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I gripped on the edge of my table and winced as I felt hot blood rush through my veins. I shook my head in denial as I stared at the picture again.
The universe wouldn’t be so depressed to make me sleep with Jordan again, would it?
I picked up the old picture of her again and checked it, flittering my eyes from her younger self to the current one.
Now I remembered why her hair looked familiar, why her eyes drew me in and why I felt attracted to her at first sight. This proved yet again that only Jordan had the ability to draw me in.
I could see the resemblance. It wasn’t so much, but it was there, for anyone holding both pictures to see.
But this meant I slept with her again. She wouldn’t like that, would she? Did she even know it was me? If she didn’t, how would she feel when she found out she slept with me? What was she even doing in Canada?
I had searched for her for four years.
I began searching for her immediately after John and I graduated from college. What happened in the past ten years?
I looked into her eyes in the picture. There was no emotion whatsoever in the big brown eyes. The eyes that used to hold all the emotions in the world. The eyes that would always tell me what she felt even before her lips said it.
‘If I get caught, I’ll die.’ John’s words returned to my head and as I glanced back at the older picture of her, I didn’t doubt that those eyes could hurt a person. Did what happened ten years ago turn her into…this?
I clicked on another picture where she was at a table with two men, her hand clenched as she peered at the clearly older men with a stern face.
What was she doing in Canada knowing that my dad and brothers were in the same city? Or did she not know? Well I had to tell her if she didn’t. My dad might have forgotten to search for them, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do bad things to her if he ever met her again.
Even though I had been searching for her for the past four years with no hope of finding her, I still couldn’t help but feel like everything was moving too fast now that I had finally found her.
I didn’t know if I was just scared or nervous or even happy. I didn’t know what she thought of me. I didn’t know what she would say if she saw me or what I would say if I saw her?
She was going to be at Fords Hall, right? Well she’d meet me there.
7
JAYDEN
FIFTEEN YEARS OLD
The door opened and I jumped from the corner I was in. Jordan’s dad already said he was coming to pick her up today, and it was almost night. Dad had ordered the cook to prepare dinner, and Raphael and I already got the sedative ready.
I couldn’t wait for her to get out of that room.
At least dad allowed someone to wash and clean their room yesterday, but she still hadn’t eaten since she came and it’d been eight days already.
So many times I’d dreamt of her and I living together in the same house. I had even spoken to Raphael about it and he teased me by saying I was a goner –whatever that meant.
I never meant it like this though. I never meant living together in the same house while she suffered.
Did I not explain it well to God?
How could dad not even care one bit? How could he do this to my best friend? How could he do this to a girl in general? If he had a problem with his friend, then he should face his friend. Was he so weak that he couldn’t go after his friend and decided to go after a poor girl and her mother?
Especially when the poor girl turned out to be the only girl I liked.
Was money that powerful that it could turn families against each other? Was money that powerful to break bonds? Was money that powerful that people who didn’t have it meant nothing to people who had it?
I guess it was. I was a living witness of that.
“Jayden,” he growled as he leaned on the door and I flinched. That voice was something I had grown to hate the past few days. I glanced up to him and I saw a stranger.
Every time he entered my room to call me, I prayed he would apologize and say it wasn’t him, and I would believe it. If he told me that he was locked up by an alien who took his place and did all those things to Jordan and her mom, I would believe him.