Page 30 of Forbidden Pregnancy
I learned for the first time in my life that tumbleweed isnotsomething made up for television. I think we’re somewhere like New Jersey or Ohio, maybe, but Michael won’t let me leave the house and he won’t give me the slightest clue where we are. He must have left CC behind or she escaped all on her own, because she’s not out in the middle of nowhere with us.
Michael barely says a word to me. With nearly two months of no normal human communication, I can feel myself growing crazy. I only have one “person” to talk to, but I barely want to believe that “person” is real.
I haven’t taken a pregnancy test, but I had the strangest feeling last week after waking up with a violent vomiting session instead of a seeping sense of dread.I’m pregnant.The thought was clear and powerful in my head, like it really did come from the big wide universe. I know it’s not biologically likely because of the misfortune with my eggs and my “maternal age”, according to social media, but I sense that it’s true.
I also haven’t had my period, but ever since the egg harvesting, my period became wildly irregular, so that’s not proof all on its own that I’m pregnant. So I have no real evidence that I’m going to have Michael Corsini’s baby except a deep, terrifying sense thatourbaby is a real person and that person is my only company while I fight for my existence underneath Michael’s strict rules.
Michael knocks on my door promptly like he does every morning at 7:00 a.m.
He doesn’t sleep in my bed – which doesn’t mean he stays away from taking his pleasure – it just means he doesn’t sleep in my bed. I can’t explain it.
When he knocks at 7, I don’t bother responding. He has a key to the door and I’m a prisoner, so what’s the point of pretending that I’m “letting” him into the room that he’ll saunter into anyways like a brutish minotaur unencumbered by a labyrinth. The comparison feels cruel because of his missing eye, but today the absence of the eye looks more terrifying than normal.
“I think you should take a pregnancy test.”
“Or ‘good morning’ as they say in more civilized cultures,” I respond to Michael, picking a point on his face to stare at to avoid analyzing the details for all the ways he’s changed over the years.
Even with one eye, Michael delivers a pretty intimidating scowl. All those years and he still hasn’t learned how to stop acting like an uncouth beast. He might actually have become meaner as he’s grown older.
“I have one. Come here and take it.”
“Shouldn’t we have a conversation?”
“Wearehaving a conversation. Come here.”
“I’ve been here almost two months. We need to talk to each other. I’m going crazy cooped up here alone.”
I give him the most guilt inducing expression I can muster up. Yelling at him and complaining hasn’t worked so far. Outright manipulation might be my only option for garnering this man’s sympathy. My sadness only seems to annoy Michael. He shifts in the door frame like I just asked him to strip into his underwear at the grocery store.
“I give you plenty,” he says. He might give me plenty of food and I might have plenty of reading material, but aside from that, Michael hasn’t even given me an explanation about why we’re out here and what happened to his sister.
“It’s not enough that I spend every night in your bed catering to you?”
“No, it’s not enough. This is… crazy.”
For a moment, I think he’s going to follow up with another rude and disrespectful statement. Michael surprises me, although I don’t want to give him too much credit.
“Yes, it’s crazy. But I’m sacrificing everything in my life right now to protect you.”
“From what? We had sex, Michael. It’s not a big deal. We can tell Cosima we aren’t going to be together and put it all behind us.”
Seven weeks with my own thoughts has given me plenty of time to think. Michael doesn’t care about me. He cares about satisfying his sexual appetite, but that’s a lot different from caring about me as a person. If he really loved or cared about me, I don’t think Michael could have spent almost two months giving me the cold shoulder.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
He doesn’t want me here, so there must be some other explanation for dragging me across the country to the middle of nowhere to keep me in captivity with no way to contact the outside world. If Michael didn’t want me here, he would have put me out.
But whatdoeshe want?
“Your life is in danger,” he says. “Your life was in danger when I kissed you twelve years ago outside the guest house.”
My body shudders from the memory of what happened at the guesthouse twelve years ago. We didn’t just kiss – and I remember because every minute of that night remains burned in my mind forever. I never thought I would encounter Michael Corsini in person again, but I always knew that I couldn’t forget how this man made me feel or what we got up to whenever we tangled together in the bedroom.
“I can’t stay on the run forever.”
“You’re right,” he says. “You can’t. Which is why we can’t get attached to each other.”
