Cherished: The Mountain Man's Babies(25)

Grace nods, understanding." You're not the first one this has happened to. I can help."

"You? How?" I look around the empty bathroom. "They are going to kill me when they find out I'm pregnant."

"It won't come to that."

"How do you know?" I've spent the last four months with my head down, so any gossip has been lost on me. I've hardly left the kitchen—the only time I did sneak off was to look for my father and siblings.

But apparently, they left when the compound moved. They aren't here, never even showed. And in some ways, I'm grateful, I want more for my brothers than what this place would have offered them... and I hope it means my father had some money left from what he was paid for me.

I can't think the worst about them. That my father may have abandoned them somewhere. More children I have let down.

"You need to hide this pregnancy for as long as you can."

I nod, agreeing. "And then what? Has anyone been able to sneak out?"

"It's not that easy. There are patrol guards here, watching who comes and goes."

"How do you know?"

"I grew up here," Grace tells me.

"What did you do, to get punished?"

She swallows, her eyes brimming with tears. "I tried to escape."

"Why wouldn't they just let you go?"

"Because the people here are monsters, Cherish. And that is why we need to be smarter next time. Why we need to make a plan that doesn't result in us returning right where we came from."

I look deep into her eyes. There's more to her story than she lets on, but it's not the time to push.

"Why are you helping me?" I ask.

"Because, Cherish, you know what it's like on the other side. But for me? I've never left this place. I need your help as much as you need mine."

"What will we do?" I ask.

"We are going to plan another escape, but this time, it's going to work."



Together, over the course of the next month, Grace and I plan each night when the compound is quiet, we whisper between the cots and figure out how we can leave.

Sneaking out still seems the surest bet.

"But it didn't work for you last time," I tell her.

"Yeah, but it will be easier with two of us."

It would have been easier, too, if my body would have cooperated.

I was on bedrest for the entirety of my last pregnancy.

This one seems no different. I know there must be more than one baby in my womb this time too because even at five months, I know that there is more movement than one fetus could produce.

And I start cramping.

The same way I did before.

I need to see a doctor, but I can't risk asking for one.

The night of the escape I tell Grace the thing I have been putting off for days.

"I can't go," I tell her. "I'm scared of traveling, hitchhiking, and sleeping in rest stops. I can hardly move as it is."

Grace swallows back any fear she may have. "I don't want to leave you, not after all this."

"I'll fake a fever for a few days if anyone asks. You have to go," I tell her, with the urgency that has grown in my chest every day since we started talking about an escape. "Go find my children. My man. You have to go to the mountain."

"Alone?" she asks, her eyes wide, her hands nearly trembling. Last time she tried to escape she was caught... but we know more now. We've been scouting the guards, watching when they take breaks, change shifts. The odds of us being successful are higher now, not to mention my time is running out. If I don't leave soon everyone will know I am pregnant. And I don't want to imagine what they will do to me if they find out.

Grace nods, putting on a brave face. But she's never been anywhere besides the safety of this compound.

"You can do it," I tell her, reciting the directions to the mountain, telling here exactly where she needs to go. "Take this with you," I tell her, setting the guitar pick in her palm. "And give it to James when you meet him. Because you will meet him. I know it."





Chapter Seventeen





Jonah wasn't lying when he said he got himself a bunch of tattoos. He and I got our first ones together in Miami—I got Cherish on my chest, and he got a big ass whale across his. Since then he's covered himself in a dozen more and looks more hardcore than I know he really is.

Because damn, he can put the babies to sleep about as well as I can.

He's been here a week, and already he and I have set to adding an addition to the house. When Jaxon and his buddies found out, they told their women to come get my babies and helped us get the addition built in no time.

With their help, we build three simple bedrooms off the main cabin. Though it’s not technically mine--my father was given it after my uncle died-- we all figure if he ever thought about showing his face back on this mountain he'd be running for the hills, knowing we all had plans to whoop his ass.