CHAPTER TWELVE

I had been fourteen, barely a freshman in high school, when Jeremy Walden approached me for a date. He was a junior and so much more experienced and sophisticated than I was. He was also popular, good-looking, and came from money. Being with him had been exciting, and sure, the vain part of me can admit I liked what being his girlfriend did for my image.

For a year or so, things coasted along, not perfectly, but okay. Since he was a little older and had been the one to draw me into his crowd of people, we naturally started our relationship with him being the more dominant, controlling figure. And that didn’t bother me.

For a while.

Okay, it bothered me. But I didn’t do a whole lot about it at first.

When his senior year started, and his dad began to pressure him more about picking out the perfect college, the not-so wonderful side of him grew more defined. He’d always had a cruel streak. He could bully with the best of them. But when he turned his bullying on me, I wasn’t impressed.

The occasional slaps he’d given me before and bruises he’d left from grabbing me too hard grew to be not so occasional. It was embarrassing to think I could be one of those abused women who put up with that kind of crap. I convinced myself his small acts of totally minor violence here and there were no big deal. He’d never actually hurt me, hurt me.

But it still got to me.

As I matured and my personality developed, we began to argue more. He didn’t like me standing up for myself, and I didn’t like him manhandling me and dictating to me every little thing he wanted me to do. The sad part was, it wasn’t even his violence that broke us apart the first time. One of his friends told me he’d seen Jeremy making out with one of the skanky cheerleaders.

I confronted him about it, of course, and after I said something snide and sarcastic—yeah, imagine that—he whirled around with his hand out. He caught me in the cheek and ended up cracking my jaw.

I broke up with him while he drove me to the hospital.

After our split, my friends he’d isolated me away from during our time together were wonderful and returned to me, nursing my wounded ego back to health.

But Jeremy came sobbing back to me—literally. He fell on his knees before me, hugged my legs, and begged me to take him back. Somehow, he managed to convince me the whole broken-jaw thing had been a complete accident. He hadn’t purposely hit me that hard; I’d just been standing too close when he’d swung around. And he insisted his friend had lied about the other girl.

Stupid me, I’d believed him.

After two months of being apart, we got back together.

For a while, he was careful not to be too controlling, and I tried to not branch out away from him more than he could stand. But…a person can’t help who they are. I needed my me-space; he needed to oversee every little thing I did. I broke up with him again during my senior year.

I was very amicable about it. Really. I sat him down and kept my voice calm when I told him we were two totally different kinds of people, and we just didn’t mesh well together. I think the part he didn’t like so much was when I told him—as gently as possible—that he needed to seek counseling to help him deal with his anger management problems.

Yeah, he beat me black and blue for that one. The worst damage came to my arm, which shattered with a nice, painful crunch after he pushed me down a flight of stairs.

He was well on his way to becoming a woman beater.

Finally, I learned my lesson. I knew better than to let him anywhere near me. My parents threatened to take out a restraining order against him, but his lawyer father jumped in, saying we didn’t need to take any legal measures yet. He assured us Jeremy would keep his distance. To him, his son was flawless and perfect, and it had been all my fault his perfect child had felt the need to act out.

Since it was all so very disconcerting for me—and my family and his family as well—both our parents tried to keep the situation low-key. As long as it severed my contact with Jeremy, I didn’t care. I just wanted him out of my life.

But Jeremy wasn’t entirely on board. After being with me for two and a half years, he’d grown attached. He actually thought he loved me. So, in his mind, he fought for me.

To me, he turned into a psycho stalker crazy ex-boyfriend who’d break into my room when I wasn’t home and leave me letters and poems and gifts, frantic to get me back.

He was very careful to stay away from me physically. But he harassed me on every other level possible, constantly hanging around outside school whenever classes let out, finding ways to post things on my Facebook page, texting me, emailing me, leaving gross videos on my phone of how he had to pleasure himself since he no longer had me.

I ignored him for the most part, sometimes yelling at him to leave me alone already, but nothing worked. He wouldn’t stop.

Eventually, his control broke. One evening, when my parents were out to dinner and I was home by myself, he snuck into my house to pay me a visit. He had his pocketknife with him—which had seemed more like a collapsible machete at the time.

After he pinned me to the door of my bedroom, he told me in no uncertain terms that if he couldn’t have me, he was going to make sure no one else could either. Then he pressed the blade to my throat.

I’d never been as afraid as I was then, knowing he was fully capable of killing me and realizing he totally planned to do just that. I blocked some of that moment to the darkest, coldest recesses of my mind. I didn’t think I’d ever fully remember everything that happened. But I remember how cold, and pale, and sweaty his face was as he leaned in close until our foreheads touched.

~“No one will ever love you the way I do, Reese’s Pieces. And if you won’t let me have you now, I’ll just make sure we’re together for all eternity.”~

I had no idea if he’d planned a murder/suicide or what. But I didn’t want to find out. I was also not too clear how I did it, but somehow one of my hands grappled behind me until I found the doorknob. Just as he began to press the knife into my flesh, I opened the door and spun away.

He sliced me the deepest on the back left side. And if I hadn’t been wearing my hair up in a ponytail, he probably would’ve whacked off my beautiful brunette locks too.

My mother contracting food poisoning from the restaurant saved my life. Dad had rushed her home early. They came through the back door to find me screaming and hurtling myself toward them with my psycho stalking ex-boyfriend charging after me, his bloody knife raised and ready to plunge again.

And here was where I had to pause and take a breath, remind myself I was fine. I was okay. All that was over.

Whew.

Well, mostly over. Jeremy’s rich daddy bailed him out of jail the very night he committed his crime, so he didn’t spend any time behind bars, hence me changing my name and fleeing halfway across the country. But my parents felt confident he would be charged guilty during his trial—if his father finally stopped finding ways to delay it—and then he’d go to prison for a long, long time. It wouldn’t even matter that he’d find out my new name when I testified against him, because afterward, he’d be locked away for good.

~Then~, everything really would be okay. I could go back to my birth name. And it’d all be over.

If I didn’t have such a unique—sure, we’ll call it unique—personality, my time with Jeremy might’ve left me an unbalanced, frightened mess. I still have moments of fear. I still experience some of that submissive compliance he tried to brainwash into me—though rarely, thank God. And I’ve grown a little more judgmental around new people.

My parents tried to talk me into seeing a therapist, but I think I handled everything okay. I dealt with it. I survived and I actually kind of felt as if I was flourishing here in Waterford. I still missed Ellamore. It would always be home.

But I was doing okay. And the lunches I had shared with Mason on campus everyday were a big part of that. He had a way of making me feel normal and yet exhilarated all in the same breath. He accepted me for what I was, and he actually seemed to like my unique personality.

He got me.

That was why, despite the three years of hell I’d lived through under Jeremy Walden’s thumb, the two weeks following Eva’s party were the most miserable days of my life.

After our near kiss, Mason suddenly dropped off the grid, avoiding me altogether. He no longer sought me out at lunch, even though I made sure to always sit at our table. On the nights I watched Sarah, he was gone before I showed up at his house, and he stayed away long after I left.

I tried not to wonder what he was doing every night he worked late, or which woman he was servicing, or how much she made him touch her, or why he kept living that stupid, freaking lifestyle. But it drove me crazy, thinking about it.

Things had changed between us. Our friendship had shattered. And he knew it too; otherwise he wouldn’t have stayed away.

I was so tempted to slip into his bedroom and leave a letter on his bed, just to tell him how much I missed him and how I could still be his friend; we could get past that stupid, almost kiss. I wanted to study with him at lunch again, watch him steal a portion of whatever I was eating, tease him about whatever topic we were discussing, and just…be in his company.

But leaving him a note felt too Jeremy-ish. So I never once even opened the door to his bedroom, not even to peek inside.

And in return, a part of my soul ached on a daily basis. A chunk of me felt missing.

I needed Mason back in my life.