“What’s wrong? What truth?” I asked worriedly.

Looking back down at me with an eerie empty face, he quietly said, “I was remanded into custody a couple weeks after you left. I went through an initial hearing, then a second hearing, and I pled guilty to a fucking crime I didn’t commit. Then I was sent off to a maximum security prison for twenty fucking months of my life.”

Nineteen

It was as if someone had put a bullet through my chest; a searing pain in my heart at this new revelation. Confusion and shock were at the forefront of my emotions.

“You went to prison?” I repeated. “For… For what?”

“Trevon had been using my place as a fucking dumping ground,” Jaxon muttered as he walked over to the bed and sat down again. He had his eyes pinned on his clasped hands. “I let him stay after he’d gotten evicted from his place because he hadn’t been paying since Lexi had taken off with you, I assume.” He looked up at me and I nodded.

“Anyway, the police were tipped off and they flooded into the apartment one night and arrested both of us for possession of a deadly weapon. There were two unregistered guns he’d stashed in the laundry closet, and then they discovered my stash of money I’d put away from my teenage crimes, and with Trevon selling dope on the side, it was the easiest case for them to put together. The fucking cop that arrested us had a real problem with me and of course it didn’t help I had a smart mouth back then. I was his number one target. And then suddenly there was a bag of heroine under my mattress that was so fucking obviously planted there. Cops, I tell you. They’re either good, or they’re out to get you.” With a sigh, he rubbed his eyes and mumbled, “There was no point in fighting the charges.”

“How do you know that? You could have.”

He shot me a doubtful look. “There was no way I could get out of that. If I pled not guilty, then it’d have been an uphill battle trying to fight a bunch of charges that were virtually impossible to get out of. Plus, how the hell was I going to afford a good attorney? Mom had nothing at the time. I knew the sentence would be lenient if I just pled guilty. That’s what my” – he made a distasteful look –“government appointment lawyer told me, anyway. So on the second hearing, I pled guilty and the judge sentenced me right there on the spot. Three years at Winthrop Maximum Security Prison. I was literally hauled away right then and there to start my sentence.”

I slid down the wall and onto the ground, hauling my knees to my chest while trying to wake up from this fucked up dream. Prison? He’d been in prison all that time?

“Why did Lucinda tell Lexi that you were overseas?”

“Why the hell would I want anyone to know I was in prison, Sara?” He raised an eyebrow at me as if I was dense in the head for asking such a question. “I was obviously ashamed, and so was Mom.”

“Winthrop Prison?” My voice left me temporarily as I gasped in the shock of it all. “That’s the nastiest prison around.”

He didn’t respond to that, but his eyes looked haunted and his lips thinned.

“Jaxon…” I exhaled slowly. “I had no idea, Jaxon. All this time I thought…” I crawled over to him, shaking as badly as him, and reached out to touch him. Before I could, he got up and walked to the opposite side of the room.

“I don’t want to talk about that part of my life,” he coldly stated, turning his back to me. “I want to talk about why it took you five years to come back here.” When I didn’t offer an answer, he shot me that familiar glare. “I looked for you when I got out. Do you know what that was like?”

I gulped painfully. “I thought you’d moved on–”

“You weren’t listed anywhere. You had no profile on any social website I could find – and believe me I looked. Do you know how hopeless a person feels when they type in ‘Sara Nolan’ in the search engine and find themselves looking at nine million results and none of them are you?” He shook his head in irritation. “Not even your mother had your updated phone number when I went to her the day I was free. So, either you were trying to hide yourself from anyone that’s ever known you, or you were dead. Do you know what that was like, thinking that you might have died somehow and I wasn’t there? Do you know how many nights I stayed up in my fucking cell wondering what the fuck happened to you? Five fucking years later you come and it’s not because you want to see me, or even Mom for that matter, but because you’re here to clean up your dead mother’s house. I went to that funeral and you weren’t even there. Do you know how hard that was?!” He shouted the last line, gritting his teeth as his eyes bore a hole through me.

“And on top of all that, you’re with some fucking hot shot guy, driving around in his expensive car, looking happy as hell while I endured five goddamn years of misery! You haven’t the faintest idea the shit I’ve have to do while you’re prancing about with your fucking giddy smile on your face!” He looked just about ready to explode, but he stood his ground and continued the seething glare.

“I wasn’t happy!” I cried, sagging on the floor with my back against the bed. “I was miserable! I hated my life every day. I cried myself to sleep every night. I dreamt of you every time I closed my eyes, and I regretted walking out every second until I started getting help.” I took a few calming breaths because my teeth were chattering.

“I hate that I left you like that, but I was sick in the head. I was turning into my father, turning into that violent, angry person who enjoyed inflicting pain on others because it gave me a rush. You go on like I did what I wanted to do, but leaving you was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

“I don’t even remember the trip I took with Lexi. Every day I was on a different bus, but I wasn’t mentally there. I was constantly revisiting the last day I had with you, how I hurt you by flirting with that guy. I was nowhere near healed when I went back to beg for another chance. It was realizing you’d moved on, and you were happy – that’s what forced me to heal. For all these years I imagined you walking into that apartment and feeling anger that I was gone, but then relief that you wouldn’t have to put up with my bullshit anymore.

“I quit school because I didn’t deserve to better myself. I deserved nothing but the worst. So, I waitressed and took meditation classes on the side. I was always trying to keep myself occupied, but it didn’t help until I met Daniel. He hired me, but that first year we became friends and I let slip that I had a problem. He set me up with the best therapist around, and it was the best thing at the time. Dr Shipton was incredible. He taught me to cope with the pain of losing you, and ways to move past the anger I’d built.”