Page 62 of The Dirty Saint

“Noah is nothing like Caleb,” I say, that name feeling like poison on my tongue. “I’ve made sure of it.”

When I found out I was pregnant, I promised myself that I would raise my baby as a kind individual who respected others. He wouldn’t turn out to be anything like the demon that put him inside me.

Not over my dead body.

“Caleb should have gotten the chance to meet his child regardless of how you felt about him.”

I let out a look of utter disdain.

“How do you think Noah’s going to feel when he finds out his mother killed his father over a mistake?”

I let out a huff. “Amistake? Is that how we’re referring to rape these days? As a mistake? No, Michael, what your son did to me was done out of his own free will. He made the decision to rape meallon his own.”

I refuse to be made to feel like Caleb’s actions were not a big deal; not just for me but for all of the other victims out there who have suffered.

“He was just a seventeen-year-old kid, Ezra. He didn’t know any better—”

“And why is that,” I snap. “After all, isn’t it a parent’s job to teach their children how to be good people?”

I recognize that Caleb’s decision is not Michael’s fault, but for him to insinuate that his son raped me simply because he didn’t know right from wrong is just as much an insult as it is cruel.

And I won’t have it.

“Michael, I loved your son with every piece of me. I would have flipped the world upside down for him because that is what you do when you fall for someone as deeply as I fell for him.”

I suck on my bottom lip until I can taste blood.

“I cried for so long after he left me alone behind those damn bleachers.”

I was embarrassed—at first—by my behavior. Caleb and I had made plans, and I just…Chickened out at the last second.

At least, that’s what I told myself every time I had a knife pressed to my wrist.

“I didn’t want to kill him. But he just kept taking and taking and taking, and I was too weak to handle it.”

I’ll admit I was broken beyond belief. But not just that, I was pregnant and growing a human in the body thathefucked with.

“People unfortunately get raped all the time, and I understand that. Really, I do. But we both know that there was a monster inside of your son that would be harder to tame as time passed, and I couldn’t have that around Noah.”

I did what I did for my child.Andfor me.

And I don’t regret a damn thing.

I was forced to pick a side, and I chose the one that would ultimately be my healer.

“You are acoward, Ezra,” Michael screams.

I nod and then lean closer. “I am also a mother.”

And I would ratherdiethan put my son in any form of harm.

During

JOEY

Ezra lays her head on my chest, her eyelids fluttering as she tries to keep them awake. I kiss her forehead, rubbing her back with my hand. She coos, and it is a sound that fills my heart with joy.

“Hey, how’s that hand of yours,” She asks.

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