Two Roads(8)

I remember the pity in my father’s eyes. The frustration. The way he ended up dying for another woman because the first one he loved destroyed herself every single day until there was nothing left.

I don’t want to lie to Jase. I love him.

But he’s all I’ve got, him and this baby inside me, and I cannot become my mother.

I cannot risk him leaving me. Not after everything.

“Antibiotics,” I say automatically. It’s not a lie, really. They did give me that huge disgusting needle full of antibiotics once, to stop my infected stomach from turning gangrenous.

“For what?” he asks, looking dubious.

I look down. See that I still haven’t changed out of this blood-spattered dress.

I pull my dress over my head, letting it drop to the ground beside my bare feet. I’m naked save for my panties, a scarred, disfigured girl who was too stupid to listen to his warning all those months ago.

Don’t leave like this. He’ll kill you.

Dornan didn’t kill me, but he might as well have.

Jase inhales sharply, his eyes stuck on my midsection.

“How—what the hell happened?”

My eyes burn but I keep my voice steady. I can do this. I can be numb.

“He didn’t like the way I covered up his marks with the tattoo,” I whisper. “He kept cutting until it was all gone.”

“With a knife?” Jase asks. He’s disgusted. Disgusted by me. And I deserve it.

I nod dejectedly.

I want to ask him, Will you still love me? Even with all my scars?

He seems to read my mind. “Jesus, Julz,” he says, pulling me toward him again. He hugs me like I might break, like I’m made entirely of glass, and if he squeezes too hard I’ll shatter into pieces, gone forever. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”

“I should have listened to you,” I say tonelessly, letting him pull me closer. I can’t even ask him, I’m so afraid. I don’t want to know if the sight of me hurts him. It hurts me enough that we even have to go through this. It’s my fault. I’m the one who left, who stormed out of his apartment and back into the arms of the devil himself. It’s my fault.

He slides one hand into my hair, letting his thumb brush up and down my cheek. His other hand rests in the small of my back. I am ruined.

“Tell me,” he says softly. “Tell me about the baby.”

A light in the dark. Something to hope for.

A baby. Our baby.

A tiny sliver of hope - our beacon in this, the darkest of nights.





After I tell Jase the few details I know—the test was positive, the baby was moving, I had morning sickness when I woke up in the dungeon, and according to my basic math Jase is the father—we both curl up on the bed, him behind me with a protective arm slung across me. It feels wonderful, albeit totally foreign. In the night I turn onto my back, his arm still heavy across my ribs, and I study every inch of his face. I watch the steady inhalation of each breath, the way his lips occasionally move subtly, and his slow exhalation. With light fingertips I trace his eyebrows, his eyelids. His cheekbones. Let my touch come to rest on his full lips.

And by then, of course, he’s cracked an eyelid, giving me a sleepy grin. He hasn’t been sleeping, after all. He moves his hand to cover my stomach, his touch gentle against my marred flesh, and I have to bite my lip to stop myself from bursting into tears again. Not because it hurts, because it feels good. He’s really here, with me, and maybe, just maybe, things are going to be okay after all.

And then we have to go and fuck it all up, this fragile peace. He shifts beside me, propping himself up on an elbow, pushing tangled hair out of my eyes.

“Julz,” he says to me. “I love you, okay?” There is a but in his tone.

“But?” I supply the word for him.

“But, the baby could still be his. Right?”

Sucker punch, right in the gut. Fuck you, Dornan Ross.

I want to die. I push Jase’s hand away, devastated, and turn onto my side, getting as far away from him as I can. Our feet are still touching, tangled together underneath the covers and I angrily kick his away from where they’ve been resting against mine.

I don’t have any right to be angry. I know I’m being a fucking diva, honestly, and even as I’m reacting like this, curling inward, drawing back inside my shell, I hear the voice of reason inside my mind. He has every right to ask you that question after the things you’ve done.

“You’re mad at me?” he asks me, seemingly bewildered. “Don’t you think I deserve to know? Don’t you know I’d be by your side no matter what?”

Inside my rational mind, I’m ninety percent sure Dornan didn’t father the baby. The dates are all wrong for that, and I had a period after the last time I slept with him. Plus, I’d been on the pill the entire time I was screwing Dornan—just that reality revolts me, the depths I’ve sunk to to procure my endgame—and I stopped taking them, purely by accident, after leaving them at Emilio’s compound when the bombs blew. And then, twice, Jase and I had had sex, unprotected, no pills, no barriers, nothing. The baby is Jason’s.