Chapter 15
“W hat are we going to do?” Ashton asked the others quietly as they watched Corey, Abby and Lisa talk in the family room. “He’s not getting away with this…we can’t let him continue to teach…”
“We’re not doing anything tonight,” Elaine said giving all of them long looks. “I will not put her under more stress tonight. What happens is as much her choice as it is any of ours. She is scared that someone will hurt Abby, and I will not have my granddaughter hurt.”
“They’re both much stronger than you think,” Diane stated ushering them further into the dining room. “Abby hasn’t had it easy in school. The moment people saw Lisa with her they’d know that she had her when she was young, and some parents wouldn’t let their children interact with Abby. Lisa knows what this town is like, what it’s put on her, and now with Abby being here she knows it won’t be just her that’s scrutinized. Abby left to go to New York because the girls who were supposed to be her friends began to bully her simply because a boy asked her to dance instead of them at the spring fling. Both of them have had to deal with far more than they should have, and they’ve made it out. Don’t think they can’t fight for themselves.”
“Did you know who had hurt her?” Edward asked.
“No, when Lisa came to me, I knew she was pregnant. She’d written me a letter in December telling me she was, asking if she could come stay with me and have the baby. I just thought she had made a mistake and gotten pregnant. I knew what this town was like, and I knew how she felt living here. I told her she could come to stay with me anytime. I knew you would never allow it, but I didn’t want Lisa to run away. She threatened to when she was with me, the day before she had Abby. I told her I would do anything to make sure she and the baby were taken care of—I didn’t want them out there trying to make it on their own. Once Abby was here, I saw how much she adored her and I gave her the idea to leave Abby with me, that I would take care of her while she went back to school. I told her that if she could convince you to let her come stay with me, she and Abby could live there as long as they needed or wanted.”
“But she eventually told you what happened I take it?” Gerald asked.
“Not until Abby was five, she was seeing someone in college—and she didn’t party or sleep around the way you boys assumed. She let the image get out there so no one would be looking at her outside of those situations. She had been seeing someone and he was pressing her to sleep with him. She didn’t feel that it was going in the direction he believed it was and broke up with him. He didn’t take kindly to that and came after her. Someone intervened and the police drove her home. She had a bloody lip, a puffy cheek, and the beginning of a black eye…there was something so haunted in her eyes and I knew that Abby wasn’t because of a mistake she’d made, that someone had hurt her,” Diane admitted.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone once she told you? It would have been within the statute of limitations, and we could have kept Abby quiet,” Elaine asked.
“It’s taken me thirteen years to get the entire story from her, the same as you. She refused to tell me who, she just said it was someone no one would have believed. She never began to hint that it was her teacher. Lisa told me that if he found out he’d kill her and Abby, and I wouldn’t begin to put them at risk. She promised me that no other girls were in danger from him the way she’d been, and I thought she meant that he was simply obsessed with her. Maybe I should have pushed harder but I didn’t want her to break. You didn’t see how much effort it took her to build herself up, put on the armor she wore in order to live here and face everyone—face him every day terrified that one tiny little slip would have her entire world unraveling. I was privileged to see Lisa at her most vulnerable, at her sincerest part and it is so beautiful. I couldn’t go against the trust she had in me,” Diane told them.
“But that still doesn’t help us figure out what to do about everyone else in town—what to do when he finds out,” Kirby stated.
“We make sure Lisa and Abby are safe,” Gerald replied. “No one leaves them alone, not even here in the house. We can all act like everything’s normal tonight, bring dinner over for them and if anyone says anything about seeing Lisa or Corey here, we’ll say they were tired and didn’t want to come over tonight.”
“For tonight I think that’s best,” Diane agreed. “Give Lisa some time to work through this and we’ll see what she wants to do in the morning.”
“I say we call the cops and, in the morning, go down and spit on that sick son of a bitch,” Ashton stated.
“It’s Lisa’s choice, she’s the only one who can tell the police the name of the town she went to that has the evidence she’d need against him,” Elaine warned them. “Whatever she decides we will stand behind her fully, all of us as one family.”
“But…” Gerald started.
“No buts, not from any of you. You stand behind her or you leave this house,” she said cutting him off. “Is that clear?”
“Yeah, Mom, we got it,” Kirby stated looking at the other men. “Let’s get their things from the car, make sure everyone’s settled in for the night.”
“Good idea,” Ashton agreed, and they moved off to see what they could manage to do to help Lisa the most.
***
Lisa shut the door to the bedroom, moving down the hallway towards her room. She hadn’t been able to leave until she knew Abby was asleep after everything that’d happened today. She needed to make sure she was okay. She let out her breath trying to relax as she moved into her room, stopping in surprise in the doorway finding Corey inside it waiting for her. “I didn’t expect you to be in here.”
“Because of what you told everyone today,” he guessed, and she nodded. “Baby, I’ve told you a dozen times already that it doesn’t make a difference. I don’t care what you did to protect yourself or that you kept Abby from me. It explains so much, but I meant it when I said you were always going to be mine,” he stated moving over to her and pulling her into his arms. “Do you remember when we were here last year…I asked you to let me be your rock.”
“Yeah, but all I saw was the sand underneath it.”
“There is no sand anymore, we are on solid ground baby, so please let me be your rock. Let me love you and Abby the way you deserve to be loved. I don’t care about anything but you—and that encompasses your daughter because she’s a part of you. If you want to stay in Chicago, I’ll move the company there or simply run it from there. I just can’t be away from you any longer. I love you and I know you had to have made a choice about us or none of us would have been here…let me love you and Abby, forever.”
“Forever? I think I like the sound of that.” Lisa let out a soft sigh snuggling into his hold more. “I did make a decision about us because I do love you. I just had to see that I loved you enough to do this. I needed something to remind me that I had to be stronger than my fear.”
“God baby, I thought I’d never hear you say those words to me,” he said sliding his hand up into her hair kissing her long, hard, showing her just how much he loved her back.
“Mmm, I don’t want to lose you, never again.”
“You won’t,” he promised carrying her over to the bed. He laid down with her, holding her to him as he kissed her, loving her with every little touch. He brushed a strand of her hair from her cheek and stared down at her beautiful face unable to stop himself from asking her, “Lisa…baby, marry me. Let me be Abby’s father, let me be your husband, show you both what it’s like to be loved…marry me.”
“Corey…”
“Marry me, say yes baby, make all of this official, it’s your decision still. No one else can make you, push you, or cajole you into it,” he stated leaning up to stare down at her. “Lisa Gracelyn Branson, I love you with everything I have, will you please put me out of my misery and marry me?”
“Yes.” Lisa gave him a huge smile. “Yes, it’s the easiest choice I’ve ever made,” she added kissing him back until she needed to feel him inside her.
They stripped each other and she felt every touch and caress deep inside her heart, her soul was connected to his and she never wanted to lose it. She let him wrap his arms around her and hold her against his chest, her ear pressed against it over his heart, and she wasn’t surprised to find it was beating in sync with hers. She let out a happy sigh and pressed a kiss to his chest as a smile settled on her lips.
“Can I ask what convinced you to come back to me? I thought when you cancelled this past week that you were regretting our night,” Corey admitted, and she leaned up so she could see him to tell him the truth.
“I just needed some time to think—to process what was going on.”
“And when did you come to a decision?”
“Friday afternoon—evening after I talked it over with Abby.”
“What changed? I’m not complaining in the least, I just want to understand.”
“I had a doctor’s appointment early Friday afternoon…and it showed me that I was focusing on the wrong thing. I was so stuck on worrying that I didn’t listen to what I already knew.”
“Which was what?” he asked worried about why she had a doctor’s appointment.
“That I had to be happy in order to make others happy.”
“I could have told you that seven months ago, baby.”
“I know but I had to get a reminder in order to see it clearly.”
“And what was this reminder? Are you sick—is it serious?” he asked, trying to control his emotions at the thought of losing her to something he couldn’t fight.
“No, no Corey, I’m not sick,” she promised seeing the fear in his eyes. “I promise I’m not sick. I missed you even more after that night and then I was trying to figure out how I felt about something big.”
“Telling me about Abby?”
“That was part of it, but mostly it was about something else,” she admitted getting up from the bed. She grabbed her robe moving over to her bag to take out the ultrasound photo. She turned back towards the bed and smiled seeing him propped up against the pillows waiting for her. “It only took me a second to realize that I had nothing to worry about, I felt the exact same way that I did before, and I knew that doing anything this time meant being strong enough to do this.”
“Do what? Tell everyone about Abby and what happened?” he asked as she sat down on the bed beside him, facing him and she nodded. “Okay, then what was it that reminded you of that?”
“A test I took two weeks ago after being two days late. A pregnancy test that came up positive…”
“Pregnancy…you’re pregnant?” Corey asked leaning towards her as shock hit him. “You’re pregnant with our baby?”
“Yeah, and I was worried about how I felt about it…about all that it meant until I saw this,” she said taking out the ultrasound photo and showing him it. “I saw our baby’s heartbeat on that ultrasound, and I knew without a doubt that I would do anything for this baby. I knew I’d do anything to make him or her happy and the only way to do that was to be happy myself.”
“And to do that you needed me?” he asked, and she nodded. “You have no idea how much I have wanted you back, wanted you as my wife, wanted you to have my baby…and now it’s all coming true. I’m almost afraid I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream.”
“It’s no dream Corey. Nothing about the situation is a dream. We can make it our dream though if we can push past all of this together. Abby’s so excited about the baby and I am too. I was terrified to tell everyone, but I couldn’t keep this baby from you, because it’d hurt me too much to not have you with me. I didn’t want you to stay with me just because of it after you learned everything.”
“I will never leave you. I don’t care if you used to throw puppies off bridges—I love the person you are, baby. I know how much you’ve struggled trying to find who that is, what makes you happy. I knew something had hurt you even more than this town, but you refused to talk about it, and I didn’t want to push you away so I let it go and tried to show you that together we can be whatever we want.”
“After I got back at the beginning of my junior year, I missed Abby so much. I thought I was going to die not having her with me. I hated him and everyone else in this town for being who they were and forcing me to keep her quiet. I didn’t care anymore—it didn’t matter to me what any of them thought or did. I just wanted my baby girl and without her…”
“You went a little crazy?”
“Yeah—like having sex under the bleachers at a football game crazy.”
“I don’t get how you could…”
“Get to that place?” she said when he stopped.
“Yeah, after what happened…I would have thought someone…”
“Would refuse to have anything to do with sex? I did somewhat after I left here but…I was trying to make a point to him.”
“What?”
“That he didn’t ruin my life, that I had come out on top. The more I was caught making out at school, the more gossip there was about me floating around, the more guys who claimed that I’d slept with them…the madder he got. He told me once that no one would ever want me again—that no one would ever give me what he had.”
“God, I hope not,” Corey stated cupping her face and giving her a soft kiss.
“Yeah, I learned that not all sex was horrible—not as long as I had a say in it and the other person was someone I wanted to be with. So, I slept with some of the guys I dated. I was a cheerleader, head cheerleader my senior year, the party girl, it would have been odd if I hadn’t, and I didn’t want to get into why I wouldn’t. Part of me hoped that being so outrageous would also get my parents to send me away, because perception meant so much to them, which had me going overboard a bit at first as well, which caused a lot of the gossip. I know what people thought about me, but I didn’t care, if they were focusing on what I was doing wrong, they weren’t focusing on what I was doing when I wasn’t in public—they were assuming the worst about me.”
“Your friends never asked you about your first time? Your first boyfriend wasn’t surprised to find you weren’t a virgin?”
“I lied and said I’d gotten close to someone at cheer camp that summer. I came back from ‘camp’, and I was a whole new Lisa compared to the previous year. I wore tiny little tops that kept eyes on my body rather than my face. I strutted around instead of walking. I threw the back-to-school blowout, and everyone loved it. They stopped talking about how I did in school and started talking about what I did out of school.”
“I can’t imagine how much it took to keep quiet all these years. All the times your brothers got onto you for your attitude, or your mother kept telling you that you needed to settle down…become responsible for your actions…”
“You can’t begin to understand what patience and restraint is until you have a baby. I wasn’t perfect with Abby. There were nights when she’d be crying, and I’d nearly lose it. I’d think what the hell am I doing? Why am I bothering? No one would know if I didn’t, but then there would be one second that she’d stop, that I’d see her tiny little face, her little fingers would curl around mine and my heart told me everything I needed to know.”
“And now we get to experience all of that together…Lisa, baby, I love you,” Corey stated pulling her back down onto the bed as he kissed her. “I can’t imagine not having you or this miracle.”
“Neither can I, which is why we’re here,” she told him as she slid over his lap letting the robe slip down her shoulders, still concealing her chest from him. “But you can’t treat me like I’m made of glass. I don’t want you to be different with me just because you know.”
“Baby, if that warning label were any bigger it’d cover all of this,” he teased cupping both of her cheeks as he lifted her slightly.
“Is that so?” she asked grinning when he lightly smacked one side of her butt, distracting her while he guided himself into her aching body.
“Absolutely, and it’s all mine, every bit of this sexy and sassy body is mine,” he stated showing her just how much he claimed it and her. Not that she minded at all.