Tainted Innocence

Chapter VIII

Here's chapter VIII. Enjoy reading :)

Chapter VIII

She didn't visit Jeremiah again. Still fed up with the way he had treated her she couldn't bring herself to be forbearing with him.

On top of that she could still hear his voice inside her head.

Don't bother to come crawling back again, Lynn...

If that was what he wanted she would oblige him.

Nevertheless, Lynn found herself thinking about him. Aside from the grudge she held against the young man, she was still worried about his well-being. Had he recovered from his near death experience? Was he out of the hospital now?

There were no news about him.

Anne hadn't called her mother since the day she'd informed them about the accident that had nearly cost him his life, and Lynn didn't have the guts to call the woman and ask her about her foster son's current condition.

Time went by, and before she knew it, a month had passed followed by another.

Jeremiah wasn't her only problem child, though. In fact he soon became less important to her than she possibly could have imagined. And once again, Matt was the trigger.

After her graduation she had decided to become a Nursery School Teacher and thus had started studying in order to get the required degrees. Consequently, she had to spend a lot of time on the subject matter and didn't see Matt as much as she liked. Still, it was manageable. What wasn't manageable, though, were the rumours that had started to spread out of nowhere. Former High School friends of her began to claim that they had heard Matt was cheating on her. At first she had laughed it off, but then the photos appeared. Photos that showed him kissing other women. Matt had protested his innocence, declaring that they were fakes, that he had obviously been framed. Sarah even vouched for him, but Lynn just couldn't turn a blind eye to the evidence at hand, especially not after one of the girls in the photos had come up to her just to inform her that she'd had a very satisfying one-night stand with him.

It was the final straw and Lynn saw no alternative. She broke up with him. Matt didn't take it well. He was hurt, angry, and dismayed that she didn't believe in his innocence. He continued to insist on having been tricked by some jealous ex-girlfriend. But Lynn was tired of listening to his feeble excuses. She practically slammed the door in his face.

The young woman spent weeks crying her eyes out, feeling lonely and utterly miserable. Since she was still living at her parents' her mother and father were very aware of her emotional state, but they couldn't really help her. To make matters worse she was still very much in love with him, and the pain she hence felt was excruciating. It was as if her heart was constantly being shattered. Again and again. Day by day.

How could someone who usually was so sweet and caring betray her without even batting an eyelash? She just couldn't wrap her head around it.

To distract herself from the heartbreak and the icy silence that had spread between Sarah and her in the wake of the break-up she practically immersed herself in her work.

On one uncomfortably cold evening shortly after the whole dirty affair she sat in her parent's living room, tightly wrapped in a blanket and cuddling with the huge stuffed dog that her father had bought for her mum as the name Valeska suddenly came up in the news.

Lynn sat up abruptly, looking wide-eyed at the TV screen that showed a familiar and yet entirely foreign face. As if doused with cold water she began to shake like a leaf while staring at the mug shot of the eerily grinning redhead that looked so much like his twin brother.