Slow Agony (11 page)

I thought about it.

I couldn’t remember.

Wait. What was I doing thinking about this? I was having sex with Griffin again, the thing I’d wanted the most since he left me, and I was missing it because I was contemplating other stupid stuff?

He picked up his pace, hammering into me, panting against my skin.

I tried to find the rhythm of it, allow myself to feel the pleasure. It didn’t hurt anymore. I seemed to have gotten wet enough and stretched enough for him to move inside me. But I was disconnected from it, from him.

And then he suddenly grunted. Shuddered.

And stopped, going lifeless against my body.

“Sorry,” he mumbled into my neck.

What? That was it?

Griffin pushed himself up on his arms. He cringed. “It’s been a while. I really couldn’t, um, hold back any longer.”

So, what was I supposed to say to that? I touched him. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. That must have sucked for you.”

Sucked? Well... “It was fine. I don’t have to have an orgasm every time we have sex.”

He rolled off of me, drawing me into his arms. “Yes, you should. I owe you.” His hands roamed over me lazily. He yawned. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear. In the morning.”

The morning, huh?

He kissed the tip of my nose, then my forehead. “My doll.”

He was asleep in minutes.

I lay in the circle of his sleeping arms for a minute, gazing at his face.

Then I got up. I pulled the covers aside and covered him up, tucking him in.

I turned off the light, intending to get back in bed with him. But as I stood over his sleeping form, looking at him in the darkness, I didn’t feel the least bit tired.

I wandered over to the window of the Holiday Inn. I peered down at the dark parking lot. My legs were shaking. I felt a tender soreness between my legs. I’d wanted...

And then, for no reason I could figure out, I started crying. I wasn’t crying because Griffin had hurt me when we had sex, and I wasn’t crying because it hadn’t been pleasurable. Those were things that sometimes happened, and they didn’t bother me.

I should have been happy. He wanted me.

And I wanted him.

But the tears were still coming, and as I cried, things were getting worse, not better. My sobs were deepening, growing louder. I tried to stifle them, shoving my fist into my mouth and biting down on my knuckles. It didn’t seem to work.

“Doll?”

Griffin’s voice from the other side of the room. I’d been too loud. I’d woken him up.

I couldn’t answer. I was crying too hard.

He got out of bed and made his way over to me. In the scant light that came in from the window, he was nothing more than a hulking shadow.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

I pulled away.

“He
did
do something, didn’t he?” His voice was gruff.

“No,” I said through my tears. “No, it’s not about that.”

“Then what?” he asked.

I scrubbed at my face with my hands.

“Was the sex that bad?”

I hiccupped, laughing a little. “No. No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He drew me into his arms. “Nothing’s wrong with you, doll. Nothing at all.”

I tried to let him comfort me, but I couldn’t. I pushed him away. “You don’t really think that.”

“Of course I do.”

“You think I’m selfish,” I said. “Did that change just because some psycho tied me up and cut me?”

He didn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

“God, I wish you wouldn’t have brought that up,” he said.
“Me too,” I said. I took a shuddering breath, trying to calm the last of my tears. “Let’s go to bed.” I went to the other bed, the one he hadn’t gotten out of, the one that was still made, and pulled aside the covers. I slid into it alone. The sheets were cool and smooth.

He hadn’t moved. I could see him by the window, silhouetted against the moonlight. “We aren’t going to be able to fix this, are we?”

I pulled the covers close. “I don’t know, Griffin.”

“All I want to do is forget it happened.”

“Do you think you can?” I rolled over so that my back was to him, but I could feel his presence behind me. “I thought that was what I wanted too. But now, now that I’ve touched you, I’m not sure that I can forget. It’s all there, Griffin. It’s in the way we made love. You were right. We’re broken.”

He sat down on the bed. I felt the weight of him tug at the covers.

I turned to look at him.

“How far along would you have been now?” he asked.

“Six months.”

He stared at his hands.

“I did it because you were gone,” I said.

“Dammit, Leigh.”

“It’s a good thing, Griffin. Can you imagine how much worse all of this would be if I was pregnant?”

He flinched like I’d slapped him. “I would never have let him near you if—”

“Right,” I said. “Because if I wasn’t a selfish slut, then you wouldn’t have left me. Weren’t those the words you used, Griffin?”

“I’m sorry.” His voice was gravelly. “It’s only that it doesn’t make sense. If it really it was my baby, then why’d you get rid of it?”

“Because you disappeared,” I said. “And... I thought we’d talked about it, anyway. I thought you knew that I didn’t want—”

“I thought you were joking,” he said. “I didn’t think anyone could seriously terminate a pregnancy because she was worried about stretching out her stomach.”

“I
was
joking about that,” I said. “That’s not why I did it.”

He clenched his hands into fists. “You didn’t even ask me.”

“You weren’t around to ask.”

He got off the bed. “So, it’s my fault?”

I pulled the covers tight against my chin, as if they could protect me. Yes, it was his fault. He’d blown up at me in January at the New Year’s party over nothing. He was convinced I’d kissed Clint, and then he ran away. And I didn’t see him for weeks.

That was when I missed my period.

By the time he came back, full of apologies, I’d already gotten rid of it.

I had to. I
had
to.

He’d left me all alone.

“How can it be my fault when you’re the one who did it?”

I didn’t know what to say. “It was your fault that you abandoned me.”

“I wouldn’t have left if I’d known,” he said.

“I didn’t know either.”

“You were supposed to be on birth control. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I was,” I said. “But I must have missed a few pills. I don’t know.”

When he came back, I didn’t have to tell him about it. I could have hidden the abortion from him. But I was angry with him, and I was hurting.

Right afterwards, I was pretty depressed. The doctor said it was hormones, and it was to be expected. My body had to readjust to its not-pregnant state, and it processed the whole thing something like an abrupt miscarriage. I knew there were physical reasons for why I felt the way I did, but that didn’t stop me from feeling that way.

I was sad and lonely and a tiny bit guilty. Because...

Well, I was too young to have a baby.

Except for the fact that I wasn’t so sure that was true anymore. It had easily been true when I was eighteen years old. It had been mostly true when I was twenty. But I was twenty-two now, and in my senior year of college. I was planning on going to grad school after college, and I wouldn’t have been able to take care of a baby and get a master’s.

But...

Well, I wasn’t sure that I really should get a master’s. Wasn’t graduate school a little vain and unnecessary? Couldn’t I have taken my degree and gotten some kind of management job and supported my baby and waited until she was five or six to go back to grad school?

Couldn’t I have made a better decision?

After all, no one ever felt ready for children, did they?

At what point did my decision cross the line? Was it the responsible thing to do given that I wasn’t ready to be a parent? Or was it indicative of my immaturity and selfishness? Was it time for me to grow up now?

But it didn’t matter, anyway, because, when he came back, it was already done. Maybe I hadn’t thought it through enough before, but...

I sat up in bed. “You have to understand, Griffin, what it felt like. I’d been invaded. I had this
thing
in me—”

“Don’t say that.” He sounded disgusted.

“I didn’t ask for it, it was just there, and I wanted it out. I wanted it gone. I was afraid of it.”

“You...” He sucked in breath through his nose. “It wasn’t a thing. It was a baby.”

“No, it wasn’t. Not yet it wasn’t. It was... part of my body, like a disease or a virus—”

“Don’t say that,” he said. He stalked over to me. He leaned down, his face inches from mine. “It belonged to me too.”

I bit my lip.

“Didn’t it? You claim it was mine.”

“It was. Of course it was.”

“Then don’t call it a disease.” His voice was breaking.

Oh. I hadn’t thought that he would—

He pointed at his chest. “My child.
I
couldn’t protect it. I couldn’t protect it from
you
.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I said.

He sank down onto the opposite bed. “I’m supposed to be able to trust you.”

“I trusted you not to leave me.”

“You think I don’t know that? I screwed up.” He rubbed the top of his head with both of his hands. “But I never thought you would do that. And it... when I look at you, it confuses me. I want to protect you, but you... you killed my child.”

My mouth opened. That wasn’t fair.

“I can’t trust you, and we...” He pointed at me and then at himself. “We’re supposed to both take care of our children.”

“It wasn’t a child,” I said.

He punched the headboard of the bed. “Leigh, don’t.”

“It
wasn’t
,” I said. “You know if I believed that I never would have done it.”

“But what about what I believe? Does that even matter?”

“What do you believe? Do you think I’m a murderer? Is that why you ran to that Daisy person, with all her ‘spirituality’? Because you knew she thought the same way you did?”

He hit the headboard again. “For fuck’s sake, stop it.”

But I couldn’t. “Do you really think I killed a baby? Really?” Now my voice was the one breaking.

He got up and stalked out of the hotel room. The door slammed shut after him.

I threw aside the covers and got out of bed. I went to the door and threw it open. “Don’t run away from me. Don’t run away from this. All you do is run.”

He stiffened, halting in the hallway. He looked over his shoulder at me. “I’m sorry, doll. I can’t talk anymore. I
can’t
.” He turned around and kept walking.

I watched him until he disappeared around the corner. Then I pulled myself back inside the hotel room and started crying again. I collapsed on the bed, a mess of tears and anger, and I sobbed until I was too exhausted to cry anymore.

Chapter Seven

I woke up to someone nudging me with a hard, plastic rectangle. I opened my eyes. It was a phone, and Silas was using it to wake me up.

“Griffin got us new phones,” he said. “His number’s already programmed it. Get dressed. We’ve got to get moving.”

I sat up. My head felt fuzzy and bloated from crying so much last night. “Where is Griffin?”

“Gone with Sloane already,” said Silas.

“What?” I got out of bed. “He left?”

“Yeah. We’re splitting up for a few days. Hopefully, it’ll help muddle the trail if anyone’s still following us.”

“Splitting up?”

“Uh huh,” said Silas. “Don’t worry, we’re gonna all meet back up. It’s okay.”

“He left,” I said, more to myself than Silas.

“Meet me in the lobby in twenty minutes,” he said. “They’ve got a continental breakfast. We can grab that.” He left the room, leaving me alone with the new phone in my hand.

I peered down at it. It was identical to the last one I’d got at Wal-mart. Another cheap, disposable cell phone. I scrolled through the contacts. Silas was right. Griffin was already programmed in. I dialed his number.

He picked up. “What?”

“You left?”

“Hours ago,” he said.

“But you said that you didn’t want to let me out of your sight.”

“Oddly enough, after last night, I found I couldn’t stand the thought of being near you.” His voice was biting and harsh.

“We need to talk,” I said.

“No,” he said. “We don’t. Silas will look after you. We’ll all meet up again in a few days. Maybe I’ll feel better then.”

“Griffin, I’m sorry that I—”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to do this.” He hung up.

I tossed the phone on the bed. Dammit. We’d kissed last night, for the first time in months. We’d made love. Admittedly, we’d had the worst sex I’d had since my junior year of high school, but still, we’d been intimate. And now, he was gone.

As I went to the bathroom to turn the shower on, I realized I was still sore from him, too.

Great. The last thing I needed was a reminder of Griffin every time I tried to move.

Usually, a little soreness after sex was a good thing. It made me feel sweetly weakened and claimed. Now, I only felt used.

I turned on the shower head. Maybe hot water would help.

“You gonna tell me what you’re upset about?” Silas asked from the driver’s seat of the car we’d stolen.

“I’m not upset,” I said.

“We’ve been driving for hours, and you’ve been scowling the whole time. You’re upset. And I know from hanging out with Sloane that you need to talk about it or you’re not going to get over it.”

“I’m not upset,” I said.

“It’s about Griffin, isn’t it? You’re pissed that he ran off on you.”

“No.”

Silas raised his eyebrows.

“He didn’t run off anyway. Like you said, we split up. That’s all there is to it.”

“Sure,” he said. “So, then, what? You swallow a lemon or something?”

“Do we have to talk?”

“Look, the guy cares about you. Anyone could see that.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “How do you figure that?”

“It’s in the way he looks at you. He gets all dewy eyed.”

“He does not.” I rolled my eyes. “Besides, if he cared, he wouldn’t have run off on me.”