Chapter 49
Chapter
Forty-Nine
FALLON
I bolt out of bed and run to the bathroom, my feet stumbling over themselves in the darkness.
I barely make it to the toilet before I'm puking.
My knees hit the cold tile hard enough that I know I'll have bruises, hands gripping the porcelain rim so tight my knuckles go white, and everything comes up in violent, wrenching waves that feel like they're tearing me apart from the inside.
Oh god, what is wrong with me?
Another round hits before I can catch my breath, before I can even process what's happening.
Then another. My stomach clenches and heaves even when there's nothing left, dry heaving until tears stream down my face unchecked and my throat burns like I've swallowed acid.
The taste in my mouth is bile and copper and fear.
When I think it's finally over, I flush the toilet again with a shaking hand and lean back against the wall.
The cold tile presses against my shoulder blades through the thin fabric of Kade's t-shirt.
I close my eyes, trying to breathe through my nose, waiting for my stomach to settle, waiting to feel human again instead of like a body betraying itself.
Then a thought strikes me. Sharp as a knife blade. Impossible and inevitable at the same time.
No. No, I can't be pregnant.
The panic rises hot and immediate in my chest. I've been really good about taking my pills.
So careful. So consistent, because that's one thing I could control when everything else in my life spun into chaos I couldn't name or stop.
I set alarms. I checked twice. I did everything right because getting pregnant by my husband—by Daniel—would be the worst kind of trap, the final lock on a cage I'm already dying inside.
But I need to check. Need to know for certain before the fear eats me alive.
Shit, I don't even know what time it is.
I push myself up on unsteady legs and creep back into the bedroom, moving with the practiced silence of someone who's learned that noise equals consequences.
Daniel's still asleep, one arm flung above his head, his face peaceful in sleep—the mask he wears even unconscious, hiding the truth of what lives underneath his skin.
His chest rises and falls in the steady rhythm of someone without nightmares, without guilt, without any awareness that the woman in his bed is breaking apart one piece at a time.
I grab my phone off the nightstand, wincing when the screen lights up too bright in the darkness. I angle it away from him immediately, heart hammering.
5:18 AM.
I have a little time before he wakes up. Before I have to put on the performance of being his dutiful wife, before I have to smile and apologize and pretend last night didn't happen, that the split in my lip doesn't throb with every breath.
I slip into my closet and grab my purse from the shelf. Then I head back to the bathroom, each footstep measured and careful. I shut the door so quietly it barely makes a sound—so quietly Daniel won't stir, won't wake up and demand to know what I'm doing, why I'm not in bed where I belong.
I put my purse on the counter and start rummaging through it with trembling fingers. Wallet, keys, lip gloss I haven't worn in months, receipts I should throw away. There's loose change at the bottom, a half-empty pack of gum, the debris of a life.
Got it.
I pull my birth control from the bag, and when I check the foil packet, my heart drops into my stomach like a stone.
I'm on the last day of placebos. My period should have already started—should have come days ago.
I've been so focused on surviving Daniel, on sneaking time with Kade, on keeping all my lies straight that I didn't notice. Didn't let myself notice.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
The word repeats in my head as I keep digging deeper into my purse, fingers searching frantically until they find the Ziplock bag at the very bottom.
The little pregnancy test I bought the last time and kept hidden—just in case, just as insurance, just because some part of me knew this moment would come eventually.
I remove it from the bag and make my way back to the toilet. Go through the routine like I did before, like I'm not falling apart inside—pee on the stick, cap it carefully, set it on the counter face down because I'm not ready to know yet. And wait.
Three minutes. One hundred eighty seconds. An eternity.
I watch the time count down closely on my phone screen because I don't want any alarms going off, can't risk the sound waking Daniel, can't risk him walking in here and finding me like this, discovering what I'm checking for.
I can't be pregnant.
Hell, I was just making inventory in my head last night for what pills I can take to end this life.
Counting Vicodin and whatever Daniel has stashed in his office, calculating dosages and dangerous combinations, planning my exit strategy from this marriage that's become a prison with a death sentence I'm serving one day at a time.
Then another thought hits me—crashes into me like cold water.
It's Kade's.
If I'm pregnant, it's his baby. Has to be. I haven't had sex with my husband since I miscarried.
I wonder what he would think if I told him.
I know he said he wanted to put a baby in me, wanted to see me round with his child, wanted to mark me in that permanent way.
But that was during sex, so it doesn't count, right?
Heat-of-the-moment words that people say when their bodies are talking instead of their brains, when desire makes them stupid and reckless and honest in ways they'd never be clothed and sober.
He didn't mean it. Couldn't have meant it.
I can't tell him about this.
And I absolutely can't tell Daniel—he'll know immediately that it's not his since we haven't had sex.
Fuck, what am I going to do?
The question spirals through my mind on repeat, each iteration more panicked than the last. I cancel the alarm before it can go off and take a deep breath that does nothing to steady me.
Force myself to walk back to the counter and flip it over so I can peek at the test lying there like evidence of every bad choice I've made, every line I've crossed, every rule I've broken.
Two lines.
Clear as day. Unmistakable. Positive.
The air leaves my lungs in a rush. Oh god, what the hell am I going to do?
My hands shake violently as I hurry to put the test back in the Ziplock bag, sealing it up and tucking it back deep in my purse.
I can dispose of it at school—in the teacher's bathroom trash, wrapped in paper towels, buried under other people's garbage.
I can't risk Daniel seeing it. Can't leave any trace of this discovery in a house where he controls everything down to what's in the trash cans, where privacy is a concept that died with my freedom.
I need to get out of here. Need space to think, to process, to figure out what the hell happens next.
I sneak back to my closet and get dressed quickly, quietly.
Black pants that hide everything, grey cardigan buttoned up high—armor disguised as fashion, costume pieces for the role I play.
I study myself in the mirror and apply foundation with extra care, layering it thick over the bruise blooming purple-green on my cheekbone, dabbing concealer carefully around my split lip until the evidence of last night's violence is hidden. Almost invisible. Professional enough.
I head to the kitchen as quietly as I can, each step careful and measured.
I make a pot of coffee because routine is safety, because Daniel expects coffee when he wakes and I've learned not to give him reasons.
When it's done brewing, I fix myself a travel mug—desperate for the caffeine, for something to settle my stomach—and set Daniel's favorite mug beside the pot.
He can make his own for once, I think with a spark of defiance that's probably stupid and dangerous but feels good anyway.
I grab my purse and my keys and walk to the front door, holding my breath until I'm outside.
I feel like I can breathe as soon as I step outside into the pre-dawn darkness.
The morning air hits my face, cool and clean and free of Daniel's cologne, and for thirty seconds I'm just a woman walking to her car.
Not a prisoner. Not a victim. Not someone carrying her teenage student's baby while married to a man who would kill them both if he found out.
Just Fallon, walking across a driveway in the pale grey light before sunrise.
But reality crashes back when I reach my car.
My mind races about what this baby means all the way to work.
Every stoplight brings new panic—red lights that give me too much time to think, to calculate, to realize how impossible this situation is.
New impossibilities stack up with each passing mile until I can't see past them, can't imagine a way out that doesn't end in blood or loss or worse.
What am I going to do? The question pounds through my skull in rhythm with my heartbeat.
I can't keep it. Can't let Daniel find out. Can't drag Kade into this nightmare—he's eighteen, still figuring out his own life, doesn't need the responsibility of a baby with his teacher. A baby that would tie us together forever, that would make our relationship impossible to hide or deny.
But I can't... I can't not keep it either. Can't make that choice. Can't go through with ending something that's half Kade, half the only good thing in my life right now.
I'm hoping no one notices my busted lip and the bruises on my cheek when I get to school. I tried my best to cover it up—layers of makeup applied with precision. But sometimes the foundation cracks. Sometimes people see what you're desperately trying to hide.
Then, unbidden, my mind flashes to images of Kade with a baby.
Kade holding an infant with those careful hands that know engines and violence and how to touch me so perfectly.
Kade teaching a toddler to ride a bike, patient and protective.
Kade being the father Daniel could never be—the kind of man who protects instead of destroys, who loves instead of owns, who would die before he'd raise a hand to someone smaller and weaker.
The image is so vivid it hurts. So beautiful and impossible it makes my chest ache.
I want to cry. Want to pull over and break down completely, let the tears come and wash away the makeup and the pretense and everything I'm barely holding together.
But I don't want to mess up the carefully applied makeup that's the only thing standing between me and questions I can't answer without lying.
So I swallow it down hard, tasting bile again, and keep driving toward the school and another day of pretending my life isn't imploding one secret at a time.