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So, doing the only thing that I could, I waited until she was safely inside, wondering how in the hell I was going to survive the fucking girl.
Chapter 10
Jett~
My hands were shaking as I shut the front door behind me, my mind already doing its best to protect me from the nightmare that Chasin had just delivered to my front door. Even though Chasin’s words made perfect sense in my head, his actions still didn’t line up with any of my reality right now. Chasin wasn’t supposed to have wanted more from me than sex. He was supposed to have been a safe bet, and now he was the worst kind of risk.
“What was Chasin Carver doing here, Jett?”
My head snapped up at my father’s voice. My mother stood in the mouth of the living room, close enough to hear us, but far enough away to avoid becoming a casualty. Still dressed in her tailored Armani blouse, pencil skirt, suit jacket, and heels, no one would guess that she was a coward underneath it all. No one would guess that Fern Morgan was nothing but a shell of a woman, an accessory that only existed to make her husband look good.
“He…uhm, he gave me a ride home from…from the park,” I lied. My parents knew my routine, and it wasn’t often that I deviated from it.
“Why?” he asked, his voice echoing throughout the house.
“He was just being…nice,” I said, still lying. “He saw me walking and offered.”
My father stepped towards me until I had to force myself not to cower. “And why didn’t you say no?” he questioned like the interrogation that this was.
“I…he caught me off guard,” I answered, the lies like acid on my tongue.
“You’re lying,” he hissed.
The sad truth was that it didn’t matter if I was lying or not. I knew the rules, and I’d known them since kindergarten. I hadn’t known why we’d had the rules until a couple of years later, but the rules had been ingrained into me since as long as I could remember. My mother and I weren’t allowed to have friends, and my father viewed people as only chess pieces on the board that was his life. People weren’t invited into our house or our lives, no matter what. If my father had to hold parties or any political gatherings, then he arranged them at one of my mother’s hotels, never our house.
“I’m not lying,” I said, even knowing that there was no getting out of this.
“Yes, you are!” he roared right before his right arm flung back with all the momentum of a grown man.
The slap to my face snapped my head sideways, my entire body colliding with the foyer wall, my purse and backpack dropped in a heap at my feet. I wasn’t used to him hitting me in the face, so I felt momentarily stunned that he’d done it. It wasn’t often that he was enraged enough to forget himself, but it also didn’t take a genius to figure out the reason why he was so pissed off. Chasin Carver was indefinitely more powerful than he was, and my father was not about to let him walk into our lives to save anyone.
Grabbing me by my shoulders, Thomas flung me to the floor, my shoulder hitting the tile floor, scraping against the grout lines. My mind tried to slide into protective mode, but my eyes caught my mother hovering near the wall that separated the living room and dining room, and she just stared at me accusingly; I knew better, so it was my fault that my father was enraged. I wanted to hate her, but I knew that I had sentenced us both to Thomas Morgan’s abuse when I had let Chasin drop me off at home. As soon as my father was done with me, he was going to go after her because he viewed every single one of my failures as her fault. When I’d been younger, I had blamed and hated her, but not anymore. I had learned long ago that my energy shouldn’t be wasted on a coward.
“What were you doing with Chasin Carver?!” my father roared, and I really should have tried harder. Chasin was the only person in this city with a car like his, so that’s how my father had known who he was.
“Nothing,” I replied through clenched teeth. “It was just a ride-”
“Quit fucking lying to me!”
“It’s true!” I yelled back, damning myself further.
The pointed toe of his shoe found its way into my back, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Over the years, I’d learned that crying, begging, screaming, or any sign of weakness just infuriated him more. Tears would make him seem like the bad guy in this scenario, and Thomas was narcissistic enough to feel offended by that possibility. It’d been a horrible nightmare when I’d been younger, but as I’d gotten older, I had learned how to channel the pain until he was finished with me. My mother had given me tips, her attempt at being a good mother.
Ten minutes later, my father was done reinforcing the rules of the house, and I laid on the floor, thinking back to when I’d been a five-year-old girl, excited about going to kindergarten. I could remember talking happily about making friends since I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and I could also remember how my mother had crushed those hopes with the ‘rules’ of our house. She’d done her best to explain to a five-year-old why I couldn’t have friends, and she had drilled the rules into my head for a month straight before school had started.
Like a programed robot, I had followed the rules, and it hadn’t been until a little after my eighth birthday when I’d finally found out why we’d had those rules. I had entered my father’s study without knocking, and he’d been beating my mother, horrifying and scarring me for the first time. However, instead of stopping, he had turned on me, teaching me a lesson for entering his office without knocking and waiting for permission first.
Like it had just happened this morning, I could remember my mother and me lying on the carpeted floor, and I’d been crying while my mother had tried to explain to me how crying would only make it worse. She had also tried to explain how my father’s temper was the price that we had to pay for everything that we had, and unless I wanted to live on the streets, then I’d keep my mouth shut and adapt. It’d taken me years before I could finally identify her weakness for what it was, my hate for her turning into pity and disgust.
Wrapping my arm around my waist, I forced myself to stand up, then walk over to pick up my stuff. I had to grit my teeth as my entire body ached with pain, my mind already dreading tomorrow morning. A hot soak in the tub didn’t always work, and Thomas had really been pissed this time around. As I stood up, I willed myself to push back the nausea, knowing that I still had to make it up the stairs to my bedroom.
Thomas and Fern Morgan were the reasons why I wasn’t going to college, though they didn’t know it yet. Having them pay for school would keep me tied to them for longer than I legally needed to be, and I’d rather work as a cashier at some mundane retail store than let them control my life a second longer than it took for me to get my high school diploma.
Halfway up the stairs, my entire body winced as I heard the sound of glass breaking against the wall, and I despised myself for how weak we both were. I struggled every day to convince myself that I was not weak, just pragmatic, but it was a lie. At any given point in my life, I could have called the police, told a teacher, or just ran away. I could have fought back, threatened to report him, or even set up a hidden camera to expose the truth about Thomas Morgan. Instead, I took the abuse because it was easier than facing a fight that I wasn’t strong enough to win. Biding my time until graduation had seemed like the perfect solution to everything, but then Chasin Carver happened.
Walking into my bedroom, I shut and locked the door behind me, wondering what in the hell to do about Chasin. For all that he acted like an asshole around me, if Chasin found out that my father was beating me, I could see him taking that personally. I had no idea why he’d chosen to change the rules between us, but he’d had, and I wasn’t confused about what kind of boyfriend Chasin Carver would make. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if that’s what he was, but whatever we were to each other, Chasin could never find out about my father. While I didn’t need a college degree to get by in life, I needed a high school diploma at the very least, and I couldn’t get one if I ended up homeless.
Heading towards the bathroom, I heard my phone chime, but I ignored it. I had no friends, so I had no idea who could possibly be texting me right now. However, when I realized that it was probably Chasin, I grabbed it from my purse before making my way to the bathroom.
