Chapter 123 Choosing to Stay

Chapter 123 Choosing to Stay
Penny POV

My hands are still shaking on the steering wheel when I pull up outside my mom's apartment, and I sit there a full minute before I can make myself get out of the car.

It feels exactly like what your dad's been doing to you your whole life, except now you're doing it to me.

I can't believe I said that to him. I can't believe how much I meant it in the moment and how sick it makes me feel now, replaying it on a loop the whole drive over. Jake didn't deserve that, not really, not when he's drowning in more than any seventeen-year-old should have to carry alone. But it doesn't undo the hurt underneath it, the real hurt, the feeling of being handed back to my own life like I'm a burden instead of a partner.

I let myself into the apartment quiet, hoping to slip past into my room without a whole conversation, but my mom's still up, sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of bills spread out in front of her, reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

"Penny?" She looks up, surprised, then immediately concerned when she sees my face. "Baby, what happened? I thought you were staying at Jake's tonight."

"Can we not talk about it," I say, throat tight, dropping my bag by the door.

My mom doesn't push, not right away. She just gets up, puts the kettle on the way she always does when something's wrong, and by the time she sets two mugs of tea down on the table, I've cried enough that I don't have the energy left to keep pretending I'm fine.

"We had a fight," I finally say, wrapping both hands around the warm mug. "Jake wants me to back off. Focus on my scholarship, my decathlon, my own life, stay away from all the stuff happening with his family."

"Is that really what he wants?" My mom's voice is gentle, careful. "Or is that what he's scared into thinking he wants?"

I open my mouth to argue, then stop, because somewhere underneath the hurt I already know the answer to that. "He's terrified, Mom. His dad might go to prison. They might lose the house. And now some man showed up saying he's my real father, and Jake just, shut down. Started trying to protect me from everything instead of letting me stand next to him through it."

"That sounds like fear talking, not Jake," my mom says quietly. "People do strange things when they're scared, baby. Sometimes the people who love us hardest are the ones who push us away the fastest, because somewhere in their head they've convinced themselves that losing us slowly on purpose hurts less than losing us all at once by accident."

Her words land somewhere deep, and I think about my own instinct to hide the tutoring job, to carry things quietly instead of asking for help, and I realize maybe Jake and I aren't so different in how we handle being terrified.

"I don't know if I want to keep doing this," I admit, voice small. "Loving someone whose life feels like it's constantly on fire. I don't know if I have it in me."

My mom reaches across the table and takes my hand, and something in her expression goes soft and old and tired in a way that makes me realize she's about to tell me something true, something that costs her a little to say.

"Penny, I need you to hear this, because I don't think anybody's ever told you plainly enough." She squeezes my fingers. "Love was never supposed to be about waiting until things get easy. If that's what you're waiting for, baby, you'll be waiting your whole life, because things are never consistently easy. Not for anybody. Real love, the kind that actually lasts, is about deciding to stay in the hard parts too. Especially the hard parts. That's not weakness. That's the whole entire point."

I stare down at my tea, her words sinking in slow, settling into all the cracked places this week's left behind. "How do you know if it's worth staying for? How do you know if it's the right person to fight that hard for?"

"You don't always know for certain," she says honestly. "But you pay attention to how it feels when the hard part passes. Does he come back to you softer, more honest, more willing to let you in? Or does he keep pushing you further away every single time things get difficult? That's usually your answer, Penny. Not in the fight itself, but in what happens after."

I think about Jake in that kitchen tonight, panic bleeding out of him in every sharp word, and I think about every other moment this week, the porch steps, the hospital-quiet kitchen at four in the morning, the way he's held my hand through every single terrifying discovery without once actually letting go until tonight.

"I think he's scared of becoming his dad," I whisper. "Scared of leaving the people who need him."

"Then maybe that's worth telling him," my mom says softly. "Instead of just walking away and letting him assume the worst about what tonight meant."

My phone buzzes on the table between us, sharp and sudden, and my mom and I both jump slightly at the sound. I check it fast, expecting Jake, hoping for Jake.

It's not him.

It's Maren, and the message freezes my whole body cold before I've even finished reading it.

Penny, please call me the second you see this. Daniel Ford showed up at the house tonight. He says you're not the only one in danger. He says whoever's been sending those messages all week, whoever leaked the security footage, whoever's been feeding rumors to Brianna, it's not some random stranger. He says he knows exactly who's been doing it, and Penny, he says it's someone close enough to have been in this house the entire time.