41. Chapter 41 The Calm Before the Chaos
Jenna: September
The darkness feels endless… until a soft hand touches my shoulder.
“Dear, can I help you up?” The voice is warm, laced with concern. “Is there somewhere you need to be?”
I don’t lift my head. “In hell,” I whisper, because that’s where I should be. “Or maybe I’m already there.”
She kneels beside me. “I’ve been there too,” she murmurs, her hand resting on mine. “Not your hell, but my own.”
I finally glance at her. She’s an elderly woman, probably in her eighties, with kind eyes, white curls, and a cardigan that looks like it came before my time.
“I get it. You probably wish you could fast-forward through all the hard stuff,” she says, quietly scanning the groceries spilled across the ground. “Maybe it even feels like your world’s been flipped upside down.”
I nod, unable to answer.
“But you’re still here,” she says, gathering the runaway cans. “That’s no small thing, sweetheart.”
She doesn’t offer empty advice. Doesn’t push.
“Life’s messy,” she adds, rising slowly. “Mean. Sometimes cruel beyond measure. But one day, when you’re an old lady like me, you might be surprised by how many beautiful moments you’ve lived through. Even in the middle of the worst ones.”
She helps me to my car. No questions. No judgment. Just presence—from a stranger the universe wanted me to meet.
Her words follow me home. You’re still here.
I am. But so is the storm waiting to break.
I burst through the door, my heart pounding out of my chest, and the shock choking me. Nausea rises as I slam the door shut. My entire world just shattered, and Jacob’s just sitting there on the couch, flipping through channels.
“I know Ryan’s dead,” I blurt out, my voice barely my own.
Jacob freezes as he slowly turns to face me. His gaze locks with mine, and for a second, I see it. Guilt. Quickly replaced by that expression he wears when he’s calculating his next move.
“What are you saying?” he asks slowly like I’m an animal he’s afraid to spook.
I take a step closer, my body trembling. “Don’t. Don’t you dare.” My voice wavers, but I force the words out. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time! About the nightmares. The memories. I killed him, didn’t I?” My breath shudders when I repeat. “Didn’t I, Jacob?”
Jacob’s face drains of color.
He sets the remote down carefully, rising to his feet. “You’re not thinking straight.” His voice is low, coaxing. “Calm down.”
“I remember,” I snap, pulse racing erratically. “The blood. His hands around my throat. The bird statue. I hit him.”
The pity in his eyes fuels my rage.
“Jenna,” he begins, his tone far too controlled, “you were defending yourself, it wasn’t your—”
“Don’t twist this!” I shout, cutting him off, my whole body shaking. “Ryan’s friend told me… he overdosed. But that’s not what happened, is it? He died that night because of me! Didn’t he?” The words taste like acid as the walls close in, smothering me.
Twenty years have passed, but the images rush back like it was yesterday. Ryan’s red-rimmed eyes, his jittery hands around my neck, the weight of the bird statue in my hands.
My fingers brush my tattoo, a symbol I once thought represented freedom. Now, I wonder if it was a warning, answers I’ve refused to face.
Jacob’s jaw locks, his calm facade cracking. “Yes, he did. But I was trying to protect you,” he finally says. “I was young, stupid. And I was in love… with you. I loved you even when you were with him, Jenna. And I couldn’t stand the thought of him having any power over you.”
The fight at Izzy’s party floods my mind.
Ryan finding Jacob with me in the bathroom, holding my hair back as I emptied my stomach full of alcohol.
His face twisted, assumptions spiraling out of control.
Accusations. Shouting. Threats. I remember him finally walking away… but he didn’t leave, did he?
“He came back,” I whisper, the words barely making it past my lips.
The painful images sharpen. His fury, how he grabbed me, the pressure of his hands around me. “And he tried to kill me. I remember,” I cry out.
My fingers instinctively reach for my neck, my lips. More images rush in, dizzying, violent, all-consuming. The slap. The sting of my bloody lip. The look in his eyes before he fell.
How the hell didn’t I remember this before? Then it hits me. I didn’t forget. I buried it. That’s what trauma does. But now, with those two words—Ryan’s dead—they cracked the lock wide open, and now I can’t stop the flood.
“You told me you took him to the hospital. That he survived!” I say, my voice shaking as I step closer. “You let me believe he was fine… this whole time?”
I killed him.
The thought slams into me over and over, making it harder to speak, to breathe.
“Oh God,” I whisper, my voice breaking. “All these years I spent trying to piece myself together, feeling cursed. Maybe I deserved it. I killed a man. A shitty man, but still human. Someone’s son. Someone’s brother.”
Jacob grips my arms, forcing me to look at him. “Listen to me. You knocked him out. But he was alive. I checked.” His voice drops. “And then I made sure he wouldn’t hurt you again.”
The world I knew suddenly stops spinning. My girls flash through my mind. Thank God they aren’t home.
“What are you saying?” I whisper, though I’m not sure I want the answer.
“I made it look like an overdose,” he mutters, the words sending a chill down my spine. “I knew no one would question it. You were in shock. I couldn’t risk him waking up and coming after you again.” His tormented eyes darken. “So, I ended it.”
I stare at him, my pulse hammering. “You… you killed him?”
His voice breaks, his mask slipping for the first time. “Do you think it was easy for me? Living with that secret… carrying it alone, all this time? I did it to protect you. Ryan would’ve never let you go. But it’s been killing me for years.”
“To protect me?” My throat burns. “How… how did you… how could you?” I mumble.
And why the hell is everyone always trying to fucking protect me when all they ever do is break me?
“I wiped the blood off him,” he says, the tension in his body palpable. “Changed his shirt. Made sure there wasn’t a trace of what happened. And my uncle who’s on the force, believed my story.”
A sick feeling gnaws in my gut.
“He knew Ryan’s record—his drug use, his arrests, his violent behavior.
It wasn’t hard to convince him that he got into a fight and then overdosed.
” Jacob’s casual, cold voice makes my skin crawl.
“He already had heroin in his system, I merely added more. Cops never questioned it… he was just another addict who overdosed. If anyone had looked closer or if the wrong cop had the case, things would have turned out differently.” He hesitates, keeping his gaze steady on mine.
“But the case was closed before it even started. Small town. Not enough resources. No one cared.”
I stumble back, his confession pressing down on my chest. “You lied to me for years! Watched me struggle night after night and said nothing . You let me think I was losing my mind.”
Jacob’s voice turns raw, desperate. “You wouldn’t have survived the guilt. I did it for you. For us. I did it because I couldn’t lose you.”
“No.” My tears spill over. “You did it for yourself. To bury the truth. To keep me in the dark.” I wipe my face, my hands shaking. “I don’t know who you are.”
Another overwhelming thought crashes in. “Is that why you married me?” My breath hitches. “Because you knew one day this would all come out?”
Jacob’s voice softens. “I married you because I loved you, Jenna.”
“Loved me?” A bitter laugh breaks out. “Or wanted to keep me quiet, under your control?”
A realization punches me in the gut. His secrets. My secrets. I’m no better than him.
“I’m done lying,” I say, my pulse racing. “To you. To myself. To this marriage. I can’t do it anymore. I won’t.”
Jacob looks at me, and I know he sees it. The truth we’ve avoided for so long. The one that will either set us free or destroy everything.
His voice sharpens, almost frantic. “Don’t play games right now. What the hell are you talking about, Jenna?”
My heart pounds, every beat a brutal reminder that I’m about to destroy whatever we have left. I meet his gaze, the truth burning in my throat, clawing to get out.
“I’m having an affair.”
The words hang, choking the air from both of us. Jacob just stares, his face blank with utter disbelief. Then, in a voice I barely recognize, he whispers, “Fuck you, Jenna.”
The words sting like a fresh slap. He’s never sworn at me. Not once in all our years together. I deserve it, though.
His fists clench, voice trembling. “Dylan… you’ve been fucking Dylan? Haven’t you?” Each word cuts deeper. “Lying to me. For how long?”
I nod, my eyes thick with tears.
“How could you?” He shakes his head. “How fucking dare you?”
“Yes,” I say, self-loathing dripping from my voice. “I’m a horrible, shitty, fucking wife. Yes, I’ve been lying to you. Yes, I fell in love with another man. Yes, I’ve messed up and fucked up everything.”
My voice breaks, trembling under the heaviness of my own sins. “But are my lies worse than yours? My whole life has been a lie, Jacob. So maybe it’s only fitting our marriage was built on one too.”
Jacob’s control snaps. His eyes narrow, filled with something volatile.
“No, Jenna!” he screams. “Don’t you dare turn this around on me. I lied to protect you. I lied because I knew you wouldn’t survive the truth. I was sparing you from something that would break you! You lied to fuck someone else behind my back!”
Tears well in his eyes. He swipes at them trying to erase the pain, but they keep falling. “I fucking killed him to save you. And this is how you repay me?”
The words slam into me like a freight train and knock the air right out of my lungs.
I thought I wanted to see Jacob’s mask slip. To prove he could feel something. But standing here now—watching him fall apart—I can’t handle it. This isn’t the calm, collected man I married. And it terrifies me.
“You’re not God. You don’t know if I could’ve handled it,” I cry, the words tearing through me. “Every single time you watched me struggle in the middle of the night, unable to breathe, not knowing what the hell was happening to my mind. And you sat there and did nothing. For years, Jacob! Years!”
Jacob’s eyes fill with rage. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Of course, Jacob. Go on, run like you always do. Let’s sweep this under the rug for another ten years.” Bitterness coats my words as tears threaten to pour out of me. “I can’t change what happened. But we need to talk about this. Figure out what’s going to happen with us… and the girls.”
He turns to me, his voice defeated. “That’s it? You want to end our marriage? You want to tell the kids that our whole life is a lie? That you’re leaving me for… for what? Dylan?”
My stomach churns at the sound of his name, spat like venom.
“You’re telling me you would take me back? After everything I’ve done?”
Could we even survive this?
Jacob’s voice breaks into sobs, something I never thought I’d see. His entire body trembles. “I gave up everything for you. Everything,” he says as his face twists in anguish. “And you threw it away. You threw us away.”
“I didn’t throw us away. We both did,” I say, my voice certain. “You lied to me about Ryan, and I lied about everything else.”
Jacob’s eyes blaze. “Don’t you dare say I threw us away. You made the choice to sleep with him. You made the choice to destroy our family.”
“Yeah, I did!” I scream, guilt and anger tearing through me. “I fucked up. I know that. I hate myself for it. But don’t pretend you're innocent. Forgetting all the nights I begged you to let me in, to give me more. I’m not the only one in this marriage.”
“How could you cross that line knowing there’s no going back?
And drag me and our kids down with you. How could you do this to us?
To me?” he demands, his voice rising again.
“How long have you been lying to me? How long have I looked like a fool? How long have you been fucking him and then crawling back home to me?”
I want to say something. But there are no words that could make this better. Nothing that could undo the damage.
Jacob’s composure slips. He starts pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Then, without warning, he grabs a vase from the counter and launches it across the room. My heart stops. I stand there frozen, watching it explode into millions of little pieces, the sound cutting through the silence.
I flinch, my breath catching. And for a split second, I’m back with Ryan. But I'm not with him. I'm with Jacob… my husband. I stare out the window, hoping to ground myself.
Jacob doesn’t say anything. He just charges out of the room and slams the front door.
And I’m left here in silence, surrounded by the wreckage of my marriage, my life, everything I once believed to be true.
But even after everything—after what he did, even if he never wants to speak to me again—I’ll never tell a soul. Not for him. For my daughters. Because no matter what he did, he’ll always be their father. And if the truth ever got out, it wouldn’t just destroy Jacob. It would destroy them.
So I’ll carry this secret to the grave. Not to protect him, but to protect my kids. I’ll lie to everyone. Even Dylan. And I’ll let him believe I did it.
Why doesn’t this feel like the end, though? All I feel is this strange sense of dread. Like somehow, the worst is still coming.