Chapter 171

Jagger finally broke the silence. His voice was low, the tone tortured. "Tell me. Just tell me everything that you went through. I need to hear it, and I don't want you to hold anything back. We need to get it out in the open if we're going to move past it."

Christine couldn't look at him when she spoke, so she turned, facing the backyard, focusing on the fence that surrounded the property. "The day you left, I knew that my life was over. I could tell in the way Dad looked at me, the things he said to me. He would get onto me if I ate what he deemed too much, if I didn't exercise the way he thought I should. I had a feeling he was grooming me for something, but I didn't know what. I waited, and waited, and the closer I got to eighteen the more nervous I got."

Jagger let out a deep breath and his stomach clenched. He wasn't going to like what she had to say, and he knew it, but he'd told her not to sugarcoat anything. If she had lived through it, he sure as hell could listen to it.