Chapter 10
When Taylor came home that night, he was a different person from the madman and brute who had left the apartment six hours before.
He came home at two in the morning, stone cold sober.
Felicity had crawled under the covers with all her clothes on and had cried herself to sleep.
There was blood on her pillow, and she woke up with a start when she felt him gently caressing her face and her hair.
She shrank away from him, afraid that he would hit her again.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her in the dark.
“I’m scared to have a baby too, and I don’t feel ready, but I don’t want you to kill our baby.
We’ll love it, and we’ll be good parents.
We’ll hire a babysitter so you can paint.
I don’t think it will be as scary as it sounds.
” He was saying all the right things. But his first instinct had been to hit her.
He was like two separate people. But even if he said the right things and was nice to her, she wasn’t ready for a baby.
She didn’t like the idea of killing a baby either, but it was that life or hers.
Getting pregnant had been a mistake, and having the baby would be a worse one.
They were both under a lot of pressure. Taylor had been erratic ever since they got engaged, and he was showing violent tendencies she’d never seen before.
Marrying him was scary enough, but having his child seemed off-the-charts crazy right now.
They could always have another child later.
Felicity tried to explain to him how she felt, lying in the dark, which made it easier to talk to him, but no matter what she said or how she pleaded with him, he wouldn’t agree to an abortion, and she didn’t want to do it without his approval.
“That’s not fair,” she said, crying again. “You don’t have to have it. You can still go to work. I work here. I can’t work with a crying baby I have to take care of. Why do I have to give up everything for a baby I don’t want?”
“Because that’s what women are made to do. Have babies and take care of them.” It was an extremely simplistic and archaic point of view.
“What about becoming doctors and lawyers? I studied to be an artist, I worked hard at it. Does all that go out the window when you get pregnant?”
“For a while. You can paint later when they’re in school. It’s not forever.”
Only ten or fifteen years, she thought miserably. “I want to wait till I’m older to have kids.”
“You’re old enough at thirty-two. Who knows, we might have five or six kids and you might love it.”
“We can’t afford it,” she said, trying to reason with him.
“Your mom can. She’ll give us the money to help us out.”
“Is that the plan? To have my mom support our family? We shouldn’t have kids we can’t afford, and don’t even want. We’re smarter than that, we know better. We have choices. We can choose to wait till the right time.” She was feeling very adult about it.
“This is the right time,” Taylor said confidently, and switched on the light. “If you’re pregnant, it was meant to be. You can’t fight destiny. You have no right to do that. You might be killing a genius or a future president.”
“I just want my life back, Taylor. This baby would ruin it, it’ll ruin everything.”
“No, it won’t. And you’ll love it, we both will.” She didn’t love it. It was going to blow up her world and her life.
Felicity had known Taylor was traditional and conservative, but not to this degree.
These were the things she wanted to learn about him before they were married, not after.
“I’m sorry I hit you. I had five tequila shots before I came home.
Tequila makes me crazy. I won’t ever do that again.
” She wanted to believe that, but he was terrifying when he was angry.
It was a new side of him that had emerged in the last few months and seemed to be getting worse.
He was getting increasingly aggressive and controlling.
She loved him, and she had thought she knew him, but she wasn’t so sure now.
Frightening new facets of his personality kept surfacing.
“I’m not going to let you have an abortion, Felicity.
” He said it completely calmly without an ounce of doubt.
“Just try not to let it show in the dress at the wedding. I don’t want to upset my mom, and she has a thing about pregnant brides. She thinks they’re all whores.”
“Why?” Felicity said in a sad voice. “Why is it always the girl’s fault? The man is just as much to blame.”
“She thinks they do it to trap the men into marrying them.”
“I don’t need to trap you. We’re already engaged.”
“Maybe you think you need to nail me down so I can’t escape,” he said, smiling at her, and he leaned down and kissed her. But his smile looked different now. It wasn’t warm, it was cold. And a kiss wasn’t enough to make her forgive him for hitting her.
Felicity got up and undressed and brushed her teeth, thinking about everything he had said, and about his mother. So now she was a whore because she was pregnant. And Taylor had no responsibility for what had happened? How was that right?
She got into bed pensive and quiet and sad, and stayed on her side of the bed.
Taylor got in naked next to her. He was so handsome, she still thought he was gorgeous and sexy, but he was ruining her life if he forced her to have this baby.
He couldn’t force her physically to have it, but if she didn’t, she would lose him.
He had even said he would kill her. She suddenly wondered if he meant it.
He was controlling her by fear. She wasn’t sure what was worse, having the baby or losing him.
The forces at war within her were equally divided.
She didn’t want to lose him, but having a baby now was too high a price for loving him.
She realized that if she didn’t want his baby, did she really love him as much as she thought? Enough to marry him?
The thoughts were swirling around in her mind while she felt his hand slip under her nightgown and touch her with the hands that knew how to make magic with her body, or terrify her.
She didn’t want to make love with him after everything that had happened that night, but her body ached for him whenever he came near her.
He knew just how to drive her crazy. He took off her nightgown and touched every part of her in just the ways she liked and she didn’t have the strength to stop him, even though he had slapped her and was going to ruin her life.
Then he was inside her and she didn’t stop him.
She wanted him and let him do whatever he wanted.
When they finished, he told her he loved her, rolled away from her, and fell asleep.
He had also told her earlier that he loved her, and that he would kill her if she had an abortion, he had hit her, and played her body like a fine-tuned instrument.
Felicity was trying to make sense of all of it and fit the pieces of the puzzle together, and before she could do it, she fell asleep, and knew his baby was inside her, just waiting to destroy her life.
* * *
Taylor had already left for work when she woke up the next morning.
Every inch of her ached from the stress of the day before.
She felt nauseous, but now she knew why.
There was an alien being in her body. She washed her face in cold water, and forced herself to go to work on one of the paintings for the show.
She wanted to call and set up the abortion, but she was afraid to.
Taylor would find out and he would kill her.
She only had two weeks to do it. After that it would be too late.
Her mother called her that morning, about another addition to the guest list, and Dominique thought Felicity sounded strange.
“Are you okay?” Dominique asked her, and Felicity said she was fine, and cried after she hung up.
She wanted to tell her mother what was happening, and she didn’t dare.
Dominique was spending a fortune on the wedding, and now Felicity was pregnant and everything was ruined anyway.
What was the point of a big showy wedding she didn’t want?
They were doing it for Taylor and his parents, not for her.
Dominique had been late for a meeting, so she hadn’t stayed on the phone long enough to find out what was happening with Felicity.
She didn’t have time. There were never enough hours in the day.
And they had to go back to Paris soon for the second fitting of Felicity’s dress.
Dominique was looking forward to seeing her mother again, and talking about her wedding too.
She had fabric swatches to show Marie-Aurélie for her dress.
Felicity got a text from Taylor that afternoon.
All it said was, “Dinner at my parents tonight. Seven p.m. Meet you there.” She wasn’t in the mood to go and she didn’t feel well, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to object or cancel.
She would just have to go. She worked until five o’clock on one of her paintings, then she took a warm bath and tried to forget she was pregnant.
The thought had haunted her all day, and everything he had said the night before, including that he loved her.
She was confused by the dissonance between his actions and his words.
She was wearing a short black leather skirt, a white sweater, black stockings, high heels, and a black peacoat, and left her apartment on time to get to his parents’ apartment by seven.
Taylor was there when she got there, and she hadn’t talked to him all day.
His parents looked serious when she took off her coat and sat down, and she noticed that Taylor was already halfway through a glass of wine, and realized that he had been there for a while, and she wondered what he had told them.