*THE HOLLEN SERIES 02*
👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦EPISODE 51👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
*👁🗨 PERSONAL as-sISTANT👁🗨*
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
*Two Months Later*
Jasmine’s POV
I was in the park with Emma Hollen– Evan’s
mom. She had been very supportive of me and
the baby, and she made time just to be there
for us.
Sometimes we would go shopping or go have
lunches at a restaurant, or go for a walk
throu-gh the park, or sit at the house and girl
chat, as she called it. She was an incredible
woman and I liked her.
“It’s such a beautiful day outside,” she said as
we sat down on a bench in the lawn.
Fisher and another guard were roaming close
by.
“It is,” I answered with a smile.
“So, Jasmine, you said there was something
you wanted to talk about. What’s that sweetie?”
she asked and handed me a bottled water to
quench my thirst.
I felt like I could vent to her and tell her
anything. She was so down to earth,
un-derstanding and kind. I had no idea how her
son could be so different. He must have got it
from his father.
“Do you believe Evan and I will get back
together once the baby comes?” I asked her.
I still loved Evan. And I couldn’t help but
imagine us being a solid family once the baby
was born. I didn’t want to co-parent. I wanted
the baby and I to have a stable relationsh!p
with Evan only. I couldn’t see myself ma-king
love to any other man but him.
Emma raked her f!ngersthrou-gh her long hair,
just like her son. She let out a sigh and turned
towards me. “You still love him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” I answered truthfully. I wasn’t
ashamed of saying it and never would be.
“I could see that in your eyes Jasmine, but let
me tell you something about my son. Evan is
a completely different specimen when it comes
to women. He’s unre-adable and unpredictable,
but, believe me when I tell you, he did love you
and the love is still there for you, but he is
afraid to show you how much he still does.
“I’m not going to judge why you did it, but you
did hurt him in a place he had never been hurt
before. His heart. But I believe that time heals
everything, and anything is possible.”
I sighed.
“The three of you could be a family again,” she
added and ru-bbe-d my baby bu-mp, gently and
pla-yfully. I was growing everyday.
“I never thought he would’ve been with Aria
Goode for so long though,” I said as I recalled
her coming over to the mansion the night
before with the ti-ghtest dress I had ever seen
on a woman.
“Aria is just a prop. Evan has her around to aid
his broken heart. In other words, her only
purpose is to st©p him from taking you back,
and she’s only acting as a fence to separate
the two of you. I don’t believe he’s in love with
her.”
“Why do you say that, Emma?”
“Because of you. He could tell me hundreds of
excuses that you’re only living with him
because of the baby, and he wants to give you
protec-tion and the police still haven’t solved
the case about your attacker, blah, blah, blah,
but I know there’s more to it than that.”
A smile crept up on my face.
“But, seriously Jasmine, you can’t remember
who attacked you?” she asked as her eyebrows
crea-sed together.
“It’s not that I can’t remember, it’s just that I
don’t know who did it. At first I thought it was
br@dley, but that voice that spoke to me wasn’t
his.”
“I was attacked when I first got pregnant,”
Emma said and rested her arm around my
n£¢k. “It wasn’t easy for me.”
“You were attacked too?”
“Yes. By Ethan’s first fiancee and his own
mother. I lost the baby.” Her eyes welled up
with tears. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
“My gosh. What happened?” I had never heard
that story before.
“I don’t think I should be telling you this. I
don’t want to drive fright into you.”
“plea-se tell me. I want to hear what happened,”
I pleaded.
“Well. as you alre-ady know, I was a maid for
Evan’s father. I c@m£ from a background of
absolutely nothing. My parents abandoned me
when I was a baby and I was always told I’d
amount to nothing. When I first got fired from
my job at a cafe, I went to Hollen Tower for an
interview.”
I listened attentively.
“The position was alre-ady filled, and I made a
clump of myself when I accidentally knocked
over Ethan’s cu-p of coffee onto his crotch.”
We laughed together.
Oh man. What if that coffee was h0t?
“Jasmine, he was furious. He started yelling
and tried dusting off the spill on his p@n-ts. I
panicked. Honestly, I got so scared I thought
he was going to hit me.”
“Why?”
“I was abused all my childhood and I thought
everyone was the same. But Ethan never la-id a
f!nger on me. He had a coffee machine in his
office so I remade the coffee. He still wanted
me out of his office, so I turned on my heels
to leave, but he st©pped me. He tasted the
coffee and complimented me for it. He hired
me as a maid and his personal coffee maker
on the sp©t.”
“Lovely.”
“Things went downhill when I fell for him, and
he fell for me too, while he was engaged to
another woman. She was a monster. Halley
and I caught hell un-der her wrath.”
“Halley and Martin? Your best friend? You were
both maids?” I asked as I remembered when I
accompanied Evan to the dinner. He’d told me
they were his parents’ best friends and
practically family.
“Yes. You have good memory.”
I smiled to myself.
“Anyways, Ethan eventually ended it with her
and proposed to me. She bec@m£ bitter at the
fact he left her for a black woman. Me.
“His mom never liked me. She was all team
Sharon. So when Ethan left for Paris, I found
out I was pregnant. He wasn’t there with me
when Sharon and his mom c@m£ back to the
house and, literally, dragged me out of there.”
“What?”
“Yeah. They dragged me out and threw me in
the back of a van and had the driver drop me
off at a swamp.”
“Wait! What?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to frighten you. It’s not
a plea-sant story.”
“So you lost the baby?” I couldn’t believe
Evan’s mom had faced such a terrible thing.
“Yes. From all the stress I suffered from the
hands of Ethan’s mother and his ex-fiancee. If I
hadn’t lost that baby, he, or she, would’ve had
a serious condition or some sort br@in damage
or something from the stress and slamming
around in the van.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. That’s terrible.” I
handed her my handkerchief; tears were
pouring down her face. “Thanks for telling me
this,” I said as I hvgged her.
Her story had me thinking.
What if it was one of Evan’s ex-girlfriends who
had put someone up to hurt me and his baby?
Or what if it wasn’t an ex-girlfriend at all?
What if it was the one he is currently d@t!ng?
*THE HOLLEN SERIES 02*
👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦EPISODE 52👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦👨👩👧👦
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
*👁🗨 PERSONAL as-sISTANT👁🗨*
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Jasmine’s POV
I was officially six months pregnant.
I was trying my best to lean forward and
mas-sage my own two feet. I’d been having
muscle spasms, pain, and my feet were
swollen because I wasn’t relaxing as a
pregnant woman ought to be. After the failing
attempts, I gave up and la-id back on the large,
leather couch in the mansion’s living room.
Evan took me back to his house as soon as I
was discharged from the hospital. He said he
wasn’t taking any chances, especially since the
culprit hadn’t been caught. He gave my mom
and Zenia the keys to one of his penthouses
and said they could stay as long as they
liked.
Zenia was back in school now, and mom got a
promotion at her job, so they both were usually
busy.
I turned on the television and browsed throu-gh
the channels.
I wonder what’s Evan’s Netflix pas-sword?
I turned off the television and my eyes shut,
but I wasn’t slee-ping.
I heard his voice coming from the front
entrance, and the baby instantly started moving
around inside of me.
I sat up on the couch and pretended to be
looking at the television again.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he saw me.
“Umm, nothing,” I answered. Silly me, I had
thrown the remote across the table and could
not reach it in time, so I was looking at a
blank television screen.
“You ought to turn it on,” he said and did it for
me. And, as if he were re-ading my mind from
earlier, he input his Netflix pas-sword and
handed me back the remote. “You ate?” he
asked sharply. He hated it if I skipped my
meals, and I was certain he told the chefs to
keep tabs on my daily meals.
I nodded as I selected an animated
movie: br@ve. I loved animated movies.
“Okay.” He dep@rted for the stairs.
I watched him walking up the steps, looking
like a S-xy hunk, briefcase in his left hand and
loos£ning his n£¢k tie with his right.
Oh, how I wish I could undress him right now.
After an hour, he c@m£ back downstairs
wearing a black tank t©p and knee-length
shorts. He sat down at the other end of the
couch and threw my feet onto his l@p. He
popped open a tube of ru-bbing gel and began
ru-bbing and mas-saging my feet gently as he
took glances at the movie.
“You know, you didn’t have to do that,” I said
once he was finished and my feet felt so much
better.
“I know. I just wanted to.” He la-id back into
the chair with his hands behind his head.
His manly scent traveled to my nostrils and it
was taking everything in me to not climb my
pregnant self onto him.
hor-mones, I thought to myself and ru-bbe-d my
shoulder unconsciously.
“Your shoulders are hurting too?” his voice
snapped me out of my thoughts.
“No. I’m fine now.”
Without listening, he got up and went around
the chair. I felt the goosebu-mps coming as his
hands met my shoulder and began mas-saging
me there, too.
“You know, you should be resting in your
comfortable be-d. You’re looking drained,” he
said, almost in my ear.
“Okay,” I said and got off the chair.
He followed right behind, like my b©dy guard.
He help me into be-d and turned on the
television for me in the room.
“You’re okay?” he asked, causing the baby to
start bouncing up and down inside me again.
“Ooff,” I said, holding my stomach.
“He’s kicking? Can I feel?” He c@m£ over to
me.
I raised up my T-shi-t and allowed him to feel
the little soccer pla-yer in there.
“That’s so amazing. Hey, little guy. I can’t wait
to meet you.”
We were having a boy. We’d found out two
days ago.
“Can you stay with us for awhile?” I asked,
using the baby to get his company a little
while longer.
I missed Evan, and I wished things had gone
differently and I wasn’t such a fool.
Without answering, he sat down at the edge of
the be-d and looked at me.
“Don’t give me that look, Jasmine.”
“What look?”
“Those puppy eyes. I alre-ady know what you’re
thinking, and I alre-ady know how sorry you are
for breaking up with me.”
“Evan, I never broke up with you. You broke up
with me.”
“No. You broke up with me when you quit your
job and left in the arms of another man.”
I heaved a sigh as I remembered the gala and
what happened there. I cussed myself.
“Evan, I’m very sorry for what I did. I was so
stupid and–”
“Jasmine. I don’t want to upset you or
anything, but I’m not going throu-gh this with
you again.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay. What if you had come from a
background where nothing was ever enough,
and you grew up as the provider for Emma
and Emily, and you were my personal as-sistant
and I was the world’s strictest boss.”
“Is this going somewhere Jasmine?”
“plea-se listen, I nee-d to get this off my che-st.”
He nodded and I continued.
“What if your mom had a serious lung
condition almost all your life, and you didn’t
have the money to get her the lung transplant
that she nee-ded to save her life. You tried
everything, even applied for loans, but
everything failed. And the doctors tells you that
your mom has a month or less to live.
But you recently reconnect with an ex, who
happens to be a millionaire, and you tell her to
lend you the money to save your mom. The ex
disappears the following day or so, but the
hospital calls and tells you that a contribution
has been made towards your mother’s lung
transplants. Wouldn’t you defend the person
who paid for everything– the ex you asked to
lend you the money?”
I had hit a nerve because he looked de-ep in
thoughts. He la-id back and stared up at the
ceiling.
“That’s my question, Evan,” I added.
“Jasmine, you know I would’ve given you the
money if you had been upfront about the
situation, right?” he finally asked.
“Evan, when we woke up in the same be-d,
once upon a time, you made it clear there
wouldn’t be anything between us. I didn’t want
to ask you for the money and have you
thinking that I was trying to blackmail you or
something. Evan I’m really, really sorry, and I
know saying that doesn’t make a difference
because the damage has alre-ady been done,
but I’m really sorry for everything I did to hurt
you.”
“It’s okay Jasmine.”
He got off the be-d to leave but I quic-kly held
onto the end of his tank t©p as if I was
holding on to it for dear life.
“Jasmine, let go.”
“No.”
“Jasmine, st©p acting crazy.”
“I don’t want you to leave me anymore. I want
us to be a family when the baby gets here.”
I had listened to his mother’s advice. She told
me I should apologize to him and let him see
how sorry I was and tell him what I wanted
from him. She said he wasn’t a mind re-ader
and, if I didn’t tell him, he wouldn’t know.
“Jasmine,” he spoke again, but he wasn’t
ma-king an effort to actually pu-ll away from
me. He was just standing there, de-ep in
thoughts and looking away from me.
“Stay.”
“I can’t. Let go.”
“No.”
“EVAN!” we heard another voice calling for him.
I let go of him immediately and watched as he
slowly left the room to meet up with her.
Aria fricking Goode.
____________
*TO BE CONTINUED*