Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“I am?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t doing anything then, but…”
“But?”
“Now that I know that’s all it takes, I’ll definitely be doing it.”
“Fuck,” he mumbles.
“All. The. Time.”
“I knew from the moment I saw you barefoot pumping gas you were going to be trouble,” he responds.
“You love every minute of it.”
“Every fucking minute,” he grins and I swear it doesn’t matter that we’ve been together for years, that we have kids, that I’m pregnant now. It doesn’t matter that he’s got gray hair starting to show in his beard or that we’ve had so much sex, that we know what the other is going to do without even realizing it. None of that matters, because it just keeps getting better and when he grins at me like he is right now, and when his voice goes hoarse with hunger… I instantly get wet.
I love my man.
19
Rory
I can’t stop crying. Nothing I do is stopping the tears and the misery just keeps running out of me faster than I can breathe. I’m lying on the floor, sobs raking through my body so hard that it’s physically painful. I’m trying to stifle the sound of my sobs, but even that is a lost cause. It’s like now that I’ve decided to let some of my pain out… It won’t stop.
I don’t want to hate Nicole. It’s not her fault, but I don’t understand how she is allowed to have three children and I couldn’t keep just one. Diesel may have never believed the child was his, and even if he did, maybe he would have wanted nothing to do with it, but… I wanted my child. I wanted to feel it growing inside of me. I wanted to give it life…
I… wanted to hold my baby.
I wanted to hear its laugh.
I wanted to hear its cry.
I wanted to be its mother…
Its.
That’s what my baby is… an it. I can’t give it a name.
The realization that I will never know if my child was a girl or boy hits me and it hits hard. It feels like a sucker punch to the abdomen, so hard, so horrific that it takes my breath. My chest hurts, my heart contracts and still the breath won’t come. I can’t get oxygen into my lungs. The pain is so intense, I feel like I’m having a heart attack. Finally, I gasp loudly, the sound broken and trembled, as a small amount of oxygen finally gets pulled into my lungs.
More tears fall; tears that are torn from my body as I grieve a life I couldn’t protect. A child…that I never held. A child I won’t even be allowed to bury. To the world, the child wasn’t even real. I wasn’t far enough long for it to even count as a person to them… but it was to me… to me…it was… everything.
“Rory, honey…”
My body jerks as I lift up. Through my tears, I see a blurry image of Nicole. I recoil, my body moving towards the wall—wanting as far away from Nicole as I can get. It isn’t logical or even right, but at this moment I feel like she’s the enemy. She has children, two with one coming soon from the looks of her.
Why is it she gets three children and I couldn’t have one…
“I want to be alone,” I whisper, the words slurred through my sobbing.
“Rory, let me help you.”
“You can’t help me,” I tell her, shaking my head back and forth in denial.
“I want to try,” she says approaching me cautiously, as if I was a wounded animal… and I am. I’m so wounded, so broken that there will never be a way to completely put me back together again. How could there be?
How can I be whole when my child is no longer a part of me?
“There’s nothing you can do,” I tell her, still shaking my head back and forth, my heart beating so hard it feels like it might break free from my chest.
“It might help if you talk to me, get it out to someone who understands—”
“You don’t understand! You could never understand! Your life is perfect! You have everything!”
“Rory—”
“I have nothing. I’ve lost everything,” I respond, not really listening to her now. Instead, I’m losing myself into the darkness inside of me that’s threatening to swallow me completely.
“Oh God, you’ve heard about Diesel,” she whispers. It doesn’t hit me. I don’t truly understand what she’s saying. I’m too lost in my misery.
“Leave me alone,” I plead with her, misery coming off of me in waves. How can she not feel it?
Why won’t she leave me alone?
I’m rocking back and forth, feeling as if I’m dying inside, when Nicole’s arms go around me and she pulls me into her body. I want to pull away, recoil from her touch, but I’m too lost… too tired. My head drops down and I look at her stomach. I don’t want to. I hate myself when I do it, but I reach down and touch her stomach. It’s warm, solid, firm… real… Nothing like the emptiness and death inside of me…