Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72945 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 365(@200wpm)___ 292(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
I stare at that text and let it roll around my brain. I told her to message me if he ever came into the coffee shop, but I guess she spotted him somewhere else, and now I have a choice to make.
Confront him now or leave it alone and let him come back on his own time.
If he’s going to come back at all.
I can’t continue like this. Not with what Cowan said back in the hotel room. Baptist needs to know the truth about everything we went through—that it was some sick reality film orchestrated by an absolute monster—but more than that, so much more than that, he has to know about the baby.
Enough holding back. Enough being afraid.
I’m pregnant with Baptist’s child and I need him to know.
Before anything else, even if it ruins whatever small, precious thing we’ve been growing, like the beginnings of a house fire when it’s still only a spark, infinitely hot but infinitely tiny, compressed into nothing more than an inch of space and a lifetime of possibility, I’m willing to take that risk. I’m willing to let that spark fizzle and fade, if it means he knows the truth.
Or maybe it’ll burn so hot it consumes us both.
Isn’t that what I want?
I put on my big girl pants, pull my shit together, and make my way down to The Black Sheep.
It’s a bar set into the lower floors of a black building on the corner of Fairmount and Twenty-First. The place is mostly empty and music drifts from speakers in the ceiling. I spot him sitting alone at a bar in an empty front room, elbows flanking a large tumbler of whiskey, shoulders slumped and spine curved like a half-moon. It’s barely past one in the afternoon, and I hope Baptist isn’t too drunk, because I need him paying attention.
I need him to really understand.
He looks over as I approach. If I expected something from him, I don’t get it. There’s no smile, no frown, no excitement and no dread, only a passive tilt of his head and a stare like he barely knows who I am.
Like I’m some stranger.
That hurts more than anything else.
“Your eye looks terrible,” he says flatly.
I try not to smile. “I know, I tried to ice it, but—” I just shrug and glance at the mirror behind the bottles. I look back at myself, eye swollen and purple, lip slightly plump, like he’d bitten me too hard. I push that thought away. I doubt he’ll ever bite me again, even if my body aches for his hands on my skin and his lips against my throat.
His touch, his kiss, owning me.
“I’m sorry.” He nods his head toward the stool next to him. “If you want to sit, go ahead. I’m not staying long.”
I pull it out and sit. “You okay? Where are you going?”
“I’m fine. Just doing some thinking.” He sips his whiskey and stares at the liquid as he sloshes it around the glass. “Before you ask, no, I’m not drunk. Not yet. This is my first. And I don’t know where I’m going. Somewhere that isn’t here.”
My stomach twists with confusion and a bone-deep exhaustion. “I wasn’t going to ask.”
He shrugs as if he doesn’t care either way. The bartender comes over and asks if I want anything and I tell him just a soda water with lime. He brings it and I sip as Baptist studies me.
“I spoke with Cowan yesterday,” he says finally, breaking the silence I’m too weak to break myself. I should blurt the truth out before I lose my nerve but I can’t seem to make it happen.
“I guess he’s not dead since you’re not in jail.”
“Unfortunately, no, he’s still among the living. But he told me why he’s been doing all this. You know, the thinly veiled psychological torture.”
I perk up slightly, eyebrows raised. “Really? And what happened?”
“I’m not sure I believe him, if I’m honest.” He hesitates and shakes his head. “He says it was all revenge. That he got into some petty bullshit dispute with my father years and years ago back when he was first starting out, and now he’s taking it out on me. Or I guess he took it out, since it seems like we’re finished with the guy.”
I take a deep breath and—stop myself.
“Wait, he told you what?”
He sips his whiskey. “I know, it’s implausible, right? I mean, how did Cowan and my father even know each other? And why didn’t my father ever mention that he once knew an incredibly famous and successful director? You never met my dad, but that was exactly the sort of thing he’d talk about all the time—he’d bring out the story about how he ripped off Tony Cowan at parties any chance he could.”
“No, hold on,” I say quickly and he frowns at me curiously. “I mean, I talked to Cowan after you left the hotel, when everything happened.”