Red-streaked and irritated, his eyes darted up to mine. A broad smile pressed against his lips. “And I will.”
Stepping backward I slipped the keys from my pocket and handed them to him. “I have to get back home before my mother goes to the police station again to freak out, but afterward…stay with me. I don’t care what my mother thinks of us being together anymore. I can’t be without you.”
My eyes peered open, gazing out at the rain-stained windows and the bumper to bumper D.C. traffic. With the mile marker and the way things were going, I knew we’d have at least an hour before we reached my parents’ home. I hadn’t the slightest idea how I could explain my relationship with Braedan to them. I didn’t want to lie, but how could I explain the truth?
I had a quick thought to text my mother, again, and tell her how close I was to home. She was none too happy about my decision to run off with Braedan.
I glanced over at him, clutching his phone in his lap and steering with the other hand. He closed his eyes for a moment too long. The beeping of horns resounded.
“Were you falling asleep at the wheel?” I asked.
“I was praying.”
“For what?”
He glanced at me and gave me a sullen smile. “Courage.”
I hooked a hand around the back of his neck and ran my hands through his hair. “Courage for what?”
He never answered me, and I never pushed him to clarify what he meant.
I’d barely allowed my finger to touch the doorbell before my parents rushed at the door and squeezed me so tightly they pushed the oxygen from my lungs. My father eagerly shook Braedan’s hand but gave him a tight hug after deciding the handshake wasn’t enough.
“Apparently, according to your father, my anger has been misplaced.” My mother approached Braedan with her slender fingers fighting between hugging him or shaking his hand.
Braedan was stone-faced as his attention remained on the floor beneath our feet. A sinking feeling inside my gut tied me into knots. Something was wrong. Very wrong. I reached for his hand and gave him a reassuring grin. “Is everything okay?”
Nodding, he avoided my gaze entirely to give his undivided attention to my parents. “I need to speak with both of you, and I don’t have a lot of time to say what I need to say.”
My mother eagerly took his hand and asked him to move into the living room. My parents sat opposite Braedan and me. The coffee table divided us.
I couldn’t bring my body close enough to Braedan. The wall was thickening between us, making me feel as though he was disappearing before my eyes. I clutched his hand and gently placed it on my lap.
My action only attracted his glossy hazel eyes for a moment. “There’s no simple or easy way to say this, but I’m not the man you think I am. My—”
“We’re pregnant,” I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, halting Braedan’s last stand and made everyone turn to me with shock on their faces.
I fought to hide my guilt and forced myself to smile. “What he’s embarrassed to say, is that he knows you would’ve preferred for us to be married first before this happened, but…it was unplanned and unexpected. He thought you’d be upset with him and see him as the man who was far from an angel who knocked up your daughter before marrying her.”
The air stopped circulating and the silence was deadening. I couldn’t look at Braedan much less my parents. From my corner-eye perspective, I could see their lips move without words. My father stood with an intention that fooled me into thinking he meant to hurt Braedan. His fists were balled and tears streamed down his eyes.
He grabbed Braedan up to stand and hugged him so tightly I could hear Braedan wheeze. My father’s hand slapped his back a little too excitedly. “We’re friends; you could’ve come to me about this,” my father said to him. “I wouldn’t have judged you, especially not now. You know Keaton’s mother and I didn’t marry until well after Keaton was born.”
“We don’t need to remind them of that,” my mother chided my father. She stood, appearing to be slightly lightheaded as she fought to maintain her balance. “Well…” A jittery hand roamed through her long bob and recently dyed hair to cover the huge amount of gray hairs she earned. “I hate to ask this…”
“I found out before that, Mom.” I circumvented her question with a quick confirmation about whether Noah was to blame for my fake pregnancy. “I’m lucky nothing Noah did threatened my pregnancy.”
Braedan’s head moved at a delayed rate as he scrutinized me. I couldn’t be sure, but disappointment clouded his face as though he’d seen right through me.
“Well,” my mother said again, her eyes darting between Braedan and me. “I can’t exactly say I’m happy about you following in my footsteps, especially with no ring on the horizon.”
Braedan’s scrutiny of me bordered on unnerving. “I hadn’t gotten a chance to find a ring worthy of Keaton’s finger, and I wanted to ask the both of you for permission first. I guess…that secret is out now as well.”
“We should go out to dinner,” my father offered, teeming with happiness over the news. “Drinks are on me.”
My mother found his joke less than amusing. “We’ll celebrate, sans any alcohol, on a day when I have time to plan a party.” She muttered underneath her breath, “Preferably after they are married.”
“If…y-you don’t mind…” Braedan paused, uncharacteristically fumbling over his words. “I’d like to speak to Keaton alone for a minute.”
“Well, that’s fine.” A severe frown seemed permanent since announcing my pregnancy and creased my mother’s usually wrinkle-free face. “You have to put a ring on that finger if you want to be behind closed doors with my daughter.”
“It’s a little too late now, isn’t it?” my father asked with a genial grin.
My mother playfully hit him on the shoulder and they exchanged smiles. “We’ll leave you two alone.”
Braedan moved as if he was in a dream when my parents left the room. He ran a hand down his face, his bloodshot eyes shot open to slice through me.
“I know what you’re thinking…” The weight of guilt tugged at the corners of my smile. “We have time to make it real, and if it doesn’t happen, we can make up something.” I was desperate, fearing the worst was going to come true. I could sense it deeply, and it riddled my core with constant cramps.
He stepped forward and touched my stomach with a fragile touch. “Were you pregnant when you went to Noah? Did you know?”
All hints of geniality fell from my face. He’d ripped off my plastic exterior and found the woman hiding in a corner while drunk with fear and fighting to hold onto the hints of happiness that were fading away. “I…I didn’t know until he… I didn’t know until I miscarried. I—”
He pressed a finger to my lips as his posture sank against mine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
I brushed my hands through silky strands of his hair, falling into his face, combing it away. “I didn’t know how to, and I thought if you didn’t ask, you didn’t want to know what he did to me.”
“Your parents? How didn’t they know?”
“I told the doctors not to tell them about the miscarriage.”
“You should’ve told me. It’s not something you should’ve gone through alone. You lost our baby because of him. What he did…will it affect your ability to have children in the future?”
I nodded. “But it’s not impossible.”
My name was a sigh on his lips, warming my face. He gripped my hips firmly pulling me closer to him. “You shouldn’t have lied.”
The sounds of police sirens were a backdrop, until they became the focal point. Pulled out of my world with Braedan, my attention darted toward the picture window behind him. His grip strengthened even more on my waist.
I convinced myself the police were there due to a small dispute that might’ve happened across the street. I fooled myself into believing it were true. I was stuck in my world of untruths, imprisoning what I was deathly afr
aid of losing. When the pounding on the door shuddered my parents’ house, my entire world shattered.
I swallowed back the dryness choking me. My fingers wound the material of his shirt, aimlessly clinging on to what was slowly slipping out of my grip. “W-what’s going on?”
He closed his eyes for a moment too long.
“B-Braedan?” I choked on the words as the sobs unfurled. “T-talk to me.”
My parents breezed past us to answer the door. A stampede of feet entered the foyer. An unknown voice spoke words that took a chisel to what remained of my shattered heart and thickened the dense air. “Shiloh Oliver, we have a warrant for your arrest.”
My mother’s lips slipped over her words, repeating what the police office said in the form of a question. Her eyes drew wider in awe. My father was stricken with shock and dismay, pulling him to sit down.
The scene around us turned black. The only light in my world dawned on Braedan. I slipped my hands to the back of his neck, holding him with a death-grip. “You have the wrong man. His name isn’t Shiloh, it’s Braedan Michaels.”
“Ma’am.” An officer tried to touch me.
I snapped backward, clinging more fiercely to what I was on the brink of losing.
“Please give us a minute,” Braedan requested of the strangers, hidden in the black shadows of my mind as I wished them out of existence. “I’m turning myself over peacefully.”
“A minute,” the officer promised Braedan.
“What are you doing?” I pushed myself against him as though it would stop him.
“What I have to.”
I could faintly hear my mother’s words to me; I could barely hear her though she stood only inches from me.
“Braedan, listen to me.” I held his head forcing him to look down at me. Warm tears tickled my cheeks at an intemperate rate. The feeling of hopelessness began to sink in and steal the strength of my spine. Ripping and tearing, it hollowed me out with a painful violence. “I know the thought of you and I together is senseless, but I don’t care. Don’t do this to me. Take it back. Take it all back. Please.” An empty nothingness began to fill my grasp. “Take it back.”
His neck lost the will to hold his head high. His shoulders slouched forward. Only the top of his glossy mane of midnight black hair was discernible.
“Braedan,” I chanted his name, desperation taking hold of my voice. “Please, look at me.” I thought if he looked at me he would realize he made a mistake. I was a girl living in a fantasy, expecting the imaginary and unrealistic things would become real, because I wished desperately and hard for them. “Take it back,” I pushed through a hearty sob.
With a heaving chest, he exhaled. “That’s the issue, Keaton. I can’t take it back. I never can.” Sorrowful eyes trailed up to my face, cracking what little shred was left of my tattered heart. He held my head, sweeping my tears with his fingertips.
“I can’t do this without you.”
“You can. You’re going to go on with your life without me standing in the way of what you should have. Spread your wings and fly, Keaton.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” I struggled to speak through my need to sob.
“Of course,” his voice cracked.
“My wings are made of plastic. They were only real because you made them be. I was only real with you.”
“Keaton.” Hoarseness faded his voice into almost nothing. “I want you to do me a favor; live your life for you. Find out who you really are and let no one mold you into something you’re not. Travel the world. Take chances. Be reckless. Find your happiness and don’t let anything or anyone stand in your way. We only have this one life. Live your truth and never again try to fit yourself into anyone else’s lie. Can you do that for me?”
The hopelessness snuck in and took away my ability to breathe, much less speak. I’d returned momentarily to Mute, the woman who lived on the street, and slipped something from Braedan’s back pocket.
I could barely stand on my own two feet as the cop next to me grabbed Braedan’s shoulder, moving him away from me, and read him his rights while handcuffing him.
Terror and sadness swept me off my feet and sent me to my knees. I nearly crawled across the floor to find the will to stand again. I wrestled with my legs, fighting past the weakness to stand and follow Braedan.
My mother halted me at the doorway to the foyer. “Keaton, what’s going on? Tell me right this minute.”
As he stood beside her, a realization draped my father’s face. Crestfallen, he slid down into the cushion of his chair.
I wrestled with my mother’s hands, pushing her away from me, and I apologized with a sorrowful glance when she nearly fell.
I turned toward the door, ran outside, and rushed down the steps. The lights of the car, holding my last piece of hope, were halfway down the road. His name was a desperate scream.
I was shoved up the stairs and back into the house. My mother never relented in her need for an explanation. Her words become white noise as I ascended the steps and closed myself up in my bathroom.
The pain I felt was worse than any pain I could remember. Worse than anything Gregory or Noah had inflicted on my body. It penetrated under the flesh and bone, vicious in the way it gutted me.
Clasping my mouth, I subdued my cries as I bawled into my hands. In a flurry of noisy wails, I sank to the floor of my bathroom. My stomach clenched and ached, forcing my posture to bend and wish for relief.
On the cold bathroom floor, I bled through my binding stitches, until there was no more blood left to bleed and all that remained was a pulsating agony, consuming all of me.
Using the counter, I held myself upright. I weeded through the cabinets for something to cure the pain. My medicine was in my hands, tempting me. In my other hand, the remnants of a skill I picked up on the street when life was simpler: Braedan’s phone.
I dropped the bottle of pills and scanned the phone with a security code.
I aimlessly tried numbers. Nothing would work. Attempting once more, I input the date I met Braedan as Shiloh and unlocked the phone. I scrolled through the contacts until I found a familiar name and dialed it.
“Oh, thank God!” Archie’s voice sounded as broken as mine. “I prayed that you would see a reason to stay. I take it Keaton gave you one and I can stop lording over the trail of revenge you left and call in a few favors in low places?”
“A-Archie?”
“Keaton.” His genuine shock resonated from the other end. “I guess my relief was premature.”
“It’s not too late, is it? We can help him, can’t we?”
His silence helped to set the wheels of my deduction skills.
“Was this…this was his plan all along?”
“No.”
“Then, what changed?”
“All I recall…” A rasp in his voice forced him to clear it. “All I recall is after you two went away to North Dakota, he relayed to me his wish for you and the end of his plans. It was drastically different from the future he desired prior to that trip.”
“You have to help. Braedan won’t survive prison. You know that. Please help us.”
“Us?”
“I love him, Archie. Please.” The phone slipped from my hands. I whirled around to be faced by my mother who had pressed end call.
“Enough, Keaton,” she demanded, any shred of warmth was gone from her face. “Get yourself together and tell me what’s going on.”
I turned my back on her, my chest heaving with heavy sobs.
“Keaton!”
I whirled around to face her. The sad little girl had taken over and could barely hold her shoulders high to address her mother. “What do you want me to say?”
“The truth, Keaton.” She pointed a shaky finger at me as her remaining fingers clung tightly to my phone. “It seems you have a hard time telling me anything that is true about you or your life.”
“Because…” I rubbed the chill drenching my shoulders and rested my tired body against the s
ink vanity. “It’s ugly and it’s not something you want to see.”
A tiny hint of shock widened her eyes. “Nothing about life is perfect, but it’s no excuse for you to repeatedly lie to me. Are you even pregnant?”
The floor was an easier thing to view than the look of disappointment on her face. A hand was shoved under my chin, forcing me to look into the eyes of the woman I repeatedly hid my true self from. “Braedan is really Shiloh Oliver.”
She gasped as a weakness took hold of her, forcing her to lean against the doorframe for strength. “I don’t know who you are anymore, but you’re not the little girl I raised.”
“You’re right. I’m not,” I admitted. “I’m not even sure you really knew who I was. You only had an idea of me, and it was the dream you set up for me. A dream I never had.”
“Obviously you have fallen very short of my expectations.” She shook her head as though it would wake her. “I’m at a loss, Keaton. I don’t know what to say to you. I’m nearly thinking you need to be reprimanded to a facility. Those men, they’ve ruined you.”
“Mom, I love you so much.” My sadness and tears choked me, coaxing me to take a breath before I continued. I hated the idea of my words hurting her. I wanted to lie to her and pretend nothing that existed was true. My fake shell had long shattered and could no longer pretend to adopt aspects of my life that weren’t my own. “I can’t keep living my life for you.”
“For me?” Shock raised her voice and her brows. “Are you blaming me for your predicament? Because I would hate to think you were ungrateful, Keaton. I made sure you grew up with the best. You had every opportunity to make something of your life.”
“I’m not blaming you, Mom. Please, don’t think I am. It’s my own fault I’ve taken this long to say this.”
“Say what?”
“I’m an adult now. My mistakes are my own. My life is my own. No matter how messed up or imperfect it is—it’s mine to live. I don’t think I ever can live up to your version of me. Whatever you think of the man I love, he is the man I love, and he deserves a new start just like anyone else who wants to earn it. You can’t imagine what he’s gone through. His strength? I envy his strength so much. I wish I had it.”
Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3) Page 26
