Chapter Fourteen
Mia
I worked in my classroom where I currently had two children and one adult. I’d learned that some of the women here hadn’t graduated high school. Sometimes they couldn’t read. Which only further convinced me I had made the right decision moving forward with my life.
Ada appeared in my doorway, her face tight with an urgency I hadn’t seen before. “I’m sorry, Mia. I need you for a moment.” Her voice carried none of its usual warmth. Something in the mixture of concern and distaste sent a chill through me.
I stood immediately, tucking a clipboard under my arm I used to take notes when necessary. The thing had become my constant companion, even more than my phone. “What’s going on?”
“Just come.” She didn’t wait for a response, already turning back down the hallway.
I followed her through Haven’s maze of corridors, past rooms giving people who had been beaten down the chance to rebuild their shattered lives piece by tiny piece.
We reached the assessment room, a space designed to feel safe and neutral, with comfortable chairs and soft lighting that couldn’t hide bruises but helped when their eyes were sensitive to the overhead lighting.
Ada paused with her hand on the doorknob and met my eyes.
“It’s someone you know,” she said quietly. “Just…remember where you are.”
Before I could process her words, she pushed open the door.
Lana Thompson stood inside, her expression a professional mask that didn’t quite hide her concern.
Beside her sat a hunched figure in an oversized sweatshirt, dark hair falling forward to shield her face.
One arm was encased in a white cast. The other hand clutched a paper cup of water so tightly the sides buckled.
The figure looked up at our entrance, and the clipboard slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor with a sound that seemed to echo forever in the sudden silence.
Jade.
Her face was almost unrecognizable -- the right eye swollen nearly shut, a deep purple bruise blooming across her cheekbone, her split lip still crusted with dried blood. But it was her neck that made my stomach lurch. Distinct finger-shaped bruises circled her throat like a macabre necklace.
I couldn’t speak. My tongue felt glued to the roof of my mouth as I stared at the woman who had betrayed me, the woman I’d pictured laughing with Eric in my bed countless times during those first painful nights after I’d found them together.
Jade’s eyes widened when she saw me, a flash of recognition before her face crumpled. She bent forward as if in physical pain, her body convulsing with silent sobs she tried to suppress by pressing her good hand against her mouth.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered finally, her voice raw and scratchy in a way that made me think of damaged vocal cords. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
I found my voice, though it sounded strange to my own ears. “What happened?”
She couldn’t meet my eyes, staring instead at the floor between us. “I should go.” She tried to get up from the chair, but I moved to her side before I realized I had and lay a hand on her shoulder preventing her from standing. “Jade. What happened?”
“Eric,” she said, the single word containing volumes of horror.
Ada retrieved my clipboard and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, anchoring me to the reality of this moment.
The fact that the woman in front of me had betrayed me by sleeping with my boyfriend didn’t seem to matter in the bigger context.
A battered woman sat in a room at Haven, a place I’d grown to love with every part of my being simply because the people here genuinely cared and helped really desperate women and children who needed protection and safety.
“How long?” I asked, surprised at how level my voice sounded.
“Years.” Jade’s admission came as barely a whisper. She looked up briefly, then away again, shame radiating from every line of her hunched posture. “Since college. Even before… before you and him were officially together.”
The room seemed to tilt slightly. I lowered myself into the chair across from her. “I don’t understand.”
Jade’s hands trembled so badly that water sloshed over the rim of her paper cup. Ada gently took it from her before it could spill completely.
“He has videos,” Jade said, her voice cracking on the word. “From sophomore year. He got me drunk at that party in the Sigma house, remember? The one I couldn’t remember much of the next day?” I nodded slowly. I remembered Jade’s confusion, how she’d brushed it off as drinking too much.
“He set me up,” she continued, each word seemingly torn from her.
“Got me so drunk I could barely stand, then took me to a room upstairs where his friends were waiting. Five of them.” Her voice dropped even lower.
“He took a video of everything.” My stomach twisted violently.
I pressed a hand to my mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.
“I was too weak.” Tears spilled down her cheeks, tracking through the makeup that poorly concealed her bruises.
“I betrayed your friendship to save my own dignity. He said he’d put the videos online, send them to my parents, my boss, everyone.
” A sob broke from her. “You know my family -- they’re so conservative.
Dad’s a deacon. They’d never… I couldn’t… ”
“He blackmailed her,” Lana supplied quietly, her pen moving across her notepad. “I’m sure there’s more, but the sharp escalation of violence where before it had been mostly emotional manipulation made me bring her here.”
Jade nodded, wincing as the movement seemed to hurt her neck.
“At first he just wanted me to spy on you. Then he wanted me to encourage you to date him. I balked hard at that.” She swallowed, the movement obviously hurting her throat.
“I liked you. I might have struck up our friendship to satisfy Eric, but you were my very best friend.” Her voice broke.
“You liked me for me. The last thing I wanted was for you to end up in Eric’s pocket like I had.
I didn’t want him to hurt you, but I didn’t see a way out for me.
It never even crossed my mind to defy him, and I think I’m more ashamed about that than anything else.
” She wiped her nose with a tissue in her hand.
“We’d been having sex since before the party, but only as fuck buddies.
” She imparted the information in a monotone, like even then she hadn’t wanted to be in whatever relationship she and Eric had.
“He liked having control over both of us,” Jade whispered.
“He’d make me listen when you called. Sometimes he’d text me while you two were…
” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “It was like a game to him. Finding ways to hurt both of us at once.” Her fingers brushed unconsciously against the bruises on her throat.
“He found something in me… someone he could manipulate and break down when he needed to release his anger. Someone who wouldn’t fight back because he owned me.
” Her eyes finally met mine, swimming with tears and regret.
“I’m so sorry, Mia. I should have been stronger.
I should never have let him convince me to pull you into his reach.
I don’t even know why I did it. I mean, looking back, knowing you could have been put through the same thing I had…
” She buried her face in her good hand and sobbed.
The woman before me wasn’t the villain I’d constructed in my mind during those dark days after discovering them together.
She was another victim. Maybe she should have dealt with things differently, but she’d been young and I knew her past made her naturally submissive to anyone with an edge of authority to them, which Eric had in spades.
I stared at the brutal evidence of Eric’s true nature marked across her body and felt the ground shift beneath my feet once more.
Not because my world was collapsing, but because I saw my past clearly for the first time.
Things that had seemed out of place during the time Eric and I had been together suddenly clicked into place -- including several parties he’d tried to get me to in the last several months.
I’d been too busy to attend. While we weren’t in college at a frat party, I had to wonder if he’d been trying to put me in the same position he had Jade.
Jade shifted in her chair, the movement causing her to wince as she continued her story. “After you left for the cabin, he was obsessed with finding you. When he couldn’t, he started drinking more, getting angrier.”
She pressed her good hand against her ribs, as if holding herself together physically while her words unraveled a horror story I never could have imagined.
“Then when he found out where you were and who you were with…” She shook her head slightly, her eyes distant with remembered fear.
“I’ve never seen anyone so consumed with rage.
He made me help him track you down,” she continued.
“I had to call your department head, pretending I was worried about you. When that didn’t work, he made me get into your email because I knew your password from when we shared a dorm. ”
Shame colored her admission. “That’s how he found out about which cabin rental you used and the address where you’d be staying.
” She took a breath. “When he came back from trying to see you the other day,” Jade whispered, “he was different. Dangerous in a way I’d never seen before.
He kept saying I helped him lose you to a bunch of thugs. ”
Her fingers trembled as she touched the bruises on her neck.
She shifted again, her breath catching sharply in pain.
“This isn’t the first time he’s hurt me, but never like this.
Never where people could see.” Her gaze dropped to the cast on her arm.
“He broke my arm when I tried to leave. Said if I ever tried again, he’d release the videos and then kill me and make it look like a suicide. ”
I struggled to reconcile two violently opposing realities.
My shock at discovering Jade had been a victim all along versus the horror of recognizing Eric’s systematic abuse was nearly too much to comprehend.
The man I’d once trusted enough to live with, to consider marrying, had orchestrated this elaborate web of manipulation and violence, using both Jade and me as pawns in whatever twisted game satisfied his need for control.
The door opened behind me with a soft click. I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. The subtle change in Jade’s expression as her eyes widened with alarm, the instinctive way my own body relaxed even as my mind raced, all told me Oktober had arrived.
He moved into my peripheral vision, his large frame filling the doorway with a quiet, contained power that seemed to change the dimensions of the room.
His eyes narrowed at Jade, taking in her injuries with a clinical assessment that reminded me he’d seen violence before, had perhaps even inflicted it on those who deserved it.
But when his gaze met mine, it softened immediately.
Without a word, he stepped behind my chair, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder.
The weight of it grounded me, his thumb brushing lightly against the nape of my neck in a subtle gesture of comfort.
I reached up and covered his hand with mine, drawing strength from his presence.
“You heard?” I asked quietly.
“Enough,” he replied, his voice low, the German accent more pronounced as it always was when his emotions ran high. “Ada texted you might need me.”
Jade watched our exchange with an expression I couldn’t quite read. I thought perhaps I saw wonder, maybe a hint of fear. But I also saw a quiet relief that made me realize maybe I couldn’t cut Jade out of my life just yet. Her gaze lingered on Oktober’s hand on my shoulder.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she said finally. “The hospital called Ms. Thompson, and she brought me here. She said it was the safest place.” Her eyes found mine again. “I can leave if you want. I understand if you don’t want me here --”
“No,” I interrupted, surprised at the firmness in my own voice. “The past is the past. Right now, you need to heal, and healing and protection is what Haven is all about.” I felt Oktober’s fingers tighten slightly on my shoulder, not in warning or disagreement, but in support.
Something shifted in Jade’s posture, a fractional relaxation as if she’d been bracing for rejection and found acceptance instead. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispered brokenly.
“We need to complete your intake,” Lana said gently, bringing us back to the practical matters at hand. “Mia, since you know Jade personally, would you be comfortable being her advocate here or would you prefer we assign someone else?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’ll do it.”
Oktober’s hand squeezed my shoulder once more before he moved to lean against the wall beside the door. “Gut,” he said simply. His eyes met mine, communicating volumes in a single glance. He might not trust Jade, but he trusted me and my judgment. And he was proud I’d taken the stance I had.
As Ada spoke to Jade, giving her a quick rundown of how things worked and what would be expected of her. Everyone pulled their weight, but Jade needed to rest, eat good food, and heal first.
I found myself watching Oktober instead of Jade.
He stood silent and vigilant, his presence a physical manifestation of everything that had changed in my life since leaving Eric.
I had found not just love but a strength I never knew I possessed, a family formed by choice rather than blood, and the means to help others escape the kind of control I hadn’t even recognized I was under.
And now, impossibly, I had the chance to extend that same lifeline to the woman I’d called my best friend and had believed betrayed me.
It sounded like she’d been trapped all along, groomed to accept Eric’s humiliation and abuse until she’d had nothing left of herself with which to fight.
I knew mine and Jade’s friendship might never be the same, but I also recognized I needed to stop and regroup.
Jade had been my best friend, the woman I told everything in my heart.
I might never have that friendship with her again, but I could never turn my back on her when she was at her lowest. I’d help Jade in whatever way I could.
Anything that happened next… Well. I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.