Chapter Sixteen
Tessa
I wasn’t able to fall back to sleep after Matthew left, but I did snag his pillow and bury my face in it, taking in his scent. I roll to my side, taking the pillow with me and smile at the slight sting I’ve got going on between my legs. I lay with my knees pressed together, calling forth the tingles, thoughts, and memories Matthew had left me with this morning.
I roll to look at the clock and see it’s six thirty, time for me to get up and get ready for work. I groan as I roll to my back and sit up in the bed, throwing my legs over the side. I push from the bed and stop as I feel a warm liquid ooze down my inner thigh. My mouth falls open as I look down to see the milky white liquid slide down my skin.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh motherfucking shit!
I reach down and run my hand up the trail it had left. Wiping it from my skin, I hold my hand up in front of my face. “Oh fuck!” Feeling the panic slam into me. I do the math, counting the days, trying to figure out where I’m at in my cycle, but who the hell am I kidding? I never understood that shit. I’ve been on birth control since I was sixteen, but had a stupid moment and went off the pill when I had moved here.
I slump back down on the bed, staring off into space.
At some point during the three times we’d had sex last night, the condom broke. He never once seemed concerned, so he obviously didn’t know. A sickness comes over me unlike any other I’ve ever felt before. I leap from the bed and run to the bathroom. Falling to my knees, I throw my guts up into the commode.
~~~~~~
I had stumbled through getting ready for work this morning, and now I’m reluctantly climbing the steps to the courthouse, dreading having to spend the day in the office with Angela.
I have the phone with Eno’s number in it with me, and have every intention of using it if the bitch steps to me, but not before I get my two cents in on the woman. I’m not in the mood for her today, and I’m sure if she opens her mouth and breathes one word about Matthew, I will lose my shit on her.
I take in a deep breath before I walk into the office, but find her desk vacant, and let out the breath I was holding. I sit down and boot up my computer on autopilot. Now that Angela is no longer a worry today, the milky substance is a big one.
It’s a good thing my job is mindless and requires little to no part of my brain to do. I’ve gone over so many scenarios of how this could play out, but in the end I settled on taking things one day at a time. I could just be making this a big deal and when I start, I’ll laugh at how stupid I’ve been.
The end of the day couldn’t get here fast enough when I figured out what to do. Matthews’s words had given me the idea.
I rush into the emergency room to find Avery standing at the nurse’s station in a set of pink scrubs. Her eyes widen when she sees me. “Oh my God, Tessa, is everything okay?” she asks, taking me by my upper arms, looking me up and down.
“Yes, everything’s okay,” I assure her. I look around, then back to her. “I hate to bother you, but can I talk to you in private?” Avery looks at me, confused.
“Sure.” She takes my arm, leading me off down the busy hall into a small room with a few couches lining the wall, and boxes of tissues sitting on the small tables between them.
~~~~~~
I sit on the exam table looking at Avery, waiting for her to speak. “Okay, when was your last period?” She takes a calculator from a drawer.
I have to sit and think since I haven’t been having sex and didn’t need the pill. I haven’t been keeping up with them. I just always knew when I was going to start when I started to feel like shit.
“Two weeks ago, maybe? Two and a half?” I look at her and my heart skips when I see her lower her calculator. “What?”
She takes a deep breath and steps over to me, laying her hand on my leg. “Ovulation happens around fourteen days after the first day of your period.”
A lump forms in my throat. “If my memory serves correctly, I would have ovulated this weekend?” She nods. I cover my face with my hands and the tears I’ve been holding onto all day break loose. “Oh God, no.”
She rubs my knee. “Getting pregnant is a shot in the dark by a blind man, literally, Tessa.”
I look and bat my eyes, trying to clear my blurred vision. “So you and Leo were trying to get pregnant?”
“No, but like the two dumbasses we are, we didn’t use anything, ever. You and Matty did. It’s just the one time the condom broke?”
I nod yes, but don’t feel any better about the situation. “Can I take a pregnancy test?”
“Not right now, you have to wait a while. But…” she starts, and a painful expression comes over her face, “you can take the morning after pill just to be safe if you want. It’s up to you.” I can tell she doesn’t want me to have this information, and it’s killing her to give me the option. But it is my choice, isn’t it? Matthew uses condoms religiously, so he doesn’t want kids.
I duck my face again and let a few more tears slip from my eyes. I’m so confused. I don’t want him to think I did this to trap him, but what would he think if I took the pill and discarded a baby he knew nothing about?
“You have up to five days to make the decision to take the pill. Go home, think about, and if you feel like it, tell Matty. Discuss it with him.” She looks back at the door, then back to me, her lips drawn out in a thin line. “Listen, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I know Matty, and I think he would want to know.”
I’m not at a place in my life to be a mother—I don’t think I ever will be. It’s not that I had bad parents, because I had awesome parents. It’s me and the life I’ve led, and who could come back into it at any time.
“Tessa?” Her soft voice breaks through my tears and thoughts.
“Yes?” I look up at the sweet brunette.
“I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise. And feel free to come back to me when you decide, and I’ll make sure you get what you need.” She takes my hands in hers and holds them, not saying a word, but giving me comfort with just her presence. What she’s just promised me is big in her world. If Leo were to find out she kept this from him, I don’t want to think about what would happen to her.
“I shouldn’t have come to you with this. I’m so sorry,” I say as I take my hands from hers and jump down from the table, roughly wiping the tears from my eyes.
She takes me by the arm, stopping me. “No, I’m exactly the person you should’ve come to.”
~~~~~~
Matty
I stand in the shadows of the alley I’ve been in for the past six hours. It had started to rain over an hour ago, but nothing will keep me from doing what I’m here for. The other three men who are with me mingle at the other end of the darkened alley, waiting for him to come out of the bar he’s been in all day.
I pull my hoodie down lower, trying to keep the water running off my head and out of my eyes. There are no flashing lights announcing the bar’s presence, just an old iron light fixture hanging above a metal door, casting dirty yellow light in a three foot half circle from the brick building.
My heated skin is only cooled by the gun I have tucked at my back in the waistband of my jeans. I try not to think about the drastic difference in the person I am now compared to the man I was in Tessa’s bed this morning. I push back how she makes me feel and replace it with the thoughts of the things I’m going to have to do tonight. I’ve got to harden my heart and remember why I’m standing in the rain in a dark alley.
This is the man I’m trying so hard to hide from her, and the life I lead when I’m him. I’m starting to think I want it all with Tessa. The white picket fence, three point five kids…all of it, even the nine to five job. I’m slowly becoming that man I’ve made so much fun of the guys for being. My mother had always told me when you know it, it happens fast. I just wished I could put a name or a description of what it is that’s happening between me and Tessa.
I look up at the sound of the metal door clanking open, then slamming shut. He turns towards the three others, but seeing them, he turns back to me. I let him walk further into the alley and step out behind him.
I kick a can, getting his attention. When he turns, I rush him, covering his mouth with my leather gloved hand and push him up against the wall. I look up into his eyes. Fear grips them, even though they’re dilated from too much alcohol.
My face is obstructed from him by the full faced toboggan I’m wearing. “You like putting your hands on little boys, motherfucker?” I bring a knee up into his solar plexus, bending him double. I take him by his greasy hair and pull him back up to a standing position. “Getting their mothers so strung out they can’t get in your way?” I land another knee to his groin. He crumples at my feet, mumbling incoherently. I kick him in the stomach, then take another handful of hair, hauling him back up to his feet again.
A black van pulls up behind me and the door is slung open. I turn, tossing the man in with the other three and climb in behind him. Me and one of the three make quick work duct taping his hands and feet together, then I stretch a piece over his mouth. Unable to resist the urge, I draw back and deliver three punches to the side of his head. When I draw back for a fourth, my arm is caught mid-swing. “Rein it in, brother. Wait until we get there, then you can do whatever the hell you want to this piece of shit,” the man who’d helped me duct tape him tells me.
~~~~~~
We keep a safe house on the outskirts of the small town we have come to call home. The small farmhouse sits in the middle of a thick forest, where if someone screams, the sounds are swallowed by the high mountains surrounding it.
I sit at the small table with an untouched cup of coffee sitting in front of me. I take another pull from the cigarette that has left a shit taste in my mouth. I hear someone clear their throat, and I turn to see a man step through. “He’s ready if you are,” he tells me. Even though I hate to smoke, I take the last drag then tap it out in the ashtray before standing.
I roll my neck, popping it, and follow the man downstairs to the basement. We walk down a long dirt hall to a small room at the end. A light bulb tips off a single wire hanging from the ceiling. It sways back and forth, illuminating the man lying on his side at our feet.
I squat down, taking his hair in my hands, pulling his face to mine. Making eye contact with him, I hear the faint sounds of him pissing himself, right before the acrid stench of urine hits my nose.
I reach up, peeling off the full-faced toboggan so that he can see the face of the man who’s about to kill him. The other three with me stand off to the sides, watching what I’m getting ready to do.
He begs for his life, trying to back away from me as I stand, the tarp he’s lying on crinkling under my feet. I reach for my weapon to the sounds of his cries and mumbles of confused words I don’t care to hear. He watches me screw the silencer onto the end of my gun, then cries out as I point it at him and pull the trigger. The room falls silent as I stand over the body of a man who didn’t deserve to be breathing and pump three more bullets into him.
I reach for my back pocket, pulling the white envelope out, slapping it into the waiting hand. “Make him disappear.”
Oz nods. “You got that shit right, brother.” He says as he thumbs through the bills filling the envelope to capacity, then points. “Mose, Cruz, wrap him up.” Oz’s deep voice follows me up the steps as I exit the basement.
I slide into the driver’s seat of my waiting car. Leaning forward, laying my forehead on the steering wheel, I take several deep breaths to calm my nerves. Bile is burning the back of my throat, but I’m sure it’s nothing like what he’s been through.
I drive back to my hotel and lay on the bed with my phone in my hand. I want to call Tessa so bad I can fucking taste it. I need to hear the sweet sound of her voice calling me baby, and the raspy way she calls my name when she comes. I close my eyes and go back to this morning when I was lying in the bed next to her warm naked body.
I have two more days until I’m back with her, and it seems like an eternity. A special kind of torture I haven’t suffered in such a very long time, but she’s worth every minute I spend away from her. I drift off to sleep with her filling my head and my heart. I’d left my soul with her to keep safe.