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 hadpromisedto 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 toput 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 systemwhen 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?”
Tears stung her eyes for an overemotional moment. It was Ella’s fault she was on her ass at all—except it also wasn’t. Ella hadn’t sprung the bastard from prison, or set her up on the website where she’d met him years earlier. Ella was a messenger.
Jenna was just a mess.
She held the bottle an inch or so from her mouth, struggling to stop shaking, struggling to even think clearly, struggling to catch her breath.What do I want?Aside from never seeing his face again, or hearing his name again, because she’d sell her soul for that.
