Read Jessie Belle: The Women of Merryton - Book One for Free Online Page A

possibility, but it was hitting me like a wrecking
ball. I clasped my hands together and paced the wood floors of our home. Blake
watched me carefully. He was smart not to speak right away.
    “I
didn’t sign up for this,” I said to myself out loud. “This wasn’t the way my
life was supposed to turn out. I should be home now with my baby and—”
    Blake
took me up in his arms before I could finish my rant and pulled me close. I
tried to fight him, but he refused to let me go.
    “Why
wasn’t I enough for you and why did you sleep with Sabrina and why do you get
to have a child when I never can? Just tell me why,” I cried against him. I
knew how selfish it all sounded, but I felt overwhelming anger and jealously
boiling within me. I wasn’t a jealous person, but the green-eyed monster
consumed me.
    “Is
that what you’ve thought all this time?” he asked quietly against my ear. “That
I broke things off with you because I didn’t think you were enough? It was the
exact opposite. I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I worked in construction
without a degree of any kind and you came from affluence and education.”
    “That
has never mattered to me.”
    “It
mattered to me. Jessica, I’m not going to keep apologizing for something I did
over thirteen years ago. I can’t change the past. And hell, Jess, don’t you
think it kills me to hurt you like this? Don’t you know how much I wanted a
child with you?”
    “I
don’t know anything anymore,” I said quietly against his chest through my
shuddering. “I only want the pain to go away.”
    He
held me tighter. “Me, too.”
    My
enthusiasm for Monday went out the door along with my husband. I knew he was
worried and even nervous, and part of me wanted to make him feel better about
the whole situation. I felt so empty and lost. I had conflicting thoughts going
through my head—I knew you’re supposed to put on your own oxygen mask first,
but I’d also heard that helping someone else would make your own problems not
look so bad.
    My
issues with both of those thoughts was that we were part of each other’s
problems.
    I
don’t know how that happened. We really were in love once upon a time. We were
never one of those couples that felt the need to shout it to the world. It was
more like we had quiet confidence in each other and as a couple. Somewhere
along the way, though, that had been lost. I don’t know if I could pinpoint
where or how it happened. I wished I could say it was just the trauma and
turmoil over losing our son that had caused it, but we’d had problems before
that. We only masked them better. But after we lost Carter, all bets were off.
We stopped trying to pretend we were okay. This new revelation was just icing
on the cake that was getting harder and harder to swallow.
    I
almost didn’t go to work, but I knew staying at home alone would only make me
more miserable. When I arrived at the café I decided going in the back door
would be best for my mental health. I swear the people in this town were like barometers;
they could sense when a storm was brewing. I already knew people were talking
about us. I knew I needed to gear up for when they found out my husband had a
child. I was serious about moving, or at least taking a very long vacation.
    I
did love this town, but the tabloids had nothing on the people of Merryton. If
given the chance they could probably solve the secret of Stonehenge and the
Bermuda Triangle. The town motto could be “inquiring minds want to know and we
will find out.”
    I
sneaked into my office and settled in at my desk. While my laptop booted up I
picked up the wedding photo of Blake and me that I kept next to my phone. The
photographer caught this perfect moment at our reception where we were looking
at one another like no one else existed. When we were first together we did
that often. It was so easy to get lost in him. We didn’t even need to speak; we
just knew what the other was thinking and we were