A TORRENT of pain blazes through my lower back, and I cry out, rolling over to get away from the cause, but it’s inside me. In my mind, I know it’s happening inside me. No matter how hard I fight to get away from the perpetual stabbing at my spine, it stalks along in my wake, like a man hovering over my crippling body with a knife, plunging it into my back.
There is no such man.
I crawl to the bathroom on my hands and knees. Pressure bloats around my lower spine, sending shooting stars into my vision, while the need to get to the toilet keeps my tireless knees and hands sliding along the floorboards.
Muscles inside me spasm.
Nausea fills my stomach.
And I’m no longer on my knees but lifted. Flipping in pain as strong arms carry me into the shower, I’m so confused by the moment. All I can feel is the devastating agony.
It is all I have room for.
Sir…
The spray of the water hits my head, and he slides down to the marble tiles with me in his arms. My legs folded like a pyramid over his, my head in the cup of his elbow.
I writhe.
Cry out.
Another burst erupts, and I scream so loud the sound continues to beat off the walls long into the next stabbing sensation, and the one after that. Or maybe I haven’t stopped screaming. I don’t know what’s happening.
‘Help.’ Is all my throat has the energy to say between bursts of guttural sobs and screams. ‘Help.’ Trembling hands that belong to me reach to cup the pain.
Then my back rips down the centre and my body opens. I reach for my core and bring my hand back. The sight of strings of blood drags another scream from me.
As I wail at the viscous rouge fluid webbing my fingers, Clay pushes my hand from view. He cups my cheeks, directing my pooling eyes to his piercing blue orbs, a stark sight amidst the dread blurring my vision.
‘Don’t look, Fawn.’ My name. Don’t look. The combination of those words twists my heart.
I sob. ‘Sir.’
His brows draw in, and he grits out, ‘It’s going to be okay, little deer.’ He pulls me in tighter, and my back convulses again, my thighs forced wider by contractions. Pressure detonates at my core, in my sides, all across the nerves attached to my body. They fire all at once like rockets inside my central nervous system.
‘Goddamn it, Fawn! Fuck, I’ve got you. Breathe for me. Breathe.’
Blinded by the pain, I squeeze my eyes shut, panting, and howling through the agony, the immense pressure. My hands fist. My nails stab my palms. And I can’t control the tightening of my muscles. Clay pries my fingers apart, placing his arm into my grasp, so I can shred his skin instead.
Then I feel the swelling inside me drop. Leave me. And the pain ebbs to a dull throb. The finality of it… of that passing sensation, of less pain, hurts so much more.
I wail as the reality of what just happened slips through the gaps between my dwindling pain. The cramping now like broken promises and the ruins of possibilities.
Clay buries my face into his chest. ‘Don’t look.’ My nails are embedded in his forearm, while his big, warm body lulls me, rocking with me back and forth. ‘This is the last thing, Fawn. I swear it! The last thing. I will drag God himself to Hell before I let you hurt again.’
The feel of being so empty and hollow assaults me, and I dare not glance between my thighs because I know what I’ll have to witness, what I’ll have to acknowledge. Fourteen weeks of delicately constructed life reduced to a blob, a crimson mass. I didn’t want him anyway…
Clay’s warm hand pushes my wet hair from my face as the warm spray soaks us, mingling with the blood puddling around our bodies. I didn’t want him anyway…
Clay presses his lips to my forehead. ‘It’s okay, sweet girl. Everything is going to be okay.’
I didn’t want him anyway.
Bad things come in threes.
Her suicide: number one.
His murder: number two.
My miscarriage: number three.
