Chapter 1
Chapter One
Tara
“ I f I have to hear you whine about your fucking problems one more time, I swear to god, Tara?—”
The bottle he slung at me flew over my shoulder, little droplets of the backwash and foam hitting me in the face as it zinged by on its way to the wall. I flinched as it shattered, hating the way he could make me so afraid for myself when I knew damn well he was all talk and no action. All he ever did was throw bottles and punch a few walls.
Fucker didn’t even stay up long enough to be disappointed in sex these days.
Not that I was giving it to him. With the way the laws trended these days, I ran a higher risk of dying before I could have a kid than I did of this fucker actually evolving to full-on murder.
Still, I had to try. I moved over a thousand miles to be with a man I hadn’t seen since college. I left behind what little bit of family I had, the three friends who insisted this was a bad idea, and fled one horrible man in my past for another.
At least this one didn’t cheat on me.
That I knew of.
“When is that business trip you’re supposed to go on for the bank?” I asked, heading into the kitchen for the broom and dustpan. “I need to make sure your suit is ready and your bag is packed.”
“Yeah, 'cause you just want me gone!” The walls between here and the living room muffled some of the sound, but his voice was still plainly filled with malice and rage. And he was very, very drunk.
I didn’t bother resisting the urge to roll my eyes. He couldn’t see me in here. And even if he could, he didn’t look at me long enough to notice a smirk now and again.
Walking on eggshells was such a fucking chore, but I loved him. He was my everything. My whole world. Leaving him would be stupid, especially over a few beers a night.
I flipped through our calendar on the wall, eyeballing the dates as they flew past. I skimmed over October 30th and frowned, remembering that I messaged Rhonda on her birthday, but she never replied.
Rhonda was one of the only friends from my old life I left behind when I packed up and left. She promised she’d always be there no matter what, if I ever needed to talk or wanted to return. But the last time we spoke was my birthday, and she’d heard him screaming in the background about his dinner being terrible and me being a whore, or something like that.
And I hadn’t heard from her since.
One more friend lost because of my shit choice in men I fell in love with.
I flipped past another week in the huge calendar I’d bought the last time Arkady broke my phone, thinking he’d never bother to rip a physical one off the wall. Aside from remembering dates and important trips, it wasn't valuable to me. When I flipped through a third week and spotted my monthly little red dot to mark the day I was supposed to start my period, I froze, my subconscious screaming at me that something wasn’t right.
No.
No way in fucking hell.
I counted backward in my head to my last period, then forward, to the dot I hadn’t crossed out yet. And then I flipped back to last week, when I should have been crossing out another dot in celebration of another month kid-free.
It was still there. The one the month before was crossed out, just like it should be. I remembered that one ending because if it’d gone another day longer, he would have started complaining about not getting sex on our anniversary.
I should have started a week ago. No—two weeks ago.
I was late.
Something that never happened.
Okay, don’t panic, just fucking breathe. It was nothing a trip to the pharmacy couldn’t fix. Besides, you’re on birth control.
There was no way this could have happened.
I’ve been pretty stressed lately, which could definitely cause abnormal periods. Or maybe my hormones were fluctuating, which was also a possible explanation.
“Hey, while you’re in there, bitch, grab me another beer.”
The telltale sound of springs recoiling as he cranked his footrest back on that old-ass, cheap-ass recliner was a relief. Meant he would pass out soon enough.
All I had to do was out-wait him.
Pregnant.
The word flashed before me like a ticking time bomb, a death warrant, handcuffs for a crime I knew damn well I didn’t commit.
I’d been so careful. So fucking careful. I used condoms and had an implant in my arm.
My heart dropped as I remembered the injury I’d gotten falling down the stairs a few months ago. I sliced my arm up and?—
And I’d been unconscious. They would have asked my boyfriend, my emergency medical contact, about what to do.
Suddenly, all I felt was panic. Fear, rage, but mostly panic.
And I realized with a start, that even if I’d married him, I would have never had his baby.
What a time for a wake-up call. Wow.
The tears wouldn’t come, though. Those, I’d save for later. Now, I had to confront the man who’d secretly had a doctor remove my birth control and likely poked a hole in the condoms.
I posted up in the living room first, my feet kicked up on the coffee table like I knew he hated, my arms crossed over my tits, the pregnancy test sitting at my heels. Then I moved to the kitchen, making him a grand meal as I stewed over what to say to him. Finally, I landed in the bedroom, staring at our photos from Costa Rica last year. He’d won two tickets to some resort at a business function and made a big deal out of taking me as proof we were madly in love.
His mother was over the moon to meet me before we went. He trotted me out like a prize parrot, preening over me like he’d won the lottery with this one.
She ate it up and insisted he’d better lock me down before I ran off to greener pastures.
And now, six months later, I was pregnant when I knew damn well I shouldn’t be.
The front door slammed against the wall, signaling his return home from work. It also shook me from my inner ramblings, just soon enough to realize I had burned the veggies in the hot skillet of oil.
Fuck. One more thing for him to complain about.
“Smells burnt,” he grumbled, walking into the kitchen as he loosened the tie around his throat. “Only you could fuck up zucchini.”
One more way to shove a knife into me.
I ignored his comment as he walked around the room, eyeballing the ingredients I’d ordered from the store a few hours ago. “So, I was curious,” I started, watching his hand drag along the counter. “When I had that accident a few months back, did you sign off on an elective surgery?”
Usually dry and humorless, his laugh sounded almost forced when he refused to meet my gaze. “What kind of question is that? I told them to stitch you up, Tara. That’s it.” His eyes lifted briefly, and I watched him quickly scan me for any sign of what was to come.
He knew I was on to him.
“Oh, hmm. That’s interesting.”
He came around the counter, peeking into the skillet where the charred remnants of the sliced, fried, now blackened zucchini lay in a bath of cooling oil. “What’s with you lately? You’ve been acting weird since this morning.”
“Funny thing, that,” I muttered, crossing the room to put some distance between us. “Because that’s usually what happens to a woman when her hormones fluctuate.”
He stopped, his hand stilling as it wrapped around the handle of the spatula. “You on the rag or something?”
“I should be.” My shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. “But I’m not.”
Funny, that.
His lips cracked in a sly smile he didn’t think I could see. “Are you pregnant?”
“How could I be? I have an arm implant, and we use condoms.”
“Maybe they both failed.” His smile grew. “I have strong swimmers.”
I wanted to gag. What he had was a lying streak a mile long, but I didn’t want to tell him that. Starting a fight right now was a bad idea. It would only end in more verbal abuse and throw bottles.
“Maybe,” I conceded, swiping the pregnancy test off the sidebar. If I proved him right, gave him a reason to think he’d won, he’d become even more insufferable than usual.
“Guess you’d better take a test, huh?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” I glanced at the trash can, wondering if it’d be too obvious to throw this damn thing away and shove some scraps on top of it. Would he suspect? Would he get violent?
Was telling him even safe anymore? And if he knew I was pregnant, if he’d caused it, then what lengths would he go to to force me to keep it?
My heart dropped as I realized I was quite possibly trapped now, with no way out.
Fuck my life. What the hell was I supposed to do now?