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Looking back on it all, she couldn’t believe she’d let herself fall so far, so fast. What had she been thinking?
Then again… it hadn’t been about thoughts. It had been about feelings. And nothing proved the relativity of time better than infatuation backed up by a heady dose of lust. It was literally how love affairs worked, duping you into believing that the intensity of emotion equated to you having known the person forever. And as long as she could call on her memories of Darius and hold the evidence of her stupidity in her mental hand… then maybe she wouldn’t do it again. Ever.
So yup, anywhere but Caldwell was her destination. She had no ties to anyone, nobody to miss her, no pets, no complications. No job. It was time for a fresh start. A new chapter. A…
As her mind drifted, she headed back downstairs and hated that she couldn’t concentrate properly. Then again, she hadn’t slept for three days, and there was a strange benefit to the exhaustion. Thanks to being a zombie, she didn’t have any energy to spare on getting worked up about the future, and this was kind of liberating. Her lack of fear, regardless of its source, made her feel in charge, somehow.
Glancing around, she ended up staring through to the kitchen. There had been a helluva mess in there to clean up after Darius had left, and the burn mark on the floor from where Bruce had been… where he’d…
“Oh, God.” She put her hands to her face and held her cheeks like her skull was in danger of blowing apart. “Oh… God.”
The thing about trauma, especially when it was fresh, was that it took over everything the instant the door to it was opened. Between one blink and the next, she saw the chairs knocked over, the pans scattered on the linoleum, the peanut butter jar on the floor, the jam spilled like blood on the counter.
The actual blood, red and black, smudged all over the place.
She’d cleaned everything up. But that was only on the surface.
Just like her composure was only on the surface.
As she felt her thoughts threaten to fragment into insanity, she pulled herself back together with the reminder that at least if she was by herself, no one could hurt her, ever again. And this was a good and necessary thing. In truth, and though he would never know it—because she would never see him again—Darius had the venerable distinction of being the worst pain she had ever lived through. Which, given her history, was really saying something.
He’d been out of this world since the moment she’d first met him.
Hadn’t he.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Nine Months, Twenty-four Days, and Eight Hours Later…
On the night Anne died, she was at least three weeks past her due date. And that was all she knew for sure. Well, that and the fact that she was utterly terrified.
Then again, how many pregnant women were all, I got this, no big deal?
Still, as the time to give birth approached, she assumed that most expectant mothers found themselves with at least a mixture of fear and joy. She had only the fear, had only ever had the fear. There was no question whose it was. So the tension and the horror about what was growing inside of her had been her traveling companion while she’d been away from Caldwell, and yes, she had considered terminating the pregnancy—pretty much throughout the entire first trimester. She’d even made an appointment at a clinic…
But at the last moment, she hadn’t been able to go through with things.
What she had followed through on were her travel plans. She had seen most of New England and the Midwest, and had only returned to Caldwell two weeks ago because even her resolute denial couldn’t override the reality that she was waddling like a duck, couldn’t tie her shoes, and felt like she was going to pop.
Being back at home had been even harder than she’d expected, proving that her memories hadn’t faded and neither had her sense of betrayal. She still hadn’t reached out to Darius after the night she had told him to go, and she was not any closer to understanding what he was, what Bruce McDonaldson had turned into, or what had happened after she had watched a man get stabbed by a steak knife and disappear with a flash and sound of a Roman candle—
“Ohhh,” she groaned.
Putting her hand on her swollen stomach, she grimaced through the pain. And then she checked her watch. Two minutes apart.
Things had moved fast with the labor, and she knew she was running out of time if she was going to get help. Nonetheless, she waited on her couch in her living room through two more contractions—and then she finally launched herself to her feet and lumbered for her purse. Gathering her keys, she left out the front door and walked to the Ford Taurus she had bought after completing a driving course in Plattsburgh and finally getting her license.
