In the year she’d been working with me at Glow, I’d noticed a couple suspicious bruises along her arms, but she’d always had an excuse for them. That is . . . when she’d spoken to me.
No one knew anything about her or her home life since she was incredibly shy and never said much to anyone. And she hadn’t said a word to me for nearly a month after I’d brought the bruises up.
I’d always mentioned my worries to Kyle, but it was obvious Jenna hadn’t wanted our help back then. Now . . .
“I have to go, Briar,” she said through her trembling. “I have—I have to get out of here.”
I stared at her in shock for a few seconds with my head shaking before I nodded quickly. “Of course, what do you need us to do? We can take you where—”
“No,” she said quickly, harshly. “I have a car, but m-m-my dad . . . he thinks I’m on my way to work right now, and he has my phone. If I don’t show up, they’ll call.”
I wasn’t understanding what she needed. All I could focus on were the bruises and the cuts on her face. The violent shaking of her body and the raw fear in her voice.
“Your dad?” I asked lamely, and wondered for a second how old she was. She had to be at least twenty-one to work in the restaurant. “What do you need, Jenna? Tell me what I can do. Do you need money?”
“N-no. No, can you cover for me at work? P-please, I n-need time to get away, Briar. I need time, and if he realizes I’m not there, he’ll come looking for me right away.”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation. “Of course I will. What time is your shift?”
“It starts in ten minutes.”
I nodded again, and tried to get my mind straight. “Okay. Okay, I’ll call and tell them I’m running late. That I forgot we switched. Are you sure we can’t help you in any other way? My fiancé can—”
“No, just—I just need to leave.”
“Jenna, my fiancé’s mom is the governor, so she can do something about your dad if he’s the one who’s been doing this—”
“No! Please don’t get anyone else involved. If you do he’ll come after me, I know he will. Just let me leave,” she begged, and the desperation in her voice tore through me until I was shaking too.
How could a father do this to his own child?
I could feel her fear start to consume me until a song was just a breath from leaving my lips—but I forced the impulse back, knowing distantly that the fear wasn’t my own. I needed to hold it together for Jenna now.
“Okay, go,” I whispered, as if her dad might be near. Before she could turn to leave, I pulled her into my arms, and tried to keep my hug light in the chance there were more bruises I couldn’t see. “Be safe, Jenna. Get far, far away. You deserve so much better than this.”
A sob tore from her throat when she pulled away. I watched her turn and run toward her car. My shock mixed with confusion, rooting me to the ground.
The next time I woke, it was from the harsh spray of a hose. The other females in the room were screaming, and I wondered if this was the end. If this had been some unknown torture, only to drown us.
I was so focused on keeping my mouth shut so things I didn’t want to think of wouldn’t fly into my mouth, that I hadn’t noticed that the screams of the girls had started dying out. I hadn’t noticed that the spray of the water was focused more on my part of the room, or that I was surrounded by people who hadn’t been there just before. It wasn’t until that familiar pinch was at my neck that all of that came back to me. I welcomed the darkness like an old friend, hoping recent memories of Kyle would be there.
“Briar . . .”
I looked up when I heard Kyle’s voice, my face tensed with worry and fear as I hurried to tell him what had just happened.
Though he seemed worried for a girl he didn’t know, and just as furious and disgusted as I was with the kind of man who would hurt his own daughter, I could see his frustration when he realized what this meant.
I wasn’t just backing out on brunch, I was doing it last minute after he’d more or less let his mom know that we’d been living together. Something she’d specifically told us was forbidden in case the media caught wind of it. Anything that could make her family look anything less than perfect wasn’t allowed . . . ever.
A lifestyle I knew all too well being raised under my parents’ roof. Not that Kyle or I had cared about either of our parents or the consequences when he’d given me a key to his place and asked me not to leave.
As soon as I was done explaining what I knew about Jenna, I called the restaurant, hurrying through the house as I did to change into the satiny uniform dress and stilettos, and then Kyle was rushing me to work.
Working had been a constant argument with both my parents and Kyle’s. They didn’t like that I was a waitress, even if it was at a place that only catered to those with pockets as deep as the Atlantic Ocean. Kyle’s mom thought it was an embarrassment to her family, and my parents thought I was embarrassing them by embarrassing the governor. Kyle hoped I would stop once we got married, but he knew I had plans to return after our honeymoon.
He didn’t understand, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part.
I’d grown up being handed everything and had watched as my parents threw money away as if it were nothing. I’d thought it normal. After all, that was how my friends’ families were as well.
It wasn’t until my parents had tried to use me as a pawn for their own personal gain that I’d realized how disgusting their money was—how disgusting the world I’d grown up in was.
From that moment on, I’d wanted to earn everything I had.
And, with the exception of Kyle and his need to spoil me, that was exactly what I’d done.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Kyle for the fifth time as we pulled up to Glow. “Please ask your mom to forgive me, and let her know I won’t miss next Sunday.”
Before I could hop out of his truck, he grabbed my hand in his and pulled me close. “Stop apologizing, Briar. My mom can get mad if she wants to; it won’t be long before she’ll find something or someone else to be mad at. Do you know if it had been my mom or one of my sisters, they would have sent Jenna away without helping her?” He brushed my hair away from my face with his free hand, and said in a soft voice, “I’m thankful for the woman you are, and I’m proud of you and proud to call you mine. I can’t wait until I can call you my wife.”
My lips stretched into the widest smile as he spoke. By the time the last word left his mouth, I was pressing my lips to his.
In a move made effortless from years of kissing each other, Kyle pulled me closer. One arm was wrapped around my waist, hugging my body against his, while his other hand was cupped around the back of my neck to deepen the kiss.
The second his tongue met mine, heat flooded low in my belly. The feeling was intoxicating, and I knew I could easily get lost in that feeling and that kiss for hours. But even through the haze of Kyle’s kisses, we were in the parking lot outside work, and I was already running late for the shift. A shift I needed to work for Jenna’s sake.