Chapter 14 #4
“After you told me about your drunken ex-wife smacking you around?” Ouch. She probably shouldn’t have put it that way, but it was already out there. “Seems unfair to not share my own toxic drama.”
“You don’t have to.”
But Sarah was already thinking about it.
The casual sex with a man she was only somewhat attracted to.
The dawning realization that she was pregnant.
Telling the father that he might be having a second child when the first was thirty years old.
Waking up to blood and fear. Being told she would never have children again.
Going to her mother’s house for a month and feeling so empty that she wondered if she would ever reclaim her soul again.
That was when I first felt like a completely separate entity from my brother.
He could never get pregnant. He could never know what it was like to lose a child growing inside of him.
He couldn’t be taken advantage of like that.
The sexism Sarah faced in the world had felt so minuscule when she had her brother to lean on for most of her life.
A fact of reality. A “oh, yes, that exists, doesn’t it?
” state of mind she could no longer embrace.
Sarah was alone in that. Her thoughts, her fears, her crippling feelings… only she could overcome them, if she chose to live that long.
When she slowly opened up about those experiences, she felt like she was talking about someone else.
Some other Sarah who went through an unspeakable tragedy and pretended nothing happened, because what could she do?
She couldn’t shut down. She couldn’t retreat from the world.
Her brother lost his job trying to protect her from the man who hurt her.
She had to keep working in a competitive market.
Danica had fired her once. It was Alicia who re-hired her.
Life went on. Sarah found her ways to cope in her off-time. What else could she do?
So she told Luca everything. The coercion, when she was so convinced that she was in control of the situation with Russell Moreau.
The pregnancy. The way that man lured her into comfort and promised her whatever she wanted, aside from marriage, of course.
Sarah was fine with that. She would take her baby and live a peaceful life somewhere.
Maybe Nigel would come with them and be the awesome uncle he was born to be.
Sarah didn’t need a husband when she had a twin brother for people to make incest jokes about.
“I thought of it as our baby.”
The tears slowly fell when she remembered what he said two nights ago.
The miscarriage. The doctor’s diagnosis.
Retreating from the world and wishing her mother knew how to make it better.
Finding out months later that her brother was pushing pregnant Alicia Moreau down the stairs because Russell was a classist bastard who didn’t want her – or Sarah, for that matter – tainting his gene pool.
If Nigel hadn’t agreed to do the horrible thing, Russell threatened to abuse, beat, whatever he could think of regarding Sarah’s bodily autonomy.
He knew how to get to Nigel. That’s what a manipulative sociopath like him did.
Only then did Sarah also find out Russell’s role in her miscarriage and infertility.
“He drugged my drink and had his bodyguard beat me when I was passed out. He couldn’t even do it himself.
” She swallowed the last of her drink. “Sometimes, I wonder how the man did it. Did he use his fists? Punched my stomach until I started to bleed? Or did he use a small club? Did Russell watch to make sure the job was done? Or did he leave the room to go have a drink with his daughter? How much of a coward was he, really?”
“My God, Sarah.” Luca looked like she was going to be sick. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you know how painful that office is sometimes? I walk in and see the same people I did back then. Then there’s Alicia, pregnant with her wife’s baby, and I think…
I could’ve had my baby by now. I could’ve had him and been happy.
I didn’t even think of it as my boss’s sibling.
It was about making that choice. Those people took away my ability to choose whether or not I had my baby, what I did with our lives, if I could even keep my job.
I feel like an indentured servant, because if I walk away from that stressful place, my brother and I will end up on the street.
What do we do? Go back to our mother? She wouldn’t understand. ”
“I didn’t know it was that intense.”
“I mean, I don’t resent them. They didn’t do anything.” Sarah shrugged. “But they remind me. They trigger those memories whenever I see them.”
“If you could quit Monday morning, would you?”
“You mean hand in my resignation and walk right back out again?” Sounded like a dream. “Absolutely. But I’m not about to do that without a contingency in place.”
“So what do you want?”
“You keep asking me that.”
Luca leaned forward, her blue eyes full of a determination Sarah had yet to witness. “Because you haven’t given me a straight answer since I first asked it. You’re holding back.”
“I’ve never been dishonest about what I want from my life.”
“Then perhaps you don’t quite know what it is you want.”
Sarah wanted to be offended, but discovered she didn’t have the energy to expend on such intense emotions. “You know what I want right now?”
Luca didn’t take her eyes off her. “What?”
“I want to curl up in bed and pretend the world doesn’t exist.”
A small smile tugged on the corner of Luca’s mouth. “That sounds nice.”
Nice? That’s all you have to say about it? Sarah was on the verge of inviting Luca back to her hotel room. Maybe not for sex. (Okay, for sex.) But some of that lying in bed and pretending that the world didn’t exist. Not beyond the two of them, anyway.
Nice, though? Come on, this was Luca’s chance to make a move. Unless she didn’t want Sarah anymore… which was preposterous. Luca wouldn’t have told her half her life story if she weren’t in the market to take Sarah home.
“Know what I want right now?”
Sarah could not contain her flirtatious glance. “What?”
She should have anticipated the answer. “You.”
“Even after all that?”
“Listening to you makes me understand you more. Which makes me want you more.”
Sarah wanted to call her ridiculous, but she was too flattered to respond with anything but a brush of the hand. After that, going home with anyone but Luca was sacrilegious.