Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 67355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 337(@200wpm)___ 269(@250wpm)___ 225(@300wpm)
“Why did you wear that dress? Why did you go out looking like that? Don’t you know how men look at you?”
I laugh because I don’t know what else to do. “Do you hear yourself Jackson? There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to look nice and feel good about myself. But you have an overinflated opinion about my charms. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and that’s okay. I wanted to look good for me. No one else.”
He stands over me silently, seeming to process my words.
I release a heavy sigh. “Jackson, you have to know this isn’t healthy for either of us. We can’t have another incident like this. I don’t deserve to be treated this way. I’ve done everything you’ve asked and you act like I have no self-control. It’s bad enough I was confronted by your mother and called all kinds of names.”
He freezes. “What?”
“Your mother confronted me at the restaurant. She apparently knows about you and me. She told me to leave you alone or else she’d make things uncomfortable for me. But the funny thing is, she can’t do any worse than what you’ve already done to me.”
I push myself off the floor. “I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. If you don’t mind, I’ll be taking the guest bedroom tonight.”
This time when I walk by him, he doesn’t stop me.
24
JACKSON
Now I know who sent the anonymous pictures to my phone.
I should have known my mother would find a way to intervene in my life yet again. Champion is changing. The city council has even been discussing possibly changing the name. My mother is no longer the social grand dame she once way. Yet somehow she still seems to think she can control me.
I spent the last couple days assuring the investors that the information they’d been sent wouldn’t affect how the company was run. To my surprise, most of them saw it as a non-issue and for the few who did, I explained my youthful indiscretions and how it could be spun in the media if it ever came up. That seemed to assure them.
I hired a private investigator to visit the town where my family used to vacation to ask around about the Berkstram incident. I learned there had been someone fishing on the lake that night that neither me nor Melody had apparently noticed. He’d seen me jump into the lake and swim back with a very much alive Melody still on the boat.
Had he come forward back then, there would have been no speculation about my involvement. I wasn’t shocked to discover my mother had paid him to keep quiet. I know my mother is evil and petty but to do this just to keep me under her thumb was pure evil.
It’s time I put an end to her interference in my life. But my biggest priority is making things right with Zora.
Long after Zora has gone to bed, I remain in the living room. I find a spot on the couch and run through all the events that brought me to this moment. I finally told her how I feel, how I’ve felt since the moment I laid eyes on her now that I have, I know I’m going to lose her.
In my arrogance, I believed that once my plan fell in place, we would get to know each other better and she would forget about the agreement and stay with me on her own accord. But I’ve made one misstep after the other. The same mistakes I made all those years ago.
I tell myself I had a reason for doing what I did back then but I could have gone about things differently.
After I established my company, I could have found a way to meet up with her and apologize and talk things out like adults but instead, I’d kept tabs on her, making sure any chance she had at a long-term relationship was ruined. Even as I told myself that the men who were so easily run off my machinations didn’t deserve her if they didn’t stick around and fight to be with Zora, I still had no right to interfere.
And in the end, I hurt her in a way that disgusts me. I don’t deserve her. I never did.
I stay in the same spot well into the night with a sense of foreboding doom in my chest because I know this is the end.
At some point I must have fallen asleep because I wake up to the sun’s rays peeking through the window and beating on my face. I groan, from the soreness in my neck and shoulders.
I flinch when I see Zora torn panties by the door. Shame washes over me. I was an animal last night and there’s only one way for me to atone for what I’ve done.