“And, see, you’re making it worse by looking at me that way.”
I folded my arms, looking around in uncertainty. “What way?”
“Like you have no reason to be afraid of me.”
“You told me I didn’t.”
His shoulders broadened as his grip on the counter firmed. “Things changed.”
I swallowed back the thickness serving to glue my tongue to the roof of my mouth. “How do we stop that from happening?”
“Not we. You.”
Nodding, I rested my body against the wall. “At times, I think I would have to completely break you, as you’ve broken women before me, to get to the man I know you can be, and have him remain forever.”
“I wouldn’t let you do that without a fight.” His words were said with such a paper-thin weakness, it reaffirmed my knowledge. “A fight you would probably lose, Nik.”
Wondering if I was dreaming, I looked around, searching for the surreal in my surroundings. I questioned if all that transpired between us the entire night would be a distant memory when we awoke the next morning. In the most moving moments I’d ever shared with Eric, the man before me was unequivocally and remarkably genuine. He was Ethan.
“What if I succeeded?” I asked.
Wrapping his arms around my body, he pulled me toward him. “I know this…you could break me a million times until there’s nothing of me to put together. And still, somehow, whatever minor piece is left, would still feel this way about you.”
I tried to swallow back the emotion that threatened to overtake me. I shook my head, trying to find a strength I’d never really had. What little of it I used to have continued to be lost to me. I lost it when my mother died. “Being who you were made to be, how do you do that so well? That thing you do that makes me—it makes me feel powerless.”
With a skewed smile he pinched my chin between his fingers, leaving his face to linger only inches from mine. “Weren’t you listening to me before? You are the reason. I keep doing it because you make me want to be that man. Seconds later, because of the shit that was done to me and the way I have to be when you aren’t there, I forget about it.
“It’s a talent I picked up. Goddamn, if it isn’t crazy strong when I’m with you”—he gesticulated with his finger between the both of us—“like this. You make me feel like it’s okay to be like this. It fucks me up, and makes me feel things I’m not used to feeling all at once. I can’t describe all of what the emotions are. I know I called it love before, but I—” He took in a long breath as he closed his eyes. When he opened them, the cocky man was back. It was as if our moments of finding solace in one another never happened.
I would always remember, even if I never saw again the man he just showed me.
“Nik,” he whispered, touching his lips to mine. “I may not be able to come again, but you will. I’m making damn sure of it.” He suddenly picked me up and carried me back to the bedroom.
THE MILD DAY let it be known that fall was less than a couple of months away. Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my jeans, I walked inside the small brick building hidden on the corner of a residential street within a few miles of the mall.
I buzzed the doorbell just outside the unassuming door of the clinic’s offices while I waited in the entrance hall.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked myself, while waiting for a response from the other end of the speaker.
You can’t be a mother, Nikki. You never could be.
My thoughts continuously cycled, reassuring me that Eric wasn’t in the right place to be a father yet. The weeks that followed after Eric shed his hard exterior, exposing his secrets to me, were remarkably the best in our relationship. But he had yet to show me a complete turn around, enough to make me think he could play the many roles needed to raise a well-adjusted human.
Above it all, I was glad Preston remained away. I was careful, making sure all the doors were locked and the alarm remained on no matter what. I no longer took my daily walks. I was back to being recluse like I was in Pullman; the difference between then and now was that I had Eric.
“Yes?” a woman greeted me through the other end of an intercom.
“I have an appointment at ten-thirty.”
“Name and ID please.”
I moved around to the plate glass window and flashed my ID. Satisfied, she allowed me entry. Stepping inside the waiting area, I began to doubt my decision My heartbeat became irregular, and a faint feeling washed over me. There was only one other woman waiting; relief washed over me.
I plodded toward the front desk, and signed in. From behind the counter, the nurse looked behind me with expectancy. “You were supposed to have someone to accompany you and take you home after the procedure.”
“A cab brought me here and I’ve arranged for the same cab to take me home,” I told her, my tone clipped. I took a seat in the corner of the room and picked up a magazine to thumb through. To fend off my nerves, I pretended the vapid articles were interesting. It took me back to a time when I was at a loss as to how to keep Eric with me to provide me with the things I needed. I turned to these very pages for directions on how to seduce Eric into meeting my needs.
I kept halfway expecting Eric to appear and scorn me for my decision. My doubts and concerns exacerbated the cramping sensation growing inside my abdomen. Cramping seemed to be a mainstay over the last few weeks, and intensified as the time went on. I’d hidden my torment from Eric to prevent him from forcing me to be chained to bed rest. As I sat in the waiting room, the pain became barely manageable.
Minutes felt like hours. When I asked the nurse behind the Plexiglas divider how much longer I would have to wait, another nurse appeared out of the side door and called my name.
Following her along the corridor, I passed by a nurse who gave me a dramatic double-take. Her familiar face was hard to immediately place. It was obvious she knew me. Quickening her stride, she made long strides to the nurses’ station and picked up her phone, trying and failing to be discreet with the pointed looks she shot in my direction.
“Mrs. Brenton?” the nurse leading me down the hall urged.
I ignored her and walked across the nurses’ station. I couldn’t hear the nurse’s conversation to the person on the other line, the two other nurses’ chatter about their plans for lunch rang the loudest. I observed the movement of her mouth, picking up the name “Dr. Brenton” from my lip-reading.
The reason why her face was familiar hit me swiftly—she was a nurse for Dr. Savine.
Before I could manage to stop the nurse from becoming a catalyst for disaster, another nurse jumped in my way, attempting to stop me. “Ma’am you can’t come back here—”
I pushed her roughly out of the way. When I reached the desk of the nurse who tattled on me, I grabbed the phone from her hands and hung it up.
“Doesn’t matter,” she remarked, smugly. “He knows.”
“Why would you do this?” I asked through a shrill voice. “You don’t know me and you don’t know him. Why the hell are you even here?”
“I volunteer here twice a week,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be okay with what you are here to do.”
“How can you work here if you feel that way? As a woman, how could you do something like this?”
“I just made sure he was informed,” she shot back, stiffening her upper lip. “You can still do what you came here for.”
I clutched my stomach as a cramp swept strongly swept over me.
A woman behind me gasped. Her startled reaction, and the sudden wet sensation between my legs, forced me to look down. A red spot slowly spread between my legs, staining my jeans.
I knew I had no business having a child with someone who was equally unstable. I was given a second chance to make sure it never happened again. The knowledge I was armed with didn’t matter. Despite what my mind logically wanted, my heart began to speak and made deep dejection my strongest emotion.
“I’M SURE YOU’R
E AWARE things like this happen.” Dr. Savine pulled the hospital blanket back over my body, concluding her examination. “It would be perfectly normal if the baby made it safely through the remainder of your pregnancy. Beyond that, everything looks to be developing just fine.
“We’re unsure if the blood came from the baby, or you, but we still have a very strong heartbeat.” Dr. Savine gave me a firm smile. “Give my office a call, and we’ll push up your normal 16-week appointment a few weeks to make sure everything is still going along as well as one would hope.” She looked at Eric and gave him a nod as he stood on the far side of the hospital room. “Make sure she rests.”
With his back to me, Eric remained still, staring out of the window.
“I mean it, Eric,” Dr. Savine reiterated. Concern was more palpable in the moments she spoke to Eric than they were when she addressed me.
He gave her a nod without directly regarding her.
She squeezed Eric’s arm before departing.
As I began to change from my hospital gown to the clothes Eric brought me from home, he never turned around. He continued to stare steadily out of the window at the gloomy sky, on the verge of releasing rain.
It seemed for the best. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, either.
I didn’t know it then, but I knew it now. I would’ve never been able to go through with terminating my pregnancy. Despite it all, knowing our baby was okay made me feel relieved. I hoped he or she would make it into the world without any further tragedies.
I needed it more now than I initially thought I did.
None of my regrets would’ve mattered to Eric. He had the facts. Anything I had to say would’ve been fruitless.
ONCE WE ARRIVED HOME, he immediately plucked me up and swung me over his shoulder. Slightly alarmed by the action, I squealed.
Gathering my senses, I warbled, “Eric, put me down.”
I was ignored. He took me to our bedroom and dropped me in the middle of the bed. Before I could get up, he straddled my body and pinned my arms down above my head with one hand.
Reaching over, he opened one of the nightstand drawers and removed a pair of familiar leather cuffs. After placing them around my struggling wrists, he used a leather leash to bind the D-rings to the rail of the headboard. The tautness of the lead made it impossible to move my arms even with the slightest bit of will.
“Comfortable?” he asked without a hint of genuine concern. “Because you’re going to be like this for sixteen hours.”
“Are you—you’re going to leave me this way while you go to work? Are you serious?”
He slipped off the bed and stood on the other side. “Pretty much. When you decided you were going to go behind my back, it shut down any rights you had. I’ll do this every goddamn day if I have to.”
“Eric…you can’t do this.” I attempted to move, uncomfortable with the familiar situation I incurred before my aunt shipped me off to Parkland…and then with Preston.
“Looks like I can, Nik. So, again, are you comfortable?” Though posed as a question to convey concern, he was very placid. It was probable that if I said no, he wouldn’t have accommodated my discomfort.
“What if Preston broke in? What if April came back and—”
“I wouldn’t worry about Preston,” he sneered. “And April? I wouldn’t worry about her, either. I made a call to ensure she’ll never come around you again. She was deemed a danger to herself and others. Police had to track her down; she was found trying to catch a flight to Paris. It’s too bad, isn’t it?”
“What?” I twisted in my constraints, more discomforted by the unsaid than the actual words. “What does that mean? What did you do to her?”
“Don’t worry about her. For the rest of her life, she’ll live to see another day inside the walls of Parkland. Can you believe Electroconvulsive therapy is still in use? If I could’ve had her doctor order a lobotomy, I would’ve done that, too. I hear she’s been shocked so many times, she’s a drooling vegetable.” He walked backward, starting for the door. When he reached the doorframe, he gave me a wink.
“Don’t you dare leave me like this. What if I have to pee?”
“You’ll figure it out. You’re good at conniving, planning, and deception, aren’t you, Nik?” Turning toward the hall, he shouted over his shoulder, “See you in sixteen hours.”
I attempted to get out of the cuffs. The battle was lost before it was fought. I screamed in frustration.
“CAN YOU DO me a favor?”
The fluorescent lights in the hospital made my headache pound. Aimee asking for favors again made my head thump like a bongo drum at a Brazilian carnival. I was becoming tired of everyone’s bullshit. “It’s three hours past my shift. When I hand my patients over to Dr. Carlson, I am getting the fuck out of here.”
“Please,” she pleaded with me. “I will owe you one. A huge one. This woman spit on me. Did you hear that? She spit on me. You have a way with bitchy women. She’ll purr like a kitten for you. I know she will. Use your charm. I’ll owe you lunch for the next week. Besides, she asked for you by name. For some reason, she called you Ethan at first. When I didn’t get it, she said Dr. Brenton.”
I immediately stopped and looked at her. “You owe me lunch for a month,” I told her. I didn’t need her to pay for my lunch, nor would I ever let her. I agreed only to have something to bargain with. The real repayment wouldn’t be lunch for a month, it would be something more beneficial to my interests.
“Month.” She swallowed.
“Where is she?”
“Bay six. Bed three. Look at that. The nurses are all wrong about you. You can be a sweetheart to your coworkers when you want to be. I knew that wife of yours married you for a reason.”
“Stop fondling my balls. While I know you think it’s cute, you’d be very wrong.”
“Done,” she said, throwing her hands up.
Of all the doctors, I didn’t mind Aimee. She knew when to back the fuck off. The other doctors—the men—spent too much time swinging their dicks, trying to see who had the bigger cock. Besides, she was the E.R. Chief; I knew if I was going to fuck with her, it had to be done very carefully.
Grabbing my tablet, I logged into the network and checked the patient chart. I stopped cold when I saw she was a cancer patient who refused her referral to private hospice care, and was also a frequent flyer.
Pulling the curtain back, I went in. A woman wearing a scowl, who looked way past her fifty-three years, was bickering with a sheepish, twenty-something-year-old woman who was trying to talk her down.
Cancer was a fucking bitch of a disease. Most of the people I dealt with for Suicide Angels had cancer. It’s a slow, painful death. The patients whose cancer had metastasized severely, and were in a constant, unmanageable pain, never had to pay for the injections.
I could play a good guy…sometimes.
I didn’t recognize either of the women, so I wondered how one of them knew my birth name.
When the senior Mrs. Sharpe saw me, she grabbed the hand of the younger woman. The younger woman looked down and seemed uneasy about the woman touching her.
Right about now, I’m wondering what the fuck this is about. Even if I believed it was an adoptive mother/daughter situation, I knew people well enough to know there was no way these two women were actually mother and daughter. There was either love or hate in a situation like this. They were both emotionally vacant toward each other, like two strangers would’ve been.
“That’s more like it,” said the older while batting her eyelashes and giving me a toothy smile.
The giggling of the nurse behind me reminded me she was there. I shot her a look that wiped the smile from her face. My frown deepened when I examined the two women in front of me. She reminded me of Nikki’s mother for a minute. Mrs. Givens. She was the first woman to fuck with me and win. From what Vic said, it seemed Mrs. Givens had secrets that would turn up to screw up my life sooner or later. Of course. Because I definitely needed more s
hit to deal with at the moment.
“Mrs. Sharpe,” I started, keeping my demeanor completely unfriendly, “I was told you’ve been causing unnecessary problems with your transfer.”
“We just want to—” The pretend daughter stopped and darted out her hand. “I’m sorry. I’m Trisha. This is my mother Anne.”
And I call bullshit…again.
“You forgot your manners because he forgot his,” Mrs. Sharpe said. “Don’t you apologize, honey. Can never have both, you know. Looks and manners. It’s what happens when a man has too much tang thrown at him.”
“At present, there’s only one,” I snarled back, flashing my ring. “I’m Dr. Brenton, but you knew that, didn’t you? Therefore, my introduction would’ve been redundant. Can you tell me what I can do for you?”
“I just want to take her home,” Trisha responded. “I should be allowed to do that.”
The irritation cut in because they wanted to dance instead of giving me real answers. So, I kept up the game. “The reluctance is because you’ve been to the E.R. seven times in the last month while repeatedly refusing hospice care.”
“Why can’t I die when I want to die? Why can’t I die in peace?” she asked, being a little too tongue-in-cheek with her words.
When I scanned her eyes for more than what she was telling me, I saw something I didn’t want to see. I turned to the nurse. “Call”—I checked her chart for the name of her oncologist—“Dr. Marsden, and request his office to reorder Mrs. Sharpe’s transfer to hospice.”
“Right away, Dr. Brenton.” The nurse, whose name I didn’t care to remember, disappeared behind the curtain.
When she was gone, I turned to the woman without one hint of the bedside manner I never had for anyone. “This is where we stop fucking around and you tell me who sent you here?”
“Mr. Mejía,” Trisha answered, her voice quiet and shaky. “I work for him. Well, not really work for him like the other girls do. I work at Mejía Enterprises as a receptionist for the Acquisitions Department. He caught me crying one day and said you were the one to see.”
The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) Page 20
