Page 66 of Fear Me, Love Me

After climbingin through Vivienne’s window, I perform a thorough search of her dorm room. I check her bed. Her bedside table. The trash. Every drawer. Inside all her shoes. Between the pages of textbooks. Under discarded clothes and piles of folded fabrics.

No test. I suppose she could have taken the test in the communal bathrooms if she’s taken it at all.

I go to the window and gaze out onto the moonlit night, remembering how Vivienne looked when she emerged from the bus station restroom.

Deep in thought. Shocked by something. The results of a pregnancy test she’d just taken?

I stand there for several minutes, letting the cool night air wash over me. There was something significant about that moment, and I won’t stop thinking about it until I’ve gone and investigated that restroom for myself.

Twenty minutes later, I’m on the other side of town, pulling into a parking space at the bus station. The place is deserted, and I have to break a padlock from the restroom door in order to get inside.

There are only two cubicles, and one of them has a trash can.

Lying on top of the trash is a pregnancy test, face down. I pick it up and turn it over, my blood pounding in my ears. I stare at the indicator window.

Vivienne’s having my baby.

I’m going to be a father.

Vivienne’s having my baby and she didn’t tell me. We were face-to-face just now. We were face-to-face at this bus station. What was her plan, to skip town and do what? Have my baby in secret? Get rid of it? No, she wouldn’t do that, but she was planning on hiding my child from me.Myfucking child.

I shove the pregnancy test in my pocket and head back to my car. She can’t run from me now. I have her right where I want her, pregnant and trapped in my labyrinth.

As I turn back onto the main road and race toward my house, I mutter at the dark road ahead, “You should have let me save you, Vivienne.”

She wouldn’t let me save her, and I take that personally.

23

Vivienne

Itake a left turn through an archway of climbing roses and then hurry down a path, and then make a right at a statue of a woman in a toga. I’ve been in Tyrant’s labyrinth before, but nothing looks familiar. It only takes me a few minutes to realize I’m hopelessly lost.

Desperately, I try to remember which way Tyrant took me when he was leading me from the boathouse up to his mansion, but I don’t think we went through this section of his grounds at all, or if we did, I was in too much of a sex haze, or too much in love with Tyrant to look at anything but him.

The memory of his harshly beautiful face gazing back at me so tenderly that night makes my heart ache and my throat burn. He’s the father of my baby, and tonight he looked at me so coldly as he declared he was going to kill me. Is it better to keep trying to escape, or throw myself at his mercy for the sake of our child?

I don’t know what to do, so I keep running. There are so many left and right turns that I don’t know if I’ve even been down these paths before. I’m looking over my shoulder after rounding a corner. When I turn to look ahead, I’m looking right at Tyrant.

He’s standing across an expanse of grass, holding the hunting rifle and wearing an expression filled with fury. “Got you.”

He raises the gun and points it at me. His finger is on the trigger, and as I stare down the barrel of the weapon, it resembles an endless, black tunnel.

I cover my stomach protectively and cry out, “Tyrant, don’t. Not my baby.”

The words are out of my mouth before I can stop myself. I have to protect the life growing inside me. I glance up fearfully because now Tyrant knows I’m carrying his child.

Tyrant lowers the gun, and there’s not an ounce of surprise on his face. “Not your baby. My baby.” He speaks through gritted teeth, reaches into his pocket, and throws something at my feet. The pregnancy test I left in the trash at the bus stop restroom.

“When were you going to tell me about this?” He waits, but I don’t answer.

I watch him, wondering if he’s going to throw the gun aside and swear to be a better man now. That he was wrong when he put the tracker in my neck, and he’s going to let my family go and we can be a real family.

But Tyrant doesn’t say any such thing, and he doesn’t put down the gun.

“Just a few days ago I fantasized about being pregnant,” I confess in a whisper. “Telling you I’m pregnant. Being with you forever. I actually thought this would be a happy moment for us.”

“Can’t you tell? I’m ecstatic.”

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