Chapter Twenty-Two
Jo
I ’m staring blindly into stage lights, disassociating just to make it through hearing my brother talk for ten minutes.
Hearing him schmooze people as if he is the best man to run this state’s administration, but all I can think about is him.
I had the best evening of my life with Lochlan, and then everything shifted.
I shouldn’t be surprised, it seems like it always happens this way.
Every time I think we’ve turned over a new leaf, the same walls go back up, and I’m reminded how little companionship I have.
The hot and cold is exhausting.
No matter how hard I work or how friendly we get, I seem to mess something up.
Jackson suggested I leave, and he agreed…
Just like that.
I thought we were past the miserable neighbor act.
I know he was upset about someone being on the property, but I don’t know why he took it out on me.
I haven’t spoken to him.
We’ve gone back to being strangers, floating around each other.
I didn’t bother checking to see if he was attending tonight’s event that I had circled on the calendar.
There’s no point in my searching the crowd for the people I’ve started to think of as friends.
Instead, I’m standing on a stage in front of 500 people like a show pig in a fitted dress, begging myself not to look as sour as I feel inside.
My mother’s teeny tiny petite figure stands next to me, making me feel like an ogre in front of all of these cameras.
I don’t want to be here.
I want to be with my people.
My people.
Second Chance Sanctuary has become a safe place to me despite how Lochlan acts, not this environment that my parents forced on me.
Applause erupts around me, but I can’t force myself to clap for a man I’m not voting for.
I keep my hands clasped in front of me and wait for my cue to exit the stage.
My brother takes his time smiling and waving at the cameras before strolling across the stage and down the only set of steps.
Austin follows behind him, and then my parents.
I start after them, standing motionless while conversation congests my only escape.
These frustrating, selfish people.
Leaving me to be ignored as if I’m not here at all, even though they forced me to be here.
As if I don’t have my own life or better things to do.
They’ll make me stand here until my feet go numb and I topple over in exhaustion.
I’m so tired of being invisible.
A shrill whistle interrupts my pity party.
I know that whistle.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, barely being able to bend in my dress enough to talk to him, where he stands beside the stage.
“You look miserable.” Lochlan holds his hands out in a come-hither motion.
Surely he doesn’t expect to lift me off the stage?
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Jo, you can do this easily, or I can throw you over my shoulder and embarrass you in front of your friends.”
I gasp in offense.
“These people are not my friends.”
Our eyes connect as my hands clasp the top of his shoulders and his envelop my ribs.
I take a step off the stage, trusting him to catch me, but I don’t come close to falling.
My shoe meets the floor gracefully as if there wasn’t any distance between my steps at all.
The warmth of his hands slips from my sides as he turns to walk back toward the banquet tables, quickly cutting off our connection.
He’s clearing a path for me while simultaneously continuing the silent treatment from before.
Everyone moves out of his way like a school of fish sensing a shark.
No one looks in my direction or waves me over for conversation.
Nobody is trying to get anything from me because they’re afraid to approach me.
I’m not invisible when I’m with Lochlan, not like I am to my parents, but I’m safeguarded.
I’m free.
I grab his forearm from behind before we reach the large round table, where I see everyone else is sitting.
“Thank you for the rescue,” I say as he turns his attention to me.
His eyes go to my hand on his forearm first and then to the crowd around us before landing on my face, but he looks anguished .
“The quicker we get the funds we need from the events, the quicker I can get my cameras and stop pretending to be someone I’m not.”
“What?” My heart sinks in my chest.
“I don’t belong here, Jo. Just like you don’t belong at the sanctuary.” My hand falls from his arm, and he turns away, walking away from me again like he did a couple of nights ago.
Everything feels heavy.
My skin, my bones.
I want to slump to the floor and forget the facade I always put on.
I’m so tired of not being good enough, but it doesn’t matter because I have to continue on.
I have to be the perfect daughter in a room full of people who don’t know the faintest detail about me.
I have to pretend to be a good sister.
I have to mingle and market Second Chance Sanctuary to people even though I’m being shoved out of the gates like an unwanted stray.
“Are you out of your mind, JoAnna?” My mother’s voice attacks me from behind.
“Being lifted off the stage. Sitting on that man’s lap. It’s despicable.”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now, Mom.”
“Randall Porter told your brother about him. You’re trolliping around with a rapist ?” She spits the word at me.
“He’s not. Daddy exonerated him.”
“Your daddy will pick up a hooker off a turnpike. He has no critical thinking skills, clearly.”
“Lochlan is a good man, but he’s just my boss.”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes.
“Your boss. You’re wasting everyone’s time. Come back home, or we’ll pull your school admission.”
“Dad promised. ”
“I don’t care what your daddy promised.”
“If you don’t let me get through school, I’ll tell everyone about what Dad and Conrad did.”
She recoils.
How dare I put her precious family in the way of scandal?
“I wish you were never born,” she sneers, stomping away.
I’m motionless while her nasty words sink in.
Slowly letting the deep void in my heart overtake me.
Everything is too tight.
I can’t breathe.
The crowd disappears as I snake my way through people without seeing them, desperate for an escape.
I’m clawing at the neckline of my dress before I reach a long, dark hallway, pulling at it desperately for some relief.
I need more room to breathe.
It’s too tight, I’m suffocating.
I burst through a doorway leading me to a balcony overlooking a garden, sucking in fresh air but it doesn’t help.
My hands fight against the fabric, pulling, tugging, and I can’t get it off.
I can’t reach my zipper.
The frustration turns to tears, and I’m hyperventilating as my panic attack consumes me.
It feels like a heart attack, it feels like–
“What’s wrong?” Lochlan appears out of thin air because, of course, he does.
He’s always center stage as my life falls apart.
“I can’t breathe. Get it off.” I hug myself, desperately trying to calm down, but I can’t catch my breath.
“Lochlan, get it off!” I scream, and his hands find my zipper immediately.
He tugs the dress open, but it’s not enough.
The shape-wear necessary for this dress is still squeezing my insides painfully.
“What is this shit?” He grabs the spandex but hesitates.
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
Ripppp.
He tears the material right down my spine and I suck in a chest full of air, dropping to my knees.
I keep my head between my legs and take long drags of air, in and out.
“Hell, no wonder you couldn’t breathe, it left indentations all over your back,” he remarks, not having any idea why I’m actually falling apart.
“Why are you here? Why is it always you?”
He doesn’t humor me with a response.
“You show up every time I’m a disaster. Why are you here?” I yell.
“I saw you run out of the banquet hall.”
I clamber to my feet with unsteady knees, grasping my dress above my chest to keep it from falling off.
“Just leave.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Go, please,” I murmur, facing the balcony.
“Jo, let me–”
“NO!” I scream into the wind in front of me.
I’m so tired of taking his emotional hand out, and then it being snatched away from me.
I’m so tired of being nothing.
After a long minute of silence, his black shirt is draped across my shoulders, and it takes all of my effort to keep the sound of my cry in.
I hear the doors click shut behind him as he leaves.