Home wasn’t the compound or even this apartment we shared.Home was here, in the circle of Oktober’s arms, in the family we’d found and the life we were building from the ashes of what came before.As I turned in his embrace to kiss him properly, I knew with bone-deep certainty that I had finally found where I truly belonged.
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.
