Blinded By Hate (book 2)

Prologue

Jaclyn

Present

No one told me that therapy would take more than five years to recover a damaged heart. At the same time, my heart was never just damaged.

It was ripped in half and broken down to the tiniest piece you could imagine.

There is only one reason I didn’t just end it all after that night.

“How’s your heart feeling today, Jaclyn?” Patience, my therapist asks.

I force a small smile on my face and try to relax in the leather chair.

I’ve been seeing Patience for almost three years now. After the first year I moved to New York, I spent a good year rotating through different therapists until I found Patience. She has been super patient with me, pun not intended. Sometimes her advice isn’t why I come, sometimes I just want to cry it all out with no one to watch or judge.

It’s hard to cry in front of Junior when I’m always with him.

And crying on the subway home is definitely something I will never do because that’s just pathetic and embarrassing.

“It’s the same as always. It’s healed.”

“Are you still getting nightmares?” A guy in a black hood pops up in my mind and I can’t help but wince. Patience notices and she nods like she always does whenever she mentions him. “Time heals wounds, Jaclyn. It’s only been about five years.”

“I’m just done feeling like this,” I say, trying hard to not let a tear slip from my eye. “Every time I look in the mirror naked, I feel so disgusting and worthless. I feel empty.”

“But then you look at Junior and what happens?”

When she mentions Junior, I look at him on the floor. He’s laying down and watching his favorite movie, The Lion King. That little boy is the only reason I’m alive and am still breathing.

If I didn’t have him, I probably would have been six feet under.

“I feel like suddenly I’m filled with life again. Like there’s actually something living in here,” I say while touching my chest.

Patience smiles at me, it’s not a happy smile, it’s a sad one.

She knows all the gory details of that tragic night. She, my mom, my uncle, and Brandon are the only people who know.

I remember seeing my mom and I just broke down in her arms, wishing for it all to go away. She cried with me after I told her the details. She made me move back in with her for a good two years and then I moved out to New York when I got offered a journalist position. She always flies out to New York to visit and check up on me. She also calls every day to make sure I’m doing good and remaining healthy. She also loves talking to Junior as well.

We did have a big argument before I left for New York because she thought I wasn’t ready. But I still moved because I just needed my own space and to be alone with Junior.

“Like I said, time heals wounds. You have a huge wound, Jaclyn, and you sitting here and talking to me does help. You’ve grown a lot since you started seeing me. Each day is one step closer to finally moving on.”

“I just wish it wouldn’t take so long and that I could stop thinking about him and that night. I want the nightmares to go away. I have to sometimes sleep with Junior for those nightmares to go away and when they don’t, I scare him sometimes.”

“What happens when you scare him?”

A tear finally falls because I hate scaring Junior. He looks at me like he is scared of me and then he will run down the hall to Brandon’s apartment to get him to wake me up.

I wake up all sweaty and out of breath and I end up crying in Brandon’s arms before grabbing Junior and holding onto him.

“He cries and then tries to wake me up but sometimes I don’t wake up. Sometimes he would have to go to Brandon’s apartment to get him to wake me up. I try not to sleep with Junior much because of that, because I don’t want to scare him,” I explain before wiping the tears away from my eyes so that Junior doesn’t notice.

He’s too focused on his movie though.

“How are you doing with your eating?”

“Better. I eat the same as I told you last time,” I lie smoothly. Sometimes I might miss breakfast or lunch because I’m too busy or in a rush. But she doesn’t need to know that. “I have talked to my doctor about it, and she always makes sure I’m eating right and my A1C is in range. No more binging and then purging right after. I don’t like it when Junior asks me why I’m not eating with him at dinner.”

Patience nods her head again.

She does a lot of that, nodding her head at the good things I’m improving on.

“How are you feeling regarding your father?”

At the mention of him I feel nothing.

I know it’s shitty for a daughter to not feel anything regarding her dead father but to me, he died a long time ago.

There are always times when I wish I had something better than what my father gave.

“Nothing. I don’t know why I never feel anything for him when I think about the news my mother told me.”

My father died three years ago, when I moved to New York.

He was speeding on the highway while drunk and he ended up in a car crash where he died on impact.

I mean, that’s what he gets for doing that. Putting himself and others at risk while drunk was a stupid decision and he paid for that as well as all the other damage he caused.

All my father was, was a parasite that infected everything he touched.

I mean look at me?

I was one of the unlucky ones that got infected by the one person who was supposed to love me.

But he’s gone and I couldn’t help but feel relieved about him not reaching out again or talking to me.

I did ask him one night, just to give him a chance, if he wanted to meet his grandson and he told me to fuck off.

I never contacted him again.

“Does that make me a bad person?” I ask Patience.

She shakes her head. “No, Jaclyn. It doesn’t make you a bad person. You never saw your father as someone to look up to, so his death wasn’t significant to you. You only ever saw him as a regular person.” I nod my head at her, understanding and agreeing because she’s right. My father stopped being my father a long time ago. “And then what about him? What happens when you hear about him or see him?”

I’ve stopped crying about him every night. It took a good year or so to stop when Junior was born. I had other things to think about when Junior was born so I didn’t have time to think about the boy who ruined me.

My heart still aches, like a part of it is missing whenever I look at him or hear his name.

“I’m better than I was five years ago.”

“Do you still cry about him?”

I shrug. “I do, sometimes when I feel lonely or miss him.”

“And that’s normal. Have you gone out recently?”

I shake my head. “No, no dating for me. I want to focus on Junior.”

“You know it is healthy to date other people or at least see someone. It could help too, putting yourself out there,” Patience explains while I just sit there and stay quiet. “Hayden was your first love and he’s the father of your first child. He will always be a constant in your life because of that. But that doesn’t mean you should put your life on hold.”

“Yea,” I mumble while looking at Junior.

Whenever I look at Junior, I always see him because Junior reminds me so much of him.

“Junior gives you purpose. Anytime you’re having those thoughts, keep looking at Junior. He gives you strength. Usually, mothers who experience something traumatic cling onto their child because you grow a bond. That bond is so strong, and it keeps you going.”

I look away from Junior and stare at Patience. “What about the nightmares? I’m scared he’s gonna show up in my dreams.”

The black hooded man has been in my dreams since before I got kidnapped by Marco. He doesn’t leave my mind and with my dreams it’s the same thing as always. The hooded man kidnaps me, I wake up in that God-awful room, facing Marco before everything goes black and I start screaming. I have told Patience about this, and she tells me it’s just my anxiety and PTSD which she has prescribed medication for.

“I can increase your dosage by five more milligrams. If you need more, I can do another five but that would be the last adjustment before we try other things.”

“Okay. We can try that.”

“I don’t want you to rely on these medications though. Eventually, I do want you to stop taking them because they are very strong,” Patience says while writing down something in her notebook.

“Okay.”

I’m not addicted or anything, I just need something to get rid of the black hooded guy and all these fucking feelings that just won’t go away.

“I also want you to try sleeping without the trazodone for a few nights to see how it goes. We’ll follow up next week with another appointment to see how that works out for you. I’ll give you the prescription for the new dosage of sertraline but take the exact dosage, no more than twenty-five.”

“Okay,” I repeat.

“And spend more time with Junior. Take a day off from work and just spend the day with him. If you need a doctor's note, I can give you that but I really think Junior is going to help you heal, as he has been helping you.”

At that I look at Junior and instantly feel my heart swell, in a good way.

Junior is my world.

I know that if I didn’t have him, I would be six feet under.

He is the only reason I’m still alive and my heart is still beating.