Unexpected Fate(81)

“No!” he bellows, repeatedly jabbing the knife in my direction. “We’re EVERYTHING!” his voice takes on a manic level of insanity, and he starts to advance on me.

“Please . . . I’m begging you. Don’t hurt my baby. I’ll do whatever you want, but please!”

“That,” he says harshly. “That is an abomination and it must be removed from you. I won’t stand for it.”

I grip my stomach tighter and sob. The tears mix with the snot as they roll down my face. The hope I was holding on to that I would be able to talk him off the ledge starts to dwindle. I look around again, praying that I’ll find something that will give me the answer on how to escape this impending doom.

This is it. I’m going to die right here where my future started. Right where it started, we’re going to die, and I know there is no way Cohen will survive this kind of loss. That knowledge and my love for him are the only hope I have left. I spot the lamp just an inch away from my fist right when Mark makes his move and lunges forward. Given the fact that my belly has gotten huge in the last seven weeks since Cohen returned home, my movements are slower than normal, and right when I feel his knife pierce my left side, I heave the lamp with everything I have and clip him right on his temple.

Mark goes down hard, dazed but not out, so I bring my arm back—weakly now that my side is killing me—and swing at him again. His lifts and his knife digs into the top of my hip. Desperate to do what I can to protect my stomach, I twist and fight with everything I have in me. If this is the last moment I have on this Earth, I’m not going to be taken out easily.

“Stop fucking moving so I can get that thing out of you!” he bellows, and it isn’t lost on me just how far gone he is on the sanity scale.

“You won’t get my baby, you sick fuck!” I scream, and with a renewed strength, I start to kick my legs between driving the heavy lamp down onto his face. “You can’t have my baby,” I sob, my body growing weaker. “Never!” I scream out and never stop, my throat burning with the raw sounds coming out.

I feel it before my mind registers that there is nothing else I can do, and as my body is pulled down with nothing left to give, I use the last bit of my strength to twist so that, when I fall, my baby is protected.





“HOW HARD WOULD IT HAVE been to carry this shit down when Cohen got here and could help us?” I ask Nate after dusting my hands off on my jeans.

We’ve just spent the better part of thirty minutes trying to get Cohen’s big-ass seventy-inch television down three flights of stairs and attempted to get the damn thing loaded into the back of my truck without breaking it.

“It seemed easier than it was when I planned it out in my head. It’s not my fault it’s heavier than it looks. Damn thing looked like it would be easy.”

Yeah. Famous last words of Nate Reid.

“Plus, if Chance wouldn’t have been so fucking lazy, he could have helped out too.”

“Chance”—I reach over and shove Nate as we start to walk back up the stairs—“is up there keeping an eye on Dani. Something that, I’ll remind you, we should be doing as well.”

“Seriously, Lee? She’s right up there! What the hell is going to happen in the two seconds we took to take care of that shit?” He pulls his UGA ball cap off and scratches his thick, black hair before jamming it back down. “Fuck, it’s hot out here.”

Right when my booted foot touches the bottom step, I hear a sound that stops my heart. I look over at Nate to see if he heard it and see all the color drain from his face.

“Fuck!” I yell and start to bound up the steps in threes. “Call Cohen, Nate. Call Cohen and then call your dad.” I keep running, letting my training take over and my instincts kick in.

For the last two months, I’ve been in training with the local police department, and for the first time, I’m thankful for every second of that training. I don’t look behind me to see if Nate’s coming. I grab my cell and dial 911 as I continue up the stairs. As I reach their landing, the operator picks up and I give her the short version of what I know. Which is nothing. After rattling off Cohen’s address and telling her to send an ambulance as well as the police, I stop talking and ease up on the cracked door.

“Sir, is the intruder still on the scene?” the female voice says through the line.

I feel Nate coming up behind me and hand him the phone. I hardly register his response to the operator. When I don’t hear anything from inside the apartment, I slowly toe open the door and ease inside.

What I see is a scene I will never forget. If I should live to be one hundred, this image will still be branded in my mind. The walls, floor, and tan couches are all stained red.