Chapter 3

Seeing him, so young, so full of that unwavering belief in us, sent a wave of memories crashing over me.

Our town, a small, forgotten place in the Rust Belt.

My home life was a mess, my mom struggling, my stepdad mostly absent or angry.

School was no better, a daily gauntlet of bullies who saw me as an easy target.

Then Jake appeared.

Not like this, not out of time, but like a force of nature in my bleak world.

He was new in town, spirited, with a quick temper when he saw injustice.

He saw them cornering me behind the bleachers one afternoon.

He didn't hesitate.

He waded in, all fists and fury, scattering them like pigeons.

He got a black eye and a busted lip for his trouble.

I remembered dabbing at his cuts with a wet paper towel from the school nurse' s office.

"Why did you do that?" I' d asked him, still shaken.

He just shrugged, a lopsided grin on his face. "They were bothering you."

From that day on, he was my defender, my rock.

He saw the bruises my stepdad sometimes left, the hunger in my eyes when lunch money was scarce.

He started working odd jobs at the local garage after school, his hands always smudged with grease.

He' d slip me a few dollars, or show up at my door with a pizza, pretending his mom made too much.

He encouraged me to study, told me I was smart, that I could get out.

When I doubted myself, he believed in me enough for both of us.

He was there, beaming, when I got the scholarship letter to the state university.

He drove me to campus in his beat-up pickup truck, helped me move into the dorm.

He proposed the summer after I graduated.

We were sitting on the hood of his truck, watching the sunset over Miller' s Pond.

He pulled out a small, velvet box. The ring wasn't fancy, but it was everything.

His eyes were so earnest, so full of dreams for us.

"We'll build a life, Sarah," he' d said, his voice thick with emotion. "A good one. I promise."

And I believed him.

I believed in that Jake with all my heart.

The Jake who was now staring at me with confused, eighteen-year-old eyes in our first, tiny apartment.

A place that was supposed to symbolize the start of that good life.