Promise of Forever by Jessica Wood Read Free Book Online Page A

miserable. There were dark circles underneath her eyes and her face was sunken in like she hadn’t slept for days. As she looked at me, I saw the pain in her eyes as her lower lip trembled like she was trying to hold back the tears.
    “You’re not joking,” I muttered, more to myself than to her. I stumbled back a few steps as my legs suddenly gave out on me.
    She shook her head solemnly as a few tears rolled down her face.
    “But…but how? How can that even be possible?”
    She closed her eyes and whispered, “We share the same father.”
    “Wh—what?” I stammered. “But you and my fa—” I didn’t finish my sentence, realizing what I was about to accuse her of.
    But she didn’t need me to say the rest. She lowered her head and let out a deep, painful sigh. “I didn’t know then…”
    Suddenly it hit me like a brick. Suddenly I realized why she was pushing me away, why she said we wouldn’t work. “And you and me…”
    She nodded as drops of tears pummeled to the ground from her face. “We can’t…we can’t be together.”
    I shook my head, still unwilling to accept this. “But you still haven’t told me why you think we’re—I mean, this can’t be true. I mean, the two people who would be able to confirm this—your mom and…—they’re both dead.”
    Without a word, I watched her walk over to her desk and pull open the top drawer. She dug through some papers and notebooks before pulling out something from the bottom of the drawer.
    Fear shot through my body as I watched her approach me, her eyes seemed to be fixed on a spot on my shirt as she avoided my gaze. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably as she handed me a stack of letters and opened envelopes. From the faded yellow hue of the papers and the worn edges and folds, I knew these letters had been around for a long period of time.
    I stared at the stack of letters in her outstretched hand in front me for what seemed like an eternity before I finally reached for them. I didn’t want to know what I’d find inside. But this was what Chloe had been hiding from me. She hadn’t wanted me to know, but I forced her to tell me. So there was no going back. I had to face whatever I’d find inside these letters.
    As soon as I flipped open one of the letters, my chest tightened when I saw—the damning evidence scrawled across the page. “It’s his handwriting.” The words came out in a low, breathy rush of air. I opened several other letters from the stack, trying to find one that would prove me wrong, trying to find one that would cast some doubt in my mind that these weren’t written by him. But each letter I opened was like the last—they all had the same handwriting I knew well. They were all written by my father.
    I turned back to the first letter in the stack.
    “Judy’s my mom,” Chloe’s tiny voice cut through my daze.
    I flipped through the letters again and confirmed what I didn’t want to believe. All these letters were addressed to a Judy. I leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor.
    Then I started to read through them.
    Whatever hope that I had clung onto that this was all a big misunderstanding was slipping from my grasp with each additional letter I read. And then I got to the letter that destroyed any shred of hope I had remaining.
    Judy,
     
    You are the world to me, my love. You know that, right? Then you should know how happy I was when you told me that you were pregnant with our child. And only you would be so prepared to be a mother that you’ve already decided on what you’d want to name your first born. Chloe and Jeffrey are perfect names!
    It makes me sad that you were worried at first about telling me. You should know me by now, and you should know that nothing would make me happier than to start a family with you and grow old with you. Don’t worry about my parents. They will eventually come around and realize how perfect you are for me. Once I have things figured out with them, I want you to marry