Chapter Thirteen
Before
Despite the irregular meals, Josie’s stomach began to swell with the evidence of her pregnancy.
She could see the tiny bump under her shirt, and she longed to run her hand over her skin, to feel the roundness, the subtle change in her body from the outside.
It was an instinct, she supposed, a pregnant woman’s need to reach for her own child.
But she couldn’t. Her hands were still bound in chains.
As fall’s blustery winds whipped past Josie’s prison window, Marshall discovered her secret, his body stilling on top of hers as his hand reached down to touch what Josie herself could not.
He moved away quickly, his masked face turned toward her bared skin, staring.
She saw his throat move. He looked away, up to the small patch of light on the wall.
“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, Josie. ”
“I don’t have any secrets.” How could she? She was laid bare in every single way. She’d known it was only a matter of time until he figured out that she carried his child.
He stood, making a scoffing sound, though there was something different in his movement.
The knowledge of her pregnancy had shaken him.
She pulled herself to a sitting position.
“This is your baby too.” He stilled further, and she swallowed, tears threatening.
She felt so afraid, so alone, the emotions she’d stifled beneath the cradle of continuous sleep slipping free and wrapping around her.
Would he kill her now? Her and the life within her?
Sweeping away all evidence of his crime?
Maybe he’d leave for good now, let her starve.
The baby she was carrying meant she had his DNA safely tucked inside her. How could he allow her to live, his child to live, if he had any hope of getting away with what he’d done?
Terror was a stone in her chest, crushing her lungs.
He left without a word. Josie hung her head and cried.
Winter would soon arrive. It would be frigid in the room where she was held prisoner.
It was already cold, though the mattress beneath her had served to keep her from freezing on the cement floor.
Still, she shivered constantly, her teeth clicking against each other as she rubbed at her exposed skin.
Temperatures were dropping, and eventually, she’d die of cold or hunger or thirst. She wondered which one would take her first.
She heard Marshall outside her window, his footsteps moving back, forth, back, forth in front of the building. What was he doing? Pacing as he tried to figure out his new dilemma? He was up there, she thought, planning her demise.
But later, he came back, rousing Josie in the dead of night.
She startled, her heart racing as he did something over her head where her hands were chained in the position she was in, lying on the mattress.
One hand fell free. Her heart rate spiked farther.
Was he freeing her? Or had he come to kill her? Hurt her?
She heard his zipper and then he took her freed hand, using it to run down his side as he moved his body over hers. “Touch me,” he demanded.
“Where?” she asked, her voice emerging as a croak.
“Everywhere,” he barked. “Like you mean it.”
Her hand trembled as she ran it down his side and around his back.
He moaned, his breath coming faster. A hot tear leaked from her eye, running down her cheek to pool in her ear.
He reached for her hand and moved it between them.
He was hard, his skin hot. She considered wrapping her fingers around him, squeezing until he screamed.
But she was still chained to the wall. If she hurt him, he’d hurt her worse. He’d make her pay.
He ran his hand roughly over her breasts, sensitive from the pregnancy, and she cringed.
He feathered his hand down her side, pausing slightly before moving over the swell of her belly.
She felt a tiny bump from within, once and then again.
Her heart stuttered. The baby. She’d just felt the baby.
His breath stalled, his body giving a small tremble, as he removed his hand quickly as though her skin had burned him.
Had he felt it too? He ran his hand back up to her breast, his own stomach meeting hers as he lowered himself.
He paused again, a strange sound emerging from beneath his mask. Frustration? Distress?
He stood quickly, zipping himself back into his pants.
She scrambled to a sitting position, confused, wary.
Had her pregnant body, the feel of the baby moving within served to quell his arousal?
She was glad of it…and not. She didn’t know what it would mean for her.
At this point, it might be her only value.
Marshall walked to the door, and she thought he’d leave, but he only left for a moment, and when he came back in, he had a fast-food bag and a…
quilt. He threw the quilt at her, his eyes glittering from beneath his mask with some emotion she couldn’t read.
Why was he providing comforts to her? She couldn’t understand it.
He placed the bag next to her and then turned and walked out the door.
It closed behind him with a click, the lock engaging from outside.
Once his footsteps had faded, she sat there in the dim quiet for several minutes, turning her hand on her wrist, stretching it, glorying in the small bit of freedom.
Why hadn’t he chained her back up? Did it even matter?
She was still held prisoner, still unable to free herself.
But now…now she could feed herself. She could take the food he’d left and bring it to her mouth.
A small bit of dignity, something to remind her she was still human.
She removed the burger and fries from inside the bag and took several ravenous bites, hardly tasting the food, desperate to stop the burning hunger in her gut.
Another bump from within. She dropped the burger to its wrapper and moved her unshackled hand to her rounded belly, placing her hand over the spot from where the tiny kick had come.
She felt it again, her heart squeezing tightly in her chest.
I’m not alone. You’re here, aren’t you?
It felt surreal. Like a miracle in the very last place she’d ever expected to encounter one.
She knew it wasn’t—that it could be broken down into simple biology.
Coarse language. She’d been raped, and she’d conceived.
But to Josie, it felt like more than that.
Something that was only hers, something others probably wouldn’t understand the beauty of, and perhaps she didn’t either except on a level she could hardly explain.
Starlight in a blackened sky. Blinking to life where before only darkness existed.
The tiny being inside her was already making his or her presence known, already grasping for life, fighting for its existence, staking its claim. And she was the guardian of that life. She was its mother. A surge of love washed through her, so suddenly and so strongly it stole her breath.
Strengthened her.
Gave her divine purpose.
It humbled her and caused a fierce protectiveness to grab hold.
It was up to her to stay alive long enough that Marshall would free her or that she’d be found by someone else.
A transient, maybe? Someone looking to rent out the abandoned building where she was being held?
Someone must own this lot. Even if she hadn’t heard anyone in many months, there were still possibilities of being found—things Marshall didn’t control.
Reason for hope. She just had to hang on to it.
Stay alive so her baby had a chance at a life too. Or die trying.
It was all she had. All anyone had. To keep fighting with the tools available to you until your final breath.
It was what the innocent life inside of her was doing—all he or she knew.
It was what her own mother had never done, deciding instead to wallow in her own misery, to take out her anger and frustration and despair on Josie.
To see her own child as the enemy, someone to beat down and use to relieve her pain.
Josie would not be her mother. Even here, she vowed.
Even in a dungeon in hell. She was different, and she would own that.
No one could take it away. It was the tiny fire burning in her chest. Her own fight for life.
Something that could not be stolen. Something that would not be extinguished as long as she kept it burning.
“Okay, little fighter,” Josie whispered, moving her hand over the swell of her stomach. “This is something we’re going to have to do together. You get that, right? You keep fighting, and so will I. I promise.”
Josie picked up her burger again and took a bite.
She wanted to stuff the whole thing in her mouth, eat every crumb, lick the grease from the paper.
But she needed to start rationing. If Marshall was going to keep staying away for longer periods of time, she had to ration what she had, so she wouldn’t starve.
She needed regular meals—even if they were pitifully small. A constant stream of nutrients for her baby.
She gathered her willpower and wrapped half of the burger back up in the paper wrapper, along with half the container of fries.
She threw the fry container in the bag, crumpled the napkins up, and tossed the garbage over near the door.
She didn’t know if Marshall would confiscate her rationed food or not, and she wasn’t willing to take the chance. She hid it under her mattress.
There was a crack in the wall that leaked when it rained.
Not a lot, just a tiny trickle that would then flow into another crack in the floor.
A few times when she’d been parched from thirst, she’d watched that small trickle moving down the wall and disappearing into the floor.
It tortured her—relief that was so near and yet so far away.
But now she had her hand free, and she could catch the dripping water in her palm, bring it to her mouth.
Stay alive. Keep trying.
I will not die. I will not die, she chanted in her mind. I now have a reason to live. And that evening when she fell asleep, she wasn’t crying.