Beautiful things - jaylor story (peace book 4)

old wounds still hurt

-Taylors Pov-

There is a long pause "hi Taylor" her usual tone is changed to a serious one. "what's wrong" I say and sit up and joe rubs my back clearly understanding that something is wrong.

"Honestly, I don't even know how to say this but there has been a leak. The sealed court documents from the trial are out there. Everything is out there, every testimony and every detail brought up in court" she says, and my eyes widen. Holly shit no.

"Wait what? How?" I say and put it on speaker so joe can hear too, and I quickly tell him what tree said. "There was a break in at the courthouse over the weekend, and it's not just your documents released, it's for several others too but obviously this has made the press go crazy"

The documents were sealed because there was a minor involved and because it was such a high-profile case. Some of it was for the public so they know a lot, but they don't know the most intimate details. They don't know what Ellie said and they didn't know about the rape. They knew we were kidnapped and hurt but the most sensitive details were left sealed for a reason.

"What do we do now?" I say and wipe away the tears falling from my eyes. "Like I don't care about me but what about the kids and especially Ellie. It's such a violation, and she doesn't know about the rape. And Kenzie and aurora don't know much about the whole thing either because they were so young or haven't really asked about it"

This is a nightmare. It's been nine years since it happened, why can't we just leave it in the past. It took us years to get to a place where we aren't having nightmares every night and constantly reminded about it, but now it's out there and there isn't really anything I can do about it.

"As you would imagine, I'm being contacted by everyone, and they all want a statement. But I'm not going to push it if that's too much" she says. "Well, I need to talk to Ellie. I'm not doing anything until I get to talk to her because this isn't just about me, it's about her too"

God and Ellie are at school. I hope that it hasn't reached the school yet, that would just make matters worse. I want her to hear it from me, not from her classmates. This is a sensitive issue and it's not fair on her to hear about such serious matters at school. Part of me want to go pull her out from school early, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk to her when she comes back from dance tonight before she goes to bed. She deserves to have a say in how we handle this.

We talk for a bit more with tree before we hang up and I star to sob. "Oh love. I'm sorry" joe says and pulls me into his arms, and I sob against his chest. "This isn't fair on her. She is still a child. I don't care about me, but she... she doesn't deserve this... and the other kids will know too, and I don't want that. I don't want any of them to know the kind of things that happened to me in that room. I don't want that to ever come to light again"

-ellies pov-

I'm walking down the hallway on my way to lunch but I'm uncomfortable because as I walk everyone is looking at me. I don't understand what's going on. I just went to the bathroom to check that I hadn't bleed through or something because I'm on my period, but there wasn't any blood.

I do know that usually when people get like this it's some sort of scandal or headline about my parents, and I don't want to deal with that today. Actually, I don't want to ever deal with that. I hate that part of their jobs because I didn't choose this. I didn't choose to have world famous parents that have stuff in the headlines all the time and comes to haunt me in school.

I'm sitting with Lauren and Katie when a familiar voice is calling my name from behind. "Look who we have her. The kidnapped girl. Did he rape you too Ellie? Just like he did with your mom?" Rebecca says and I freeze. What is she talking about?