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I’d been forced to have friends and people I trusted again, which had probably been a good thing for me.

Jenna had gotten the option of a choice, and I sure as hell couldn’t fault her for deciding to trust no one after what had happened to her.

“I don’t remember having a parent,” she shared in a hushed voice.

I stood, held out my hand, and pulled Jenna to her feet as soon as she grasped it.

I led her to the family room, dropped onto the couch, and pulled her down beside me on my left so I could wrap my good arm around her.

If Jenna was going to tell me some of her story, she was going to have a warm body beside her to comfort her.

I knew the basic facts from her bio but hearing it from Jenna would be different. A lot of her childhood experience had been assumptions in her file, stuff that no one except Jenna could verify or explain.

“What do you remember?” I asked as gently as possible.

She shook her head. “Not much. Both of my parents were criminals. Drug dealers. They both overdosed and died at the same time. I was placed with a couple when I was four. They never adopted me and they weren’t nice people. I was physically, verbally, and sexually abused until I was eighteen and left their home. They were careful, and the injuries they caused when I was younger weren’t usually visible. The brainwashing started early, so I never reported them. I was convinced that the abuse was somehow my fault. That I was a bad child and that I deserved it. I kept covering up the abuse because I thought that was the only way I was going to survive. They convinced me that no one would ever believe me if I talked and that I’d end up in a group home, where I’d be raped and mistreated on a daily basis.

“They lost interest in the sexual abuse once I became an older teenager, so I just kept counting the years, the weeks, and the days until I could escape. The horrible scar on my face happened as soon as I graduated from high school. Those last two months before I turned eighteen and was able to leave were horrible. They took that big chunk of flesh from my face so I’d always remember them. I was tied down so they could administer that going-away gift from them. The facial scar was big and it didn’t heal right. The edges couldn’t be put together because they cut out the skin. The one you can see on my neck wasn’t quite as bad. They gave me antibiotics but refused to take me to the hospital. They were incredibly evil and twisted, Brock. I’ve been through a lot of therapy as an adult. It helped a lot, but there are some things that are probably never going to completely heal for me.”

Fucking hell!

She’d been so damn vulnerable, and the system had let her down in every fucking way possible.

She hadn’t just been neglected. She’d been terrorized for her entire childhood and adolescence.

How did anyone come out of something like that halfway normal?

Yet…she had.

She was extraordinary.

Maybe she would always have some trust issues and little quirks because of her past, but she’d somehow become a kind, sympathetic, and thoughtful adult.

In my mind, that was pretty damn miraculous.

Yeah, I’d known about her history, and her suspected abuse had been documented. It had been noted in her files after she’d become an adult. Another child had gone to the same couple and that child’s abuse had been reported.

The couple had been booted out of foster care, but it pissed me off that they’d never been prosecuted.

They’d both died in a car accident soon after that second child had been pulled from their custody.

I wasn’t sure if Jenna even knew that they were dead.

I closed my eyes for a moment and willed myself to get a grip for Jenna’s sake.

“And after you escaped?” I questioned, not sure if I could handle all the details of her childhood abuse without losing my shit, and I knew it was probably something Jenna didn’t need to talk about at this stage of her life.

She’d been through years of counseling. Reliving it during therapy over and over again had probably been more than enough.

If she wanted to share, I’d be here to listen, but I wasn’t going to make her feel like she had to talk about something she’d tried to put behind her.

“I had scholarships and I took some college classes in high school,” she explained in a more confident voice. “I finished my bachelor’s in two years because I went year-round and had those college credits I’d gotten in high school. I wasn’t sure how far I could get by working and going to college, but I was determined to get as much education as I possibly could. I was always fascinated by space and I’d dreamed about being an astrophysicist from a pretty early age.

“My college years were hard. I lived in a house full of students so we could keep our expenses low. I didn’t have any skills, so I took a job in a diner. It didn’t pay that great, but I kept pushing to get my education. Things were really tight for me, even with some student loans and scholarships. That’s when I started blogging. Just when I thought I couldn’t make it through my doctorate program, my blog really took off. I started to earn good income, and I was able to survive on that money.”

Eventually, that blog had made her wealthy, but I was damn glad it had taken off in time to help her finish her doctorate.

“So we both left the system and never looked back,” I mused.