. I went home with a lie about a one-night stand and antibiotics that messed up my birth control pill. People believed it, I was labeled a whore, which drove my dad and big brother nuts, and life went on.

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