The Break Up Plan

38: COLE JACKSON

Happy new year you guysss🤗🤗💕💕 Cheers to a new year and a new decade and I hope you all have an amazing 2020😘😘

Warning: this chapter contains triggering contents like abuse and murder.

Dedicated to ManashjyotiSaikia

***

By the time I pull up into the rapidly deteriorating drive way and turn off the engine, Cole still hasn't said anything.

Wordlessly, I open the door and step out and he does the same.

I glance at him over the hood of the car and gesture to the house. "This is where we lived before we had money" I tell him.

His eyes glance at the house in front of him, taking in the tiny bungalow my family lived in till I was nine. Nostalgia envelopes me as memories come flooding back. The time I tripped on a crack and split my knee, when Tyler, Gabe and I used to jump off the roof and unto my parents' mattress we'd set on the ground. My eyes settle on the little nook under the small stairs leading to the porch where I used to write.

Cole has still not said anything so naturally, that's my cue to keep talking till he shuts me up. "They plan on renovating the entire neighborhood" my eyes follow the mostly empty houses that make up my childhood home, "they'll tear down the houses and build posh mansions with fancy lawns and snobby families"

I sigh, leaning against the car, "I wanted my kids to see this place, as it was when I was little"

I look at Cole and he's looking at me but his mind is miles away. I walk around the car to his side and stand next to him.

"Remember when you took me to your special place and I spilled my guts about my life?"

His reply is a brief nod.

"Well, it might not be much" I gesture to the house, "but this is kind of my special place"

His reply is a sigh.

I let out a sigh of my own and grab his hand, "you said you trust me" he looks down at me and I hold his gaze, "it's time to prove it. I need to know what's wrong, Cole, please"

His hands slip out of mine and reach up to painfully tug at his hair and I bite my lip as I watch him battle with himself, pacing and hyperventilating.

Finally, he stalks to the porch steps and before I warn him about dust and the fact that it might not hold his weight, he sits down and buries his face in his hands. "Promise me"

He looks up at me and I see the decision in his eyes, "promise me you won't see me any different than you do now, that you won't change towards me" he's trying hard to keep the desperate plea from his voice but I hear it anyway and a strange sort of fear consumes me. What's so dark and dangerous that it might change how I feel for him?

I walk towards him and sit next to him on the steps, he turns to me, his eyes searching, waiting, "I promise" I tell him, "Nothing can make me change towards you"

He scoffs like he doesn't believe me and turns away. Then he starts.

"Till I was eleven, my legal name was Cole Jackson" he sighs, "Christopher Jackson was my father"

I exhale, "he died?"

Cole's chuckle is bitter and scary, "if only"

I'm taken aback but I don't say anything, I wait.

"My parents met in the most cliché way ever, she wasn't looking where she was going and he saved her from being run over. They realized that they attended the same med school and had classes together. They went through the whole process, friends, crushes, unjustified jealousy and then they got together. While all this was happening, my mom was succeeding in everything she did, she was a genius and she was killing school. My sperm donor, was not"