The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  She resumed her posture of before when he was gone, propping her elbows on her knees and cradling her face in her hands. Her head was throbbing with the effort to jar memories lose that might be helpful and she still only had a vague recollection of thinking she must be about to start—a week ago? Two? Three?

  She couldn’t for the life of her remember. She couldn’t think of any other memory to tie it to beyond the fact that she’d worried that it might interfere with her fun! “Oh god! Oh my god! Garryk is going to totally freak!” She was probably going to get to see just how fast he could run!

  Chapter Eleven

  Whether it was the fear that she was right or the desperate hope that she was wrong, Chelsey decided to dash out for a pregnancy test almost as soon as Garryk left, even though it was far later in the evening than she would’ve ordinarily considered safe for gallivanting. She realized as soon as she started cruising the streets in search of a store for a test kit why it was a bad idea. There didn’t seem to be a damned thing open! Even the damned ‘all night’ pharmacy was closed! And if that wasn’t outrageous enough, she was informed when she called their emergency number that pregnancy test kits didn’t fall under the definition of ‘emergency’ to them!

  “It might if you thought you were pregnant, you asshole!” Chelsey growled at the man and hung up.

  After sitting in the parking lot for a few minutes, drumming her fingers nervously on the steering wheel, she finally decided to try a convenience store. She was in luck! The first one she stopped at had one!

  The box was dusty it was so damned old! She couldn’t find an expiration date, though, so she decided to fork out the outrageous sum they demanded and drove home again. Slamming the door behind her and locking it, she dashed to the bathroom and tore the box open, scanned the instructions and then flopped on the toilet and tried to hit the little stick. Fortunately, she didn’t have a shortage of piss at that moment because she had a hell of a time ringing it. They couldn’t make the damned test strip a little wider and longer for what they charged? Honest to god! It was like trying to hit a toothpick at fifty yards—blindfolded!

  Feeling a little relieved—actually a lot once she’d emptied her bladder—she set the test down on the counter and stared at it for several moments before she remembered the instructions she’d tossed in the trash. Digging them out, she scanned the paper again until she found the wait time. Dashing to the door, she craned to see the clock and note the time and then put the lid of the toilet down and sat down to watch. When she was convinced ten minutes had passed, she got up and checked the clock again. Two minutes.

  Her stomach growled. Remembering Garryk’s warning, she decided she might as well grab something while she was waiting. The suspense was killing her! She needed a distraction anyway. “Light. Something light,” she chanted while she searched the refrigerator and then the cabinets and finally went back to the fridge. There was absolutely nothing to appeal to her.

  She found a box of ice cream in the freezer. After studying it a moment, she shrugged. It was dairy! Grabbing the box, she glanced toward the kitchen clock as she reached for a bowl and discovered fifteen minutes had flown by while she was searching for sustenance.

  Dropping the box on the counter, she raced into the bathroom and snatched the test kit up. After staring at the little display window for several moments, she grabbed the empty box and looked it over. Pregnant two lines. Not pregnant one. She stared at the little window again, trying to decide if the really faint pink line beside the dark one was actually the results of the test or if the ink was running because she’d accidentally pissed on the little window. She moved it in and out, trying to get better focus and finally held it up closer to the light.

  Still uncertain, she put the test kit down and sat down with the instructions, scanning them for an explanation of ‘light’ line. She didn’t see anything that specifically referred to whether the line was dark or light, but she did see a warning—useless if not pissed on first thing in the morning—or words to that effect.

  “Well, damn it!”

  Throwing everything in the trash, she stomped back to the kitchen, grabbed a spoon, and started eating chocolate ice cream out of the box. A straw would’ve come in handy. It was already melting.

  She wasn’t going to sleep a wink, damn it! She didn’t even have a test for the morning! She could stop and get one on the way to work, but could she hold ‘it’ till then?

  Well, she was just going to have to try! She didn’t see an alternative at the moment.

  By the time she’d arrived at that decision, she discovered she’d eaten almost a third of the ice cream. Feeling suddenly queasy, she dropped the spoon in the sink and put the ice cream up.

  She stared at the kitchen clock, considering whether there was any possibility of finding another store that was open that also had pregnancy kits and finally discarded the notion. She didn’t want to wait. She wanted to know! But it didn’t look like it was going to happen.

  Sighing, she checked the doors and windows and headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed. She’d nearly dozed off before it suddenly occurred to her that she’d left everything in the trashcan in plain view!

  Leaping from the bed, she raced into the bathroom, dug the test strip, the box, and the instructions out and looked around for some place to hide them. The back of the toilet?

  She could just imagine the look on Garryk’s face when he flushed and her pregnancy kit popped up in the bowl! Surprise!

  She studied the trash can, wondering if she could shove the stuff to the bottom and cover them up and finally discarded that idea, too. It would be just her damned luck Garryk would drop something in and go after it, or decide to empty the damned thing!

  Carrying the trash to the kitchen, she pulled the can out and shoved the evidence beneath a layer of trash. “Gross!” After disinfecting her hands, she headed back to bed.

  She was still wide awake, staring into the darkness when Garryk came in. She closed her eyes when he glanced her way, but she didn’t hold out a lot of hope that she’d fooled him into thinking she was asleep. Fortunately, as unnerving as her secret fear was, she still found it soothing that Garryk was home and the sound of the shower finally helped her grow drowsy.

  He roused her when he climbed into bed beside her. Bracing on his elbow, he looked down at her for a long moment and finally settled when she continued trying to pretend she was fast asleep. Gathering her against his length, he curled around her, ‘pillowing’ her head on his rock hard arm. He rubbed his cheek along the top of her head and finally settled. “Whatever it is you’re worried about, you know you can talk to me, don’t you baby?”

  Chelsey wasn’t even almost tempted to confide. She struggled to think of a response and finally gave up. “Mmmmhmm. Goodnight, baby.”

  * * * *

  Exhaustion was nothing new to Garryk. He’d lived with it so long that he figured he’d gotten as used to it as anybody could … and gotten used to running on a lot less sleep than the average person considered essential. On top of that, he was a man with a mission so, although he ordinarily merely rolled over and went back to sleep when Chelsey got up and left for work, he was wide awake when she left that Friday morning.

  Bounding from the bed the moment he heard the front door close, he headed into the bathroom to start his search. The trashcan didn’t contain anything but a couple of empty bottles, a soap wrapper, and a few wads of tissue. Setting it down again, he searched the medicine cabinet and then the drawers of the vanity. When he still came up empty, he straightened and scanned the room for any other possible hiding places and finally lifted the top of the tank.

  Shrugging when he saw nothing but water, he left the bathroom and looked around the bedroom. He knew she hadn’t disposed of the kit there, though, and headed into the kitchen and went straight to the trashcan. Picking it up, he tilted it and shook it until he found what he was looking for. “Ah ha! Pay dirt!” He fished it out and moved to the window for better
light.

  Briefly disappointed when he saw the results were indecisive, he dropped the test strip in the can and shoved it back under the kitchen sink, considering the situation while he washed the gunk from the trashcan off his hands.

  She must have tested the night before, he realized, shaking his head in disgust that that hadn’t occurred to him. She wouldn’t be far enough along to get an accurate result if she had. Blind panic—not a good sign, but not altogether unexpected all things considered.

  The problem was she was on high alert now. If he hadn’t succeeded, he might not get the chance.

  He shook that anxiety off. He was no specialist in that field, but he’d boned up on it and he was almost a hundred percent certain she was pregnant.

  It was the one percent of doubt that bothered him.

  Well, she was bound to buy another test kit. He’d just have to try to get to it before she could get rid of it afterwards.

  Dismissing his disappointment with an effort, he headed back into the bathroom to shower. The great thing about working pretty much every hour of the day that he wasn’t sleeping was that he didn’t get much chance to spend the money he was trying to save. The problem was that it didn’t leave a lot of time for shopping when he wanted to, or needed to … and he needed a ring if he was going to convince Chelsey that he wanted to marry her. Otherwise, the little idiot was liable to get the notion that he was just being noble when she finally got around to telling him she was pregnant!

  He was going to be seriously pissed off if she decided to be noble and deal with her ‘secret’ by herself! If that wasn’t just like her, though, he didn’t know what was! He decided to give her another week. If she was still trying to hide it from him, he was just going to have to confront her about it, as little as he liked that particular strategy. He was damned if he could think of anything else to try to convince her, though. He was just going to have to go with what he had. If that didn’t work … he’d have to think of something else.

  * * * *

  The problem with being a creature of habit, Chelsey reflected irritably, was that she was always on automatic when she was tired and she was never bright eyed and bushy tailed when she rolled out of bed in the morning. She’d already flopped on the toilet to empty her bladder before she remembered the damned test—which she was supposed to get on the way to work!—and she discovered she couldn’t cut the stream off once she let go.

  Mentally kicking herself, she finished getting ready for work and left, promising herself that she was going to leave a note on the bathroom mirror for herself before she went to bed! She didn’t think she could make it through another day with so little sleep.

  It was a rough day to face with only a few hours of honest to god rest! Fridays always were and this one was worse than usual. By the time school had let out, though, she’d decided she was going to confront Lawrence face to face instead of taking the coward’s way out and calling him up. It wasn’t as if he could do anything else to her!

  Well, she supposed he could. Crazy men killed their wives, ex-wives, and girlfriends every day, but she didn’t think he was that crazy. He wasn’t going to do anything that might bite him in the ass and he had enough sense to know he couldn’t get away with murder.

  She hoped. Since he managed to get away with just about every other low down thing in the world, he might think he could get away with that, too, but she was pretty sure it was safe. In any case, he was certain he had her by the throat. He wasn’t nearly as dangerous when he was confident he was going to win.

  It seriously sucked to drive all the way to his place and discover that no one was home! She settled in her car again to wait, certain somebody would get home before much longer, and fell asleep. It was nearly dark when discomfort finally outweighed exhaustion and she woke up.

  The house was dark and there wasn’t a car in sight, she discovered, so either they’d come and gone again while she was sleeping in the car—unlikely, she decided—or they’d made plans for the weekend and left before she arrived.

  Anger flickered through her, but she was just too worn out to feed it. Grabbing her satchel, she got a piece of paper out and scribbled a note for Lawrence informing him that she would be back the following day to pick up Larry. After a little consideration, she decided to make two more just in case she picked the wrong door to attach the note to or it blew away. She put one on the front door, one on the back, and then stuck the third in the mailbox on top of the stack of mail that was in it.

  As tired as she was when she got home, she was still too wired to rest—possibly because she’d taken an hour and a half nap in the car. She took the test kit out of her purse as soon as she got in the door and headed to her bathroom to look for a place to hide it. There weren’t a lot of options. She finally simply hid it in the drawer of odds and ends, mostly cosmetics, figuring Garryk had had plenty of time to discover what the drawer contained and wasn’t likely to be rummaging through her makeup. Just to be safe, she put it toward the back under a pack of cleansing pads.

  Leave a note or not? Garryk would see it, but she could just put something cryptic—like check test. She was a teacher. She didn’t see why he’d think anything about it.

  Ok, so maybe it would look a little odd that she’d taped it up in the bathroom, but there wouldn’t be any point to leaving herself a note at all unless she put it where she could see it first thing. She thought, maybe, she could remember after screwing up once already, but she’d been so distracted lately she knew she couldn’t count on it.

  Restless once she’d done that, she decided to get a head start on her weekly chores. If she managed to run Lawrence down and wrest Larry from him she didn’t want to spend most of the time he was with her cleaning.

  Heading to the spare bedroom, she opened the door and flicked the light on. The musty smell of a room that had been shut up a long time hit her as the air was sucked out of the room by her entrance. She paused, feeling her throat close as she scanned the room. The tops of everything were coated with dust.

  Larry was supposed to spend every other weekend with her, but she didn’t think he’d spent more than one a month for the past six—and none in a solid month now. The first few months after the divorce, he’d dutifully arrived right on schedule. He’d been angry about the divorce even then, though, and hardly a ray of sunshine, and their relationship had deteriorated steadily ever since.

  After studying the room bleakly for a few minutes, she thrust the thoughts aside and set to work tidying it up and airing it. She found a pair of jeans and a shirt he’d kicked under the bed that she’d missed the last time she’d cleaned the room. Leaving the door open, she took the dirty clothes with her when she left and got her laundry basket from the hall closet. She’d collected the clothes from the hamper in her bathroom and headed out again when she noticed Garryk’s bag by the door. There was a change of clothes crumpled up on top.

  He was usually really good about picking up after himself, but he was always in a rush to get from one job to the other and he’d had a few lapses since he’d taken up the habit of swinging by to check on her between jobs. Setting the basket down, she picked up the clothes to sniff them to see if they needed washing or if it was just something he’d decided not to wear after he’d unfolded them. As she lifted them, something fell out and hit the floor with a dull rattle.

  She saw when she looked to see what it was that it was a prescription bottle. Frowning, she picked it up and looked at the label. It had Garryk’s name on it, but she had no idea what the medicine was for.

  Unsettled, she studied the unfamiliar medical name. He seemed so healthy it was hard to imagine what he might need pills for. He couldn’t be sick, she assured herself. It didn’t make her feel any better, though, to think he might be popping pills to keep going because he was working too hard to manage it without something.

  She hesitated, chewing her bottom lip, and finally straightened and carried the bottle with her to the living room. Grabbing a note pad fr
om her satchel, she wrote the name of the medicine down. She hesitated again when she took them back, but she was more than a little uneasy. As guilty as she felt about it, she decided to check to see if he had anything else in the bag. He’d left it open. It wasn’t as if she’d really invaded his privacy.

  Ok, so it was, and she felt bad about it, but it was going to worry her to death to think he might have a drug problem!

  Thankfully, she didn’t see anything else, but then she had another problem. She didn’t want Garryk to know she’d been snooping when she shouldn’t have. Straightening the contents of the bag the best she could, she dropped the bottle in and then gathered the clothes she’d intended to wash and tried to arrange them like they had been before, half in and half out of the bag. She would just pretend she’d overlooked them, she decided, surging to her feet and grabbing the laundry basket.

  She’d just put the basket in the trunk and closed it when she heard the rumbling growl of a motorcycle. Straightening, she looked around until she saw it coming along the street. She nearly had heart failure when she discovered Garryk was on the damned thing! He pulled along beside her car and cut it off, pulling his helmet off. Chelsey stared at him, fighting the urge to shriek at him as if he was Larry’s age and she’d just caught him doing something that could get him killed.

  “Where you headed?”

  She blinked. “I didn’t know you had a motorcycle.”

  His dark brows rose. He shrugged. “It’s reliable and good on gas.”

  Chelsey bit her lip, but she couldn’t stand it. “And dangerous to drive in city traffic.”

  He studied her a long moment. “There’s risks with everything,” he drawled.

  And more risks with some things than others! She wished she’d never found out about the motorcycle! She wasn’t going to be able to sleep a wink, knowing he was out on the thing! What else didn’t she know about him, she wondered abruptly? Pills in his duffle bag and a motorcycle?