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Pain lancinated my heart because I understood why. She’d been empty and desperate for someone to fill those vacant places her childhood had left behind.
“You believed it because you deserved all those things. He’s the one who manipulated you, Jessica. He’s the one to blame.”
She blinked through the memories, swallowing hard before she pressed on. “He’d travel back and forth to visit me before he finally asked me to move to Time River so we could be together. I was so happy. I thought things were finally going to change until he told me it still had to be kept under cover. No one could know. And there was a part of me that knew it, Savannah—this place inside me that revolted against it again—that warned me something wasn’t right. And still I went with it because no one had ever made me feel that good. So important. So beautiful. Like I was cherished.”
Regret tipped her mouth all the way down on the right side. “So, I texted you and told you I didn’t need you in my life anymore. It destroyed me, severing our connection. It was the biggest mistake I ever made, shutting you out.”
“It broke my heart, too.”
“I know. I knew it would. And still I went along with it.”
She paused, then said, “I moved the next day. When I got to Time River, I was upset, expecting something much more glamourous, but he told me to trust him, that everything was going to work out the way he’d promised, and he put me up in this gorgeous condo.”
My stomach twisted. The condo that had been in the journal.
“He’d visit me there most days, sneaking in at all hours, since God forbid, he be seen with me, until he finally asked me out to his place one night. And there I was again, the fool who thought he was finally going to make me a real part of his life.”
Bitterness filled her voice. “Only I wasn’t the only woman there.”
She paused, processing the hurt.
The pain.
Her shame was sharp and clotting the air.
I reached for her hand. “It’s okay, Jessica. I’m right here.”
She sniffled, but she kept her attention on me as she murmured, “My heart cracked right in half, Savannah, yet somehow…somehow that bastard still managed to convince me to go with them to his room. He’d said nothing could bring him greater pleasure than having the two of us together.”
Her gaze tripped to the wall, to the floor, then back to me. “When Jack was out of earshot, she’d squeezed my wrist so hard that I’d thought she would draw blood. Her words had been rushed and quieted as she’d urged me to leave. She’d told me to run far away and never look back. And I let jealousy get in the way…thinking she was trying to get rid of me so she could have Jack to herself. A fool who didn’t listen.”
Sorrow bottled in my chest. “Brianna?”
My mind still reeled with the truth. I’d been filled in on the link with the journal. Told that my sweet Olivia had taken it, not understanding what it meant. And here I’d been searching Ezra’s ex’s journal for months and had no clue.
Sorrow filled the quiver of her chin. “Yes, Brianna.”
Jessica paused, warring through the images that I could see plagued her mind. “It started out with only the two of us. Usually in his room. Sometimes at my condo. He’d take turns with us or sometimes watch us together.”
Her head shook in guilt. “I didn’t know Brianna was married, Savannah. Not until we were a few months in. I was stunned, unable to wrap my head around the fact that she had this double life. But she’d been just as swept up in Jack as I had been. Too blinded to see what she was sacrificing for the chance to be with him.”
My spirit felt like it was getting beat up on all sides. Grief slamming me. For Jessica. For Ezra. For his kids. It was also there for this woman I could never truly understand, but I had to believe she’d been just as manipulated as my sister had been.
Jessica’s attention dropped to her lap, and she pulled her hand from mine and started to fiddle with the tissue, her fingers trembling so hard I could feel them shaking the bed. She peeked up at me from beneath her bangs. “Being with Jack was more pleasure than pain, but he was into that, too. I…” She paused, then rushed. “I found I liked it. It was exciting. Exhilarating. That was until he started taking us down to his basement. That was when the pain became a real, terrifying thing. It wasn’t until then I started to realize I’d gotten myself into a situation I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get myself out of. One that so many times I felt like I didn’t want to get out of.”
