Chapter 95 Three Days Earlier Melissa
Three Days Earlier
Melissa
‘I don’t blame Mel for having that abortion.’
‘What did she say?’ Damon asks Melissa.
The temperature between the three of them plummets.
Damon’s gaze narrows, his glare switching from Adrienne to Melissa.
A flicker of something passes through him again and lingers before he can conceal it.
Adrienne also seems to sense it and takes a step back, allowing space between them.
She turns to Melissa, who is shrinking inside herself.
‘What is she talking about?’ Damon asks her.
She opens her mouth, but she cannot find the words.
‘Mel?’ he continues.
She watches his face pale as the truth begins to settle.
‘You had an abortion?’ he says. ‘When?’
She says nothing, her focus falling to the half-finished driveway below her. She waits for the penny to drop.
‘There was no training course in Harrogate, was there?’ he asks. ‘You told me we lost the baby there. But you had a termination instead, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wasn’t ready. Not then.’
She meets his gaze as his features harden. ‘You killed my baby,’ he says.
Adrienne jumps to Melissa’s defence. ‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘She didn’t kill anything. At that point, “your baby” was barely more than a cluster of cells.’
Damon raises his voice. ‘It was still my child.’
‘And her body,’ Adrienne argues. ‘So she gets the final say. Don’t try and make her feel any worse about it than she already does.’
Melissa finds herself at a loss for words.
Instead, she is whisked back to one of the worst days of her life, when she made the decision not to move forward with the unplanned pregnancy.
Up until then, her periods had been as regular as clockwork.
And she’d chalked the missed one up to the stress of realising her marriage was crumbling.
But when her breasts began to feel tender and the fatigue set in, she knew in her gut what it meant.
A home-testing kit confirmed her suspicions.
She said nothing to Damon, afraid that she might cave under the weight of guilt and remain chained to a life she no longer wanted.
She was an estimated ten or so weeks along when she underwent the procedure at a private clinic in Birmingham.
In a cruel twist of fate, the pregnancy had been the result of the final time she and Damon had sex.
She’d gone through the motions to please him, rather than admit to herself she was no longer attracted to him.
The abortion served as a turning point. Soon after, she plucked up the courage to leave him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Melissa whispers now.
‘Damon, please go home,’ Adrienne says, the edge gone from her voice, ‘because if you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to call the police. You can’t be here.’
It crosses Melissa’s mind this might be the last time she ever sees him. A lump forms in her throat she can’t swallow, no matter how many times she tries.
Damon finally appears to admit defeat. But the look he gives her before he slowly turns to walk back down the driveway is disconcerting. She has seen him hurt and she has witnessed his upset, but this is something altogether different. She can no longer read him.
‘Are you coming?’ asks Adrienne, but it’s not inflected as a question. Melissa follows her inside.
But neither gets the chance to close the front door.