Chapter 10 Bomb Drop
Chapter ten
Bomb Drop
Jenna stared at Jon’s text, guilt and something uncomfortably similar to longing paralyzing her forward momentum.
Good morning. How was your night? Sleep well?
She couldn’t possibly tell him it had taken her forever to fall asleep because he wouldn’t leave her thoughts.
That she’d agonized over the way they’d parted—again—and spent literal hours fighting some stupid desire to pick up her phone and call him back.
Never mind that she didn’t even know where he’d ended up.
The Misty Glades Inn? It was the closest their town had to a hotel and usually more vacant than not.
But she imagined a man like Jon would not appreciate the atmosphere of the place.
So, most likely, he’d driven all the way back to Klamath Falls or somewhere reasonably close, to be able to check on his hospitalized friend.
For all she knew, he wouldn’t even be back in town that day. Hell, maybe she’d offended him so thoroughly that he wouldn’t come back at all.
The thought made her heart ache even as it spiked her anger. This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.
Finally, Jenna found the strength to latch on that self-preserving anger and typed out the most neutral-honest response she could think of.
No problems at all, thank you for asking.
Adding any form of ‘good morning’ response felt like emotional encouragement, and she may have been the one to reach out the day before, but that only meant it behooved her to be the one to draw boundaries, too.
Jon was defaulting to her because she was familiar on some psychological level and he was still shaking off his sea-legs.
Or however that worked. Whatever he thought he felt for her was nostalgic at best. She was basically his rebound, except he was rebounding from a breakup with his dream career rather than another woman.
Jenna blew out a breath and shoved her phone into a pocket before snatching her purse off the hook. Maybe, someday, they’d find a way to balance the line as friends. Though honestly, she doubted it. But she was not going to be any man’s fallback girl.
She stepped outside and twisted around to lock the door.
I probably just didn’t do that yesterday.
It made sense. She’d been so frazzled with worry for Steph.
It was the same reason Jon hadn’t let her drive.
Once she had all the locks secured, she turned again to start forward—and made it about two feet.
Some kind of eco-friendly hydro-death trap car buzzed up to her curb, half blocking her driveway, and in the seconds it took Jenna to process the strange sight of the thing she’d never seen without the filter of an LED screen a blonde popped out.
It wasn’t unlike watching a Barbie eject from a remote-controlled toy, except the car was a respectable shade of blue, not hot pink.
The blonde rounded her vehicle in easy strides, rushing straight toward Jenna with an unmistakable glimmer in her somehow glowing blue eyes.
Discomfort twisted in Jenna’s gut. Retreat. She did not want to be cornered by who- or whatever this was. But it was already too late.
“Jenna Carr? You’re Jenna Carr, right?”
Jenna went ramrod stiff even as the discomfort doubled and converted to anger that was probably disproportionate to the actual offense. She narrowed her eyes at the approaching stranger. “Hodge,” she said firmly. “It’s Jenna Hodge. I haven’t gone by that name in years.”
The woman came to a perfectly balanced immediate stop just outside arm’s reach and lifted the tablet she’d held tucked beneath her arm. Her delicately trimmed brow of equally golden hair furrowed for a heartbeat. “Oh, my apologies. The information I found has you listed under your married—”
“I took back my maiden name as soon as the divorce was final. Who the hell are you?” Nice?
Hardly. But then, neither was ambushing her on her doorstep, quite literally blocking her in, and addressing her by her abuser’s name.
She’d changed her name in all the legal and proper channels, even endured the DMV just to scrub the asshole off her record.
Using that name had not been a simple researching snafu.
The unfamiliar woman seemed undeterred. Up close, she was obviously a few inches taller than Jenna—and notably skinnier, of course.
Her long, golden blonde hair was pulled back into a pillowy looking braid that, combined with her blue eyes, perfectly contradicted the Goth-chic fashion style she wore.
Even her boots fit the aesthetic. She held out a hand. “I’m Ella, with the Planet Bugle.”
Jenna blinked. The what? Why did that sound like she ought to recognize it, when she was so sure she’d never heard of it before? She gave herself a shake. More importantly, why in the hell was a damn reporter standing in her driveway—on purpose?
Ella retracted her hand without looking remotely offended. “Sorry to pop in on you unannounced. Kind of figured you’d hang up if I opened with ‘can I ask you a few questions about your ex-husband?’”
Jenna folded her arms across her chest. “So instead you thought to ambush me outside where you think I won’t walk away?”
Ella shrugged. “We can go somewhere else—”
“You can go wherever you want, within legal reason,” Jenna interrupted. “I have somewhere to be and your toy car is blocking my drive.”
Ella’s smile widened. “Then I’ll be quick!”
“That wasn’t an invitation—”
“When was the last time you heard from, or spoke to, Mr. Carr?”
Jenna’s chest tightened merely at the repetition of the name. “We’re not doing this.”
Ella tapped something on her tablet. “Is it true you moved all the way across state lines, back to your hometown, to get away from him?”
“Get out of my way.” Jenna turned to start toward her SUV. It had four-wheel drive. She could probably run right over Ella’s wind-up-whatever.
Ella followed after her with another question. “Do you feel safe here, now that he’s been paroled?”
Jenna froze. No. No, she’d heard wrong. Or the bitch was baiting her for a reaction. She would have been notified—they had promised to notify her. She’d even gone out of her way to make sure the right people had her new contact information.
Slowly, carefully, Jenna turned to again face the suddenly quiet reporter. “What?”
Ella’s head bounced not unlike the way her car had bounced to a stop at the curb. One forward dip followed by a buoyant rebound. “Last week.” She turned her tablet around and held it out as if she had foreseen Jenna’s need for proof.
Jenna’s stare dropped to the screen and the words on display blurred for too many seconds as a jarringly unfamiliar image of a face she’d once believed she knew looked back at her.
It was a prison photo, and prison had obviously aged the man more than the years themselves might have.
But what struck her was that he wasn’t hiding the anger in his eyes anymore.
That, and he was larger—more muscular—than she’d known him to be.
She finally forced her focus to the lines of text and skimmed them quickly, searing them into her brain so she wouldn’t feel compelled to seek any information out and re-expose herself in an hour or a year. Reading it once was hard enough.
It was a short article, from an online source local to the region where they’d been living before his arrest. She didn’t see her name, merely a mention of ‘his wife’ in reference to the reason he’d been incarcerated years earlier.
The headline was the most important part, though.
The big, bold, ugly letters declaring in no uncertain terms that the nightmare she’d worked so hard to put behind her was walking the streets again. Time served, the article read.
Ella retracted her tablet as Jenna sucked in a shaky breath. “Even just one comment for the record would be wonderful.”
The world spun sideways and Jenna’s stomach revolted, hollowing out as if suddenly developing a crater inside. Her knees buckled.
“Oh!” Ella swooped in before Jenna’s face could meet with the concrete, catching her awkwardly around the torso and helping to slow and control the remainder of her descent.
“Okay, that’s a vibe. Um, hold on.” Once Jenna was on her ass on the edge of her small rectangle of lawn, Ella hopped up again and darted away.
Jenna didn’t have the energy to watch the woman’s movements.
Her entire body trembled. She wanted to close her eyes and make the day stop, or start over at least, but she was afraid if she closed her eyes she might collapse the rest of the way.
And the last thing she could do was let herself be so vulnerable. It wasn’t safe.
It’ll never be safe.
The last words Colin had ever said in her presence, said to her, roared through her mind once more. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you before I let you go off and live without me, you hear me? I’ll fucking kill you!”
Her divorce had been granted swiftly after that, without his signature, thanks to the numerous witnesses and the latest wound he’d managed to inflict before security had intervened. She’d considered that one worth it for what it had ultimately gained her—her freedom.
Now it felt like she’d overestimated that freedom.
“Here,” Ella said, crouching beside her and holding out a bottle of water. “It’s still sealed and everything. I keep a few in my car. It’s not cold, but that’s better for your system when you’re in shock, I’ve heard. Just take a few slow sips or something.”
Jenna was mildly amazed she was even able to hold the damn thing, and her fingers clenched a bit too tightly as her arm shook, but she didn’t slosh more than a drop or two in the effort to unscrew it.
Although, if she were honest, she feared she might vomit anything she put in her stomach right then.
“Is there anything I can get for you? Anyone you want to call, maybe?”