PREGNANT FOR A PRICE

by Kathryn Thomas

  “She told me everything,” she says, voice trembling, but under control. “She told me how you were charming and arrogant and cool at the start. You know, all that shit us little women love do damn much. And then she told me what you turned into. And I know people, Maddox. I know them. And I’d bet my life on it—she wasn’t lying.”

  “Cassandra,” I murmur, anger flaring. “You spoke to Cassandra.”

  “I spoke to the woman whose photograph you had me look at!” she cries. “And she told me, Maddox. She told me all of it. You cheated on her, didn’t you? Poor woman, I don’t think even she knows how many times it happened. You cheated on her, and if she had the gall to ask you to stop, you hit her. You hit and hit her, didn’t you, and I… you made me believe you were different!”

  I step forward, opening my arms. She’s staggering on the spot, and her eyes have that glazed-over, drunk look. “I can explain all of this, Eden,” I say. “But you need to know: none of it’s true. Nothing she said is true. She’s crazy.”

  “Oh, there it is!” Eden roars, throwing her hands up. “Here it comes! Whenever a woman makes accusations like this, she’s always crazy, isn’t she? She’s always psycho. Do you know how many men have used that excuse before, Maddox? Do you know how pathetic it is?”

  “It’s true,” I say. “It’s the goddamn truth.”

  “Get me the driver. I want to go home.”

  I make to hug her. She thumps my chest, shoves me back.

  “Get the driver! I want to go home!” She turns toward the mansion. “Nat!”

  Natalie, her friend, emerges from the mansion, walks down the stairs, and throws a fiery, feral gaze at me. She takes Eden by the arm and leads her toward the porch. “We’ll wait here for the driver,” she says.

  “None of it’s true,” I say, head pulsing. “Not a single word. You’re drunk, Eden.”

  “I might be drunk!” she calls from the porch. “But I’m not an idiot.”

  I take out my phone and shoot a text to the driver: porch.

  I approach the porch, stop at the bottom of the steps when Eden growls, “No closer!”

  “Listen,” I say. “I’ve called the driver, okay? But you need to listen to me. None of it is true. Nothing she said. I’m not trying to smear her. I’m telling you the truth. Cassandra is insane. I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll tell you the whole thing.”

  “What about the screensaver?” Eden murmurs.

  “What fucking screensaver?” I snap.

  Eden and Nat flinch at my outburst. She’s drunk. She’s drunk, and she’s not thinking straight. Just like that Harvard kid, but I’m not about to put Eden in a headlock. Goddamn, what did that crazy bitch say to her? What poison did she trickle into her ear? Goddamn Cassandra! I need to find out exactly what she said.

  “Eden,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “I swear to you, on my parents’ lives, on my own life, and on the life of every member of The Miseryed, that nothing Cassandra said is true.”

  “Sure,” Eden grunts, collapsing into Natalie’s arms. “Sure, sure, sure.”

  The car pulls up, and Natalie helps Eden to her feet, and the two of them walk to the car. I go toward the door, meaning to open it, but Natalie says, “We’re fine, thank you.”

  They climb into the backseat. I hold the edge of the door and poke my head into the back. “None of it’s true,” I say. “None of it.” Eden is crumpled in Natalie’s arms, curled up like a child, and Natalie is stroking her hair and staring at me. “I’m going to talk to her, and I’ll call you tomorrow. I’ll get this whole thing straightened out.”

  Natalie turns to the driver. “We’re going to my apartment, sir. The address is…”

  I stand up and close the door, and the car drives away.

  “Goddamn,” I mutter, my fists smacking my thighs. “Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn.”

  I turn to the mansion; jaws clenched, teeth rattling, temples pulsing. Goddamn Cassandra.

  Chapter Forty

  When I walk back into the party room, I scan it quickly. People are drunker now, but not much else has changed. The band plays jazz, and the partiers dance or talk in huddles. Waitresses and waiters circulate. I look over the room, past Markus, past a few of my men, and to the stairs. Cassandra stands at the top, waving at me.

  I push through the crowd, fighting the urge to sprint, to barge people out of the way, and up the stairs. Cassandra turns on her heels and walks down the hallway, toward the computer room to which I sent Eden. That’s where she got her. Screensaver… what damn screensaver? I push open the door, and Cassandra swivels in the chair like a Bond villain. The only thing the bitch is missing is a little cat.

  I close the door behind me.

  “Maddox,” she says.

  “What did you say to her?” I growl. I look at her closer. Her eye is black, and her knuckles are grazed. “What is wrong with you? What happened? Goddamn, Cassandra…” I walk closer and look with more detail at the graze and the black eye. “That’s makeup.” Part of me wants to punch her directly in the face, but I’ve never hit a woman, and I’m not about to start now. “That’s makeup. Did you put that on to make her pity you? Is that your little game?”

  Cassandra just throws her head back and laughs. Then she leans back and turns on the computer screen. It hums to life, and a photograph of Cassandra and me appears on the screen. We’re on a beach, kissing. I remember the day – it was at the start when she was still pretending – but I don’t remember the photo. But I was drunk as a sailor on leave that day, wasn’t I? How easy would it have been for her to snap a photo? And who was it that was giving me drink after drink?

  “You planned this long ago,” I mutter.

  “Oh, no.” She giggles. “Not this precisely, but I took the photo as an insurance of sort. Oh, you never know what will come in handy, do you? And earlier, I overheard you and your little princess talking. It was after you had sex in the gazebo. So I rushed up here and voila!” She grins at me. “It softened her up. Drunk, scared people are willing to believe anything, you know.”

  “Why?” I breathe, my entire body willing me to become what she said I was: to beat her. But I won’t, I never will. Despite what she said, it isn’t in my bones. My body wouldn’t allow me. Invisible hands would grip me, holding me in place. I could never hit a woman.

  “Why?” She shakes her head at me like I’m a naïve little boy. “Because I suspected that you might not leave her, so I had to make her leave you. Don’t you see? Now she’s out of the way, we can be together. We don’t have to worry about this pretty little babe any longer. It can be just you and me —”

  “Look at yourself, Cassandra. You’ve painted yourself in pretend scars and bruises. You’ve made out that I cheated on you, hit you, when I never did either. You’ve caused pain to the woman I think I—And you think I’ll come back to you?”

  Cassandra nods solemnly. “Eventually, yes. You want an exciting woman like me. Not a boring woman like sweet fickle Eden.”

  “Eden isn’t boring.”

  “I’m everything she’s not.”

  “Which is why I would rather die than leave her for you. Do you think you’ve worked this out, really? She was drunk, tonight. Shocked, too. I’ll straighten it out.” I stare down at her. For once, she looks scared. She shrinks back. “You cut me, you stole from me, but you won’t do this. Stay. Away. From. Eden.”

  I growl the words, and then turn away and pace from the room.

  I walk down the hallway and push into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, and leaning up against it. I slump down onto the floor, letting my head drop between my knees.

  I wanted to get out of the dangerous parts of my life. I wanted to get out of them, become a real mechanic, or a programmer, or something. Get out of the life and take Eden away. Somewhere quiet, somewhere isolated, somewhere safe. Somewhere we could be alone.

  But she won’t have me now, will she?

  Please listen. Please just listen.

  Chapter
Forty One

  Eden

  The champagne has hit me hard. I’m vaguely aware of Nat muttering under her breath, “I won’t have this, I won’t have this. Look at you, Eden. You’re a state. What has he done to you? Stupid man, making you upset like this. It’s not right. It’s not even close to right. Well, that’s that, isn’t it? He’s ruined it with you. Don’t worry, babe. I’ll always be here.”

  She strokes my head as I lay in her lap. My mouth is dry, and my lips are chapped, sticking together when I close my mouth. He hit her, I think, numbly. He hit her and cheated on her, and he’ll do the same to me if I give him a chance. I know how drunk I am, and yet at the same time I’m convinced I’m not that drunk. It’s a strange state.

  But all I know for absolute certain right now is that my head aches and my belly is churning.

  The car stops, and Nat leans down and whispers in my ear.,“We’re at my place now,” she says. “Shall we get you up? You can have some water and a sleep. How does that sound?”

  I know she’s talking to me like I’m a baby, but I’m not offended. I appreciate it, really. Right now I feel like I need to be babied a little bit.

  “Yeah—uh, okay,” I mumble, the pounding in my head drowning out my words. “Sure. Let’s go.” And then the pain overwhelms me, and I begin to sob, “He hit her, he cheated on her, he hit her, he cheated on her. And the screensaver, Nat. He told me to go up there. No one else did! He scouted every inch of that house before tonight. That’s his job. And he knew I would see it. Why! Why!”

  “Oh, sweet,” Nat sighs, stroking my sweat-damp forehead. “Men are like that sometimes. I don’t know why.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I breathe. Saliva builds up in my mouth, and I’m suddenly sure I’m going to vomit.

  “There’s something about the bruise,” I mutter, hardly even hearing my own words. “There’s something…”

  I close my eyes tight-shut and think about nothing, and soon I’m drifting to sleep. Vaguely, I feel Nat leading me up the stairs to her apartment and laying me on the bed, but I hardly know what’s happening at all. I’m tired, and drunk, and my heart is aching.

  This is a dream. And when I wake up, it’ll be next to Maddox, and he’ll be the man I remember.

  ***

  I wake up to the smell of coffee on Sunday morning, wrapped up in Nat’s love-heart-patterned sheets. The curtains are closed and let only a tiny pin of light in, but even that is too much. I roll over and follow the scent of coffee. Nat is sitting next to the bed, mug in hand. Another mug sits on the bedside table.

  “What time is it?” I groan.

  “Nine o’clock,” Nat says. “I can leave, if you want.”

  “It’s okay,” I sigh.

  I sit up in bed, feeling as though every bone in my body is going to snap, as though every tendon is stretching too far. Memories of last night come to me, and what I remember first is the champagne: how sweet and tasty it was; how I drank four or five glasses without realizing. And then I think about Maddox and Cassandra, and I swallow harshly. Saliva tries to rise in my mouth, but my mouth is too dry.

  “Water,” I breathe.

  Nat reaches underneath her chair and picks up a water bottle. I snatch it from her, tip my head back, and gulp in as much as I can. I gulp and gulp until the bottle is empty, and then I bring my hand to my head and massage my temples. “I was drunk last night,” I mutter.

  “I know,” Nat says. “I was there.”

  “A woman told me that Maddox hit her, told me that he cheated on her. And there was a screensaver, Nat…”

  “You told me all about it before you went to sleep,” Nat says. I look at her face. Her lips are pressed together, and her eyes are wide. As I study her, her nostrils flare. She grips the coffee mug as though she wants to shatter it. “It’s unacceptable,” she growls. “He shouldn’t be making you feel this. I hate seeing my friend feel like this.”

  I smile at her. “You’re a good friend, but there was something, Nat…” I shake my head, trying to remember. When it comes to me, I’m sure I’m wrong. There’s no way; it’s too strange. You’re just looking for excuses. It’s a natural thing to do. But you have to forget about him now. It’s over.

  But still—

  “What something?” Nat asks, blowing on her coffee.

  “The woman, Cassandra—”

  “The woman he beat?”

  “Yeah, it’s odd. I was drunk at the time, stressed out, so it didn’t seem that strange. Or if it did, not so strange to stop me listening to her. But she had a bruised eye, a black eye, you know—and her knuckles were all cut up. I don’t even know how. But the weird part is, she was crying, and when she was crying, the black eye was disappearing, sort of like if you drip water onto face paint. You know how it smudges?”

  Nat nods.

  “Well, it was doing that.”

  “Why would she paint herself with a black eye?” Nat says.

  “No idea.” I shrug, and my whole body roars out against it. My arms ache, my shoulders ache, everything aches in that way only a hangover can bring. “To make me feel sorry for her, maybe? And the screensaver. So, yeah, sure, he told me to go to that room, but how was he to know I wouldn’t immediately touch the mouse or keyboard, disturb the screensaver? How could he be sure I would see it? If he was playing a sick game with me, I mean.”

  In the yellow light of morning, these questions need to be answered. Not like last night, where all that mattered was rage and outrage and heartbreak.

  “Okay, fair enough,” Nat says, some of the tension leaving her face. “But what about the flash drive? That’s the best way to know, isn’t it? If he really did want you to see something that’d upset you, he’d put it on the flash drive, wouldn’t he? That’s what you were doing up there, after all.”

  “I didn’t even look at it,” I say.

  “Well…”

  Nat places her coffee mug on the table, walks from the bedroom to the living room, and returns a moment later with her laptop. She places it on my lap. “Where’s the drive?”

  “Hang on.” I reach into my bra. It’s still there, wedged between the fabric of my bra and my breast. When I take it away, I feel the outline it has imprinted on my skin, from where I’ve slept on it. Nat giggles. I laugh, too.

  I take the flash drive and insert it into the laptop.

  My heartbeat is like a rushing bull, bounding ahead, up into my throat, making it hard to breathe. This is it. This is what I should’ve done last night, just to be sure. But makeup! It was makeup! It was stupid silly makeup!

  “You’re scared,” Nat comments.

  “I’m scared,” I admit.

  She reaches across and places her small hand on my shoulder.

  ***

  The folder appears in the computer tab. I think of the names it might have before it’s finished loading: fooled you; stupid bitch; it was never you. And a hundred other vindictive, taunting titles. But when it does load, the title is not fooled you but for you.

  I trail my finger across the trackpad, leaving a snail’s trail of sweat, and double-click the file. It opens, and my shoulders sag. Oh, what did I do? I think. Why didn’t I get more information?

  “Wow!” Nat squeaks, leaning across and peering at the screen. “Just . . . wow!”

  The first file is marked: code, further improvements. I click on it, and lines and lines of the source code for Angels of Death appear on the screen. The changes are marked in yellow, with tracked comments along one side. Increases stability; prevents crashes; quicker loading times; etc. And next to each tracked comment are the initials M O.

  “M O?” Nat asks. “You don’t think . . .”

  “Maddox Owens,” I say. “Maddox Owens! He was the programmer this whole time! Nat, I never thought he was stupid. I wouldn’t be with a stupid person. But if this is him—”

  “He’s a coding genius.”

  “Yeah, and look, he’s done it.” I scroll through the code. “He’s done it, Nat. All of it
. Look. It’s fixed.”

  “He’s even implemented the sub-level and the boss,” Nat says in wonder, as I get to the bottom of the code, where two multi-page yellow chunks have been inserted. “Eden!”

  I’m breathless. Beads of sweat slide down my chest in between my breasts. My finger trembles on the trackpad, causing the mouse to move erratically on the screen. I aim for the minimize icon twice before finally hitting it. I go to the next file, which is a word document. It opens with two pages of bullet points. The title is suggestions for the game.

  “All this work,” Nat whispers. “All this work for you. Why would he—”