Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
That night Santos’s mother is hosting a dinner at Augustine’s. There’s a part of me that wants to crawl into bed and hide from that woman, but there’s another part, the stronger, rebellious one, that wants to show her she hasn’t won.
Santos has told me it’s up to me if I join him or not, but he will be there. He doesn’t seem happy about it, though.
We haven’t talked about the ultrasound, but I find him watching me anxiously at times. I should tell him I don’t want to end the pregnancy. I know he wants to keep the baby, too, and I also know if I decided to terminate, he would support me. There’s something keeping me from talking about it though, and it’s not to punish him or anything like that. I just can’t seem to open my mouth about it yet.
“You’re going to come tonight?” Santos asks when he walks into the bedroom to find me getting dressed.
“Yep,” I say, looking at myself in profile in the full-length mirror. “I can’t hide forever.” I face him. “Besides, I don’t want her to think she holds any power over me. She doesn’t.”
Santos is watchful. “Are you sure?” he asks after a minute. “It’s early yet. If you need time to process, you have it. As much as you need.”
I take a deep breath in and exhale it out. “I’m fine.”
“All right. I’m glad you’ll be there. And we can come home whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”
Santos slips his arm around me seemingly even more careful with me now than he’s always been—and he has always been careful. From the first moment we met, when he asked for forgiveness before doing what he had to do, he’s always taken care with me.
I lean into him. We drive together to the event with Val and another soldier following in a second vehicle.
The event itself is a charity for children in war-torn countries, which Mrs. Augustine apparently feels passionately about. I don’t believe it. Not for a second. The only thing that woman has any feelings for is herself, and maybe Caius. Santos? I’m not so sure.
I’m glad the ballroom is full of people though, and when Santos discreetly hands me a flute of sparkling water, I take it and stand at his side as he makes conversation with all those waiting to talk to him. He’s a fixture now, an important man to the people of Avarice. I know he’s making his way toward his mother, though, who is holding court in the far corner. I can see she’s anticipating his arrival, too. I wonder if she’s anxious about it. If she’s afraid of him.
The Avery family is also here, and strangely, I find I don’t much care. Not about them. Not about Mrs. Augustine. Not any of it. Because that’s one thing this unplanned pregnancy has done, and I don’t think it was Evelyn Augustine’s intention. It’s shifted my priorities. It’s brought me back to myself in a way.
“Excuse me,” I say. Santos pauses mid-sentence and looks at me, eyebrows raised. I nod to tell him I’m okay, and he lets me slip away. I feel his eyes on my back as I cross the room even as I hear him pick up his conversation.
I walk to the wall of windows at the back. The night is clear and the water calm. The beacon light scans the horizon warning any ships that may be in the nearby waters not to come too close. Those cliffs mean business. I know.
I sip from my glass as I take in the lighthouse, making myself look at it, see it. Maybe it’s the circumstances that have changed or this new weight of a brand-new life that will depend solely on me for the next seven plus months. For the years to come. But as I stare at it, it’s just a lighthouse. A building with a shitty past. A shitty present. But it can’t hurt me. It, like Evelyn Augustine, has no power over me.
“Should you be drinking that?” comes a soft voice from so close behind me that I feel breath on my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I turn to find Ana standing just a few inches from me. She has cut her hair at a sharp angle and has a new, thick fringe of bangs that come to the tops of her eyebrows almost like someone took a ruler to get them so precise. It’s freshly dyed blue-black and flat-ironed so straight I swear I can smell how she’s fried it.
“You like it?” she asks, brushing her bangs down with her index finger.
“You look great,” I say, turning away.
She grabs my shoulder and gives me a stupid smile. She raises her eyebrows at my drink. “Isn’t that bad for the baby?” she whispers loudly.