by Bella Grant
I finished and held my breath, waiting for his response. I got nothing but silence. Tears pricked my eyes, and I stared out the window into the starry night, rubbing my tummy reassuringly. I would have to find a way to make this work for us. What I asked of him wasn’t so difficult. Could I expect him to respond positively to us having a baby?
When we got to the apartment, he didn’t kill the engine but kept it running, making no effort to leave the car. What they said about a leopard never changing its spots was apparently true. I knew him too well, and when he didn’t wish to talk about something, he would simply leave. Weeks of frustration plus hormones overwhelmed me, and I lashed out at him.
“So that’s it? You won’t even talk about it? Liam, I am trying to help you figure out what you want to do!”
“Who says I haven’t figured it out?” he asked, and I could hear the strain his voice. “I wish you’d talked to me before you signed me up for something I have no intention of doing.”
“What’s your plan?” I demanded indignantly. “Staying in that music store and making minimum wage? Making supervisor? Because they don’t make much. I want you to do something you love—like you love music!”
“If you would just be patient, Emily.”
“I’d be patient if you showed any inclination of ever doing anything!” I snapped.
“Emily…”
“No, Liam!” I cried and unbuckled my seatbelt at the same time as I opened the car door. “Go out with your friends and ignore the problem as usual because that solves everything!” I added sarcastically for good measure.
I slammed the car door and headed for the stairs. Please come after me, I begged him silently, but the tears fell when I heard the screech of tires as he drove away. I unlocked the apartment door and went inside, wondering if I was wrong for pushing him. All I wanted was the best for him. Why couldn’t he see that? I loved him so much I didn’t think I could even walk out on him for not being more ambitious.
“If he doesn’t walk out when he finds out I’m pregnant,” I mumbled bitterly. I doubted he would do that. He would more than likely try to do something with his life after I told him about the baby. But a baby was the wrong reason to do it. He would resent us eventually.
I was scarcely in the house when a knocking sounded at the door. I hurried over to it, hoping it was Liam returning to let me know he was being foolish. It didn’t even cross my mind that he had his own key and wouldn’t need to knock. I so desperately wanted it to be him that I jerked the door open.
“Jake!” I gasped his name as I stared at my ex-boyfriend in shock. Since the fight between him and Liam, I had believed he had disappeared and had stopped stalking me. I reacted a second too late in trying to slam the door shut. His booted foot pushed between the door and its jam, and he shoved back on the door so hard it knocked me into the wall. Panic seized me. I knew I was in big trouble. If only Liam were here.
“Do you know how long I’ve waited for this opportunity to get you alone?” he sneered at me. “I knew that if I waited—if I was patient enough—I’d get the perfect opportunity. Overhearing that argument with your roommate makes this the perfect opportunity, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re only going to make the case in court better for me,” I reminded him as I inched along the wall as far away from him as I could get.
“And how will anyone know I was here?” he asked, slamming the door to the apartment shut behind him.
“Because I’m going to report it right now.”
Before I could take another step, I was staring down the barrel of his gun. My stomach dropped to the floor.
“I don’t think so,” he countered. “Now move it. We need to get out of here before your roommate comes back. This has nothing to do with him. I’m sure you don’t want him to get caught in a crossfire, because if you don’t do exactly what I say, the minute he walks through that door, I’ll blow his fucking head off.”
“Jake, please…”
“Save the begging for later. Go to your room!”
When I didn’t react fast enough, he grabbed me by the arm shoved me hard. Oh, God, if an unsuspecting Liam should walk in, he will get hurt! The thought was frightening and prodded me to move quickly and do as he suggested.
My heart was lodged in my throat as he emptied my drawers onto the bed. He barked at me to bring a suitcase, which I did, too frightened to do anything else. He stuffed the clothing into the case, as much as it could hold, and then yanked me out the bedroom.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, finding my voice.
“I’m taking you home where you belong,” he answered. “Now hurry up, and if you so much as think about screaming, I’ll shoot you, so don’t tempt me, Emily. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you disobey me, I will have no choice.”
He continued manhandling me out of the apartment. I briefly considered calling his bluff and screaming for help, but the gun holstered in his waist silenced me.
“This will not work,” I warned him as he sped out of the apartment parking lot. “What are you planning to do? Keep me locked up in the apartment forever?” When he didn’t respond, I stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t lock me away against my will, Jake. This is abduction. If you let me go, I’ll drop the restraining order case but if you do this, I assure you, I will press charges against you..”
“Enough! If you’d never served me with that summons, none of this would be happening!” he shouted, smacking his hand hard against the steering wheel so its horn blasted in the night. “Just shut up and let me think!”
I huddled in the near the passenger door, my heart sinking deeper the further away from my apartment he drove.
24
Liam
“For God’s sake, Liam, you and your girlfriend need to work out your problems!”
A disgruntled Shawn shoved the brown paper envelope in my hand and slammed his door. I didn’t take offence since I probably would have done the same thing, given the circumstances. I’d convinced him to keep the draft for me against his wishes.
“It’s time you tell her about the studio time,” he’d argued. “You know this is what she wants for you, so why would you hide it from her? You’re about to get a contract, for God’s sake! Tell her, man!”
“Not yet,” I’d countered. “I want it to be done and for it to be certain before I tell her. I don’t want to get her hopes up, raise her expectations, and then nothing happens.”
“You have the draft of a contract to look over! What is clearer than that?”
I’d convinced him to keep the papers, not believing our apartment was a safe place to keep them. If they were there, Emily would surely find them since everything of ours was mixed together. We barely had any privacy from each other, not that we minded.
After our argument, I decided it was probably best I let her know about the booked studio sessions, the demo tracks, and sending them to different record labels. I had surprised myself by not quitting at the first rejection and the second. I’d sent to seven different record labels before I received a tentative call back, which was responsible for the contract I’d been given to read through—preferably with an attorney—before I agreed to sign on with the label. It wasn’t a huge record label, but it was a start for exposure.
It had been difficult to complete all I had without Emily finding out. She’d been too wrapped up, for the moment, in studying for her mid-term exams to notice my disappearance. I’d taken a week of my vacation, and she didn’t know. I left the house at the same hours as I did when I worked, and she never suspected a thing. Naturally, I didn’t like lying to her, but I had every intention of coming clean once I got my signature and that of the record label on the dotted line.
I wanted to tell her earlier but thought that without the proof, she would probably think I was making stuff up to get her to shut up. Tonight, I would tell her the truth, and hopefully, she would understand why I had kept it from her. I suspected she would be more pleased than mad, an
d if she was the latter, she was never upset for long.
It was late when I got to the apartment, almost midnight. I hoped she wasn’t sleeping, which was a high possibility. She had the habit of waiting up for me when I was out late, while she pretended she wasn’t doing anything but studying.
I grinned when I entered the apartment with the brown envelope clutched in one hand. Light glared from inside, a sign that she was still up.
“Emily,” I called to her, frowning at the silence. The apartment was too still. She wasn’t in the living room, nor the kitchen. I pushed the door to our bedroom open and stood in shock, staring at the ransacked room. Drawers were half opened and some of her clothing items were strewn on the bed and a few on the floor. With long strides, I got to the closet and drew the door open. Half her clothing, which hung alongside mine, was gone as well.
A feeling of betrayal overcame me. She’d left me? I knew she was upset about me not doing anything to promote personal growth in my life, but I’d never thought in all my wildest dreams she would pack her things and go. What about the lease? She couldn’t walk out on me, leaving the apartment as my sole responsibility.
Screw the lease! My heart was ripped out of my body at her decision. I’d asked her to be patient. She hadn’t been able to wait one night? I would have understood her getting mad for one night and sleeping elsewhere, although I didn’t agree with it. Whatever problems we had, none warranted her leaving our home. And by the number of pieces missing from her closet and drawers, she didn’t plan to return any time soon.
“Over my dead body!” I muttered. I wouldn’t let her out of my life like that, not for whatever stupid reason she had come up with for justifying her leaving me like this.
Throwing the brown envelope on the dresser, I raced out of the apartment again. Emily would go to two places, and her parents were too far for her to get there. Her car was parked in its usual spot, which led to my second suspect. Miranda.
Not caring how late it was, I got in my car, determined to get my girl back home where she belonged. We would have a long, good talk, too. She had to know it was disappointing that she would run out on me over a little argument. I rang her phone several times to let her know I was heading there to pick her up, but she wasn’t answering.
I’d dropped her at Miranda’s once in Gardendale and wasn’t sure if I remembered how to find her house. I made a few wrong turns before I located it. It was almost one, but I didn’t give a shit. I rang the doorbell, and when I was dissatisfied with the lack of response, I pounded on the front door.
I heard chattering and the porch light came on, along with a light in the hall. The door was wrenched open, and Miranda’s boyfriend emerged, looking pissed as hell. A tousled Miranda peeked around him.
“Liam!” she cried, pushing past her boyfriend. “What are you doing here so late?”
“Where is she, Miranda?” I demanded. “I know she’s here because she has nowhere else to go.”
“What?” she asked.
“I know Em has to be here,” I repeated, and when the couple stared at me in confusion, I tried to push past them into the house. “Emily!” I yelled. “Emily, I know you’re here.”
Miranda’s boyfriend placed his hand on my chest to keep me from entering the house. “Easy, man,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going on, but Emily isn’t here.”
“She’s got to be here,” I argued, my voice raising, then turned to Miranda. “I know you two talk about everything. If she went somewhere else, she would have told you. Where can I find her?”
“I have no idea what this is about, Liam,” she replied, looking very sincere. “Why don’t you come inside so we can talk?”
My heart sank at her invitation. If she was asking me to come in, Emily wasn’t inside this house. But if she wasn’t, where the hell could she have gone? Trance-like, I followed her and her boyfriend to the kitchen where I paced around, even though they gestured for me to sit. Miranda took a seat, but her boyfriend leaned against the counter, observing me like he was still trying to figure out what I was doing there.
“Do you want something to drink?” Miranda asked me.
“I just want to know where she is,” I retorted, running my fingers through my hair. “We had an argument and I left. By the time I returned to the apartment, she’d almost cleaned out her closet. Most of her things are gone!”
She frowned up at me. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like Emily.”
“I never thought she would do this either,” I replied bitterly. “But she has and for a stupid reason. I need to find her Miranda. She’s the best damn thing I’ve got going on, and that includes the contract I have to start my music career. I can’t lose her.”
Her eyes bugged at me. “Did you just say music career? Are you talking about the music store?”
“No, I’m talking the contract I got with a record label,” I explained. “I didn’t tell her about it because I wanted the deal to be done before I got her expectations up. She was always telling me to start thinking about my future and putting my talent to use. I didn’t want to disappoint her if I failed.”
“You should have told her,” Miranda groaned. “It would have made such a great difference, Liam. Even if you failed, she simply wanted to know you were trying to do something.”
“But now she’s gone. Are you sure you can’t think of anywhere she would be?”
Miranda shook her head. “I’m telling you, Liam, this is not like Emily. She loves you. She would have never left you, especially with the…”
She trailed off but not before I caught the guilty expression on her face. She knew something!
“What is it, Miranda? Please, you’ve got to tell me. How can you be so sure she wouldn’t leave me, and if she didn’t leave me, where the hell is she then?”
She shook her head, looking uneasy. “I can’t tell you. I made a promise to Emily.”
“Please, Miranda,” I begged her. “If you know something you’ve got to tell me. I have to find her.”
She shook her head and apologized. “I’m sorry, Liam. I can’t tell you. Did you try calling her?”
“Yes, and she wouldn’t answer.”
“Let me try.”
She went over to the wall phone and dialed Emily’s number. She repeated the procedure two more times, to no avail.
“It rang the first two times,” she announced. “But the third time, it just went straight to voicemail, like she turned it off.”
“It’s late, man,” her boyfriend said finally. “We should go back to bed. It might be best for you to try to find her tomorrow, or maybe we’ll hear something from her and can let you know.”
Defeated, I nodded and headed for the front door. I had the door open when Miranda’s voice stopped me. “Liam, wait!”
“Yes?” I said hopefully.
“I’m worried about her disappearing,” she stated with concern. “Emily would never leave you. She loves you and she’s the happiest she’s ever been, but more than that, she would never leave you and not tell you about the baby. She’s not the type of woman who would take a man’s child away from him without his knowledge.”
Everything within me moved at her words. “Baby?” I croaked. “What baby?”
“The one she’s been hiding from you,” she explained. “I couldn’t tell you. I probably shouldn’t even tell you now, but I’m concerned about her. I’m a hundred percent positive she would never willingly pack and go away without a word—and as you said, she tells me everything. I would have known.”
“A baby?” I repeated as everything started to make sense. The morning sickness, the exhaustion, the weight gain, the mood swings. Why the hell would she keep it from me? “I’m going to be a father,” I stated in awe, and the thought didn’t scare me as much as it should have.
“Yes, you are,” Miranda said softly. “Now, how will we find her? Are you sure she left willingly?”
“If she didn’t, who—” I started to say before fear gripped
me. “Oh, my God. If the bastard has hurt her, I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Who?”
“Her ex!” I exclaimed. “The bastard has been going after her, but I thought I’d set him straight. I’ve got to find her, Miranda. Where do you think he would take her?”
“Their apartment?” she suggested.
“He would be dumb to take her there, but he seems irrational and prone to doing something stupid. Plus, I don’t have any other lead.”
“We’ll go with you and I’ll show you the apartment. Just let me change.”
“Please hurry,” I begged her, tortured at the thought of Emily being with her ex. He could seriously injure her and our baby. I started praying, not sure if I believed but not knowing what else to do.
25
Emily
I would not go out without a fight, I decided after Jake locked me in the guestroom with a threat that he’d kill me if I screamed or tried to alert anyone that I was being held against my will. He’d confiscated my phone, which I’d tried to hide from him, but when the phone started ringing, he’d discovered it. It was Liam, and I imagined he had just gotten home and found me gone. What was he thinking? Did he believe the illusion Jake had tried to create that I had left him? Surely, he would search for me. He would know, despite out argument, that I loved him too much to leave him.
I needed him. Our baby needed him.
After jiggling the lock of the door one time too many, I accepted I wouldn’t be getting out of the house that way. I wasn’t sure where Jake was. I’d been stupid to point out that holding me against my will at his apartment was a dumb idea, so he was trying to find a new place to keep me. If I didn’t get out before he moved me, I might never be found.