Worth Any Risk

Ch. 11 Try, Try, Try

*Jordan

I try to go home when I leave the wooden bridge and Cole standing on the dusty road. I try to guide my car on the familiar paths, the safe paths that keep me out of the wolves' teeth. Predators are everywhere, and like Little Red Riding Hood, I learned my lesson the hard way.

I grew up with do as your told and don't talk back. I bent over backwards to never make waves ever since my mother died when I was nine and Amber was ten and Reese was twelve.

Dad would come home tired and drunk, and completely ignore us. Or angry and mean, and fists would fly. Or drunk and too affectionate, wanting us to sit on his lap or worse. Always something. Stay small, stay out of the way, and keep your mouth closed were the rules that kept me in one piece. My sisters fought back. I didn't.

But then, they fought for me, didn't they? Then they took off as soon as they thought I was safe. After he died when I was seventeen, I was out of his reach, but like a fool, fell into Trey's grip. A couple of years later, I became the submissive, good wife who obeyed her husband and anticipating his needs to the point of neglecting my own.

Looking back, knowing what I know now and how the world works, I see the steps he took to reel me in and trap me in his control. He picked his victim—me—for weakness and the broken hurt I must have projected. He started by being too sweet to resist, offering to drive me places I needed to go when my sisters and I were sharing one run-down Ford. He passed me notes, he had me sit with him at lunch instead of alone, since Amber graduated early. He invited me to parties and put his arm around my shoulder, as if we belonged together. I never had this kind of attention from anyone before. I didn't have many friends and my sisters were hell-bent on leaving town. It wasn't long before I was completely isolated, with only Trey in my life. Everyone else was dead or gone. Little by little, his family started to hate me. Passionately. I still don't understand why, except that they expected great things from him and must have thought I was the one holding him back.

They had no clue who he really was. If he passed his classes the last two years of school, it was because of me. If he didn't get arrested for shoplifting, it was because I showed him how to do it, or did it for him. If he didn't drive home completely wasted after a party and kill himself, it was again, because of me. I pretended to drink at those parties with rowdy boys jostling and shoving to be the alpha. Shouting at each other to chug more beer until they puked on my shoes. Dragging girls off into the bushes—I'm not sure all those girls knew what was going on.

If I could get those boys in a dark alley with me now, I'd show them what it means to be hurt in the dark. And Trey was king asshole of them all. I just didn't see it until it was too late.

He was supposed to go to college, but his departure was scheduled shortly after we started having sex. I had managed to hold out for over a year, but he wouldn't wait any longer. I didn't know anything about my body. He didn't want to use a condom, so we didn't.

His parents blamed me. Called me a slut. I was only eighteen, but I wanted that baby. I needed someone to love, someone to call family. Amber had taken off the second she graduated high school, so brilliant she had a full-ride scholarship to an out of state-school, and Reese waited until a couple of days after I turned eighteen.

I was legal and could own the house. She was gone from one day to the next. We were too broken to stay together as sisters.

Trey took a warehouse job outside of the city since I was pregnant, but I lost the baby at the end of the first trimester. I think he was relieved. Relieved I miscarried and he didn't have to be a dad, and relieved I prevented him from having to go to college.

He could still have a semblance of fun. His mom wasn't pampering him anymore, I was. And I knew better than to try and tell him what to do. He was very happy with the arrangement, I can see it now.