Chapter 11 #3
He tried to chuckle but ended up hissing in pain again. “Fuck! I hate that I look like this the last time you’ll see me for a while.”
“I told you, I’ll figure out how to get out of here. I’m going to come see you today.”
“Not going to change my appearance,” he reminded her.
Jenna winced. Oops. A noise behind her had her turning around to see her sister glaring up at her from her bed. “Um, Jack, I gotta go.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just…I’m kinda using up all Carolyn’s minutes right now.”
“Be safe, Jenna. Try to call again if you can’t get out. But I swear, baby, we’ll figure this out. I love you.”
“I love you too, Jack. Bye.”
She hung up before she heard his reply. The one word she didn’t have the heart to hear come from Jack Duncan was ‘goodbye’.
“How much did you hear?”
Carolyn raised an eyebrow. “Other than Jack apparently promising to take you over his knee if you apologized to him again?”
Jenna’s cheeks flamed. She covered her mouth, completely embarrassed that she’d brought that back up. What had come over her?
Carolyn’s chuckle wasn’t mocking or condescending. “Hey, I’ve done far worse with guys who don’t even know my name. At least you know your man loves you.”
Jenna sat down on the edge of her sister’s bed.
Her embarrassment gone, replaced with the utter devastation that she might not have a choice about seeing Jack again.
“How do you do it? Fight Mom and Dad like this?” She leaned forward, her arms between her knees.
“I can’t breathe, Carolyn. They’re making me leave but I don’t know how I’m supposed to go. ”
Carolyn moved, untangling herself from the covers to sit by Jenna. “Are you sure about this, Jenna? Absolutely sure that Jack is who and what you want?”
Jenna nodded, staring down at her sister’s dark carpet.
Her soul felt like it was cracking. “I love him, Carolyn. I don’t care how young we are.
I don’t care that we come from different social classes.
Hell, I don’t even care that we have different religions.
It’s him, Carolyn. I knew it from the moment we met that he was mine.
I can’t even explain it, but it’s like we swapped hearts. He claims mine and I claim his.”
Carolyn was silent for a long time. “You’re lucky, you know,” she finally said. “You’ve always been so sure of yourself. And I owe you an apology.”
Jenna turned to her head to look over her shoulder at her sister. “What do you mean?”
“I told Mom you were at the library.”
Anger flared. She jumped off of the mattress. “You what?”
Carolyn held up her hands in surrender. “Hey now. Mom asked where you were, I told her you were at the library. It was a completely innocent place to be. I did not tell her you were with Jack or anything about him. I also did not know she was going to have her bodyguards—”
“Thugs,” Jenna interjected with venom.
“—thugs,” Carolyn corrected herself, “beat Jack up. All I am apologizing for is telling Mom where you were. It was just a passing question. I didn’t think twice about telling her you were at the library because I can’t even recall ever seeing Mom in a public library before.”
Jenna wanted to be mad at her sister, even though her admission did explain how her mom had found them, but she couldn’t. Not really. Carolyn hadn’t done anything vindictive or with malice. Jack’s current condition was entirely their mom’s fault.
Her shoulders sagged. “It’s fine. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
Carolyn stood. She was wearing a man’s white shirt that was at least three sizes too big for her and a pair of boxer shorts with skulls on them. “Do you trust me?”
Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I can’t tell you. All I’m asking is, do you trust me?”
Slowly, Jenna nodded her head.
“Good. Wait here.”
With that, Carolyn left her bedroom. Jenna blinked, not entirely sure what just happened. She didn’t know what her sister was about, but she figured she’d give her a few minutes. After all, Jenna had said that she trusted Carolyn.
She ended up waiting around for almost an hour. She really was exhausted, having barely slept a wink the night before. She’d been too upset about being shipped off to boarding school to even consider sleeping.
When the door finally opened and Carolyn walked back into her bedroom, Jenna was laying under her sister’s covers. She’d just started to doze off when Carolyn came back. Jenna sat upright.
“Well, I have good news and I have bad news.”
Jenna bit her lip. “What’s the bad news?”
“It’s kinda a two-for-one deal,” Carolyn explained.
“Can’t know one without the other. So you do not have to go to Massachusetts.
Mom was agreeing to that before Dad came home, which is where the bad news comes in.
” Carolyn gave her a sympathetic look as she said, “They’re making you return to your old school in Seattle. ”
Jenna’s excitement at not having to go to Massachusetts plummeted. “What? Why?”
“Dad feels it’s best for your ‘educational future’,” Carolyn answered with air quotes. “You can’t argue, it is a better school, Jen.”
But it was a school without Jack. “I don’t understand. How does this help me?”
“Well, a two hour car ride is significantly shorter than a five hour plane ride over multiple time zones.” Jenna couldn’t argue that she did have a point there. “And,” Carolyn added, “you’re allowed to come up here on weekends to ‘visit me’,” again adding air quotes.
Jenna perked up. “I can?”
Carolyn nodded.
Okay, so she would spend her weekdays in Seattle and then get to spend her weekends in Port Townsend with Jack. That wasn’t a…bad plan. It was certainly an improvement on being shipped across the country. Really, there was no choice between the two.
“How did you get Mom and Dad to agree to this?”
Carolyn waved that off. “Please. With the amount of skeletons in their closets? All I had to do was threaten to make some of them public if they didn’t ease off of you and Jack.
I tried to get it to where you could stay here, but Dad wasn’t budging.
I think he thinks time away from Jack in the big city will make you forget about him. ”
Not possible.
Jenna smiled at her sister. She scrambled out from under the covers to run to her. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
Carolyn squeezed her back. “Don’t push them too much, Jenna. I’m warning you. They’re not happy. And you still have to go pack. You have to be in Seattle in the morning.”
Jenna made a face. That was fast but she supposed she shouldn’t have expected anything different.
Carolyn stepped back from their embrace. “They’re also still not going to let you out of the house today to go see him.”
Jenna’s heart sank. “That’s…” Her voice cracked. “That’s fine. I’ll see him next weekend.” She pointed to Carolyn’s phone. “Can I?”
Carolyn nodded. “Just take it into the bathroom.” She stretched and yawned. “I’m heading back to bed.”
“Can I join you afterward? Probably best to avoid Mom and Dad today.”
Carolyn snorted as she crawled into bed. “Understatement and yes. Just turn off the lights before you come to bed.”
Grinning, Jenna grabbed the phone and cradle, glad the cord was long enough to reach the bathroom. She closed the door to give her and Jack privacy, as well as keep the noise down for Carolyn.
She owed her sister big time. Hopefully one day she’d be able to pay her back.
The phone rang and rang. Then the voice of the boy she loved picked up. “Jack! You’re never going to believe what Carolyn just did…”