Chapter 1
Ivy
He was gone. No phone number, no written note. He just fucked me black and blue before vanishing like a nightmare. It was a one-night stand. I tried to stomp to the bathroom. My pussy shrieked in protest, my thighs quivering like I'd run a marathon.
I looked at the horror show in the mirror, shocked at the marks on my body. The thick belt mark around my neck, cum coated face and dark fingerprints on my breasts, arms, hips and thighs.
I groaned when I thought of my bed. It couldn't be salvaged.
How much bodily fluid could one man produce?
Some of it was mine, but I would never discuss that.
The mattress was a crime scene. Stained, reeking of sex and something darkly sweet.
No amount of Febreze could salvage that. I'd have to burn it.
I stepped into the shower, wondering if I would ever feel like a human again after my sordid night.
Each time I moved, I ached and got a flashback from the best sex I’d ever had in my life.
I had to let it go. He would have left me his number if he wanted to see me again. I didn't even know his surname.
◆◆◆
The police came knocking a few weeks later.
My ex was missing.
I kept my answers short. No, I hadn’t seen him. Yes, I’d moved on. No, I didn’t have a key to his place anymore. However, the officers exchanged a look that made my skin crawl. Like I’d already been tried and convicted in their heads.
Guilty until proven innocent.
I shut the door, leaned against it, and exhaled. That’s when it hit me—the weirdest fucking thought of how Nicholas would’ve known how to handle them.
I shook it off. He’d left bruises on my hips, bite marks on my thighs, and zero fucking contact info. Classic one-night-stand etiquette.
Then my brain dropped the real bomb.
Morning-after pill.
Oh.
Shit.
I yanked out my phone, counting weeks on unsteady fingers. Six weeks. Six whole fucking weeks since that night. No nausea, no sore boobs—just my dumbass, too busy ‘distracting myself’ to notice.
Fucking Sadie and her pep talks.
I screamed into my couch pillow until my throat burned.
This was my mess. My problem.
◆◆◆
I sat in my car holding the little booklet the midwife gave me. A night full of pounding a stranger left me with a lifetime sentence. My reckless behaviour was back to haunt me. I glanced at the picture of the baby on the leaflet. The bastards used a cute one.
I thought of the genes my child carried. I could produce a cute baby. I would be thirty when the baby was born and fifty when it was twenty. How late did I want to leave it? Did I want to risk having an ugly baby?
I frowned, thinking of my ex, Alex. He wasn't unattractive, but his abusive nature wasn't desirable in a gene pool. I wish I’d left him the first time he lifted his hand to me, but I thought I could help him—each time, I was suckered in by flowers and sincere apologies.
He even squeezed some tears out a few times.
But a child. A baby would be mine. I didn't need to worry about a man. I earned a good wage and had a decent amount of savings hidden away.
My stomach twisted, not from fear, but something deeper—a flutter, like wings brushing my ribs.
It's too soon for that. Way too soon.
I pressed a hand to my belly. Cold sweat dripped down my spine.
Was it a sign?
The sensation went away as quickly as it came. I shook my head and started the car. It must be hunger.
◆◆◆
I grew to adore my little bump.
My family cooed over ultrasound photos, and my friends threw a shower with enough tiny socks to outfit an army.
Even the sceptics softened—except for Sadie, who claimed partial ownership of my unborn child on the grounds that ‘I basically helped create this baby into existence with vodka and poor decisions.’
I laughed. For the first time in years, I felt complete.
Everything was going well until I began to get strange pains in my stomach.
Each morning, I would rush to check my underwear for spotting, but so far, there was nothing.
The midwife and doctors couldn't find anything wrong. At first, they thought there was an issue with the placenta, which was my baby’s lifeline, attaching us together, but every test came back normal.
As days turned into weeks, I began to feel weak, and nothing helped. My manager exiled me to work from home when she saw my pale, gaunt face. The fear in her eyes terrified me. I couldn't lose my little bean.
I lay in bed, grocery shopping, but when I reached the protein section, I started salivating over the blood-red meat.
I craved the bloody lamb and beef. The thought of sinking my teeth into the muscle, sinew, and bone made my hands tremble.
Hunger made my stomach hurt—the familiar pain that woke me up at 3 a.m.
I couldn't wait for the online delivery. I sat up.
It had to be some weird second-trimester craving.
Women had them all the time, didn't they?