Page 71 of Steel & Jenna
“No game,” Jack said shortly. “I’ve wanted one thing since the day I met your daughter, Mr. Scanlon. You asked me this question a year ago and you can ask me it a year from now. My answer will always remain the same: I want nothing except Jenna.”
“That’s the one thing you’ll never have,” Mr. Scanlon snapped.
Jack started down the stairs, too exhausted to be having this argument. “You seem like an intelligent man, Mr. Scanlon. Is it so hard to believe your daughter inherited that same intelligence from you?”
“If you come back here, I’ll have you arrested!”
Jack shrugged, still not looking back. “Have a good night, Mr. Scanlon. Maybe try talking to your daughter instead of controlling her.”
As Jack hopped into the truck, he saw Mr. Zarin shake his head, but the smile on his face told Jack the man approved. His lips twitched as he laid his head back on the headrest.
It was after midnight. Closing his eyes, he thought,One year, six months, and twelve days, Jen.He swore he could feel her responding happiness at the reminder.
CHAPTER 16
1 YEAR, 6 MONTHS, 12 DAYS - 1 YEAR, 2 MONTHS, 1 DAY
Things went from sucky to bad in Jenna’s world. At four-thirty in the morning, she was shipped back off to Seattle like a discarded bag of grain. She apologized profusely to Walter for him having to get up so early to come and get her.
That was when she was informed by Walter that this would be his last drive with her. He was fired and, as of this time, there was no replacement. She was stranded in Seattle unless she started taking the train on the regular.
Her dorm room phone was also disconnected. When she went down to the lobby to call Jack, a very frightened Amelia informed her that her phone privileges had been revoked by the Dean of Students. No doubt at her father’s orders.
Jenna had to beg a fellow classmate, whom she was on friendly terms with though she wouldn’t call a friend, to call Jack from her dorm phone. They agreed to wait for her to return to Port Townsend, thinking her father would calm down and get her a new driver in a couple of weeks.
He did not.
Jenna tried to write Jack letters, only to have them returned to sender. When she called Jack on her classmate’s phone again, he was confused because not only had he not Returned To Sender her letters but she hadn’t replied to the two he’d sent her. After a bit of an investigation, she discovered that the employee who collected and sorted the students’ mail had been informed that all of Jenna’s mail, whether getting or receiving, was to be sent to her parents. Her mom or dad had returned Jenna’s letter to Jack to her and had most likely thrown out Jack’s letters. While she could believe that her parents would read them, regardless of who they were made out to, she doubted they would hold on to the letters.
While Jenna could still call using her classmate’s phone, it wasn’t the same. She didn’t have any privacy and she felt bad for keeping the calls longer than a few minutes.
When she tried to leave to take the train back to Port Townsend one Saturday in November, this time planned with Jack picking her up at the train station in the daytime, she was informed by security that she’d lost her weekend privileges and was restricted to school property until further notice.
Then things went from bad to worse. After several weeks of remaining in Seattle and trying to figure out ways to stay in contact with Jack, Jenna learned that Carolyn had discovered that their parents had reneged on their original deal.
She’d not only very publicly quit working for Scanlon Enterprises, but she’d also spilled the beans to the press about their father’s plan to move to New York City. When the developer that had been working on the building plans discovered who he was actually working for, he tried to triple his price. The entire project had fallen through when a competing company then purchased the property before their father could close the deal.
Scanlon Enterprises would be remaining on the west coast. At least for the next several years.
Her parents cut Carolyn off, took back her cars, and removed her from the trust they had set up in her name. In turn, Carolyn packedup from Port Townsend and left. Gone. Poof. No call, no visit. Not even a letter, though perhaps her parents had destroyed that too. All Jenna knew was that Carolyn was gone. Her one ally, her sister, had abandoned her.
With Carolyn gone and no longer under her parents’ thumb, there was no reason for her parents to remain in Port Townsend. They’d been there to keep Carolyn away from the city life, to try to influence her into becoming a respectable, high-society woman. Since that had failed, her parents saw no reason to stay. Their house in Port Townsend would once more become a vacation home.
Winter dragged on. Jenna didn’t even get to see Jack at Christmas or on his seventeenth birthday in January.
Her grades started to fall. It was becoming a hardship just to get out of bed each day to attend classes. She dreaded the long weekends with nothing to do. The few times she spoke with her parents, they held firm. If they discovered Jenna was speaking to or communicating with Jack in any way, she would be shipped off to Massachusetts.
Her life was a haze. Empty. Desolate. The times she was able to talk to Jack from her classmate’s dorm, he felt the same way. He tried to reassure her, tried to tell her to just keep counting down the days, but Jenna’s depression was getting worse.
Even talking to Jack on the phone was becoming too painful. She felt trapped, restricted, and claustrophobic. She hated her dorm room with a passion to the point where she wasn’t sleeping much.
When the Dean of Students informed her that she was at risk of failing and might have to repeat the year, Jenna just shrugged.
Her parents came to the school to yell at her. They called her an embarrassment and told her she was taking her lovesick delusions too far. She was ruining the Scanlon name. And again, Jenna just shrugged.
Her heart felt like it was breaking into a thousand pieces and they wanted her to benormal, to smile and act like the world was full of sunshine and roses? They were taking away her happiness, and they thought she was beingoverdramatic?
Maybe she was. According to the school counselor, it wasn’thealthy to be so invested in a relationship, in a boy, that she would be debilitated without contact with him. Jenna didn’t even bother shrugging at that one; she just walked out.
