Fear Games

7. Here We Go Again

EDEN

I sighed as I walked through the front door to my home, finding Jacob's son Jax sitting on the couch watching television. He smiled at me in his blue pajamas and said, "Hello, Mrs. Walker."

"Hi Jax," I said, throwing my keys in the bowl on the table by the door and kicked off my shoes. "Is your, uh, father home?" It felt weird saying those words, that Jacob had another child. I was still trying to get used to the idea. I wasn't necessarily coming around, but I wasn't going to treat Jax like shit because of a mistake his father made eighteen years ago. And it wasn't like Jacob cheated on me. Jax was his before he even met me. So there was no reason to make Jax feel bad for being Jacob's son.

"Nope," Jax said. "He hasn't come home from work yet. Did you need him for something?"

"No, I was just wondering," I said. I should have known he wouldn't be home. He was never home this early. Making my way over to the couch to sit next to Jax, I added, "How was your day today?"

Jax shrugged. "It was alright. Nothing too exciting. How was yours? You're a teacher at Valley View Private School, huh?"

"Yes, I am," I said.

"Where are your kids?" Jax asked as he flipped through the TV channels, without looking at me.

"They decided to get together after school," I said. I didn't want to nag, but I felt the need to ask, "Do you have a job or anything? I know we didn't get to talk much yesterday since you spent most of the day with your father."

"Don't worry about it," Jax said. "And no, I'm not working currently. I'm trying to find a job so I can get my own apartment. I definitely don't want to overstay my welcome here, especially with the divorce going on."

"So you know," I said. Part of me had hoped he didn't know about the divorce, but of course Jacob would have told him. And it was so obvious that we had our issues.

"Yeah, I do," Jax said. "It's a real shame, but Jacob—I mean Dad—does love you. He's made that abundantly clear in our conversations."

Huh. That was news to me. Jacob never expressed any love toward me anymore, not since we started having our issues. "Did he really say those words?"

Jax shrugged again. "I guess so. What's the main problem between you guys anyway? If you love each other, why get divorced? Doesn't really make a lot of sense to me."

"Things are...complicated," I said. That was the understatement of the millennia. "I have a lot of trauma in my past, and as much as we tried to work through it, we just can't."

Jax nodded. "Yeah, he told me about you and the Fear Games stuff. You were really one of the victims? That must have been hard. I can't even imagine."

I wasn't even going to get into the fact that Jacob telling Jax about my past trauma was a bit of an invasion of privacy, so I decided to let that go for now. "It was hard. It was the toughest thing I've ever been through. It's affected every part of my life ever since. Seeing all that death, being at the center of it all..." My voice trailed off. "You probably don't want to hear about all this."

"No, it's okay," Jax said and turned off the TV to look right at me. "I don't mind listening. Truly."

"Thank you, but I probably shouldn't," I said and stood up from the couch. "I think I'm going to take a nap. If Jacob comes home, tell him not to wake me. I'll see you later?"

Jax smiled at me. It looked just like his father's. "I'll be here."

As I made my way up the stairs and found my bedroom, I thought about everything that was going on. Talking about the Fear Games with Jax made me remember that there was a good possibility that the Games were starting again based on the phone call Rachel received from Josh and the texts she'd been getting. Even though I wanted to worry and stress about it, I knew that doing so wasn't good for my health and I just needed to take a couple hours to relax and nap to get my mind off of it.