Page 98 of The Monster in Me

Chapter 36

JADE

My cheeks are sore. My cheeks are fucking sore.

I rubbed my face for the millionth time today, it still feels surreal. For the first time in my life I can finally sit back and enjoy the moments of happiness I am feeling. The happiness I am constantly feeling. So much so, my damn cheeks are hurting from smiling so often. Looking back on all the memories from these last few months has me smiling like an idiot.

Bass and I left prom to have a perfect romantic night together, which ended up with the entire group getting together around 4 a.m. and heading down to Scottie’s Diner, proceeding to eat our weight in burgers and pie. Graduating a few weeks later, walking across the stage and earning my diploma, which was an accomplishment I didn’t know I’d be so proud of. Kids from the projects don’t make it this far, but we did. The five troubled teens, the wayward misfits, walked that day and overcame a statistic not many have.

Especially not here in the midst of the privileged punks.

Bass is his own category of bliss. He has done everything in his power to make me fall in love with him more every day. He comes home to the beach house every night with a different dessert for me and the baby. Well that's a lie he brings two desserts in case I don't like the first one. Meaning I get two desserts every night. I’m not saying it’s planned but it sure is a win-win for me. It doesn’t get better than this.

Though as if that isn’t enough, he surprised me last month with a fully decorated, beautiful nursery. I was running around stressed for the last few weeks not knowing how I wanted to decorate or if I’d even get it done in time with the lingering nausea and vomiting. Pregnancy brain has been unkind in the decision-making department. However, leave it to Bass to manage to get it all done while Scar and I had our joint baby shower. He and Ace were hard at work building the crib and painting the room. By the time we were wrapping up the shower, the daddies showed up to show us the room. It was done and it was absolutely perfect.

The walls were painted a pale green, the furniture all-natural wood with the off-white bedding and rockers. Bass bought two rockers so he could help feed the baby while I rested. He honestly thought of everything. It's times like this I think back to the fact we both come from shitty home lives and terrible childhoods. Neither of us had a nurturing parent to give us any clue or insight as to how to handle a baby coming.

Now here we are, both of us ready and more excited than we have ever been.

“You never speak of her,” I whisper, half hoping he hasn’t heard me as he lifts his head from its favorite place perched upon my chest, listening to the rhythmic sounds of my heart, feeling the gentle push and pull of my breathing. We’re outside once again, it seems to be our favorite place to be. Under the stars, out in the open under a blanket of darkness, illuminated by the bright gleam of the moon. We’re lying on the daybed swing on the front porch, when his gaze connects with mine, the clear gray tint of his irises suddenly darkening to resemble storm filled clouds full and ready to release their ire on the ground below. The look in them makes me shiver with fear, fear of the darkness that brews within them, the demons begging to be let out. I don’t know much about his childhood, hardly anything about his relationship with his father, other than the obvious which is he hates him, and absolutely nothing about his mother.

“I can say the same about you,” he utters bluntly, no humor heard in the rather tense tone of his voice. He appears apprehensive, the beautiful features of his face drawing downward.

“Touché,” I reply, leaning my head back against his edge of the bed. It’s not the most comfortable of positions, but his hardened pecs I was lying on earlier are not the most comfortable of pillows either. Though the warmth they exude makes it all worth the while. I lay my head down, unable to look him in the eye as I speak my next words.

“I never knew mine,” I murmur, confused at why I am even speaking about a topic I always refuse to talk about. “She died giving birth to me, rather before giving birth, like the universe decided to punish me, leave me helpless and alone before I even had the chance to step foot upon it, before I was able to take my first breath, cry my first cry.” My voice begins to crack as I feel his body tense before me. Like it’s too much, too hard for him to hear.

He says nothing, which for some odd reason makes me keep divulging my deepest, darkest truths. “She developed preeclampsia late in her third term. It’s when women develop high blood pressure during their pregnancy. She wasn’t aware as she usually wouldn’t make her doctor's appointments. Her blood pressure rose dangerously high one day and she went into premature labor. As her husband and only living adult relative, my father had an impossible decision to make.”

His silence is deafening. I can almost hear his thoughts, feel the tension as his heartbeat begins to accelerate. I take it as a sign to continue this tragic tale, the truth about my relationship with my parents, with my father. “Well, you would think it was an impossible decision. The nurse told him he had to decide if they would save his wife, or his daughter, as it was improbable they would both make it. So he decided, told them he would murder them himself it they didn’t save his beloved Amelia.” I begin to chuckle at the irony of what happened next. “But little did he know that my mother had taken this decision into her own hands. Before going into labor, she had signed a document stating if anything were to happen to her during delivery, they were to save her daughter.”

His body goes rigid as the next words leave my mouth. “You can imagine the surprise my father was given when the doctor gave him the wonderful news. He had a newborn daughter and was left without his darling wife.”

“Jade,” Bass whispers, but the emotion in his voice, the way my name sounds coming from it, is too much for me to handle as I fight to hold in my tears.

“The first few years were okay, I believe he was in shock about everything that happened and how quickly it all went down. I was the apple of his eye, the only piece of Amelia, other than my brother Roman, he had left. But things took a turn for the worst when Lilith came into our lives. He began to drink himself to oblivion every night, as I became a constant reminder of the hole my mother left in him, looking more and more like her every day. You would think being with Lilith would patch it up but if anything she dug the hole deeper. Poisoned his mind, not that it was innocent, with horrid thoughts about me. Not to mention she verbally abused the hell out of me and beat me every time she could justify it.”

Sebastian shifts under me moving his arms to wrap tightly around me as his fingers graze the side of my temple. “A mother I never met, a father who never wanted me, a brother who chose to leave me behind, a stepmother who loathed me for no apparent reason other than being the daughter of a ghost she’d always compete against, and a sister, a sister who has no choice but to move on with her life.” A stray tear falls upon my cheek, dampening my skin before falling against his chest. “I’m alone, helplessly alone. The lone wolf abandoned by her pack, exiled, and left to roam the dark woods all by herself. No one to fight the dangerous creatures lurking in the trees, no hero to save her from the darkness of the night sky, no love who could help her fight against the wickedness of her own thoughts. If this tragic tale doesn’t qualify me for a few stints in the psych ward I’m not sure what will.”

His hand wrapped around my waist tightens its grip on me as he speaks. “One thing is to have your mother stripped away from you by such a tragedy,” he murmurs, his voice trailing off as he hesitates to continue. But I think the fact that we are lying here together without making any eye contact helps give him the push I’ve been waiting for. “Another thing is for her to leave you of her own free will.”

And there it is, the ultimate secret. His darkest truth, the reason behind the heartless and cold villain. He’s nothing but a lonely, scared little boy. “She chose to take the money my grandfather offered her in exchange for abandoning her family. For so long I was angry at them, for giving her that ultimatum, but in reality it was her who made the choice to leave her baby boy.”

“And now here we are,” I whisper into the night sky, “Alone, emotionally damaged beyond repair, and cursed to live our entire lives wishing there was someone who could love us this way.”

“That’s the thing Jade,” he says, shifting us so he’s now sitting upward on the daybed and I’m left with no choice but to follow. The thin blanket that covers our naked bodies slips off revealing my bare breasts that quickly perk up, my nipples hardening from the coolness of the ocean breeze. Or is it from the way his eyes roam over me, the hunger within them awakening the hunger in me, before stopping to meet my frightened stare. “You don’t have to keep wishing, or wondering if you deserve to be loved, because I’m telling you right now you deserve it more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

I unwillingly laugh, looking away from him, out toward the vast ocean ahead, before his hand moves to grip my chin pulling my gaze back to him. “To love you is to trust that you won't ever leave me,” I murmur breathlessly.

He sighs, the embodiment of despair, “I swear I never will,” he continues, “If there is anything I am completely, one hundred percent sure about it’s that.”

“That's a hell of a promise, cupcake, one I'm not sure even you are powerful enough to keep.”

He reaches his fingers out to tuck a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, running his fingers over the sensitive skin of my collarbones, down the center of my chest until his palm lands on my stomach. My huge, thirty-six weeks pregnant stomach. I inhale a sharp breath, my heart almost stopping in shock at what the tender gesture does to me, about how it makes me feel.

“This, right here,” he stops as he notices the tears begging to be freed from my deep green, swollen eyes, “This is your assurance. I fucking love you Jade, and this baby growing inside of you, our baby, is the guarantee that I won’t ever leave. I vow to be yours forever and always.”

It’s those last words that make me fall to the darkest place I’ve ever gone, to the cavernous depths of my hollow heart, as I surrender under his gaze, trembling from the gentle caress of his calloused fingertips, falling apart piece by piece by the promise etched in his words, as I ache to feel him inside of me. To fill me, to feed me, to satiate the beast in me and fulfill his everlasting promise. Forevermore.

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