Pain, so much pain. That’s what a broken heart is. Jezebel’s heart had been broken so much over the past couple of months, and each moment only broke it more. Before this moment, since the instant he woke up in the hospital, he wanted nothing to do with her. He wouldn’t sit down and have a conversation about it, even once he knew they were married. He pushed her away without trying to find out what had changed between them over the years, how they could have gotten back to a place where they were together. He didn’t understand, but it was because he didn’t want to understand. He made his choice, and he was just trying to justify it by avoiding and denying the truth. Jezebel didn’t know how she expected Jordan to react to her words, but in a way there was a glimpse of the Jordan she knew, the Jordan who knew her like the back of his hand, who knew how much of a struggle it had always been for her to feel wanted, the Jordan who would bend over backwards to do anything for his kids, his family. Yet at the same time he was still the Jordan who hurt her, who only knew how to judge a book by its cover, who was too blinded by the situation to ask why. If it was true, why didn’t he ask why? If she had made that decision without telling him, what if it had been for a medical reason, or her mother found out and found a way to force her into it, or any other reason that could have made it the only option. Hadn’t he ever wondered why she would have done it, especially without telling him? That was one thing that never quite made sense to her, why didn’t he question it? He just decided that he didn’t really knew her, when he should have known her well enough to know it wasn’t something she would’ve taken lightly.
However, even if his words were that he could never think she was a mistake, his actions since waking up in the hospital said otherwise. He treated her like she was a monster, like she wanted to hurt him. He wanted to be with Sadie, so clearly in his mind he should have been married to Sadie still, so a marriage with Jezebel had to be a mistake. He didn’t want anything to do with her, so how could them being together and getting married not have been a mistake? Maybe he didn’t think of their past, when they were just teenagers and none of it was so complicated, was a mistake, but everything recently must have been. Divorce papers were proof of that.
As Jordan spoke, he looked her in the eyes, and if he knew her as well as he should have, he would have been able to see beyond the tears that filled her eyes to see how broken she was. She was grasping at straws just to get through each day. That time before Jordan was in the hospital, she was terrified and nervous about the babies, but she was excited, she was happier than she had been in a long time. Now, that feeling of light was gone. The light at the end of the tunnel was nowhere to be found as fear, heartbreak, guilt, and loneliness took over.
Jordan didn’t give her a chance to protest, to explain, to correct him, to tell him how he’d known the truth for nearly a decade, all the time that he couldn’t remember. She couldn’t get a word in, and every word pained her more, especially when he brought the subject back to the divorce papers. Though, he barely got the words out when everything changed. Glasses began to move on their own, barely a tremor, but in moments everything changed. Jezebel didn’t have much of a chance to even process what was happening before Jordan grabbed her and Aidan by the hands to pull them to the dining table, helping her under as everything grew worse. The problem was, even as the earthquake came to a stop, the situation became increasingly worse. Everything happened so fast, it was all a blur. She heard Jordan ask if she was alright, and all she could do was shake her head. She was not okay, not in any way. [color= #049fe0]“No… I’m not…”[/color] she answered with a slight whimper. There was a part of her mind that went back to the last moment she felt as much fear, nearly 20 years prior, when she had Laurel. Everything that went wrong when Laurel was born brought so many risks, now even more could go wrong, with more on the line. [color= #049fe0]“we’re not…”[/color]