Chapter 399

Josie stiffened slightly.

"It's okay if you don't want to!" Sean tilted his head and kissed her forehead. "I just want to understand you more. If it makes you uncomfortable or even painful, you don’t have to say anything.

"Jojo, no matter what you’ve experienced in the past, I don’t want them to become your shackles. If they are, I hope I can help you break free from them!"

Josie grabbed Sean’s hand. "You just helped me break free!" She tilted her head back and kissed his chin, saying, "Actually, I can talk about it.

"When I was seven, a very beautiful volunteer teacher came to our town. She went door-to-door in our town, trying to persuade everyone to send their children to school. At that time, I also wanted to go to school, because I wanted to be like her.

"She was clean and beautiful, liked by everyone, instead of being scorned, constantly beaten or cursed. But studying cost money, and I had none. So I went to beg the head of the town, Winthrop Strickland.

"When I went, Winthrop wasn’t home. His father was the only one there. He was almost sixty years old at the time. He looked very mean, and I was scared of him. But that day, he was very kind to me. He even offered me candy.

"I told him I didn’t want candy. I wanted to go to school. He said if I went inside with him, he would give me money for school. At seven years old, I was very naive. Although he was mean, for the sake of studying, I still followed him into the house…"

Recalling the scene from that day, Josie closed her eyes, feeling it was an unforgettable nightmare. Every time she saw the scar on her body, the memories would become vivid.

"Stop talking, I don’t want to hear it!" Sean’s eyes reddened. "I’m truly sorry. I shouldn’t have asked." He hugged her tightly, bowing his head and kissing her repeatedly, "Josie, I love you. Let me protect you from now on. No one can hurt you again!"

Josie smiled and shook her head. She said, "I’m fine. Even though he did try to harass me, that beautiful teacher told me that private parts of the body should not be shown to others, and certainly not touched.

"So when he told me to take off my clothes, I turned and ran. But I was unlucky and fell, landing directly on his sickle.

"I lost a lot of blood then. I thought I was going to die, but luckily, I didn’t. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have met you, and I would definitely be very sad!"

Josie lifted a hand to wipe away the tears falling from her eyes. "Sean, I don’t understand emotions quite well. Sometimes I don’t even know how to get along with people.

"Someone once told me that I am inherently unfeeling and can’t distinguish right from wrong, because no one taught me these things when I was little.

"Ever since I can remember, I knew that anything I wanted, I had to earn through labor.

"Everyone in my town hated me. If it weren’t for Winthrop, they wouldn’t have given me food.

"But I am also very grateful to them, because despite their scolding and beating, they still gave me food.

"As I grew older, I became more efficient at work. Sometimes I did very well.

"They would even give me some old clothes. But they didn’t know that Winthrop proactively told everyone to let me stay so he could keep his job.

"For this reason, they gave Winthrop the old house my mother left behind. However, after he became the head of the town, he complained that I didn’t work.

"That’s when he instructed the whole village to help raise me.

"But the villagers didn’t know about this, so they directed all their dissatisfaction and anger towards me.

"I was often beaten when I was little. However, after that incident, I was never beaten again.

"It was because I almost died back then, Winthrop was afraid the incident would escalate and alert the authorities, who would send me to an orphanage and take back his house.

"So, he promised to send me to school."