Free Shhh... Gianna's Side by M. Robinson Page B

anywhere. I was terrified that someone would recognize me and would ask me questions or worse, ask me how I was doing. Our town was small and it was a given that I would run into someone I knew. Jake spent every second with me during the time of preliminaries. It took a year before the trial got started. The prosecution hired the best possible coaches to make sure Mack and I didn’t crack on the stand. Jake said he couldn’t leave me, and that he loved me, that his place was to stand right beside me to make sure I made it through it all. If he could have walked through the gates of the prison, he would have killed him with his bare hands.
    He transferred from Columbia to Brown University to finish his senior year and to see me through everything. To add insult to injury, it was then that I realized he never cheated on me. He was the epitome of the perfect boyfriend who worked his ass off in school to come back to me. He worked hard and took heavy class loads because he wanted to provide me with the life I was accustomed to, and the one he said I deserved. I tried to attend Brown University with him, and I made it a semester before I had to drop out. I couldn’t take the preliminaries of the trial and still function normally; throw school into the mix and it was just too much. It took a year after graduation for the trial to start and then three months later he was gone.
    Placed behind solid bars and away from me.
    I couldn’t contact the love of my life.
    Mack had been accepted to Michigan State and left right after we graduated. She was going back and forth during the preliminaries of the trial. Jake asked me to marry him a month after the trial ended, and it was around the same time that my parents put the house up for sale. They said they couldn’t live there anymore and they needed a fresh start. The house sold in three weeks and they decided to move to North Carolina. They were ecstatic when I told them about our engagement and said it came at a perfect time.
    The burden of guilt and remorse weighed heavily on my decision to say yes because I felt like I owed it to him. I married him because I thought I had to. He was the only thing that made any sense to me back then. He was my rock, the very foundation that kept me going on a daily basis. Jake did the best he could for us. He studied hard to graduate with a business degree and make a name for himself in pharmaceutical sales. He traveled all the time, leaving me alone with nothing but my misery and self-loathing. The hatred I felt for myself was overwhelming; there were days I couldn’t even get out of bed and when I did, I cried the entire day. I didn’t know how it could be possible for one person to shed so many tears, but I was drowning in them.
    However, that was only on the inside; I was still Gianna Edwards back then. After the trial, people expected to see me relieved and grateful because justice was served, the good guys won and the monster was gone. Placed in a cell where he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.
    I did everything I was expected to do; I got excited for my upcoming nuptials, I planned with my mom, I went dress shopping, ordered the right food, and picked out the most perfect four-tier cake. I prepared for a day that I was dreading, and no one knew it but me. The day every girl dreams about became my nightmare. My parents invited everyone they knew and then some. McKenzie was my maid of honor, but we barely spoke throughout the entire wedding process. By that time, we were barely speaking at all. Her speech was short and to the point, but no one thought anything of it. I knew better. We got married fairly quickly, three months from the day he proposed to be exact. Our parents insisted that we have a honeymoon, and I came up with every excuse in the book to not go through with one.
    He was starting a new career and needed to stay focused, I wanted to prepare our new home and make it comfortable for us, it was a better idea to put that money in