Always yours,
Storm
Dear Diary
It shouldn’t feel this good to be nineteen. Eighteen is the age where things change and that was last year, but it was no fun when Josse and Laurie were turning seventeen—I can’t wait for their birthdays. We’re going to have soooo much fun!
I keep trying to tell myself that age is only a number, but it means I’m one step closer to leaving this house.
It’s horrible, really, to think that the second I graduate is the second I’ll be out of here.
I don’t even want to come back for Thanksgiving. I have no doubt that I’ll return because I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t, but still… freedom is around the corner.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently.
I don’t want to believe that it’s because I’m ridiculous and I can’t stop watching that biker who waits in the parking lot every day for Jimmy. It’s just, when they ride off, he looks that way.
Free.
I don’t think I’ve ever been free.
I know for sure my mom hasn’t, and I don’t think she ever will be either.
I see him and Jimmy on their bikes, that girl, Kendra, on the back of Jimmy’s, and I watch them with envy.
I’d love to feel that way.
That’s probably as likely as me suddenly growing wings. Dad definitely wouldn’t approve of me bringing home a biker. Just the notion would probably make him have a coronary or something.
I shouldn’t find that amusing.
I really shouldn’t. Gah, that’s evil. I’m just sick of it. Sick of the rules, sick of the strict discipline. I’m nineteen now! I shouldn’t have to have a curfew, for God’s sake. Mom screams at me when I try to argue. She always screams now.
I can’t wait to go to college. Even if it’s for pre-med, anything is better than this. Being a good girl is so tiring. Living my life so that Dad’s flock can’t judge me, doing as I’m told just in case it triggers his disapproval, waiting on Mom to slap me to punish me… I’m so ready for the next step.
Tonight’s my birthday party. I’m surprised by how many people are saying that they’re coming seeing as I’m the quiet one in our year, but I guess it’s any excuse for a good time.
You don’t think nobody will show up, do you?
We made arrangements for seventy people, but… it could be a prank, couldn’t it?
Ugh.
I hope someone shows up.
Nineteen… freedom is just around the corner.
Nineteen
Keira
PAST
"Try again!"
I sobbed at my mother’s harsh demand, sobbed even harder when she slapped me after I failed to open the package, snatching it from me to rip out the pregnancy test and to shove it in my hands.
"So help me God, Keira, if you’ve managed to get yourself pregnant, I won’t be able to save you from him this time."
My eyes rounded at her words. "Save me from him?" I swallowed.
It sounded ridiculous, but she was channeling major aggression like I’d never seen before—before or after the moments she slapped me—and when I’d told my parents that I thought I was pregnant, my father had quietly left the room and told Mom to ‘deal’ with it.
"Do you think he’ll kill me?" It sounded so stupid, but…
I knew to tread lightly around him.
He often disappeared, leaving Mom to chastise me whenever I did something he didn’t appreciate, but he was the one behind the punishments. He was the driving force behind them.
"Why would he do that when he could just punish you for the rest of your life?" was her bitter retort as she shoved another glass of water at me.
Draining it dry, I stared up at her, the second pregnancy test in one hand, the empty glass in the other, wondering how this had happened. Wondering when this had gone wrong.
He’d used a condom.
I wanted to scream it.
He’d used a condom.
She filled the glass again, twice more, and I drank them. Twice more.
When I finally needed to pee, my mouth trembled as I stuck the kit between my legs, no longer embarrassed about being on the toilet in front of my mom, no longer caring about having to pee in front of her because this was the third time.
The last time.
There was a short row of positive tests on the vanity, but she still kept making me do this. Like one negative was all I needed to finally be allowed out of the bathroom.
My eyes watered when she set the timer on her phone, but I knew.
I was pregnant.
I’d known when my period hadn’t come. I’d known when I started bawling at the sight of the photos of the Holocaust we were shown in school. Not just saddened, but moved to actual tears.
How had this happened?
I thought about Storm. About how he’d looked as he kissed me. About how his eyes had softened, that sorrow in his eyes gone as he held me, as he touched me, as he caressed me, reveled in me.
I’d never felt anything like that before.
Ever.
I sometimes knew I’d never feel it again either.
No one would look at me like he did. It was intoxicating, making me giddy with a strange sense of power.
He was a Sinner. He was a brother in an MC that everyone in town said actually killed people and ran drugs and guns and stuff for a living.
But that all faded away, my nerves, too, when he looked at me and that sorrow wasn’t in his eyes.
I did that.
Me.
Just by being there.
By kissing him, holding him, needing him, wanting him back.
The memory of the one time we’d had sex made me feel flushed and awkward as I sat on the toilet. It was weird, her looming over me, but I had a feeling she had an arsenal of pregnancy tests just waiting for me to pee on. I didn’t know where she thought I got it from, but hell, I was nervous enough that it wasn’t a problem.
Storm should be here.
Not her.
I shouldn’t be terrified. I wouldn’t be if he were here.
I’d be safe.
Safe from everyone. Safe from the world.
"Oh, God," she rasped, breaking into my thoughts a second before the alarm went off.
I knew what that meant.
Another positive.
Shocked silence ratcheted the tension up twofold in the small downstairs bathroom, and I wondered if she was really that naive that she’d put all her prayers on one small test, but… hell if I knew what was happening here.
I’d blurted out the truth over meatloaf. We always had meatloaf on Mondays. As my dad drenched his in gravy, the one vice, of all things, he allowed himself—aside from his parishioner’s wives—I’d told them, unable to hold it in, needing their help and not sure what to do.
That was why I was here.
Meatloaf now decorated the peony wallpaper in the dining room, and for the first time in my life, my father had slapped me. I’d been spanked as a child, but slapped? Never by him.
Of course, when Mom did it, she’d hit the same cheek.
Tomorrow, I’d be bruised.
If I lived that long because that was the kind of vibe I was getting here.
That thing kids said, ‘My parents are gonna kill me,’ felt shockingly real right about now.