The Scars That Make Us (Second Generation Book 3)

Chapter 44

JACE

Everybody had fallen asleep. Well everybody besides Catarina and me. Today had been exhausting, to say the least. I was hoping she’d get some rest, but burning the midnight oil has turned into the 1:00 am oil and she was still going at it. After going through everything with Granger and Asher, she was a bit shaken up. I didn’t know the specifics yet, but I knew what happened in that office couldn’t have been good. 

Grandma and her daughters got to work making everybody dinner and we tried to make the night seem normal, even though we knew that it was anything but. The only comfort I had was that according to the sheriff, most of the media trucks had left for the evening and although they seemed annoying, only the one ever seemed invasive and harassing.

To be on the safe side, everybody stayed in the lake houses with their respective parents. Nola and Dante were sleeping in the guest bedroom here at my mom’s place and Deacon was crashed on the couch in the living room. Asher was sleeping on the couch in the basement and Catarina and I were in Granger’s office. I sat on the couch with my feet propped up on the ottoman while she typed away, her fingers going one million miles a minute.

Under the advisement of Sadie, Granger’s cousin, Cat had decided that the best way to counter this act of media terrorism from her parents was to take away every single piece of ammo they could use against her. Originally she wanted to just go yell out to the cameras and have them record her, but Asher suggested that perhaps writing something down would make more sense. The plan was hatched. Cat was going to write an open letter that would be anonymously sent to various radio stations around the state. 

For added measure and a final nail in the coffin a few days after the letters are released, a different source will be dropping the email conversations and pictures with Melrose and Margot in which the affair….shudder....between Larry Hutchinson and Randall Bell will be exposed. A little harsh? Maybe, but Margot doesn’t do anything without Larry knowing, so he had to know what was going on there. Tabby isn’t exactly an innocent party in any of this either. She treated her sister like shit too. Asher was all for it, I think his exact words were, “burn that fucking house down.” Pretty sure he meant just metaphorically.

“Jace?” He sweet, but tired voice pulled my attention away from my phone. She stood up from the computer and stretched her arms over her head in a yawn. Her tank top rose slightly as well, showing off her swollen belly and a cute belly button that was getting ready to pop.

“Yeah, baby? What do you need?” I moved to the edge of the couch, reaching out to grab her arms, moving her body closer to me.

She sat down on my lap and cuddled her head into the crook of my neck. “I think I’m done now.”

I kissed her temple and left my lips there for a moment to rest. “How are you feeling?”

“You know, kind of cathartic. You remember how I told you that I used to cut because I felt the need to just get that release out and feel the pressure leave my body?”

“Yeah.”

“It kind of felt like that, but on a bigger scale. I’ve hidden so many parts of my life for the sake of my family’s image that it took such a toll on me. Even things that weren’t directly about me, it was the facade and the fakeness, ya know?”

“I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Not to sound dark or anything, but in a way, I feel like I just wrote my obituary. I put Catarina Hutchinson to rest and the only person left to live in Catarina Alexander.”