She could have ended this hours ago if she’d kept running when she’d first spotted me.
The surge of unjustifiable bitchiness that sweeps me when I think of Maddi calmly taking a seat on the bed after she saw that I was already being held in the room, essentially blowing her own chance of escape for me, leaves me mortified.
When did I become this bitchy, nasty person?
If this is what jealousy does to a person, then I’m not a fan of it.
Forcing myself to push down my irrational annoyance with her, I answer as steadily as I can.
“It depends on what you need me to do.”
Rolling her eyes, which causes my palm to itch with the desire to slap her, she huffs. “All you need to do is pass on a message. It’s quite simple.”
After I grace her with a reluctant nod, she smiles—a big, wide, toothpaste-commercial-worthy version of a smile. The excitement that radiates from her is contagious.
I feel myself being drawn into her vortex.
“I learned some stuff that I shouldn’t have when Connor took me to see his new boss.”
I clap my hands. “Like what?”
“Enough for me to leverage your release, I think.”
I want to argue for more details, but I know by the wry expression on her face that she’s expecting it, so I don’t give her the satisfaction.
“So, if you manage to leverage my release, who do I need to pass a message on to?” I question her. “What’s the message?”
Rubbing her eyes, her features turn sad.
I can see her mind working as she organizes her thoughts.
“Mik. I need to you to find Mik—or Timber. Only those two. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else. We don’t know who we can trust.”
“Okay?” I don’t want to know what she means by her trust comment.
“Find one of them and tell them this. Word for word. The Beast is trying to marry the Princess to the Wizard to unite the kingdoms. They should be able to work out what that means.”
My eyebrows nearly reach my hairline as I take in her ridiculous message.
“Is that a code or something?”
“No. It’s the beginning of the end.”
And with that prophetic, doomsday-sounding comment, it’s my turn to roll my eyes at her. The whole comment sounds like I’m passing on the plot to a fairy tale, but if that’s what she deems important, then who am I to argue?
“Okay, I’ve got it. The Beast is trying to marry the Princess to the Wizard to unite the kingdoms.”
We sit in silence for a moment before my curiosity gets the better of me.
“You’re really not going to tell me what it means?”
“It’s better for you if that’s all you know. That way you can’t say something to the wrong person.”
Hopping off the bed, she throws her next demand over her shoulder at me. “Come here and help me make some noise. Let’s get their attention.”
I struggle to my feet begrudgingly.
My stomach immediately lurches, followed quickly by the infernal dizziness that’s been plaguing me. I slap my hand across my mouth and run for the bathroom.
I just make it, hurling the remaining meager contents of my stomach into the basin.
Maddi follows quickly, rubbing my back as she gathers my hair out of the way.
“JJ, are you sure you’re okay? I don’t think this is simply lack of food. I’m hypoglycemic, and I don’t react like this to low blood sugar. I get dizzy, sure, but I’ve never thrown up.”
Her question sets off alarm bells, and I drop my head. Potential diagnoses fly through my mind as I catalog the other symptoms I’ve been having—the overwhelming lethargy, my aching body, and the fact I’m only dizzy when I stand quickly.
One condition jumps out at me.
Especially when I stop denying how sore my breasts are, and that the nausea I’m experiencing was occurring before I inhaled the ether.
Sure, I haven’t vomited before today, but it’s been a close call a few times over the last few weeks. I’m trying to perform mental calculations in my head as I clean my face and hands. I’ve counted up to seventy-five when Maddi interrupts.
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
“I was trying to work out my last period when you interrupted my counting,” I snap at her.
This is the last thing I need.
How stupid could I be?
I’m a doctor, for crying out loud. We don’t get pregnant accidentally.
“How many days late are you?” She ignores my snappy tone and keeps rubbing my back.
It feels good, and part of me registers that Maddi might just be the angel that Mad Dog always calls her. I’ve said some pretty nasty things today, yet she’s still in here with me, making sure I’m okay. No wonder everyone loves her.
“Over seventy-five.” I laugh without humor. “I’ve never been regular, but I’ve never been this late either.”
Wiping my hands on my shirt, I move away so she isn’t touching me anymore.
I can’t believe this.
Now I’ve let the idea enter my head, I’m certain that it’s what’s wrong with me, and it makes me furious.
One broken condom. One broken condom, and my life is ruined. My career is over, and I’m forever tied to a man I haven’t decided I want yet.
Fisting my hair with both hands, I back up against the nearest wall, and slide to the floor.
Tears overflow, leaking down my face, my bottom lip trembling as the knowledge of everything that I’m going to lose tries to drown me.
Maddi drops to the floor next me and puts her arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a side-by-side hug.
“It’s going to be okay, JJ. Timber will be an awesome dad. He’s always wanted kids.”
I want to shake her arm off, but I don’t have it in me.
Who cares if Lucas wants kids or not? He’s a man. He can continue on his merry way unaffected by having a child, if he wants. The woman is the one whose life is thrown into disarray and ruined completely. Just look at my mother and her career. She never worked another day after they got me. Instead, she stayed at home and impersonated a Stepford wife.
“I’m not keeping it. So you need to keep this to yourself.” She jerks in surprise at my loud exclamation. “If you want me to pass on your message, then you need to keep this a secret until I can get rid of it.”
“JJ, it’s—”
I cut off her protests. “It’s none of your business, or Lucas’s. This affects me. It’s my choice.”
Pushing myself slowly to my feet so I don’t upset my stomach any further, I point at the door that’s keeping us prisoner.
“Let’s go and make some noise. Get this show on the road.”
Shaking her head at me in disbelief, Maddi marches over to the door and starts shaking it.
The locks rattle, making more noise than I expected.
“Hey. Assholes!” she shouts. “I want to talk to someone.”
I join her, and we call out together until we hear footsteps heading toward us.
***
“Are you sure everything will be okay?” I whisper as Connor and the man with the scarred face leave the room.
The agreement for them to let me go was reached quickly, negotiations almost non-existent.
All Maddi had said when they entered the room was, “I’ll do it, if she’s let go and proof is provided that she’s safe.”
This was followed by the man with the scar down one side of his face, and the long goatee, sticking his hand out for her to shake. Connor had burst into mocking laughter at her consent, his face turning red as his laughter echoed around the room.
“Everything will be fine,” she answers with confidence.
Staring into my eyes, her expression firm, I resist the urge to squirm under the intensity. “You need to tell Timber that you’re pregnant as soon as possible. He deserves to know.”
Biting my lip so I don’t tell her where to stick
her suggestion, I answer her after a long moment. My annoyance at her demand colors my tone.
“I was talking about you being left here by yourself. The rest is none of your business.”
Snorting, she flashes angry blue eyes at me.
“We’ll see.” Maddi blows out a sharp breath and rolls her eyes at me, her expression losing its anger as whatever’s on her mind overrides her frustration with me. “You need to promise me that you’ll find Mik or Timber straight away. You need to pass on my message the first chance you have. Time is important. If you take too long, then I’m not going to be okay.”
Maddi’s standing tall and proud, exuding confidence, but I can see that underneath it all she’s uncertain about this plan. Empathy overcomes me, forcing me to push aside my indignation at her ongoing attempts to meddle. Excitement at getting out of here grows, but it’s joined by worry about leaving her.
I’m also confused.
Why would they go to all the trouble to take me, only to let me go without argument?
What has she agreed to?
“Time to go, little girl.” One of the guys who dragged Maddi in here this morning saunters through the door. He wraps his sweaty palm around my upper arm, and drags me out of the room without another word. I keep my eyes on Maddi as we leave her behind, nodding in agreement with her previous demand when she arches one eyebrow at me. A small smile creases her face at my response, but I don’t smile in return.
I’m filled with too much fear.
Paralyzing fear that I’m going to let her down.
Bad things happen when I let people down.
JJ
Thirteen Years Old
“Juliette walked home from school with a boy today, Daddy.” My little sister, Charlotte is bouncing up and down in her seat as she tattles on me to our father. At nearly four-years-old, she lives to get me in trouble nowadays.
I swallow my mouthful of disgusting asparagus and hope that Daddy isn’t listening. Sometimes he doesn’t hear them telling on me, and other times he’ll snap at them for being disloyal to their “sister”. I hate it when he says sister in that funny way of his—making it clear that I’m not their real sister—but I’d rather hear him tell them off than have him turn his attention on me.
I don’t want to be punished tonight. Not after the awesome day I had at school. For the first time in a long time, nobody teased me about the stupid buttoned-up way I wear my uniform or the fact that my hair was in an old-fashioned chignon like it is every day.
In fact, nobody teased me at all.
The new boy—the tall, good-looking new boy with his cool skate shoes and his English accent—went out of his way to spend all day with me and that made everyone else be nice to me. Nicholas even called me pretty in front of our classmates, saying that he’d love to see me with my long, dark-red hair down so he could find out if it felt as soft as it looked.
“She did. She did. Daddy.” Elizabeth joins in when Daddy doesn’t answer Charlotte. He hasn’t looked up from the newspaper he’s reading while he eats his dinner with us at our big, fancy table. I want to kick the twins under the table to shut them up but if I do, they’ll cry, and then we’ll all end up in trouble. “We saw him. He walked her to the front door.”
Looking at me as they try to get Daddy’s attention, I swallow down the tears that try to fall when they laugh at me. Not long ago, I was their favorite person. Now they thrive on watching me get into trouble.
“Did you hear your daughters?” Mother cuts in. She shoots me a poisonous look when I jerk my head toward her, wide-eyed with surprise. I didn’t expect her to speak tonight. I heard her having a fight with Daddy in their bedroom when he came home just before dinner. She was limping and her cheek was red when she served our dinner. When Daddy hits her, it means she’s been really stupid and useless, and has upset him more than usual. When that happens she stays quiet for the rest of the night, unless Daddy speaks to her first.
Once upon a time, Mother was on my side and we would hide the little things that upset Daddy away from him together. We were a team until the twins got bigger and Daddy got angrier at their messes and their noisiness. Now I think she hates me, and even though I try so, so hard to be perfect for her, she doesn’t hide my little things from Daddy anymore—only hers and the twins.
“What are they saying, Carmen?” Daddy addresses my mother and she flinches at his angry voice. Oh, no. When he sounds like this, it means he had a bad day at work, and he’s going to be really angry if we upset him. I pray to God I’m wrong.
I don’t think I believe in God. Daddy says it’s impossible for one magical being to be responsible for the creation of the world, and that people who believe in God are stupid and don’t understand basic science. Daddy’s a doctor, so he knows all about science, but a teeny, tiny bit of me wants to believe in God like my friends do, because their parents are nice and they love them.
Maybe if I believed in God or I found a way to prove to my parents that he’s real, they might be nice to me and love me again?
“Are they saying that you were inept as a mother once again today? That you allowed your barely teenaged daughter to be alone with a boy, unchaperoned? That you compounded your ineptitude by letting your toddlers see your stupidity? Is that what they’re saying?”
The twins fall still in their seat as Daddy’s booming voice starts to fill the dining room, their laughter dying as they realize that they’ve woken the monster, and he’s not just angry at me tonight. When Daddy speaks like this, we’re all in the firing line.
“Dmitri, please. It wasn’t like that, at all. You know how willful Juliette is. She doesn’t listen to me. I’ve told her not to walk home from school. I’ve told her that I’ll pick her up. I’ve told her numerous times to stay away from boys and to keep her attention on her studies.”
While Mother is offering her rushed excuses, I’m shaking my head in disagreement.
She’s lying about me.
She said at the start of the year that she would no longer be “schlepping the twins down to my high school” to pick me up—that I was now “old enough and ugly enough” to get myself to and from school. She refused to give me money for a bus pass, so I was forced to walk each and every day no matter what the weather was like. Nicholas lives one street away from me, and when he found out that I didn’t catch the bus like he did, he offered to walk with me from now on. I knew if I was caught that I’d be in big trouble, but I really wanted to spend time with him and be normal for once, so I overrode my fear and broke my parents erratically enforced rules.
Slapping his hands palm down on the oak table, Daddy jolts me from my thoughts as he pushes to his feet and walks towards the twin’s side of the table. Coming to a stop next to Elizabeth, he swings her off her chair by her arm and shakes her until she stands on her feet. Then he tells her to bend over with her hands flat on the seat.
Biting my bottom lip, I look down at my tightly clasped hands as they shake on my lap. I pretend that I don’t hear him unbuckle his belt and that I don’t hear the ear-splitting crack it makes as it flies through the air, making contact with the delicate skin of my baby sister’s backside. Sinking my teeth into my lip hard enough to draw blood, I hum as she cries out from the strike, and then breaks into loud wails that earn her another slap from the belt for crying.
“Now, Elizabeth, how many times do I need to tell you that Patrice’s do not tattle on each other? We are loyal to our own. We are strong. We do not cry over trivial things like physical pain. Do you understand?”
I block out as much as I can when Daddy repeats the process with Charlotte, who thankfully doesn’t cry, before he sends them both to their room without allowing them to finish the remainder of their dinner. Listening to their little feet scampering along the marbled floor as they head for their bedrooms, subdued and sniffling, makes the fear I’ve been trying to ignore rise in my throat and choke me. I can’t breathe, the room spins when I chance a look up from my lap, and every atom of my
being is hyper-aware of Daddy making his way around the table to me. Every hair on my body is standing on end, anticipating the moment he lashes out.
My eyes fly open, and I jump in my chair when Mother shrieks. Turning to look at her, I watch as Daddy seizes her by the front of her blouse and slaps her across the face. He hits her with his palm the first time, the next strike coming from the back of his hand. Her pearl necklace breaks when she tries to pull away and the jewels bounce in multiple directions as they hit the floor.
“If you were any sort of mother, I would not need to discipline my daughters constantly. A man should be able to enjoy a decent, home-cooked meal in the comfort of the house he pays for, without interruptions from unruly children who should know better.” Turning his attention from my mother to me, he continues. “Although, with you, I suppose it’s a case of you get what you pay for. You will always require a greater amount of discipline in order to overcome your dismal heritage.”
Dropping my eyes from his, I think about the adage I heard in English class a few weeks ago. “Water off a duck’s back”, that’s how I’m going to treat Daddy’s words about me tonight. If I cry, his punishment will last longer, so I’m going to act as if his words don’t affect me. He would kill me if he found out, but I also mutter a quick promise to God—just in case there is one—that I’ll get an A+ on every test for the rest of the year if he makes Daddy finish his punishment quickly.
Pulling Mother’s face closer to his, he shakes her as he snarls. “If you didn’t have your looks and your father’s money, you’d be completely useless to me. Clean this mess up—”
I’m confused when he mentions mess since our home is always immaculate, until I hear china crashing onto the floor, breaking and shattering. It’s risky, but I can’t help peeking as Daddy wipes all of Mother’s expensive and cherished china plates, crystal tumblers, and sterling silver cutlery off the table, making a mangled, broken pile at her feet. He’s never lost his temper so badly before. Spit is flying from his mouth and his eyes are filled with hate as he berates her. He throws her to the floor next to the pile, yelling down at her. His angry voice makes me tremble. I want to run away because I know my turn is about to come but my legs won’t move when I tell them to. I’m frozen stiff with fear.
Making Choices (Black Shamrocks MC Book 2) Page 11
