Tory closed her eyes, knees weak with relief as the flight instinct drained out of her.
“God, Xander. You scared the shit out of me.”
His smile was wan. He set his glasses on the shelf above the sink. Then grabbing the hem of his T-shirt, he pulled it off.
“You’re not getting out, are you?”
Tory watched him strip. Clothes littered the bathroom floor, and he leaned toward her to start the shower. He was beautiful. Not everyone thought so, but from the day she’d met him, there was nobody else. There was strength in his lean frame. His intense blue eyes bored into hers, and she knew what he wanted.
His hand slid up her thigh and over her hip as he climbed into the shower behind her. She shuddered at the feel of him pressed up against her. Hard. Wanting. She arched back into him, wanting him too—needing to feel something other than the clawing pit of emptiness and loss that filled her at the memory of Michael.
His strong fingers slid across her wet skin, cupping her breasts, squeezing them gently, pinching her nipples until they were hard, pulsing. She groaned. Pressed against him, breath quickening at the thought of him. But he held back.
His palms slid down her slowly, from her breasts, to her hips, then lower. Tory flattened her hands against the wall of the shower, letting the spray rush over her back as a riot of sensations raced through her. She groaned. Ground against him.
“Now,” she said, reaching for him.
He caught her wrist and placed her hand back on the wall. Kissed her neck. Her shoulder. Xander laughed deep in his throat.
“Patience.”
He took his time, exploring every inch of her body, pausing at each pleasure point. Her breath caught as he found the center of her. Spiraling waves of heat and need melted everything away until she cried out. Called his name.
Only then did he shift his position, angled her forward. Tory braced her hands against the shower wall as he entered her. He moved inside her. Slowly at first, then faster, until the intensity of his thrusts made her gasp. Needing him.
“Harder,” she urged.
He responded, gripping her hips as he drove into her, bringing her to the brink and then back again, until she couldn’t stand it. She came with a dizzying force that left her breathless and panting in his arms.
Afterward, she washed him. Her hands slick with shower gel slid across his back, chest, legs, loving the feel of his skin beneath her palms: the long, taut lines of his muscles, the jut of his shoulders. She had always been his, from the moment he’d looked at her, she had known.
Stepping from the shower, Tory swiped steam from the mirror and brushed her hair. Clad only in his boxer shorts, Xander stood close and gripped her shoulders. His lips buzzed her ear. She shivered. Sparks of pleasure flamed through her.
“How’d it go?”
“Fine,” she said, stiffening in his grasp.
His eyes caught hers in the mirror, and she didn’t look away. She’d learned a few things from her mother, like how to tell a good lie.
“I left him in the woods like you said.”
His fingers dug into her shoulders and she squirmed in his grasp, trying to wiggle free.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Did you?” he pressed, his grip held tight.
“Did I have a choice?”
“Why don’t I believe you?” The way he looked at her, it was as if he could see through to her very core.
“Why would I lie?”
“That’s a good question. Why would you?”
She pulled her shoulders free of his grasp and stalked into the bedroom. Xander followed close behind, watching her every move.
“I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to, and still you don’t believe me. What do you want me to do? Take a lie detector test? Sign an affidavit? I dumped the baby in the woods just like you said. If you don’t believe me, go look for yourself. That is if the coyotes haven’t already gotten to him.”
They’d had an agreement—rules about what they would and wouldn’t do. Xander was violating that agreement and expected her to play along. But there were some lines she wouldn’t, couldn’t cross.
“What’s wrong?” Xander asked.
“We have to stop. I didn’t sign up for killing babies.”
Xander took her hand and squeezed her fingers.
“We’re not killing babies. We’re saving lives.”
Tory pulled her hand from his grasp.
“By killing people. Don’t you see that what we’re doing is wrong? Those babies were supposed to go to good homes, not abandoned in the woods. You promised.”
Xander tucked the hair behind her ear.
“After all the things we’ve done, you’re worried about killing babies.”
The soft tone belied the mettle in his words. She paced across the small room as she processed what he said. It was terrible. Cold.
“I never wanted to kill anyone,” she said.
“You wanted to help with my research.”
She did. But she hadn’t known that his research would go to such extreme lengths. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They had a code.
“Everybody dies, Tory. You know that. You’ve got to look at the big picture. Our donors have given their lives to save others. Their deaths have meaning.”
She so desperately wanted to believe him, but she was plagued by her own gnawing doubts.
“When everything started to fall apart, you were the only one to stand by me,” he said. “Don’t leave me now, Tory. Not when I’m so close.”
Were they close? She didn’t know.
All she knew was that he was her world. She would walk through fire for him. He was the only one who loved her, and without him, she was nothing.
The raw need in his voice killed her. A man as brilliant as he shouldn’t have to watch his intellect die.
He was changing. They both knew it—he was getting worse. Tremors. Missing words. And behavioral changes. He wasn’t cruel. It was the disease. He couldn’t control it. He was losing everything he cared about right before her eyes.
Xander cupped her face in his hands. It broke her heart to see him this way. How could she leave him when he needed her so much?
He kissed her forehead, as soft and tender as he might a child, and she knew that she was lost. She could no more abandon him than she could let that baby die.
“I’ll stay,” she promised. “But I can’t do this anymore.”
“I know. I know.”
He reached behind her neck, and she let her head fall against his shoulders. His fingers twined in her wet hair. Such talented hands. Capable of performing the most amazing things with a scalpel. Saving lives.
He would find a cure. He had to. And she would help him.
“We’ve got more stem cells. We can do it together,” Tory said.
“It’s not working.”
Tory pulled back. The look on his face chilled her.
“What’s not working?”
“Transforming the cord blood cells to pluripotent cells is too complicated. Too costly.”
“We’ve got money from the last adoption. How much more do we need?”
Xander shook his head. “If I had more time, I could make it work, but the way I’m burning through stem cells . . . We’re running out of time, Tory.”
She wasn’t dumb. She knew where stem cells came from. If they didn’t use cord cells, there was only one other viable option.
“I was thinking,” he said.
She pressed her fingers to his lips, as if that would stop the words she dreaded from tumbling out.
She wished she had fallen in love with someone else—someone ordinary. Not this extraordinary man who was looking at her like he was drowning and she was the only one who could save him.
“I was thinking that maybe we shouldn’t use cells from the umbilical cord. We should use fetal stem cells instead.”
“Xander, no.”
“Just one more time, Tory. It will work. I
know it. We’ll find a donor earlier in her pregnancy.”
“No. Please.” She prayed he would stop. She didn’t want any part of this.
“We’ll find someone who is going to abort the fetus anyway. It’s not like we’d be killing babies. Just this one last time. I promise.”
Chapter 30
Thirty-six years old, and in some ways, she was as dumb as the teenager she had once been. Between the craziness at work and the stress of dealing with Brooke, there were a couple of days she’d forgotten to take her birth control pills. Dumb, yes, but accidents happened. After Seth left last night, she’d peed on the stick, and her worst fears were confirmed. She was pregnant.
Marissa closed her red, scratchy eyes. Touching them lightly she listened to the steady drone of the rain on the car roof and gathered her resolve. She was pregnant. It was a fact, and now she was going to have to deal with it. No more hiding. No more pretending. That’s what grown-ups did. They dealt with their problems.
Marissa didn’t have a family doctor. Seldom sick, she used urgent care clinics when she needed something; the majority of her health care budget was spent on Brooke, the diabetic. Regular exams and preventative care were a luxury she couldn’t afford. So, she came here.
The Planned Parenthood clinic opened at seven on the dot. She knew this because she’d checked the website in the middle of the night. Desperate Google searches were among the many things to do while not sleeping and trying to decide what to do with the rest of your life.
Marissa gazed out the windshield at the Planned Parenthood entrance and picked up her handbag. There was no point in stalling. Doing what she came here to do wasn’t going to get any easier the longer she sat here, so she stepped out of the car into the pea-soup gloom. A woman in a fuzzy pink hat approached her.
“How can you do this? Jesus loves your baby,” she said, thrusting a flyer toward Marissa.
“Thanks. No.”
Marissa tried to maneuver around the woman, but she moved with Marissa and started to pray.
“Please,” Marissa said, but the woman wouldn’t move.
“Have mercy on your baby.”
“You don’t understand.” The woman wouldn’t give up. Finally, out of desperation, she took it and stuffed it in her purse. Spooked, Marissa hurried through the parking lot and up the steps.
Coming here was hard enough. Having to face protesters made it worse.
The design of the lobby was intended to be peaceful with its soft lighting and soothing music, but after what she’d just been through, her anxiety level was through the roof. Nervous, she made her way to the front counter and steeled herself for the humiliation. The receptionist was just returning to her desk when Marissa arrived.
“Good morning,” she said. Plump with dark hair, she flashed a reassuring smile. “How can I help you?”
Marissa’s mouth was bone dry. She swallowed and uttered a phrase she had never imagined herself having to say again. “I’m . . . uh . . . pregnant. I was hoping to see someone . . .”
A fleeting look of surprise flitted across the woman’s face. “Of course. You’re lucky. We have one of our best doctors in today.”
She handed Marissa a clipboard of forms and told her to take a seat while she filled them out. Marissa took a chair in the far corner of the room. She wondered if this was how Suzie and Becky felt, scared and alone, overwhelmed by the prospect of having a child.
They were young—had no concept of what it was like to raise a kid, to put someone else’s needs in front of your own. The hardships of working two jobs to buy diapers and formula and barely scratch by. Food stamps.
Not only had those early years been hard financially, but emotionally too, as Marissa bounced from one bad relationship to another, looking for stability. A partner she could count on. Abandoned by Brooke and Kelly’s womanizing father and then marrying Rick—an abusive alcoholic.
The pro-life flyer half hung out of her purse. On the front was a close-up image of a fetus’s face next to the words “I stand for life.” Marissa yanked it out, folded it in half and shoved it deeper into her purse so she didn’t have to look at it.
She couldn’t make a good decision if her life depended on it. It wasn’t just her life she had to consider, but her daughter’s lives too. Setting the clipboard down on the empty chair beside her, she thought about how her decisions had impacted her daughters. Growing up without a father and with a mother who worked all the time wasn’t easy. Their childhood was spent in daycares and with neighbors without the security of a two-parent home. She wasn’t there to help with homework, or volunteer in the classroom. Work took precedence.
Marissa ran her finger over the thin, vertical scar on her upper lip. The girls had witnessed Rick’s drunken rages, his violent outbursts that ended with Marissa taking a trip to the hospital.
Now Kelly was living with her third ex-husband while Brooke was fighting to overcome her harrowing ordeal—a battle she was losing.
Brooke needed her now more than ever.
How was she supposed to care for Brooke and a newborn?
Seth was a good man. Kind. But he was stuck in the past. He wasn’t ready for a committed relationship, not to mention a baby.
And she couldn’t do it alone.
“Ms. Rooney?”
The nurse roused her from her reverie. She picked up the clipboard and followed the nurse back to the exam room. Marissa steered clear of the exam table, covered in paper and bookended by stirrups, and settled in a chair instead.
“So you’re pregnant?” the nurse asked, looking at the forms Marissa had halfway filled out. “When was your last period?”
Six weeks? Seven? More?
“Don’t know. I haven’t been keeping track.”
The nurse looked young, mid-twenties, tall and slender. She nodded. The long, red ponytail that brushed against her shoulders clashed violently with her pink scrubs.
“You’re thirty-six?”
“That’s right.”
“And you have two other children?”
“Teenagers.”
“Oh,” the nurse said, with no trace of judgment. “Is this baby planned?”
“Definitely not planned.” Marissa flashed an anxious smile. “I never expected to be here, you know?”
She wasn’t a kid, like Becky or Suzie—like she had been when her two girls were born. She was a grown woman who should have known better. She deserved a swift kick in the ass for being so careless. Stupid.
The nurse sat down in a chair beside Marissa. There was something familiar about the young woman. At first she wondered if she was a friend of Brooke’s, but that wasn’t it.
“You’re here by yourself?”
Marissa nodded.
“I haven’t told the father yet. I haven’t told anyone, actually,” she confessed, like she was sharing a shameful secret.
“That’s okay. About half of all pregnancies are unplanned,” the nurse said. Reassuring. Like this wasn’t a gigantic screw up. “Do you know what you want to do?”
“Do?” Marissa covered her face with her hands. She didn’t need to be told what the options were. Adoption. Abortion. Have the baby. “I haven’t made any decisions.”
“You have time.” The touch of the nurse’s hand on her arm was comforting. She felt so damned alone. “I think we should start with an ultrasound to gage the age of the fetus. Does that sound okay?”
Marissa’s gut clenched at the thought. She wasn’t sure she could see the baby on the screen and still consider abortion. No matter how unintended, this was a life. A piece of her and Seth.
Still, she couldn’t imagine starting over. Changing diapers. Midnight feedings. And that was the easy part.
Interpreting her silence as indecision, the nurse continued. “No matter what path you choose, determining fetal age is the first step.”
“Okay.”
The nurse smiled.
The nurse pulled a paper gown from the cupboard and handed it to Marissa. It ru
stled like dead leaves in her hands.
“You’ll need to undress from the waist down,” she said.
The nurse turned to leave the room. Her red ponytail swayed behind her. Like a lightning bolt, it struck her, and suddenly Marissa knew exactly where she’d seen her before.
Chapter 31
“You living here now?”
Nine o’clock and the foundation was just coming to life. Henry rolled in carrying a Starbucks cup, a messenger bag slung over his shoulder.
“Some of us don’t keep banker’s hours,” Seth snapped.
The comment knocked the smile right off Henry’s face, and for a second, Seth felt bad. Just because he was in a foul mood was no excuse to take it out on Henry. Truth was, he’d been to Marissa’s office twice, hoping to catch her before everyone else was in, but no luck.
He thought about calling her but decided against it. This was a conversation they needed to have face to face. Texting or the phone wouldn’t cut it.
“Fight with the missus?” Henry asked.
“Funny.”
Seth tried to focus on the case and failed. He had read the same email three times when Marissa marched into the room.
The sight of her sliced through him. Her face was deathly pale. She’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?”
Henry looked up from his monitor, curiosity piqued, but Seth didn’t give a damn. All he cared about was Marissa.
“I think I saw her,” she said.
“Who?”
Marissa dropped her purse onto Seth’s desk. Unzipped, some of the contents spilled out. Oblivious to the mess, she turned toward Henry.
“Can you play the Babies’R’Us video?”
“Sure.”
Henry’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and seconds later the surveillance video flashed on the screen. Marissa scrutinized the video, but Seth was still looking at her, consumed by the certainty that something was very wrong.
“That’s her,” Marissa said, pointing at the screen.
“The redhead? You saw her?” Henry asked. “When?”
“This morning.”
“Where?”
Marissa hesitated. “At a clinic.”
She looked down at his desk where her purse had spilled open. She bumped the purse and it tumbled to the floor. Seth bent to retrieve the contents.
Dark Harvest (A Holt Foundation Story Book 2) Page 18
