by Wilde, Leah
You’re in trouble, Paris.
That hadn’t even begun to describe it. The wrath he’d unleashed upon me that night and the days and weeks following was like something out of the Bible. He alternated between a cold fury and the most insane bellowing I’d ever seen or heard. There were a few moments where I was legitimately scared for my life. And when he’d slapped me…
I shivered. The phantom pain of his hand across my cheek still lingered. He kept his ring on when he did it. I wondered often whether that was on purpose or not. Either way, I had a little scar on my jaw to show for it. A little memento from Daddy, a bright warning to the next guy to stay far, far away from me. I was damaged goods, but I was his and no one else’s.
I’d felt horrible in the aftermath of the party. Nauseous, trembling, wildly emotional. It was like my nerves were permanently frayed and the whole system was going haywire. I didn’t know who to blame—Micah or my father.
Even now, almost four months after the fact, I was ashen-faced and sweating, even though the bedroom was well below seventy degrees. I closed my eyes and tried to draw in breaths steadily, in through my nose and out through my mouth, to calm my fluctuating heartbeat. Breathe, girl, I instructed myself. It’ll be okay. You’ve just gotta let things go.
I supposed the easiest thing to do would be to just accept that this was my life now. I’d thought I was kept under lock and key before, but that was a hilarious understatement compared to what things had become. Daddy had installed tracking software on my phone that gave him updates every fifteen minutes on my location via GPS and logged every single text message I sent. I had a strict curfew of eight p.m. every single night of the week, without exception. If he wasn’t going to be home himself to make sure I complied, then he sent one of his men to check on me and lock the doors behind me. I’d have said that it was like being a prisoner, but at least people in jail had a realistic chance of escape. I had none.
The breathing was helping to bring my heart rate back to earth. I noticed my skin start to cool down as I kept my eyes closed and focused on the feeling of the air rushing past my nostrils. It felt good to be silent and still, to not have to study or clean or anything. Just sit. Just breathe.
Suddenly, something jabbed inside my stomach. It felt like the whole thing just lurched, like a muscle spasm or someone poking me from the inside. I bolted upright in surprise. Just then, I heard a flush and the door to my bathroom opened. Katy flounced in. She took one look at the startled expression on my face and her eyes narrowed right away.
“Are you okay, Paris?” she asked with concern.
I stammered to find words. “I’m, uh, yeah. I’m fine. It’s just, um, a cramp. That’s all.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, managing to find some confidence to inject in my voice. “Totally fine. I’m gonna go to the bathroom, though.”
“Okay,” she said. She shrugged and flopped onto my bed, then picked up a magazine and started leafing through it. I clambered out of the desk chair and wound my way between the piles of clothing on the floor. Stepping into the bathroom, I shut the door behind me.
I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were wide and scared. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt a jolt like that, but it was the hardest one yet. I’d never felt anything like that until recently. And I was beginning to lose track of how many nights I’d spent sleepless in bed, counting up the number of weeks it had been since the party where I met Micah.
I hadn’t told Katy the full story. She was stunned enough that I’d taken Micah up on his motorcycle ride. For some reason, I didn’t want her to know everything that had happened after that. It seemed like a private thing, just for him and me to share and no one else. Maybe I just wanted to hold onto something between us. I couldn’t imagine he was doing the same.
At the time, it had felt so special, so unique. The way he looked at me, the way his hands and mouth grazed over my skin—I’d never had a moment that felt more real than reality. But with Micah, the whole night had taken on this otherworldly quality. I couldn’t shake it.
Yet in the four months since then, I started to doubt my memories more and more. He was a biker, a bad boy, a fuck-and-leave kind of guy. He sure as heck wasn’t sitting around reminiscing fondly about the wonderful lovemaking we’d shared. No, there was exactly zero percent chance that that was happening. More than likely, he was already onto the next girl, or the next dozen as the case may be. I was long gone from his rearview mirror. I’d be surprised if he even remembered my name.
It might have been the embarrassment of feeling so attached to a memory that he surely didn’t care about that kept me from sharing all of the details with my best friend. That would certainly have been a reasonable explanation, at least in my eyes.
But there was more to it. There were the symptoms.
Anyone who’d ever taken a sex ed class or seen a soap opera knew the signs. Nausea? Mood swings? Sudden pangs in the abdomen? I’d been fooling myself into believing that it was a physical reaction to the consequences of being discovered by my father, but deep down, I knew better. I knew the truth.
I was pregnant.
Chapter 10
Micah
I raised my hand and knocked on the door. It was a crummy apartment building, infested with rats and the various low-life scum who populated a place like this on the shitter side of town. The decal on the door read 233.
I crossed my hands in front of me and waited patiently. A few moments later, the door opened, and a woman greeted me. She was small and had pale blonde hair tucked up into a bandana on her head. Her dress might have been pretty once, printed with colorful flowers, but the brightness of the fabric had faded away over the years. I noticed frayed threads poking out from the edges of the garment.
“Hey, Valeriya,” I said. “Hope it’s alright if I drop in on you like this. I was in your neck of the woods, and I thought I’d swing by and say hello.”
She smiled, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Poor woman. She looked so worn through, like an old dish rag that needed to get thrown away soon. There were bags under her eyes that looked heavy and immovable. “Hello, Micah,” she said. Her accent had gradually lost its edges since she’d first come to the city, but if I listened closely, I could still hear the harsh Russian grate on some of her vowels.
She opened her arms to give me a hug. I leaned down to let her and she gave me a soft, friendly kiss on the cheek. “It is good to see you. Please, come in.” She stepped aside to let me into the apartment. I ducked my head under the low doorframe as I entered.
It was hot and humid in here. I could hear the window A/C unit chugging away, but it didn’t seem to do much to take the edge off the summer heat leaking through the thin walls. A few potted plants sat wilted in the corners of the living room. Valeriya slid past me and into the kitchen, where I heard pots and pans start clanking.
I looked at the walls. A few pictures were hung up in cheap frames. One of them was slanted off-center, and I reached up to adjust it. The picture was of a man and woman on the back of a motorcycle. The girl had her arms squeezed tight around the man’s torso. Both of them had wide, beaming smiles. They looked downright ecstatic to be with each other.
“I love that picture,” Valeriya said as she emerged into the living room with a pot of tea and two mugs in her hand. “Anton looks so happy there.”
I let my hand fall to my side. “Yeah,” I said. “He really does. You both do.” I turned and joined her on the striped couch pushed up against one wall. She poured out a cup of tea for me and handed it over.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I took a sip and set it down on the table next to us.
“So, Micah, how are you? How are things?” she asked. Her voice was earnest, but there was still that undertone of sadness to it, lingering just behind every word.
“They’re okay. Up and down, you know how it goes.”
She nodded. “It isn’t an easy life you chose.”
“It kind of chose me, but I guess you’re right. It ain’t easy.” The dying sun shone through the thin curtains hanging over the window, lighting up the room in purple and red. It made Valeriya’s hair glow. “But anyway, I didn’t come here to complain about my job. How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, brushing away an invisible speck of dirt from her knee, “I’m doing fine.”
“Do you need anything? Money? Help around the place?”
“No, no, please,” she demurred, waving a hand at the suggestion. “I don’t need anything.”
“Because you can always let me know if you do. I want to help however I can. The whole club does.”
“I know that.”
“Good. Don’t forget it.”
We fell silent, not looking at each other. I didn’t know what to feel or do or say. I was always shit at these kinds of situations. But for some reason, I felt compelled to come back over and over again, even though nothing new had occurred to me. It was the same sad shit repeated every time.
“It’ll be three years next month,” she said quietly.
I looked up and saw a tear glistening at the corner of her eye. She wiped it away quickly. “I know,” I said quietly. “Can’t believe it’s been that long already.”
Her eyes met mine. She looked fierce all of the sudden. “I can. Every day is so long.”
I didn’t know what to say to that either.
“You must have come for a reason. Did you come to tell me something?” she asked. “Do you know more?” She was leaning forward and squeezing my hand tightly between her fingers. “Do you know who did it?”
I laid my other hand on top of hers. As gently as I could, I said, “I’m sorry, no. We still don’t know.”
The sudden spark of life faded away, returning her to the same grey, depressed woman who had greeted me at the door. “How can you not know?” she said. Her eyes were staring into the middle distance. “How is that possible?”
“We’re trying, Val. He was important to us, too. We’ll find a way to make things right. He deserves that.”
Another tear welled up in her eye. Her bottom lip was quivering. “They shot hit so many times,” she whispered. “I could barely recognize his body. Whoever did it was a monster.”
I opened my mouth to talk, but the words just wouldn’t come. Val succumbed to the crying. Sobs took over, racking her from head to toe as she buried her face in the couch cushions. I patted her back softly and let her cry.
I couldn’t even fathom what this woman was going through. Was she really the same as the girl in the picture? That girl had looked so happy, so head over heels in love. And now look at her. She was a wreck, always just a few words away from a sobbing fit. Three years to cope with her husband’s murder and she was still barely keeping it together.
A wail from the other room interrupted us. I looked around, confused, but Valeriya shot up immediately, wiping her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. She disappeared through the doorway connecting the living room to the bedroom. I sat and waited. A moment later, she emerged with a swaddled bundle in her arms.
My blood ran cold. “It’s okay,” she murmured in a singsong voice. “Mommy’s here. It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” She rocked the baby back and forth her in arms, cooing and clucking. She straightened up and looked at me. Her eyes were red and puffy from the tears, but when she spoke, her voice was calm. Strong. “I’m sorry. He hasn’t been sleeping well the last few weeks. I think he knows when I’m upset. Anton’s anniversary always rattles me.”
“No problem,” I said. She sat on the couch next to me. In between the folds of the blankets, I could see the pink nose of the infant. A little hand reached out and clung to his mother’s shirt. The fingers were so small. How was it possible that this was a person? How was it possible that I was ever that small and unblemished? I looked down at my own hands. They were scarred, tattooed, and tanned from years on the road. Life had done its work on my skin. This little guy, though, had so much in front of him.
But he’d have to face all that without a father. I couldn’t believe that Anton had meant so much to this woman, had given her a son and been the reason behind her every smile. Only to disappear when they needed him most. Not that it was his fault. But goddamn, a man had to know when he was close to the end, didn’t he? Didn’t he know that dying would hurt his family so much more than it would hurt him?
“He’s getting so big,” I said. “How old is he now?”
“Two,” she said.
“I guess he’s not a baby anymore, then, is he?”
“Not really. Growing up so quickly. Look,” she said, pushing the blankets away from the child’s face, “hair just like his father.” A shock of dark hair had taken root across the baby’s scalp. She was right; it was thick and curly, just like Anton’s had been.
“He’ll be a lady-killer for sure,” I said with a sad smile.
“Handsome boy, yes, you are,” she cooed at him. A beeping sound went off in the kitchen. “That’s the oven. Do you mind holding him for a second? It was hell to get him to lie down for his nap, and he sleeps better when he’s next to somebody.”
“I, uh, well—” She didn’t wait for my answer. Instead, she hoisted the boy onto my lap and strode quickly into the kitchen. I sat perfectly still, statute still. God forbid I wake the kid up. I wouldn’t have the first clue about what to do. This was already way beyond my level of childcare expertise, which was more or less nonexistent.
But as I looked down at his face, I felt something sag in my chest. No one in the world had the right to look that peaceful. Didn’t this kid know his dad was dad? Didn’t he know how much his mom was struggling? Maybe when he was awake, he did. But for right now, he was Zen, as unlined and innocent as the day he was born. My heart went out to him. He didn’t realize yet how hard life could be.
A thought came shooting across my mind: Fuck Anton. He caused this. He set up this beautiful woman for a lifetime of misery, and he condemned her son to the exact same shit. I could have felt sorry for him—he was dead, after all, and we were no closer to finding the killers than the we had been the day it happened—but no, fuck him. Fuck any man who told a woman he loved her, who gave her a baby, then went out and risked his life the way he did.
I looked down at the face of the kid in my arms and made myself a promise. I’d never do to someone what Anton did to Val and her son. I’d stay far away. This life of mine was too risky as it was. I had no right bringing someone else into the mix. I was willing to gamble with my own skin. But not that of others. Not the skin of those I loved. How could I? This child’s skin was so smooth and perfect. I refused to be the one to inject it with my dark ink.
“I gotta go, Val,” I said as soon as she returned.
“I understand,” she replied. She crossed the room and scooped up the child from my lap.
“If you need anything…” I began, but she just shook her head.
“We’ll be fine.”
“I’m going to find out what happened to him, Valeriya. I promise you.”
Her eyes were clear and her gaze was unwavering as she looked up at me. “I hope you do, Micah. I really hope you do.”
Chapter 11
Paris
“You want some chocolate?” Katy called from the next aisle over.
“Nah, I’m okay,” I said. I didn’t tell her, but the very idea of chocolate made me revoltingly nauseous. Which was strange, because I’d been a chocolate fiend my entire life. Now, though, it was the last thing in the world I wanted to put between my lips.
We were in the pharmacy down the street from my house, picking up snacks and some supplies so we could go paint our nails in my bedroom. I took a glance over and saw Katy fixated on the magazine rack down by the cash register. Moving quickly before she could notice, I reached out and snagged a pregnancy test, tucking it into my purse as casually as possible. Then I walked up and met her by the checkout line.
“Ready?” she said.
“What’d you get?”
“Honestly, I’m not all that hungry.”
She gave me a weird glance. “Is everything okay? You’ve been acting awfully weird these last couple days.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just not hungry, that’s all.”
She shot a hand up and pressed her palm against my forehead. “Are you getting sick?” she demanded. “I know how grouchy you get when you’re coming down with a fever.”
“Enough, Mom,” I said sarcastically as I peeled her hand away. “I’m perfectly fine. Leave me alone.”
She stared at me, but didn’t say another word until we paid for our items and walked out. I kept my fingers crossed as we went through the doorway, but by some lucky miracle, the stolen pregnancy test didn’t set off the alarm. I knew I should have paid for it, but I couldn’t bring myself to even let the cashier get the wrong idea about me, much less broach the subject with Katy.