Page 118 of Babalon

“It’s probably a lot to wrap your head around, but what do you think?”

“About what? The fact that I could have been killed and lost a baby, too? Or that inmates had their hands inside of me playing with my guts? Maybe wrapping my head around the fact that the father of my child is probably chopped up into pieces, and I’m going to have to give our baby up to people I don’t know because I’m likely going to jail? Tell me, what is it you think I can have wrapped my head around five days after being carted out of the bowels of a prison covered in someone else’s blood.”

That was harsh, but I really want her to stop talking to me.

“What do you think about, seeing the best part of you sitting in that little four by six image?”

Will she ever stop? God… how right she is though. The best part of me… and Kace… there my heart goes again. Breaking.

“Julie, why do you have to be this way?”

“What way?”

“Annoying.”

“It’s my job.”

“Get a better one.”

“You first, sis. Now, come on. What do you think?”

With a sigh, I lean my head forward, resting it on my knees as I close my eyes and concentrate on our… baby.

“I’m broken, Julie. That’s what I think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you a fucking therapist today?”

“If that’s what you need, yes.”

“What I need is Kace.”

“Talk to me about the baby first, then you can tell me about him.”

This girl is going to be the death of me. By either giving me an aneurysm or making me shatter what’s left just to gain a little bit of gossip.

“I came from a shitty household where my mother abandoned me, and now, I’m about to do the same thing to an innocent kid. The whole ‘history repeats itself’ is eating me alive.”

“You’re not your mom.”

“Tell my baby that.”

I cannot explain the amount of pain that idea makes me feel. In all my twenty-eight years, I’ve never had a bad thing to say about my mom. Hoping she was living the best life she could away from me and my dad. Right now, though? A piece of me hates her. Hates how, in a way, I’m following in her footsteps. There will be a day where my baby starts remembering things and their memories won’t be of me, I’ll be forgotten.

Tears sting my eyes, but I don’t dare look over at Julie. I don’t want anyone else's pity.

“What about Kace? He must be something to snag your attention. You don’t seem like the type of girl that lets men distract her from the things she has going on in her life.”

“He’s… he wasn’t your normal inmate. While, yeah, he did something bad to get put in prison, he didn’t get tangled up with the bullshit gangs inside. He had two friends that had his back while… while I clowned him on the daily. I was terrible to him, but for some reason he still loved me.”

“You talk about him in the past tense.”

“Mhm. I’m sure he’s dead.”

A knock raps on the door protecting me from the rest of the world. The sound makes me jump, whipping my head towards the oversized hunk of wood. Heart racing in my chest, the worst-case scenario runs through my head—Nate is on the other side. Impossible, but that’s what lingers in the back of my mind.

“I’ll answer that, you’re safe, Nadia. Keep that in mind.”

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