Chained (Caged Book 2) (10 page)

So, biting my tongue, I took the seat opposite him in the club we’d decided to give a go, and squeezed his hand. “You will get over her, Ben. It might not seem like it now, but I can promise you that you’re better off without her.”

“How can you say that, Klo? You don’t even know her.”

“No, I don’t. But I know her sort. In my eyes no one will ever be good enough for you anyway. But I’m biased.”

That made him smile; his eyes softened on me as he took a long drink of his vodka. “So, change of subject. Quickly. Tell me something that will take my mind off her.”

Coughing to clear my throat, I smiled. “Let’s play a game.”

His brows rose and he stared at me but nodded. “Go for it.”

“It’s a guessing game. Guess what I’m trying to tell you without me using words.”

He looked bewildered for a second, but gestured for me to go on.

I lifted my drink of orange juice.

He frowned, shaking his head.

I sat back in my chair and rested my hands on my stomach.

Still he appeared completely stumped. Until, I cradled an invisible baby in my arms.

Recognition widened his eyes and shock made his jaw drop. “Fuck! Klo?”

I gulped, sucking my lips behind my teeth and nodded.

Ben’s confusion turned to delight. The biggest smile I had ever seen on his handsome face exploded across his features and he jumped up out of his chair. “Babe. I’m so fucking pleased for you.”

His hug was warm and comforting, his love for me seeping down inside and soothing the pain in my soul. I nodded against him, unable to fight the tears that were careering down my face.

“I can’t keep it,” I whispered into his ear while he still clutched me to him.

He froze against me then reared back. Sadness took over the previous elation, wetting his own eyes. There was only Ben who knew how much I wanted a child, a piece of me that would love me unconditionally, and a part of me that I would love eternally.

Richard had been my only friend. Well, what I thought was a friend. Trudy was also gone, and so was Dave. I now had no one. And suddenly I wanted to let everything out. Holding it all in was crippling me. Ben was the only one who would ever understand me, and although our marriage hadn’t worked out, I knew he loved me, and I still loved him. I always would. He was my first love, the man who had held my hand in the darkness and tried to help me climb out of the pit I often found myself in. Even if he hadn’t succeeded it didn’t mean I didn’t love him for trying.

“Talk to me, Klo.”

“It’s just not to be.” I sat back down and took a long mouthful of my juice, wishing to God it was alcohol. Even though I wasn’t keeping the baby, it still didn’t feel right drowning the poor thing in whisky. “The main reason I’m telling you is that I need someone to go with me to the clinic. I just wondered…I just wondered if…”

“Of course I will.”

I nodded, now unsure of what to say.

“Kloe,” Ben murmured. “Please talk to me. Let me help you. Whatever is going on…”

“I can’t,” I choked out. “It doesn’t even make sense to me.”

“And the father?”

“He’s… not around. Not anymore.”

“But he knows?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes, he knows. And he knows that I’m… I’m going to kill the only child I’ll ever probably have.”

Ben hurried round the table to me when I broke down. Sliding onto the bench beside me, he shrouded my shoulder with his arm and pulled me into his chest. My tears soaked his shirt, my mascara painting the pale blue cotton with streaks of black. Ben wasn’t concerned. He rocked me, he shushed me, he coaxed me to calm down.

“Babe, please don’t cry. I always hated it when you cried.”

I looked up at him from where my head rested on his strong chest. Tension simmered thick between us, the oxygen in the air thin and stifling. For a long moment we both got lost in the blue of each other’s eyes, both of us remembering and struggling to distinguish the feelings that had started to seep into us.

But I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. What we felt was need for compassion. We looked for support and companionship, and refusing to see what our connection actually was would be lethal.

I pulled away but held his hand tightly in mine as I swiped at my tears with my other hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly.” He sighed and regarded me. “I need to say this Kloe, or I’ll regret it.”

I nodded, bracing myself for what was coming.

“Whatever has happened between you and the father, it doesn’t mean you can’t do this on your own. Well, I’ll be there every step of the way. You will make the most fantastic mother. And whatever happened in your past, it won’t inflict the love you will have for your own child.”

“I know that, Ben. This isn’t because of my past, or that I don’t think I’ll cope on my own. There’s so much that you don’t know, so much even I don’t know. I can’t make sense of anything. It’s all so damn hard. But this also isn’t my baby’s fault. So much has happened and I know that bringing a child into the middle of this is so very wrong.”

“You’re right, it isn’t the child’s fault. But you’re making it his fault. You’re blaming it for whatever is going on. It’s innocent in all this, Klo.”

“And that’s why I have to do this. Innocence is so fragile, so breakable. And I’d rather die than break something so precious.”

“But having a termination isn’t ‘breaking it’?”

It was all such a mess. And although Ben was being harsh with me, I knew he was only trying to make it all better. But no one could ever make this better. It was all so fucked up that I wasn’t sure I’d come out of it in one piece, and that was what scared me. It terrified me. If I broke, or Anderson kept his promise of using me for his revenge, then who would my child have? How would it survive? I had no one and Anderson was too broken himself to care for a child. Yet something in the back of my mind told me he would care for it, he would love it. Just as much as I would.

A child was our redemption. A chance for us to begin what others had ended for us. A purpose for all this love we had inside us.

Knowing he was getting nowhere, Ben shook his head. “End of subject.” Jumping up and making me start, he grabbed my hand. “We need a dance. It’s been years.”

And so that was what we did. We forgot everything. We forgot how shit life was.

And we danced.

Going back to work was like I’d never been away. The Three Ferns, the convalescence home I had worked in for the last four years was my diversion. The patients were some of the hardest I had ever worked with – other than Anderson.

Most ranged from severe depression after having an accident, to self-harmers that couldn’t find any other way to deaden the pain that lived inside them. For obvious reasons I connected with these cases more than others. Because I understood what a simple slice of the skin could do for the soul.

There’d been a time when I had mutilated myself, self -hatred conquering me until I could release some of that pent up revulsion that forever lived inside me.

When Robbie and Anderson had cut me during sex, I had been surprised by the differing feelings that had engulfed me. One simple slice hadn’t released the tension; it had built it. A single stroke of the blade across my skin had consumed me in sensations that made my mind shiver in ecstasy. Pain + arousal = fucking bliss!

Self-harming was a completely different distribution of pain. I was one of the lucky ones, if one could say lucky. I hadn’t cut for a long time. Now I only used food to comfort the nightmares that plagued me. I’d cared for many ‘emotional eaters’ - as the health authority like us to refer to binge eaters, anorexics, and bulimics – but I had never come across a case similar to mine. Well, not yet, anyway.

“Kloe?” Leroy, one of my oldest recurring self-harmers looked at me with a furrowed brow. “I must say, it’s nice to have you back, but I still miss that smile of yours.”

I gave him a smile, shaking my head to distribute my thoughts. “Sorry, Leroy. I’m tired today.”

“Tired?” He laughed. “After the long holiday you had?”

I wanted to scoff. “Because of the long holiday I had.” I winked.

Leroy was lead guitarist in a world renowned rock group. He found the stress of being in the limelight suffocating, and his only release was to cut and get high. There were other factors to his SH (Self-harming), I knew there was, but he had buried them so tightly inside that even after eight months of him in and out of Three Ferns, I was still trying to uncover them.

“You fancy a walk?”

“Sure.” I smiled, thankful for his need for some fresh air.

He smiled, nodding as he pushed himself out of the huge, soft chair he had in his room. He called it his ‘writing chair’. It was specific to his request, but Genesis Convalescence prided themselves in catering to each individual client’s wishes.

The stiches on his arm pulled and he winced.

“You okay? Do you need some pain relief?”

He quirked an eyebrow at me and then rolled his eyes. Rolling mine back, I followed him out of his room and onto his personal patio. But today he needed more visual stimulation so we both meandered down into the gardens.

The grounds were divided into six exclusive areas, each surrounded by either a wall, hedges, or trees. The privacy each of the several unique gardens supplied cost the company a small fortune to maintain. But they were an essential part of the healing process.

Leroy headed for the Japanese garden, one of my favourites, and the most secluded; towering trees and various clipped high hedges enclosing each small private spot within the oriental section. He led us to a bench that sat to one side of the fountain and was surrounded by a trickling stream, a tiny bridge, and numerous cherry blossom trees.

“I have to tell you something, Kloe.”

I nodded, shifting on the bench so I was looking at him and giving him my full attention. “Go on.”

Turning away from me, he concentrated on the fountain. I had a feeling he didn’t want to look at me and I prayed he was finally going to open up to me.

“I missed you. Frank is okay, but he isn’t the same.” Frank was the therapist who had filled in for me while I was gone. He was good at his job, but hearing that from Leroy gave me a sliver of pride in myself. “It made me realise that if I want to get better then there’s only you that can help me.”

“And you,” I told him. “Both of us can help you, Leroy.”

He shrugged, not sure if he believed in himself as much as I did. “Whatever, but…” He closed his eyes and swallowed. As I reached for him, he slid away from me and shook his head. “I need to do this; your compassion won’t help. Please don’t.”

“Okay.”

I placed my palms together and slid them between my thighs, showing him I had no intentions of touching him.

For a long time he just sat quietly, staring at the water that leapt from the mouth of the large fish in the fountain. I allowed him patience, and I sat as quiet as he did.

A cold shiver raced up my spine and the hairs at the back of my neck suddenly stood to attention. I swung round, searching the area for company but Leroy and I were alone. Putting it down to my pregnancy hormones, I turned back around and waited again.

And eventually, we had a breakthrough.

“I did a bad thing, Kloe.”

I slowly nodded, leaving my eyes fixed on the gardens. “You do know that whatever you tell me, Leroy, is completely between us? It doesn’t go in any record, only in my own head. I am not obliged to report any crime, and I won’t. This is between you and me.”

He nodded, gulping as he ran his tongue over his teeth. His face was pale and he looked like he was going to vomit.

“I hurt someone.” He threw it out so bluntly that I couldn’t help but flinch. That had not been what I expected.

“Okay. Was it an accident or planned?”

“Definitely planned.” He turned to me. “I’m a druggie, Kloe. I will do anything for a hit, you know that.”

“So you hurt someone to pay for drugs?”

He screwed up his face and wobbled his head in consideration to my question. “Kind of. I owe someone a lot of money. This was the only way I could clear my debt.”

“This?”

“This,” he repeated. There was a look in his eyes that made the blood in my veins chill.

When I sensed movement behind me, I closed my eyes and realised exactly what ‘this’ was.

“I’m so sorry, Kloe,” Leroy whispered before he stood up and walked away.

“Hello, Samantha.” The soft tone of Terry Asher’s voice whispered in my ear.