I stand up, grab my bag, and wave her off.
“I’ll see you later. I just remembered something. I will catch up with you later.”
I run out of the hall as fast as I can and barely get outside before I’m retching. Bending over, I empty the entire contents of my stomach while keeping a hand on the wall next to me to hold me up.
Oh no, this is not good. This is so not good. It can’t be. It cannot be real. I reach in my bag, pull out a bottle of water, swish some in my mouth, and spit it out. Then I search for a napkin, and when I realize I don’t have any, I wipe my mouth on the inside collar of my shirt.
There is only one way to know. I head over to the pharmacy.
Never in my life did I think I would be in this section of the pharmacy, buying one of these boxes. I stare at them without being able to see them. My emotions are running wild at full throttle. I try desperately not to be sick again.
Finally, I pick up the two cheapest boxes and compare them. But I cannot make sense of which one is better because my eyes won’t focus, and it is just too much information for my overloaded brain. I decide to pick the cheaper of the two, walk to the counter, make my purchase, hands trembling, and then head back to the bathroom.
I have to know.
A minute later, and I am peeing on a stick in the handicap stall, feeling like an idiot. I wipe myself and put the butt of the stick in my mouth while I raise and button my pants. Then I look at it, willing it with all my heart to show negative.
A couple of minutes later and all my dreams evaporate.
I can’t believe it. I absolutely cannot believe it. Please, God, say it’s not true, that this is some cruel, awful, terrible joke.
Tears start falling from my face, and I throw the stick in the corner of the stall in a rage. No!
Everything was going so right. I got into school, I got my own place, I got away from my parents, everything was going so great. Now I am going to be dragged back down to hell for the rest of my life!
I wanted to learn to dance. I wanted to get a job that I cared about. I wanted to see the world. All of that is gone now.
I can barely care for myself! How am I ever going to take care of a baby? How would I even know how to take care of one? I have been disowned by my family and the church, not that they’d help me anyway. No one was going to help me.
I would be completely dependent on Lex, the one thing I’ve been trying to avoid. In the same way I had been dependent on my father. Letting them dole out money or attention. Never to have any choices of my own. Chained with a baby at my hip.
This can’t be!
I sob and sob, doubling over, clutching the pain in my belly where this enemy has been growing. I know what this means… I’m trapped, more so than ever before because this one was for life.
There is no way to do this alone. I’ll have to give the baby up, or tell Lex and let him help me. Either way, I will never be free again.
I slip to the floor and sob until nothing but dry air comes out.
13
Lex
The drive to pick up Jude is a long one. For some reason, it feels like I can’t get to her fast enough today. I maneuver around cars, I speed up at yellow lights, my pulse races as I scan the crowds of students leaving the building after their last class, and finally, I spot her.
I move up to where she is waiting and reach over to open the door for her. Before she steps off the curb, I notice something is off. Her eyes aren’t right, and she doesn’t seem to see me. I put the car in park and quickly come around to see what’s up.
“Jude? Are you okay?” I ask softly, but with urgency.
“Lex, don’t treat me like a child. I can’t handle it. I hate when you do that.”
Her body is tense and leaning away from me, and I don’t know what has happened between this morning and now to make her act this way. But whatever it is, it’s not good. My mind races back to Roman and Luke, and I panic, wondering if they have gotten to her somehow, trying to warn her about something. Or if she was threatened by someone else at school. I have no way of knowing. It is all so far out of my fucking control.
A woman walks up to us just then–she’s wearing a cotton head scarf that pulls all of her hair back out of her face, which is makeup free, and she’s in a long skirt and turtleneck like I had seen Jude wear on our first night together– and when she touches Jude’s arm, Jude turns to look at her and recoils in horror. I can tell that she can’t breathe, and her features pale.
“Mom, what are you doing here?”
Shocked, I suck in a sharp breath of air. She does have a family… a mom. Why would she hide them from me? Why would she pretend to be an orphan? I don’t understand why she is reacting to her this way. I watch the exchange between the two of them, so many things passing back and forth unsaid, a whole lifetime of language that had developed between them that I knew nothing about.
How could Jude have hidden her from me?
The woman looks at me and then looks me up and down. Disgust. That’s all I see on her face. As if I am trash. Unworthy of her daughter.
“You need to come back home.” Her tone is demanding and insistent. “We changed our minds, and we forgive you. There is still time for everything to work out like it’s supposed to. Bartholomew still agrees to do right by you even without you being pure. Jude, he is willing to forgive you and still take you as his wife.”
Jude screams, and everybody around us turns to stare.
“Get out of here! I never want you to come back here again! The day you disowned me, I disowned you! I want you out of my life! You and your husband. There is NO going back. I would rather die!”
It is as if Jude is spitting at her, and I cannot imagine what horrors must have befallen her to have such a strong reaction to this mousy woman.
“Lex, get me out of here.”
Jude pushes past me and reaches for the door that’s half open and yanks it all the way before she steps in and turns to glare at her mother as she slams it shut between them. I have never seen Jude be rude to anyone, much less someone who might be as close to her as her mother. I don’t understand. I have never seen any woman act that way toward their mom, with such disdain and disrespect.
I look at her mother, who looks back at me as if I was the devil incarnate. I reel. I have no idea why she would look at me that way. And what was all this about her purity? And her engagement to someone? What the fuck!
I take long strides around to my side of the truck, get in, and turn it on. I have to get Jude away, at least to find out what the hell is going on.
We drive home in silence, and the pieces start falling into place. She gave up her virginity to me to get away. How bad must things have been for her to do that–just to get away? For her to get out of a marriage? Was she in a cult? Was she a religious fanatic? What did I even know about this girl? I have questions, and she needs to give me some answers.
As soon as the front door is shut behind us, I open my mouth to tell her I have questions, but she flips the script before I can.
Jude turns and pushes me against the front door and reaches for my belt loop to unbuckle my pants.
“No talking, just this, right now. I need you.”
I grasp both of her upper arms and firmly say, “No, Jude, no.”
“Yes, please. I need this. I need you,” she pleads, her small hands on my zipper, now lowering it, making my cock spring forward. There is something about her needing me that bad that makes me hot for her all over again. The fight in me is gone in an instant. I bury my hands in her hair and bring her mouth up as high as I can, pulling her up onto her tippy toes before I lean down to kiss her. She is so tiny, so frail, and so filled with power right now.