“I can’t believe you finally answered, bro. I’m in trouble. I need money.” I bring the phone away from my ear and look it over. It’s the same model, but the chip mine has from me dropping it when Finlay surprised me in the kitchen is gone. The man on the phone has an evil voice… the evil voice of the man who stole my life. My hands shake as I place the phone back to my ear. “James, you still owe me. I need money.” I cover my mouth to stop a scream tearing from me. I’m hyperventilating, trying to grip on to reality. “James, don’t fucking ignore me. You owe me.” Tears burn my cheeks, and I finally find my voice.
“How do you know James?”
Silence. I don’t think he’s going to answer until he says, “Antonia?” My name on his lips twists my insides. His sick, deep laugh echoes down the line, mocking me. “Well, well. I didn’t think I would hear your sniffling cries again.”
“How do you know James? Who are you?” I scream.
“You have no clue, do you? Did he even tell you he had a brother? Of course he didn’t. Our parents wouldn’t allow that.”
“You’re lying. He would have said if he had a brother.”
“Oh, there’s a lot he wouldn’t tell his precious Antonia, like the fact that I went down for him when he raped my girlfriend.”
“You’re lying,” I croak.
“I may have knocked her out beforehand, but he still fucked her. She cried like a child when she became conscious with his little dick inside her. He never really got over it. He’s not cut out for putting whores in their place.”
I can’t breathe.
“He gave me the code,” he growls down the line. “He told me only one kid would be there and gave me the codes he took from the sticky note in your room. How careless and trusting you are.”
“Stop,” I beg.
“He couldn’t access his own money without our parents knowing, so he gave me everything I needed, and you were just a sweet fucking bonus.”
“No.”
“Yes. I’ll be seeing you, Antonia, to finish what we started.”
I throw the phone across the room and my stomach drops, turning over, causing vomit to retch from me. Deep in the pit of my abdomen, a swirling of pain spreads through my lower tummy, almost unbearable, and then the warm blood leaking down my leg confirms the heart-destroying truth. I’m losing our baby.
The doctors said around twenty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and there was nothing I could have done. It wasn’t my fault. “Sometimes pregnancies don’t stick,” he had said, like it was a post-it note losing its glue. They see it so often they become desensitized, making you feel unworthy of your devastation.
Shock caused my miscarriage, trauma shocking my system. I want to scream, roar out this pain, I want to rip from my skin and soak in acid to wash that animal from my soul. He took everything from me, and it was because of James. The boy I loved, trusted, intended to spend my life with before he couldn’t look at me the same way. How dare he?
Rage courses through me in stages, leaving me feeling helpless and murderous all at the same time.
Finlay’s face flitters through my mind whenever I think of my love for James. I didn’t know it then, but the way I feel for Finlay is so different to how things were with James.
Finlay was shouting at Gavin when he noticed me buckled over, gasping for breath. That was days and days ago. I haven’t seen him or anyone since, because if I do then I will have to face what happened, and it’s too painful. Too real, and it’s inevitable he will need to know that my past has come back to take more from him. He thought he lost me to James.
“Would you like to see your parents?”
Yes, is the first word that comes to mind, and it’s the first time I’ve wanted to see anyone. Mum will be worried sick, and I’ll eventually have to explain to her that everything that happened to me, to Richard, to her, was because of my reckless trust in another. I left the codes out in the open and would have even given them to him, never imagining the betrayal that would come from it. I’m weak when it comes to affairs of the heart. Never again will I allow my heart to be so open. I’ll create an impenetrable prison around it.
“Antonia?”
It annoys me that he addresses me by my first name; I haven’t given him permission to do so, but he also sees me as weak, child-like, to be handled as one.
I nod meekly and pull the covers up over me, sinking back on the bed. Getting out of here so I can confront James and inform the police that I know who the attacker is can’t wait any longer. That bastard needs to pay.
Not telling my parents about the phone call is best. I need to speak to James myself before anyone else gets the chance. I need to hear him confirm what his brother said before I send the police to arrest him.
There’s still a small part of me hoping beyond hope that it isn’t true, the weak part, even though deep down I know it is.
All that time he made me feel like I was dirty and broken, and it was all because of him, because of his brother. Rage and bitter torment cause my skin to heat and itch with fury. It’s so powerful, some days it’s all I feel, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to move on from this.
EVERYTHING IS WRONG.
No one is speaking to me and I’m going out of my damn mind. I’m dying inside knowing my woman lost our baby and she won’t let me see her, comfort her, tell her my insides are corroding with an ache I can’t shift.
She was barely pregnant, and I know this happens, but I’d let myself believe, see the future. I let myself love the baby I thought we were going to have in our arms, and instead, I have nothing. Why won’t they just let me in there? She’ll be okay if they just let me hold her.
Nine fucking days and nights in this hospital waiting room and she still won’t see me. Does she blame me? I got her here straight away, but was it mine, Gav’s and Gaby’s argument that caused this to happen? Did we over-stress her? Is that possible? Fuck. I can’t wait around anymore.
My head keeps replaying that night. Her on the phone and me finally losing my shit over the thought of Gaby and Gavin going at it and being siblings.
Fuck. Everything is such a mess.
The vibrations of my cell buzzing against my leg jerks me to the present. I know it will be my mother again; she’s been calling and texting my phone since that night. Gaby has tried to see her, but she’s been avoiding her.
We need to know the truth with regards to Gaby, and she’s kept her in the dark long enough. She’s kept us all in the dark long enough.
Peeking my head around the corner to Antonia’s room, I wait for the doctor to tell her parents that she won’t see anyone, but instead, he opens her door and shows them inside. My gut twists and my fucking soul wilts from the inside. She just doesn’t want to see me.
An hour later, they reappear in the waiting room, her mother giving me a look of distaste. “We will be taking her back to her apartment in a couple of days, and we think it best that you give her some space.”
“She’s had space.”
“I’m not asking, Finlay Hayes. How much more damage do you want to inflict?”