Page 54 of Torment

16

Mason

I feltas if I’d been dunked in freezing water.

“What the fuck did you just say?” I asked, staring down at Jolie with narrowed eyes.

Her forehead puckered. “I said you owe me a chance to tell you exactly why I did what I did. Why I didn’t keep the baby.”

A sudden pain stabbed at the back of my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Baby? What fucking baby? What the hell was she talking about?

I reclaimed my seat on the bed and kept my gaze firmly fixed on Jolie’s face. “You said you wanted to explain,” I said, fighting the urge to shake the information right out of her. “So do it. Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

“Okay.” She nervously twisted her hands on her lap, looking over my shoulder. “Remember the day you left New Eden early and called the authorities to tell them everything you knew? It was the very last day.”

I gritted my teeth. “Of course I remember.”

Now that all my memories were back, I doubted I’d ever forget the day I got blown out of my car by a fucking bomb.

Jolie nodded slowly. “That morning, Dale Sardelic came to my room. He was the guy who replenished our so-called vitamins every week. He realized I hadn’t been taking mine, so he made me take three at once. Because I hadn’t had any for so long, it hit me really hard. It was bad.”

She hesitated, eyes still focused on something behind me. “How bad?” I asked, trying to keep her talking.

“It was okay at first, but by late morning, I started feeling weird. I guess it was a bit like being really drunk or high. I started hallucinating all these terrible things. I even thought I saw Elena’s ghost at one point. It got worse after that. I started feeling really sick and dizzy, and I started seeing a demonic version of you everywhere, along with all these other things from a horrible dream I had the night before. Lauren and Martha eventually took me to the church, because they thought I was possessed, and it just kept getting worse and worse.”

“How so?” I said stiffly.

“I started having all these messed up thoughts about you. About everything else too. At one point I honestly questioned whether or not you were the Devil. That’s how screwed up I was on the pills.” She stopped for a second, as if she were gathering her thoughts again. “I knelt on the church floor for ages, trying to decide what I should do. Then I was hit by this sudden sense of clarity. I realized my period was due four days before, and it still hadn’t arrived. Even though I was a pretty late bloomer compared to the other girls, my periods were like clockwork once they finally started. I always got them at the same time every four weeks. Basically down to the minute.”

“So you were definitely pregnant.” I felt as if someone had reached into my chest and scooped everything out.

She nodded. “I thought so, yes. It was enough to knock some sense into me and make me realize you weren’t a demon, and that all the hallucinations were just side effects from the drugs. But I was still pretty messed up on them. So I did something really stupid.”

Her lips began to tremble, as if she were about to cry.

“What did you do?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

“I know I was supposed to act normal and keep my mouth shut about everything until the FBI showed up, but I was so high. My brain really wasn’t working properly. I skipped down the hall like a maniac and interrupted a meeting my father was having with the Elders.”

“What did you say to them?” I asked, even though I was sure I already knew.

“I don’t remember my exact words. Like I said before, I was really high. I think I said something like: ‘I need to talk to you. It’s about Mason, and it’s important. He’s not the guy you think he is. He isn’t like all you sick, twisted bastards. He told me the truth and we’re going to run away together. Oh, and by the way, I’m pregnant with his baby’.”

A slow hum was starting in the back of my mind, a warning tone. I could feel the color draining from my face. “That’s what you said?”

Jolie nodded. “As soon as I blurted it out, I knew I’d fucked everything up. I thought they’d hurt me. Or go after you. But I was wrong. My father just said ‘well, he’s your problem now’ and kicked me out of the room. That was it.”

My body was slowly turning numb from shock. None of this was what I’d expected to hear at all.

After another wash of bitter cold, I found my tongue again. “Then what?”

“Less than two hours later, they left with all the other men. They’d obviously been up all night planning their getaway. I actually noticed they looked exhausted at breakfast that morning, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but I guess they figured out what we were up to somehow. They knew the raid was coming, and they’d known for a while.”

Jolie went silent for a moment. She played with a gold thread on the blanket, and then she looked directly at me, her eyes wide and fearful. “Anyway, that was the day I realized I was pregnant. But this is the part you wanted to hear about,” she murmured. “After the FBI showed up and rescued us, we were all sent to the hospital for a week. We needed to be examined, for obvious reasons, and we were all pretty sick. Like me, for example. I was severely anemic, and I had a ton of other vitamin and mineral deficiencies too.”

“I see.”

“At one point a doctor came around to talk to me. She confirmed I was pregnant, in the very early stages. Two or three weeks. I think she thought I’d been forced like so many of the other girls, because she said she wanted to let me know that I had options. She said some of the others who were found to be in the early stages of pregnancy had taken some sort of pills. I know all about them now, obviously, but at the time I didn’t even know it was something that existed.”

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