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My whole body aches, and I'm a little bashful about how much I relish the pain. Even in our worst moments, Alexanderalwaysleaves me riding the high of offering up my body to him. His touch, the choking lust that charges every moment, every kiss, every earth-shattering stroke—I can’t get enough of it.
Maybe it makes me just as crazy as him.
With eyes blurred from the steam rising from the piping hot stream of water, I catch a glimpse of my silhouette in the mirrored glass. Blinking so the image clears, I glance over my body.
It’s like I’m seeing myself with new eyes.
Idolook different. Apart from the obvious things like pink-streaked hair sticking to my nape and the tattoo on my wrist, I do look a little thicker. In my thighs especially.
Maybe it’s because I’ve spent countless hours picking my body apart, but the changes are so obvious now that I wonder how I missed them all this time. My eyes travel upward, lingering on the slight bruises around my neck and shoulders from Alexander’s hands.
I feel suspended in a glass case of emotion.
I’m angry, but not angry enough to pick a fight with him about what exactly happened between us earlier. I’m sad, but not sad enough to cry or scream or even hurt myself. It’s just a conflicting, confusing numbness.
About where we’ll go from here, of what will become of us. Because it might not be just the two of us anymore. It might be three.
Frankly, I’m fucking scared.
There’s a chance I could be someone’s mother.
Me, eighteen-year-old Alize Moreau. The girl who doesn’t know her mother, who hates her father, who lost her first and only friend in an attack on her house, whose boyfriend just held a gun to her head, and she enjoyed it.
I don’t feel capable of any of this in the slightest.
I still don’t know for sure, but even outside of the campus clinic’s email, the signs are there—the weird appetite, the weight gain, the unexplained illness, the fact we’ve never used any form of contraception—
A bubble of nausea has me crumpling to my knees to wretch. Nothing comes up but bile. I puked all I had back in the stall at the airport. When I manage to pull myself back to my feet, everything feels worse.
I need to talk to Alexander about this sooner than later.
But not while he’s in this mood that he’s in. It must be the anxiety of going back home to his father that has him this fraught with emotion–a feeling I understand well.
As much as I want to shout at him and tell him what’s happening with me—with us, actually—it wouldn’t be fair. The best I can do is try to put him in a better mood.
I hold that thought in my mind as I quickly wash my body and rinse the conditioner from my hair. Though I wasn’t keeping track of the time, I’ve been in here long enough for Alexander to be suspicious.
I don’t want him to come looking for me.
The last thing I need is to make him any more upset. Until I figure all this out, I’ll have to choose my battles. I would rather fight about the fact we’re going to have a family soon than the fact that my long-ass shower is going to make us late.
I’m out of the bathroom five minutes later, a towel wrapped around me and my wet hair piled atop my head in a tight bun. A rivulet of water snakes down my neck, turning cold from the air-con in the stateroom.
After drying myself as quickly as I can manage, I towel my hair of most of the water I can manage and then pull it back into a low bun. Then I’m back in the clothes Alexander ripped me out of, sans the underwear.
Everything is going to be fine.
I give myself a little pep-talk in the mirror. No matter what happens, everything is going to be fine. Alexander and I love each other. We’ve been through hell and back together—a baby won’t–can’t–break us.
With shaky fingers, I slide the stateroom door open.
The jet’s decor is all cool tones, leather and soft-touch fabrics—white, grays and silvers. A few rows ahead of me, Alexander sits in one of the forward-facing chairs. All I can see is the back of his head and the rocks glass he’s holding.
Just the sight of him has an odd mix of desire and anxiety twisting in my belly.
That’s the thing with Alexander and I—our attraction, our relationship, it’s a constant balancing act of lust and love, pain and pleasure and even in the moments where I absolutely hate him, he’s still the air in my lungs.
I walk up the aisle slowly. His head is turned toward the window.
