Chapter Fourteen
The third main tunnel, the ocean-view, wound beneath the earth in a twisting pattern. Carved through a lot of rock, this tunnel had more sudden turns than the others as Mal sought easier land to cut through. At one point, Jack swore they were looping back toward the way they’d come before straightening out again.
Jack had spent at least an hour working with Dylan and the rabbit before the boy got tired and took a nap. Soon after, he and Charlie entered the last tunnel.
“This tunnel,” Charlie said, pointing to one on their left, “leads to the stream where we bathe. We ran out of shampoo, but we do have some soap, toothbrushes, and razors.”
She’d been using the same razor for over a year but, dull or not, it was a prize possession even if it did leave her looking like she’d tussled with a cougar after using it. Being a vampire, all those nicks and cuts healed fast.
“Where did you get soap and razors?” Jack asked.
“Sometimes, the people and vampire the Savages capture have supplies with them. I think some of them are hikers pulled straight from the trails. They sometimes let those people keep their things. Mal believes they do it to screw with their heads, and I think he’s right. They took my purse when I got here. If they’d left me with it, even though it had nothing useful in it, I would have felt a small measure of security by having something familiar with me.
“But anyway, when the humans who keep their things are dead, the vamps leave their stuff behind, and we’ve scavenged stuff from them. We’ve never found any weapon in the backpacks. The Savages would never allow them to keep anything that could be useful in defending themselves.”
“Interesting,” Jack murmured. “So are you and Mal a couple?”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up as she turned to him. “Me and Mal?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about you, but when I’m dating someone, I normally don’t go around kissing other guys. So no, Mal and I are not a couple. He’s my friend, and that’s all. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Jack realized he’d struck a nerve at her acidic tone, but he couldn’t help feeling pleased over this information. Mal wasn’t competition. Now he just had to find out about Dylan’s dad, but right now probably wasn’t the best time as she continued to stare at him like she was contemplating breaking his nose again.
Instead, he turned his attention back to their surroundings. “How many tunnels branch off this one?”
“Three.”
“How long is this tunnel?” Jack asked.
“Five miles. It’s three times the length of the others.”
“Holy shit.”
“Mal said he would have kept going,” Charlie said, “but the ocean didn’t give him a choice.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t tried to dig his way off this island yet.”
Charlie chuckled; she’d thought the same thing more than a few times. “I think if he knew which direction to dig for land, he would.”
“Is he still creating tunnels?”
“Yeah. There’s not a whole lot else to do down here.”
“Do all of you help him?”
“Sometimes. It’s more Mal’s thing than ours.”
“So what do you do to pass the time?” Jack asked.
“Patrol and spend time with my son.”
“How did you and Dylan end up on this island?”
“We were walking home from a chorus concert at the school he attended and where I taught.”
“You’re a teacher?”
“I was. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be returning to the profession. I doubt many would agree to their child’s education coming from one of the undead.”
The regret in her voice pulled at Jack. “You could still teach, as long as you move often to keep people from noticing your lack of aging.”
“Sounds like a great life for Dylan,” she murmured.
“So they took you right off the street?” Jack asked when he sensed her melancholy.
“Yeah, but it was a quiet back road.”
“Were you in Canada?”
“No, New York. Looking back, I curse myself as an idiot for walking when we could have driven, but it was a nice night, and we only lived a mile from the school. I believed a walk would be refreshing, so, even though we’d have to walk back in the morning, I left my car at the school.”
“What about Dylan’s dad? Was he with you when they captured you?”
Charlie snorted with laughter. “He’s never been with us. I told him I was pregnant, and he was so eager to get away from me that his car left a giant cloud of smoke as he burned rubber down the street.”
Charlie would never forget the image of that beautiful, black Corvette spinning tires in the middle of her postcard-perfect neighborhood. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen since Mrs. Bowers cat got stuck in a tree. And there she’d been, standing like a fool in the middle of the street, unable to understand what happened.
During the five months they spent together, Chad endlessly professed his love for her. She’d known they would one day marry and he would rescue her from her parents. He’d never said anything about marriage, but his proclamations of love could only end in marriage. No one could love someone so much and not want to share their lives with them.
She had been so excited to tell him she was pregnant that images of eloping to Niagara Falls danced like the Sugar Plum Fairy through her head. She would get her GED afterward and raise their baby while Chad taught ballet.
That was how they met; he’d been a judge at a ballet competition she attended. Before a knee injury ended his career, he danced for five years with a professional ballet company. Afterward, he opened his own studio; with his charisma and good looks, he became popular amongst the parents and students.
After first meeting Chad, her mother talked about transferring Charlie to his studio as he was rumored to be the best in the area. Charlie refused to tell her mother she preferred to stay with Miss Dodd, who was the only person in her life to show any caring toward Charlie, even if their relationship didn’t extend beyond the dance studio.
Charlie didn’t express her preference for Miss Dodd because she knew if she did, she would find herself in Chad’s class the next day. She was hoping her silence would end the discussion.
In those early days, Chad was friendly, unfailingly polite, and incredibly handsome, but something about the way he looked at her disturbed her. She hadn’t been able to put her finger on it then; now, she knew her instincts were trying to warn her away, and she failed to listen.
But her silence hadn’t mattered as Chad approached her mother about recruiting Charlie, and her parents, never the ones to ask Charlie what she would like to do, pulled her away from Miss Dodd and placed her under Chad’s training. Convinced it was the next step toward Charlie dancing onstage with a professional ballet company, her parents were thrilled with the arrangement. Instead, it was the step that led to their daughter being knocked up five months later.
Though she was initially wary of him, it only took Chad a couple of weeks to break through her defenses. With his sandy blond hair and eyes as blue as the sky, all the girls whispered and giggled and tripped over themselves around Chad. All the girls, except for her.
And for some reason, he focused on her over all those other girls. She hadn’t understood why at the time, but she’d been so flattered and starved for attention that she lapped it up like a puppy receiving belly rubs.
As Charlie grew older, she realized some predators had an uncanny knack for picking out the weakest prey. Chad was one of those predators, and she’d been so unhappy, unloved, and lost that she was easy pickings.
At twenty-seven, Chad had no business pursuing a sixteen-year-old, too-sheltered girl who’d endured more mental abuse than anyone should ever experience. She was prime picking for someone like Chad, and he’d homed in on her like a cat on a Christmas tree.
Despite her instincts telling her to be car
eful, his good looks and dimpled grin seduced her. She blushed, murmured, and bumbled her way through his flirtations. When he told her parents he believed Charlie could make it far in ballet and suggested private lessons for her, her parents were ecstatic.
They would have keeled over if they’d known Charlie was deflowered in his office after their third private lesson together. She’d been such an idiot at sixteen. A stupid, confused, looking for love from anyone who gave her one second of attention idiot!
When, three months later, she went to her lesson with her positive pregnancy test tucked proudly in her bag, she was practically floating on air. Not only would she finally escape the clutches of her parents, but she was already madly in love with the tiny human growing inside her. No matter what it took, she would ensure this baby had a far better life than hers.
She would do much better with her child than her parents did with her. She would never allow them to go hungry or make them do something they hated. Chad would be an amazing dad, and she would be a good mom.
After class, she followed Chad into his office where they had sex before dressing. She’d been bursting at the seams to tell him, yet she found her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth once the time came. He constantly told her how much he loved her, yet an uneasy feeling churned in her belly.
She had to tell him soon. He was having dinner with them tonight, a weekly affair her mother insisted on while her father ate in silence. But then, her father did almost everything in silence.
In those earlier days, Charlie blamed her mom for everything, but they were her father’s laws her mother carried out. He required his house run a certain way, and he expected the perfect little dancer girl, but he wouldn’t do the dirty work necessary to see his rules carried out.
Over the years, Charlie’s hatred and resentment toward her parents lessened. However, she’d come to see that household for what it was—her father’s sick version of what he believed the happy, perfect family should be. Someone should have told him families were never perfect, and that laughter and love were what made them happy, not strict order.
She often wondered what her father’s childhood was like to make him such a man. Charlie knew the answer for her mother; raised in a strict, religious family, she was taught to never go against her husband and to be a dutiful wife. She excelled in her role.
So that night when Chad finished with her and they were standing by his desk, waiting to go to her house for dinner, she finally gathered the courage to dip her hand into her bag and pull out her pregnancy test.
“What’s that?” Chad asked as he examined the stick in her hand.
She’d giggled like the stupid, silly schoolgirl she was. “It’s a pregnancy test.”
The color drained from his face, and he wobbled on his feet until she feared he might pass out. “What are you doing with it?”
She frowned in confusion. What did he think she was doing with it? Last she checked, people didn’t carry around sticks other people peed on. “It’s mine. Well, ours.”
“Ours?” he squawked, sounding more like a parrot than a man.
The uneasy feeling in her stomach grew until it felt like a small storm was brewing in there. Sweat beaded Chad’s forehead, and his eyes looked about to bug out of his head. He wasn’t all that handsome anymore.
Chapter Fifteen
“Yes, our baby,” she said.
“Aren’t you on birth control?” he demanded.
“No, I told you my parents would never allow me to go on it even if I could ask them to take me for it. You know how they are. I could never ask them for such a thing; they’d never let me outside again.”
“You never told me that.”
The storm became a hurricane as she gawked at him. “Yes… yes, I did,” she insisted. “That’s why I asked you about wearing a condom.” Her parents may keep her as sheltered as they could, but she still heard the girls in class talking and learned enough from them to know some things about sex and birth control.
“I’m not wearing one of those fucking things.”
Which was pretty much what he told her the first time they discussed this too, but in a much more flowery way. Then, he’d told her that he didn’t want anything getting between their love and he had to feel her completely.
The ticking hands of the clock on the wall counted away the minutes as he stared at the stick before snatching it from her hand. He glanced at the word pregnant in the little window. She was so naïve back then that the stone-cold look on his face didn’t tip her off to what was coming, but she would never forget that look.
“It’s not my baby,” he stated.
Charlie blinked at him, uncertain she’d heard right. “Of course it is.”
“I know you’ve been spreading your legs for every man you encounter.”
Charlie felt as if he’d slapped her as all the breath rushed out of her and she recoiled. Now she feared she might be the one to pass out as the ground lurched beneath her feet. She couldn’t assimilate this man with the one who’d proclaimed his love for her while taking her clothes off twenty minutes ago.
“No, I… I would never sleep with someone else,” she stammered out. “You’re the only one I’ve ever been with, and… and I love you.”
“Lies,” he said and waved the stick at her. “And if anyone asks, I’ll tell them all the men you’ve been with. You can’t prove it’s mine.”
Of course, she could have proved it was his the second the baby was born, but her brain was too busy trying to process the betrayal burning through her for common sense to come into play.
“You’re saying it’s mine because I’m the only one of your many who has a stable job and who can take care of you. That’s not me. I will take you to have an abortion and pay for it, but that’s it.”
Now, she knew he’d offered to pay for her abortion so he could erase the evidence of what he’d done. If this came out, he could be arrested for statutory rape. He would lose his business as few would willingly let the man, who fathered a child with a girl not old enough to vote, teach their daughters. She realized all this now, but back then, all her dreams were too busy shattering around her feet to put two and two together.
“An abortion?” she choked as he continued to wave the pregnancy test between them.
“Yes. No one’s going to claim that bastard as theirs, and you know your parents will make you give it away.”
And that was what finally snapped her out of her stupor. She didn’t care; he was saying these awful things about her, but now he was saying them about her child. He wanted her to get rid of the baby nestled in her womb, a baby she already loved.
She’d had high hopes for this child and the life it would have, but it was already experiencing the cold indifference of one of its parents, and she would not tolerate it. She would love this baby enough for twenty parents if that was what it took, but she was keeping it.
Her parents battered most of the defiance from her over the years, but she felt her spirit surging back to life as she snatched the test from him. Her anger felt much better than the hurt, and she allowed it to fester within her.
“I’m keeping my baby,” she stated.
“Your choice,” he replied with a shrug, but she saw the panic in his eyes. “Don’t expect anything from me for the thing.”
“This baby is not a thing,” she snarled. “It’s mine, and it is yours.”
“Doubtful. I’ve heard you’re screwing at least three other guys.”
She didn’t know if he was just saying that or if he had heard such a thing. “I haven’t talked to three other guys this week.”
“You don’t have to speak to screw.”
“You said you loved me.” She didn’t say this in a pathetic pleading way but stated it because she had nothing else to say.
“That was before I knew you were a whore.”
And that was the end of it for her. Charlie bent, returned the test to her dance bag, and rose to face him. “Take me home.”
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“I’m not going to sit at dinner while you spew your lies to your parents.”
“I’m not going to tell my parents you’re the father of my baby.”
“And why would I believe a lying slut like you?”
She’d never in her life wanted to hit someone as badly as him, but she kept herself restrained. “Because the best thing for my child will be never knowing you, and I won’t take the chance my parents might try to force us into something if they know the truth.”
Doubt flickered in his eyes. “Yeah right. You’re going to tell them your lies the first chance you get.”
“No. We’re through. After tonight, I never want to see you again. My baby will never know your name or how pathetic you are, but if you don’t take me home tonight, my parents might suspect something. Sit through dinner, keep everything normal, and I’ll tell them after you leave.”
The idea of having to sit across the table from him made her already iffy stomach roll, but she would do whatever it took to keep her baby protected from him. There was a chance her parents would make them marry if they learned the truth. She’d rather face life on the streets—which was probably where she would end up after telling her parents—than a lifetime with Chad as she finally saw him for what he was—pathetic.
“After tonight, you’ll never have to see me again, and thankfully, I won’t have to see you again either,” she said. “I can’t think of anything worse than being tied to you for the rest of my life.”
Though he wanted nothing to do with their child, a disbelieving look came over his face. Charlie knew that look wasn’t because he doubted her motives but because he couldn’t believe she wasn’t chasing after him.
How could she, a pregnant teen with no one to rely on, not want him? He was handsome, ran a successful business, and was, by all accounts, a catch. He was also a pathetic loser who preyed on young girls because he knew women would see him for what he was.
Unforeseen: The Vampire Awakenings, Book 9 Page 9
