Keeping Chloe (Hard Love Book 2) by Veronica Starling

Author:Veronica Starling [Starling, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

I woke from a nap and placed my hand on my abdomen. The bump felt hard. It was so weird to know there was a baby inside me. It was surreal. I didn’t feel like a mother. I still felt like a kid sometimes. I wondered if that was how every new mother felt. Out of place. Unprepared.

The last time I was pregnant, with my pimp’s child, I’d not had the time or energy to even think about it. I’d only acknowledged it in a very vague sense. And I’d not gotten attached to the idea before it was brutally cut short.

I remembered Jase’s empty eyes as he beat me and kicked my stomach repeatedly. I remembered the awful sickening pain of it. It was a beating the likes of which I’d never experienced. And I remembered being relieved when Jase accomplished his goal and I finally started bleeding, even though my body was so terribly hurt. A miscarriage. An intentional one. Cheaper than an abortion. A child didn’t belong in that world.

I had numbed myself to it and had never allowed it any weight. I couldn’t. I’d been too busy trying to survive. Too busy trying to field insincere attempts by uncaring strangers to save me. Then, after I went back to Jase, I was too busy absorbing the regular thrashings I received.

And it wasn’t like other parts of my life slowed down. The prostitution didn’t stop when I went back. My emotional and bodily injuries were just heaped on top. A heavy, heavy burden in the end.

So just as I had numbed myself to the emotional scarring of miscarriage, I had numbed myself to any potential feelings of guilt when I eventually pointed the gun with my shaking hands at Jase’s sleeping face and pulled the trigger.

That, too, was a relief, for I wouldn’t see his hollow eyes ever again… Except that I had. I’d seen them since, just in the context of other faces. Ashley Standish. Terrence, the waiter. Among others. My mother and uncle had had those eyes, too. Those unfeeling eyes were a regular part of my childhood.

I caressed my belly. It protruded only very slightly. Sixteen weeks. Another twenty-four to go. And then I’d be a mother. I had no clue what I was doing. Anxiety racked me constantly at the thought of fucking it up somehow.

I was terrified of becoming my own horrible mother. What an evil person my mother had been. I wondered if she’d ever been happy or nice or if she’d always just been malicious…

“Hi.”

I jumped at Max’s voice. He stood at the edge of the trifold screen that separated my creative space from the rest of the warehouse. My creative space. Psh. My printer and laptop sat on my desk, unused, by an empty desk chair, while I sat on my chaise lounge and stared off into space. Most of the time at least.

“What are you thinking about?”

I shrugged, uncertain of how to word my thoughts and uncertain whether I wanted to share them.

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