by C. J. Welles
I walk into Callie’s room and find her asleep on the mattress on the floor. I look around her room at the rest of her things that need to be packed. I start with her clothes first, then move onto her DVD’s and CDs. She is so unorganized. It’s the night beforehand and she’s only just packing up her room. I’ve never come across someone who is so relaxed like her.
I’m placing her books into a box when I pick up a book and a photo slips out. I pick the photo up and stop when I see its Callie, holding a little baby. What stopped me though is that it is taken in a hospital and Callie is in the hospital bed.
I close my eyes and try to take it all in. She said she was pregnant, but I thought she must have had an abortion.
Callie has a baby out there somewhere.
“I should have told you,” I hear her sweet voice say from behind me. I turn, and she is sitting at the edge of the mattress. “I went to tell you. But I couldn’t get it out.”
I see a tear slip from her eye and roll down her cheek. I hate seeing her cry. It rips into my heart.
“It’s the hardest part out of everything,” she whispers.
I walk towards her and lay down, then pull her into my side. She lays her head on my chest and I rub my hand over her hair in a soothing way.
I go to say something, but she beats me.
“When I found out I booked in an abortion. God. I had only just turned eighteen and I was living on the streets. I had no money and barely enough food to feed myself.” I hate that Callie ever lived like that.
“I had no one to support and help me. There was no way I could bring a baby into the world. But then two days later I was on my way to the clinic on the bus. Everywhere I looked there were mothers with their beautiful little children. I studied them the whole bus ride. They were innocent children who couldn’t say what they want. I watched one mom with a tiny baby. The baby would cry, and I watched the mom try to work out what the baby wanted because he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t say what was wrong if he was hurting or hungry.” She pauses and runs her finger in circles on my chest.
“It got me thinking. The baby couldn’t defend himself while he was young like that. He couldn’t have a say in what happened in his life. Then I thought of my baby in my belly. My baby was just like the little baby on the bus but inside of me. It couldn’t defend itself from me. From what I had planned.” She shifts her body so she’s lying on top of me, between my legs with her chin on my stomach and looks up at me.
I run my fingers through her long blonde locks when she pauses. I don’t talk, I let her get it all out and let her know I’m here for her. “I didn’t step foot in the clinic. I couldn’t do it.” A tear slides down her face and I wipe it away with the pad of my thumb. “I hated that I was pregnant to him.” She grinds out. “I hated that there was a part of him inside me. And every day that I was pregnant it was a constant reminder of what he did to me. But the baby inside me didn’t hurt me. She didn’t ask to be brought into this world like she was.”
I can’t believe what I am hearing. She is so far from selfish. “Angel, you have such a beautiful soul. So many people focus on how it affects them. They don’t think of the baby.”
I feel something wet on my stomach and look down. Callie is silently weeping, and it breaks my heart seeing her cry.
I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead. “Don’t cry, Angel. I love you so much, baby. You amaze me each and every day we spend together. Everything you have told me. You are such a strong girl. So many people would just end it all. They wouldn’t fight like you did.” She doesn’t reply at first.
“I did want to end it so many times,” she whispers. “After I gave up my baby. It was nearly the last straw. I was depressed and felt like the life had been taken out of me. I’m lucky I had Krystal. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t, you kept fighting. You are here now baby.” I lean down and kiss her softly.
We lay there quiet, Callie laying on top of me while I rub her back.
I want to ask her so many questions, but I don’t want to upset her anymore. I hesitate before I speak. “You don’t have to talk about it anymore, baby, just let me know if you don’t.” She nods. “Do you know what you had?”
“A little girl,” she says with a sad smile. “I got to spend an hour with her until she was taken away. She was so beautiful. I still can remember every detail of her. She had deep baby blue eyes and a full head of brown hair. When I rubbed my hands over her hair it was silky smooth.” She smiles, and it makes me smile. “She had a little button nose and tiny little fingers she waved around when she was hungry.”
“She sounds perfect, just like her mommy. When was she born?”
“November second. She just turned three last month. She was born three weeks early. She was so tiny, weighing only five pounds five. I was nearly too scared to hold her.”
“She looked tiny in the photo.”
We lay there twined together in peaceful silence. She kisses my chest and whispers “I love you,” which makes my heart melt. They are the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.
I pull her up to my side and tuck her between my body and arm, then kiss her lips. “I love you as well, Angel.”
∞∞∞
Chapter 26
Callie
I WALK OUT into the kitchen, early in the morning, and find Krystal and Bry asleep on the couch together.
Going back a few weeks, I would be so pissed at Krystal, but now I don't care.
This move is a new beginning in my life. A new chapter.
I know I still have a history. It will always be there. But it's in the past now. From today on, I am only looking forward.
From now on, I'm not going to hold grudges and let hate eat away at me, over little insignificant things.
Yeah, Bryson called me a few names and made me feel like shit, but there are more important things in the world.
I've spent enough years hating life, living as if it didn't matter if I didn't wake the next morning.
Jace knows every detail about my past now and still wants me as I am, baggage and all.
I look over to Krystal and Bryson again and they actually look cute together.
Krystal has her head on his chest and he's got his arm wrapped around her.
I grab my cell and quickly snap a photo.
"What you are doin’ Angel?" I jump when Jace comes up behind me.
"Look at them. Just taking a photo to show Krystal later."
"Don't you pick on them."
"Me? As of I would." He looks at me with an are you serious face. "I won't, they look cute together." He shakes his head.
"I'm going to have a shower. Then once they're awake and ready we'll go."
"Okay, I’m just going down to the café to get breakfast," I say and kiss him before I go.
Since everything is packed up, there is no way to cook anything. So, Krystal and I decided to treat the boys to some bakery goods from the café we love.
I should have put in an order yesterday. After Maria has finished packing up everything I order, there is basically nothing in the sweets cabinet. I am a shocker, I love sweet food. I’m surprised I don’t look like a beach ball walking around with two stick legs.
“I’m going to miss you two girls,” Maria says, as she hands me the bags.
“I’ll come visit every time I am up this way.” Krystal and I have been coming here for three years now. You’ll see me buying their croissants several times a week. And the blueberry muffins are the best.
“I hope you do. It won’t be the same without you in here with your sweet smile.”
“I’ll definitely miss you. I don’t know what I’m going to do without your bakery foods. I can’t cook my own.” I frown and Maria laughs. She’s heard all about my lack of cooking skills.
I give her a hug and head back to the apartment in a hurry. The sooner we leave here and get Krystal settled in, the sooner I can get moved into my new home. I
can’t wait to finally call the ranch home.
I’m in such a great mood as I enter the lobby that I don’t notice anyone behind me until I hear that voice.
I freeze and my knees wobble and threaten to give away.
Oh, God. That voice. I haven’t heard it in years.
Please. Please let it be I am hearing things.
“Calli-star.” My body begins to shake.
It’s him.
I don’t answer him, but I can’t move either. I am frozen in place.
Hearing him makes me want to curl up in a ball like it did all those years ago.
The memories come back full force
“You are nothing but a slut”
“So I can remember this moment.” The sound of him taking a photo.
“Take it, you little whore.” While he shoves his dick in my mouth.
The pain from his fist connecting with my face.
Thinking I was going to die when he held a pillow over my head.
“I know about our little girl,” he says in a serious tone.
Please stop talking. I just want him to stop talking.
My whole body is covered in sweat and I can’t stop shaking.
How does he know about her? No one knows about her apart from Krystal and Jace. Oh, God, he’s been stalking me. I knew it was him in the supermarket the other month.
It makes me feel sick. I don’t want him near me.
“I had a right to know about her.”
No. No, he didn’t.
I don’t want him to know about her. I don’t want him to talk about her.
Everything being all hazy then the pain I felt as he roughly pushed himself inside me.
The evil gleam in his eyes as he forced me to look at his face.
“See you love it,” he groans out.
When I was in so much pain and so frightened that I couldn’t even cry.
The pain of giving birth to my baby.
It’s all too much. I need to get away from him.
“Please leave me alone,” I shakily whisper.
“I only want to talk and give you a letter to give to our girl.”
This pulls me out of my frozen state and my mood to anger.
“My baby! She was my little girl. You raped me,” I grind out.
How dare he?
I hear him suck in a sharp breath. Did he think I had just forgotten everything he did to me?
“You are nothing to her. She will never know who her father was. Her father is nothing but an evil monster. She will never know where she came from.” She deserves better. “I gave her up, so she could be with a loving family. With two parents who love her and cherish her every day. Not with a father who raped her mother, a mother who was fucked in the head because her step-father tortured her for years.”
I spin around on my heels and come face to face with the monster who has haunted me for years.
The monster who made me want to kill myself.
The man who was meant to protect me from bad people, but instead he harmed me worse than anyone else in the world ever could. He looks old and fragile. He looks innocent standing here.
But I know better.
Nothing about this man is innocent. He is pure evil.
“Just read this letter and give this one to our daughter.” He holds out two envelopes, but I do not take them. Nothing he could ever say can ever change what he did.
“You can keep your fucking letters. Do not come near me again. I don’t care who you are and who you know, but if you contact my daughter, I will do anything and everything to bring you down,” I growl, and he doesn’t say anything else.
“You used to scare me so much and you haunted me every day. But looking at you now, you are nothing but a pathetic man looking for forgiveness. You no longer scare me and everything about you is in my past.” I turn around and take shaky steps towards the elevator and ride up to our floor.
Once I get out, I slump against the wall and slide to the floor.
I can’t believe he walked up to me. Did he really think I would just accept an apology? That I won’t hate him?
Sitting here I don’t know how to feel. The way I reacted to him. I felt like I was the little fifteen-year-old girl who was scared and would hide away.
I hear my cell ring, but I don’t answer it. I just sit staring at the wall opposite me.
I am a strong woman now. I stand up for myself all the time. I don’t take any shit from anyone. Why does he still scare me?
I don’t know how long I sit here for and how many times I hear my cell ring before the apartment door opens and Jace comes barreling out the door.
“Oh, fuck Callie.” He rushes to me “What’s happened? Are you okay?” He feels me all over and looks all over with his eyes.
“What’s going on Callie? Answer me.”
Krystal and Bryson come running out and stand behind Jace.
“M-m-martin.”
I hear Krystal gasp. “Fuck,” Jace roars as he leaps up. “What did he do?”
I shake my head. “N-nothing. He was just downstairs,” I say quietly.
Jace leans down and quickly kisses my forehead. Next thing I know he is running for the stairs, with Bryson following behind him.
Krystal knees down in front of me. “He didn’t touch you?” I shake my head. “What did he say?”
“He…He knew about the…baby,” I say with a shaky voice and she gasps. “He tried to give me a letter for me and her.” I shake my head. “I didn’t take them.”
“How did he know?” I shrug my shoulders.
I don’t know. I know he has friends in high places. But I didn’t think he would be able to find out things like that about me.
“Are you okay?”
I slowly nod. “I just… I froze when I heard his voice. It was like I was back in my room… with him there with me. It wasn’t until he asked me to give her a letter, that I got out of my daze and stood up to him.”
“That’s normal, Hun. But the fact that you did stand up to him, means he doesn’t have a hold over you like he did.”
We get up off the floor and walk inside. Ten minutes later the guys return. Jace walks to me and wraps his arms around my shoulders.
I hear Krystal say something, then Bryson says that they didn’t find anything.
“Are you okay, Angel?” Jace murmurs into my ear.
“Yeah, it was just a shock. But I want to forget it. I want to move on.”
“Okay, Angel. Do you still want to move today? If not, we can wait and do it tomorrow.”
“NO!” I shout a little too loud. “No, he has affected my life too much in the past. I am not letting him get to me.” I step away from Jace and look up into his beautiful brown eyes. “I am okay. He is nothing to me now. My life is you and me from this moment on.”
Jace leans down and kisses my lips. “You really do amaze me, baby,” he mumbles against my lips. “You are strong and so determined.”
Yes, maybe I am, but it’s been Jace who has made me want to be better, that has helped me to become the person I am.
“If we didn’t have plenty to do today and if those two weren’t watching us, I would make love to you now.” I look over to Krystal and Bry and they are both looking around the place like they are trying to pretend we aren’t here.
“It wouldn’t bother-” I hear Bryson say before Jace growls. “Hey, you don’t even know what I was going to say. I was going to offer to take Krystal out for breakfast,” Bryson gets out quickly and I laugh.
Jace looks at me with a raised eyebrow and I shrug. It’s funny the way he gets worked up over me.
“You know I never say no to sex with you but yes, we have heaps to get loaded on.” I clap my hands. “Let’s get moving.”
I grab a box and push all thoughts of Martin and my past out of my head.
I am strong, and I am not going to let anything to do with Martin get to me anymore. This is my fresh start and he is not going to ruin it.
∞�
�∞
Chapter 27
Krystal
I DON’T THINK anyone is more relieved than I am, once we finally get my things moved into Jace’s house. Well, my house now.
I hope to God that they can’t find me here.
The visit I received last week was not a pretty one. Hopefully, my plea for more time was successful.
I look around my new home and smile. It’s a fantastic house. Not just because of all the luxuries, but because it’s a house, not a small apartment. I can do so much with the place. Once I get the rest of my things out of storage, I will have this place looking amazing.
But the thing I like most about being here is, I won’t have Callie and Jace across the hall going at it like rabbit’s half of the night when he stays over.
I hate thinking about it, but I have slept with him once. And yeah, he was good. But the stamina he must have to make Callie scream like she does several times a night is crazy. I’m going to love getting a full night’s sleep every night from now on.
I look out the back windows, over the backyard and pool and sigh. I feel safe for the first time in a long time.
I just hope it lasts for a while. Being further out from the city and not working at the strip club anymore, it hopefully will be a few weeks until I am found.
Arms wrap around my middle and I relax into the chest behind me.
Nothing feels more like home than right here in these arms.
Lips travel up my neck to my ear and I feel him bite down on my earlobe. I shiver and squirm from the slight pain.
“Tell me again why you haven’t told Callie about us?”
“You know why I haven’t.” I turn around and look up at Bryson.
He is so beautiful.
He takes my breath away, every time I gaze into his pale blue eyes.
“Hmmm, but things have changed now.”
“I know, I will tell her tomorrow.”
“Good. I don’t want her to be surprised and angry on Christmas day when she turns up and finds you there with me.” I don’t get a chance to reply before he swoops me up into his arms and carries me upstairs to my new room.