Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87988 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Jocelyn sat on the exam table, swinging her feet, the paper crinkling beneath her. She grew dizzy, gripped the sides with her hands, felt it bunch, then relaxed.
He’d pushed her.
She remembered now. She’d been trying to hurry and get dressed, do as he asked, but he pushed her. Jocelyn pressed her lips together, tried not to think too hard about what that meant. She let him do a lot of things that caused her pain—but those usually caused a good pain. This was different. And now she needed stitches.
She knew what Mr. Sawyer had done to her was wrong, knew she should probably not go to that motel to meet him anymore. Not just her mind knew it, either. Her palms were sweating, and her throat felt tight—like the inside was swollen. The same thing had happened before, when she’d done things with Mr. Sawyer that made her uneasy. Yet she kept going back. This time, though, she would be stronger.
Fleetingly, she thought of her mother—what she’d tell her happened. She could simply say she fell. It was true, after all. Hell, her mother might not even notice a head wound with stitches.
“Jocelyn?” A woman tapped at the door. She was tall, young, and wore a white coat. “I’m Dr. Nye. I understand you have a cut that needs tending to.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The doctor was quick and thorough. The most painful part was when she injected something she called lidocaine to numb the area. But after that, Jocelyn didn’t feel anything other than a little pressure. “It’ll wear off,” Dr. Nye said. “But you can take some Tylenol or ibuprofen, and that should help. You’ll have a scar, but since it’s at the beginning of your hairline, it won’t likely be noticeable, unless you’re looking for it.” She snapped off her rubber gloves and tossed them into the garbage can. “Can you wait here just a moment?”
Jocelyn nodded, and the doctor left. She stood up and peered at herself in the mirror behind the sink. A gauzy bandage had been placed over the stitches. This was going to be hard for anyone to miss, even her mother. And why did her damn palms kept sweating? She twisted the knob on the faucet and ran cold water over them, blotting them dry with a paper towel.
“Jocelyn?” Dr. Nye came back into the room and beckoned for her to take a seat. “We took a urine sample when you came in. Standard procedure.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“For female patients, part of that screening is a pregnancy test.”
Jocelyn tilted her head, waiting for more. Perhaps the doctor was going to tell her all the different tests they’d run.
“Jocelyn, your pregnancy test . . . It came back positive.”
CHAPTER
39
Iwas pregnant.
I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. At least not before I read that new chapter last night. After, though, I couldn’t stop the memories from flooding back. At 5 a.m., I gave up on trying to sleep and brewed a pot of coffee. Caffeine didn’t help. Certainly not the four cups I drank. It only made my heart race faster and my head spin so violently that I had to sit down so I wouldn’t fall.
I was pregnant.
Pregnant.
With his child.
The thought makes my stomach roil, and the coffee threatens to come back up.
I’ve gotten used to the idea that Jocelyn and I are the same person. But this . . . this I will never get used to. No way. Not possible.
Every time I closed my eyes last night, vivid memories rushed back. One in particular felt so real that at one point, I barricaded the bedroom door with my dresser.
It was the week after I’d gone to the clinic. I went to meet Mr. Sawyer at the motel at our usual time. I’d been anxious about telling him I was pregnant, afraid of what his reaction might be. He had a wife, a small child. I couldn’t imagine he would want a baby with me. But he surprised me, told me he was happy, that we could run away together and raise our family. We wouldn’t have to hide anymore. Texas, he said—Galveston, a small coastal town where you caught a breeze in the summer, unlike this suffocating part of Louisiana.
It was my dream come true. He was so gentle that night, so caring and warm. We made love for the first time. Of course we’d had sex before—the dirty kind, the kind where he called me a whore as he pumped inside me from behind. That’s what he liked, what got him off. But that night, I was on my back. He looked into my eyes and told me I was beautiful, how beautiful our child was going to be. It was such a drastic change. I should’ve known it was too good to be true. But the most dangerous lies are the kind an innocent person wants to be true.