Chapter 23
Skye
Four weeks later
“C ome on, Skye, it’s been almost a month, and you’ve not left the house. I get it, breakups suck, but it’s time to start moving on babe,” Meghan says, dolled up and ready for a night out while I’m sat in the same sweatpants I’ve been wearing all week on the couch.
They’re right of course, I can’t spend the rest of my life moping around pining over men who’ve made it abundantly clear that not only do they not want me, but they probably hate me too. I’ve tried texting and calling all four of them and none have replied. Each time I don’t hear back is like a knife in the heart, yet I can’t seem to stop myself from trying to speak to them.
“It’s not that we don’t want you here, Skye, you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, you know that, but maybe Meghan is right, going out could do you good. Take your mind off things,” Trish offers kindly. Even she’s going out tonight.
“Please Skye, we haven’t gone out all four of us in months,” Lucy begs me, her brown eyes wide and pleading.
“I don’t know guys, I’m still not feeling well…” I say hesitantly, not wanting to leave the safety of the house.
I’m not lying. Recently I’ve been feeling nauseous all the time and have even been sick on multiple occasions. I’ve been feeling so sick that even the smell of frying bacon, something I love, makes me want to puke. I assume it’s the stress of the situation, I’m so heartbroken I’m literally making myself sick. I barely eat, and if I do it’s usually junk food, so no wonder my body is protesting.
“How about this,” Meghan offers diplomatically, “You come out for one drink, and if you’re still feeling sick, you can come home. What’s the worst that could happen? You might even have a good time,” she cajoles.
From the look of determination on Meghan’s face and the hopeful expressions Lucy and Trish wear, I know there’s no point fighting this. Sooner or later they’ll get their way.
I let out a defeated sigh, throwing the blanket off my legs I reluctantly agree, “Fine, one drink.”
Lucy squeals with excitement, clapping her hands together and doing a little hop.
“Yay!” Trish says, equally as happy.
Meghan smiles and then looks at my clothes, “Excellent. But first things first, girl you need to shower and let us give you a makeover.”
They all begin talking excitedly about what I should wear, and I allow myself to be dragged into the bathroom. I hop in the shower while they rush off to pick out an outfit for me. I can hear their squeals and laughter from the other room, and it makes me smile. I’m lucky to have friends as good as they are, I should try to remember that. I can’t have been easy to be around. They’re right. It’s time I come back to the real world. I’ve been letting my studies slip and before long we’ll be back at college. I need to decide if I still want to write about Bill and the Angels of Havoc. Right now thinking about them is too painful. But I also want Bill to pay for what he’s done, and to do that, I need enough information to write an expose against him.
Mom’s tried begging me to come home, but the thought of seeing Bill’s face again makes me sick. Regardless of my relationship with the guys, if their suspicions are correct and Bill has anything to do with Brewer’s death, I could never forgive him. I need to find out the truth, for Brewer.
Of course, Mom has no idea about any of this, so I’ve had to pretend that the reason I’m not home is that I want to live a more normal life and live with my friends during college. I’ve also said that I’m still mad at Bill for forbidding me from finding out more about my dad. But from her increasingly insistent messages telling me to come home, I can tell that, for whatever reason, Bill is behind it. Her words seem scripted and more like Bill’s than her own. I assume with the elections coming up his team has said it looks better if I’m there. Either that or he’s hoping I’ll give him information on the Angels of Havoc, something I will never do.
After finishing my shower, I feel more refreshed than I have in a while and a small part of me is looking forward to spending the night out enjoying myself and feeling normal again with my friends. From Meghan’s room, I can hear pop music blasting out and the sounds of the girl chatting happily. I throw on some clean underwear, wrap a towel around my wet hair, and head in there bracing myself for the makeover.
An hour later we’re pulling up to the club, the girls are already a bit tipsy having shared a bottle of wine. I’m still stone-cold sober having decided to wait until the club for a drink, the last thing I want is to be blackout drunk tonight. The girls have picked out a cute dress of Meghan’s for me that hugs my curves and blew out my hair making it sleek and glossy. But now I feel self-conscious as I follow behind my friends, teetering on my heels and tugging down the hem of my dress.
The club is overwhelmingly loud, packed full of young people getting drunk and having a good time. We push our way toward the bar where Meghan quickly gets served by fluttering her eyelashes and pushing her breasts into the handsome bartender's line of vision.
“Four vodka cranberries and four shots of tequila, please!” she shouts over the heavy bass of the club music.
“Coming right up,” he replies with a wink and a smile that reveals his straight white teeth.
“I don’t want a shot!” I try shouting out, but my voice is lost, the girls too busy giggling over the cute barman.
I shake my head, refusing the tequila shot when Meghan tries to hand it to me, she shrugs, knocking mine back as well as hers with the others as they whoop and cheer. My drink is thrust into my hand, and I take a tentative sip, grimacing at the taste. I’ve not had a drink in a while, and it tastes revolting to me now. Perhaps it’s just the cheap watered-down spirits they use here compared to the good stuff I was having at the Angels of Havoc club.
I allow the girls to drag me to the dancefloor where we dance and sway with the beat. The girls’ happiness is infectious, and I find myself starting to have a good time. It feels like old times again when the four of us would do girls’ nights out all the time.
Inevitably though, after a while, the advances of guys hitting on us stop being rebuffed. The girls have had several more drinks and soon Meghan disappears on the dancefloor, dancing with some guy. Trish spots a guy she’s had a crush on for a while and her face turns bright red when he comes over to ask her if she’d like a drink, but she nods happily and allows him to pull her away, throwing us a gleeful look over her shoulder as she goes.
The heat of the club and the dancing, combined with the one drink I’ve had seem to hit me all at once and all of a sudden, I feel like I’m about to throw up. Panicked, I cover my mouth with my hands and race toward the restroom, pushing my way through the crowd.
Fortunately, for once there isn’t a line of drunken women waiting to pee and I race into the only available stall just in time as the vomit rises, bringing the vodka cranberry back up. The blood-red color splashes against the white of the porcelain bowl.
“Skye?” I hear Lucy’s concerned voice from outside the stall.
I’m too busy being sick to respond, but I didn’t have time to lock the door, so she slowly pushes it open and crams inside the small stall, holding my hair back for me and patting me on the back soothingly.
“Better?” she asks as I finally stop heaving and flush.
“I think so,” I reply hoarsely, closing the toilet lid and sitting on it.
“I thought you didn’t drink that much,” she says, tilting her head to one side.
“I didn’t. I only had the one. I’d worry it was spiked but I feel fine, other than having just been sick of course, and I’ve been being sick for weeks now,” I reply with a groan.
“You could be pregnant,” Lucy says, almost off-handedly in a joking way.
But then it clicks into place, my symptoms definitely are those a pregnant woman would experience. “No… I can’t be. I’m on the pill…” I say my voice betraying my doubt.
“Yeah, but those things aren’t one hundred percent guaranteed. Did you forget to take any?” she asks sensibly.
I shake my head, “Never. We used condoms before I started the pill, we only went without after I went on it.”
“Hmm, did you start taking it during the first five days of your period?” she says tapping her chin in thought.
“No, why?”
Trish looks worried, as though we were just kidding but now, she thinks there’s a chance I could be. “Skye, how soon after you went on it did you have unprotected sex?”
“More or less right away, why?” I ask my stomach tying itself in knots.
“If you don’t take it within the first five days of your period it won’t work until at least a week… Didn’t your doctor tell you that?”
“No, they didn’t,” I reply as it dawns on me the very real fact that I could indeed be pregnant and that one of four men could be the father.
“Skye, I think it could be worth taking a test, just to be sure.”
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. You’re right yes. I have to go,” I reply, standing up.
“Right now?” Lucy says, a little alarmed. “I mean… sure, let’s go. Should we get the others?”
I shake my head, “No, leave them. Let them have fun, and besides, I’d rather this stays between us for now, if that’s okay?”
Lucy squeezes my hand, “Of course. Come on, let’s go.”
As we leave the bathroom I spot a back exit. “Let’s go out this way,” I say to Lucy, pointing toward it, “I don’t want to deal with pushing our way through the dancefloor to get to the main exit.”
“Sure, just wait here two seconds, okay? I’m gonna see if I can find the girls to let them know we’re leaving. If I don’t see them, I’ll come right back and we’ll text them. Don’t leave without me,” she says holding up her hands in a ‘stay’ command, I nod in agreement, and she rushes off.
The smells of sweat and stale beer make me feel nauseous again and with no sign of Lucy in the crowd, I decide to open the door and wait outside in the fresh air with it open behind me for her to see. As I’m standing there, my hands on my knees and breathing deeply as I try to fight off the nausea, I hear someone come outside the same exit as me. I look up, expecting to see Lucy, but it’s a big burly guy with a bald head, wearing all black, with tattoos that snake up his biceps.
“Sorry, I just needed some air,” I say to him, assuming he’s one of the club’s security men.
To my confusion, he doesn’t reply. At the same time, another huge man smoking a cigarette rounds the corner. He too has tattoos though they’re mostly concealed under the shirt and leather vest he’s wearing, he sports a large handlebar mustache.
“Skye Johnson?” he asks.
Automatically, I reply, “Yes?”
Quick as a flash, both men rush toward me and grab me. I let out a cry, but my shouts of surprise and fear are soon muffled by a big burly hand covering my mouth. I kick and fight but they hold me tight so I can’t escape.
“Struggle and we will hurt you,” the man who asked my name says.
I stop struggling for a moment before realizing that they’re dragging me in the direction of a van. I start fighting again but it’s too late and they’re too strong. The man presses a foul-smelling cloth to my nose and my nostrils burn with the chemical smell as they bundle me into the van. As I start to lose consciousness, I think I hear someone shouting my name.
But then everything turns black.