Love Song Series Box Set (3 page)

Julie

I wake up to the sound of machines beeping. I should be used to it by now. Lord knows this isn’t my first rodeo. I open my eyes and notice the room I’m in. The same gray walls and green curtains I saw only a few months ago. Yeah, I’ve been in here before. They should keep it reserved for me.

I look around the room and see my daughter Jenny sleeping in one
of the hard metal chairs, holding on to her favorite doll Lulu. My sister-in-law, Bethany, is sitting in the other chair, stroking Jenny’s hair. Bethany notices I’m awake and rushes over to me.

“
How are you, hun?” she asks, taking my good hand in hers, the one the bastard didn’t break.

“
I’m…um…I’m okay.” I try to talk normally, but it comes out in a nearly silent whisper. “How’s my baby?”

“
Jenny is fine, sweetie. She’s been here with me the whole time. I told her you fell down the stairs again.” Bethany shrugs her shoulders. In other words, Jenny doesn’t buy it.

“
How long this time?”

“
A little more than a day. The doctors wanted to keep you sedated for a while. You were in a lot of pain, so they wanted you to sleep through the worst of it.”

More than a day?
“Oh my God! Jenny must have been scared to death.”

“
Don’t worry. I haven’t left her side the whole time. I picked her up from school, and we’ve camped out here the entire time. I explained to her that you were just sleeping. She’s frightened, but she’s okay.”

I look over at
my little princess. She’s still sleeping like a baby. She looks so much like her father that I can’t help but think of Jase each time I look at her.

After I ran away from Tennessee, I ended up in Kansas City.
Kristen was attending College here, and I wanted to be near her. I needed to be with someone that I knew loved me, someone that I knew would never hurt me.

Luckily, her roommate Bethany was a sweet
girl and let me crash in their dorm room. Bethany is shy, even shyer than me. She never once complained about having me there. In fact, she even pushed me to sign up for classes. Before long, she became one of my closest friends. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her over the last nine years.

“
Thank you for taking care of her,” I say as tears fill my eyes.

After leaving Jase, I thought I had cried as much
as a person could, but I was wrong. When the doctor told me I was pregnant, I proved that a body never runs out of tears.

I didn
’t know I was having his baby when I left Jase. If I had, I would’ve stayed. I wouldn’t have stayed with him, but I would have never left Tennessee. At first, I didn’t even realize I had missed a few periods. When I did, I didn’t really think much about it. I was so upset about Jase and Becca that I just assumed it was the stress. Then, I started getting sick, so I decided to go to the clinic. By the time I found out, I was roughly three months along.

I was scared shitless.
I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn’t know how I was going to support myself, much less a child, without going back home. By that point, I knew going back to Cromwell was not an option for me. Even if I could have faced Jase and Becca again, I didn’t think Jase was in any condition to be a dad.

When I told my family and Pop about the baby, they warned me to stay away. They all said they would help all they could, but that Jase was in no way ready to be a father.
I kept asking them when I should tell him, but they all kept saying to wait. No one would tell me what was going on with him, so I finally called Matty. He said Jase had fallen apart after I left. He was drinking all the time and fucking up his life. In other words, he was getting drunk and fucking anything that could walk.

He said the Jase I knew and loved was gone
, and if I came back, he would do nothing but cause me more heartache. More importantly, he would hurt our baby; not physically, but his drinking would leave scars that would never heal. Having an alcoholic mother, I carried enough of those scars. I didn’t want my child to bear that pain.

I hated that Jase was so messed up, but a part of me thought he deserved it. Jase didn
’t just hurt me; he shattered me. He tore the heart right out of my chest and stomped all over it. It took me three years before I moved on, before I tried to leave my love for Jase behind. When I first met Bethany’s brother Dean, I thought he was a great guy. He wasn’t handsome in the way Jase was, but he was cute. His dark blonde hair and deep blue eyes immediately grabbed my attention. That, teamed with his drool-worthy body, had been the icing on the cake. He wasn’t just easy on the eyes; he had also just graduated from medical school and joined a small gynecology practice about an hour out of Kansas City. Best of all, he was amazing with Jenny. Dean was everything a girl could want.

After months of him asking me out, I finally gave in. Bethany tried to warn me.
She told me time and time again to stay away from him. She always acted strange whenever Dean was around, but she never really explained why. She just kept saying,
“My brother is not who you think he is.”
I wish I had listened.

“
Has Dean been here?”

Bethany takes a deep breath and slowly nods her head.
“He was here the first day. He followed the ambulance to the hospital, but he left after you were admitted and hasn’t come back.”

I let out a bitter laugh.
“At least he called the ambulance this time.”

Dean was a wonderful boyfriend. He was attentive and always included Jenny in our plans. When we went out, we went to places like the park or the zoo. He even took us to Worlds of Fun and spent the whole day riding baby rides with Jenny. I thought he would make a wonderful step-father.

I didn’t love him, but I did like him a lot. There were no butterflies, no erratic beats of my heart, none of the things I had felt with Jase, but he made me smile. In a life full of tears, a smile meant a lot to me. So what if I wasn’t in love with him? I wasn’t sure I could love anyone except Jase. Naively, I figured liking him was enough. We dated for two years before he asked me to marry him. I didn’t say yes the first time, but a year later, I was tired of being alone, and I figured being married to Dean was better than being by myself all the time.

I was wrong.

He didn’t become abusive until after we were married. The total transformation in Dean is still difficult to wrap my head around. It was like I was living in some screwed up fairytale. I said I do to a prince and woke up married to the evil villain.

He hit me for the first time while we were on our honeymoon in the Bahamas.
He slept in on our third morning there, and I decided to go lay out in the sun while I waited on him to wake up. I put on the new bikini Kristen bought me as a wedding gift, left a note near his pillow, and headed for the pool.

About an hour later, Dean walked out
of the hotel. I noticed him as soon as he stepped outside, and a huge smile spread across my face. He was looking back and forth, trying to find me, and I remember feeling a jolt of excitement. I immediately got up and started to walk to him. As soon as his eyes met mine, I realized that he was angry. Really angry. He ran over to me, literally knocking people out of his way. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to our room, while everyone watched me struggle to keep up.

As soon as we got through the door, he backhanded me. I flew across the room, but he was on top of me before I even landed.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even open my mouth. Dean screamed at me for leaving the room. I was never supposed to go anywhere without getting his permission first. He screamed at me for wearing a bikini. I was his, and no one was allowed to see my body but him. He then started hitting me, and he kept hitting me until I blacked out. The last thing I remember thinking was that this can’t be the same man I just married.

I left him the next day. I snuck out of our hotel while he was sleeping.
I walked through the airport, head down, trying to hide my bruises. My heart pounded with each step I took.

I used most of my savings to fly home. When I got
back to Kansas City, I got a hotel room and hid for three days. I kept trying to figure out how to get away from Dean, without telling my family what happened, but came up with nothing. On the third night, Dean found me.

Dean forced me to come home. He beat the living hell out of me for running away. It was way worse than the first time. After he was done, he got out his doctor bag and patched me up. I ended up with two broken ribs and nine stitches. He warned me that it would be worse if I ever tried to leave him again
. He then went to work like nothing ever happened.

Dean didn
’t promise not to do it again, and he never said he was sorry. He just told me if I was a proper wife, he wouldn’t have to punish me. I did try to run away again; I’ve tried to leave him many times. I did not want Jenny to grow up in a home full of abuse and anger. I pressed charges more than once, but Dean and Bethany’s father is the only judge in our little town. I guess things like domestic violence get swept under the rug when your daddy’s a judge. I finally quit trying to leave, knowing getting away wasn’t an option.

At first, I wondered why he changed so much after we were married.
After a lot of soul searching, I have come to realize that he didn’t change at all. He just hid his true self from me until he knew that I couldn’t get away.

Shaking off the memories, I sit up in the bed
and push my dark hair behind my ears. “Bethany, can you get me a phone please? I need to call my family. They’ll be worried.”

“
I already did that, Jules. Kristen, your Uncle Mack, and Matty are on their way.”

Oh Shit!
No, no, no. “What? You didn’t tell them anything, did you?”

Bethany completely ignores me.
“Jenny is really excited to see them. She says they always bring her a surprise,” she adds with a sad smile.

I can tell Bethany is feeling guilty again. She has told me a million times how bad she feels that she didn
’t tell me about Dean before he and I got married. I’ve told her over and over that this is not her fault, and that she did try to warn me. She is stuck in her own world of pain, all courtesy of Dean and his parents. I know Dean has hurt me, but he has fucked Bethany up in a way that I’m not sure she can ever overcome. Having her parents ignore years of Dean torturing her didn’t help either.

Bethany has never told me
everything Dean has done to her, but I know it’s bad. I’ve seen him beat her more than once. I have also seen him look at her in a way that no brother should ever look at a sister. I tried to get her to stay away, but she keeps coming back. She won’t leave me to suffer Dean on my own.

Bethany tugs on my hand.
“I’ve got some news.”

I know she isn
’t going to tell me what she told my family, so I just nod for her to go on.

“
Well, do you remember me telling you about Cynthia Cook?”

“
Of course I remember.” She is a big time divorce lawyer from the city. People say she is like a pit bull. She grabs a man by the balls and doesn’t let go until there’s nothing left. She’d be perfect, but I don’t have the $25,000 retainer. Yes, I am a doctor’s wife, but I have no money. None! I do not have access to one cent. I can’t buy a Snickers bar without permission.

I worked as a legal secretary
for two years before Dean and I were married. I enjoyed my job, but Dean made me quit as soon as we said our ‘I do’s’. At the time, I thought he did it to control me, and that keeping me from working was part of it. But now, I think he was also worried that my co-workers would see the results of my regular beatings.

Bethany and I have already talked about getting a good lawyer a million times. She keeps saying she will come up with the money somehow, but I know that
’s not going to happen. She’s a teacher with hardly enough money to pay her own bills.

I could always ask my family or Pop.
Even Matty and Shane would help, but then I’d have to explain what was going on. I can’t do that. I know my guys, and they would hurt Dean. They’d end up in jail, and I refuse to let them pay for my mistakes.

“
Well, Ms. Cook took your case,” Bethany says with a true smile, a smile I rarely see.

“
What? How? I don’t have the money, and neither do you.”

“
It seems that Ms. Cook doesn’t like it very much when a husband abuses his wife, and she hates my father.” She smiles again. “Her sister was in a little fender bender, and she was in the ER waiting room at the same time as I was. I happened to run into her getting coffee. I figured what the heck? I told her everything. She then came back to see you. As soon as she looked at you, she was ready to go after Dean. When she realized who our Dad was, and what he was doing to cover for Dean, she was practically drooling to have a go at him.” Bethany looks at me and giggles.

“
Yeah, then what happened?” I have to know what’s going on.