The Beginning of Us (139 page)

“Shut up!” I shoved her down in the corner. “What did you do to him?” I was so mad that I threw myself on top of her and started smacking her in the face. She put her hands up to protect herself.

I felt someone pulling me away from her. Stosh had blood running down his face, but he was alert enough to know what was happening. When Ivy saw that he was conscious, her eyes got big and she began to plead. “Stosh, please. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He grabbed her by the hair and shoved her against the wall. “Grab her hands.”

I looked down on the floor and grabbed the zip ties, before rushing over and wrapping it around my sister’s wrists. Once her hands were bound, it was easy to get her sitting down and attach each of her feet to the chair. It was barbaric, but necessary.

When I knew she couldn’t move, I rushed over to Stosh’s side and helped him get into the living room. “I feel like I’m going to pass out. That bitch hit me with a bat.”

“I saw it.” I ran over with a wet towel and started cleaning him up, so that I could assess the injury. “You’re going to need stitches, babe. The gash is pretty deep and you’ve lost a ton of blood. I’m positive you have a concussion.”

Even while he was in pain. He managed to smile. “Listen to the doctor’s daughter go.”

I shook my head. “Stop joking. Are you able to walk to the car?”

I helped him stand up, grabbed a clean shirt for him, and led him to the car. The hospital wasn’t that far from the house and we were there in just a few minutes. Stosh kept closing his eyes, dozing off.

“You have to stay awake.”

“I can’t. My eyes feel heavy.”

I was so worried about him. Head injuries were serious. Someone could be talking to you one minute and dead the next. Losing him would crush my soul. I couldn’t even let myself imagine it.

I ran into the hospital and got some attendants to come out and help Stosh in a wheelchair. From there, they put him on a gurney and took him right into the emergency room.

It seemed like forever that I had to wait to hear from someone. When the nurse came out to look for me, she had this look on her face like she didn’t have good news. My stomach dropped and I felt like I was going to hurl. I covered my mouth and ran toward the ladies room.

She’d followed me in there. “Ma’am are you okay?”

“Just give me a second.”

I was beginning to cry and I couldn’t get myself calm enough to face her. Finally, after a few minutes, I made my way out of the stall and saw her standing there. I looked her right in the eyes and waited for her bad news.

“You can come back and see him now.”

My face lit up. “He’s okay?”

“The doctor will explain everything. He has a concussion and we had to give him stitches. He’s lucky you were there when he fell. A head injury like that could be fatal.”

When he fell?

Stosh told them he fell?

I followed behind her until we got to his room. His head was bandaged up, but he looked alright. His face lit up when he saw me walking in. “There’s my girl.”

I was so happy to see him. I rushed over and wrapped my arms across his chest.

He struggled to breathe for a second. “Easy now. I’m a little beat up.”

“I’m so sorry I left. You don’t know how worried I was when I got home and found you like that. I was so scared.”

“It could have been worse. I got one blow in as I was going down. I know the hitting a girl rule was broken, but she deserved it.”

I laughed and kept holding him. Letting go was not an option. “I wanted to kill her. Seeing you just laying there, looking all lifeless was horrible. I felt like picking up that bat and ending her existence.”

He reached his arm up and put it around my back. “That would have messed up the plan.”

“Yeah, but at least we have another option to fall back on. Running away with you seems better by the second.” It was true. We would be giving up our family, our friends and Stosh’s job, but we’d be together. Somehow, that was all I cared about.

“You know, I tried to call you. I wanted you to grab creamer on the way back. When you didn’t answer your phone, I called your parent’s house. It was disturbing when they said they hadn’t seen you.”

I felt sick. He’d caught me and I was going to have to tell him that I went against his request and met Rafe. “Stosh, I’m sorry. I was trying to take care of the problem. I thought if I could just talk to him alone, he would back off.”

“So, where were you?”

I sat up, seeing that he wanted details. I could understand how he wanted us to be honest with each other. After everything, it was the only way our relationship could work. “Please don’t get mad at me, but I went to his house.”

“You what?” He tried to sit up, forcing me off the bed and him to fall back down on the bed. “Willow, you’re smarter than that. He could have attacked you, or raped you. For Christ sakes, you have got to be more careful.”

“I know. I know. I wasn’t thinking.”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I’m glad you’re okay, Will. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.”

“It wasn’t even worth it anyway. Rafe couldn’t take no for an answer. He said he won’t give up on our love.” I was sarcastic when I said it.

“Great!”

“I told him to leave us alone. He said he’d already bought a house in Malta. They were going to move there and raise our baby, after Ivy stole it from me and took it from you. With her living out of the country, we’d never freaking find her.”

He kept holding my hand. “At least there isn’t a baby for her to steal. I would really kill her if she tried that shit.” He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I know why you did what you did, but I do want children. Someday, I guess.”

“Yeah, someday.” I felt like more of an ass.

He pulled my hand up to his lips. “Just promise me no more lies, Will. I can’t keep worrying about you like I did today. It killed me. I think it’s why I let my guard down. I couldn’t think straight.”

I stood up and froze. I had to tell him about the baby. If I waited, he was never going to forgive me. I tried to open my mouth to speak and I started to get dizzy. Before I could even grab the edge of the bed, I went down.

I woke up in a hospital bed. Stosh was sitting beside me and he didn’t look happy. The bandage was still on his head and he was also dressed in the same hospital gown as before, which meant it was probably the same day. “What happened?”

He gave me a funny look. “Apparently, when you’re pregnant, it is important that you eat breakfast and take vitamins.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just started to cry.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“I was going to tell you. I just…”

“You let me think you had an abortion. Do you have any idea how much that hurt me?”

“Stosh, it wasn’t like that. I went to the clinic, but after talking to the counselor and thinking about what I was doing, I couldn’t go through with it. When you came back, I needed to be sure your intentions were good. The timing just never seemed right.”

I could talk to him until I was blue in the face. He was hurt and pissed. The more I pleaded the more frustrated he became. “I’m angry at you for lying to me. I’ve been messed up since you told me what you’d done. The decent thing would have been to tell me the truth. I hope you get that.”

“I do.” I reached for his hand, but he pulled it away. “Stosh, please. I just wanted our baby to be safe. You have to understand that I had to know you weren’t plotting anything with Ivy. She wanted our baby and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let her find out.”

“The nurse said the baby is fine.” He sat the sonogram picture down on my stomach.

“Please, don’t be mad.”

He stood there for a second, just looking at me. Then, without saying anything, he walked out of the room.

I was still hooked up to the monitors, so it wasn’t like I could just get up and follow him. Obviously, he needed time to be upset with me. If my sister hadn’t tried to smash his head in earlier, I would have still wondered if he would run and tell her. Now that she’d done that and I’d talked to Rafe, I knew he really was telling me the truth when he said he hated her.

This wasn’t how I wanted to tell Stosh about our baby. I’d pictured being in bed and celebrating after everything had calmed down. I thought about showing him a sonogram picture and being happy together.

Now, he’d found out while I wasn’t even conscious. How long had I been out of it?

The nurse came in to check my vitals. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“We are going to give you some fluids and some vitamins. After we monitor you for a couple hours, you’ll be free to go. It’s best that you make an appointment with your OBGYN. Health care during a pregnancy is very beneficial to both the mother and baby.”

“Okay, I will. Thank you.”

“Your husband is in the room next to you. He’s very happy about the pregnancy. I take it that it was unexpected?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be too worried. He seems over the moon about it.”

That was the reassurance I needed. He was mad and I didn’t blame him. I deserved that. It was still good to know that while mad, he was just as happy about it as I was.

There was one thing that I knew for sure. That was the last secret I was ever going to keep from him.

Chapter 20

Heart Attack v/s Hurricane.

We were released from the hospital later that night. Neither of us was worried about Ivy, since she was tied to a chair in the middle of a room. I’d locked the doors before we left and not worried if she’d died of starvation. She deserved to suffer.

Stosh didn’t say much, during the ride, except that he wanted to stop and get something to eat. I didn’t want to mention that I was starving, being that it would go back to me being pregnant and keeping it from him.

I’d had hours to think about what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t come up with anything that would make him forgive me. He was hurt and it was directly because of my actions. I almost couldn’t forgive myself.

We arrived at the restaurant and got seated. Of course, we got dirty looks with Stosh having stitches in his head. It hadn’t bruised that bad around the injury, but it was enough to make it very noticeable. An egg shape could be noticed from the side and it seemed shinier than his other skin.

As for me, well, I looked normal. To everyone else, I was just a regular woman, having a meal with my husband. Only Stosh and I knew that I was impersonating my sister and carrying his child. We belonged on a talk show with big ridiculous reveals.

We’d already ordered our food when Stosh finally began to speak to me again. “Now that I know you’re pregnant, we need to talk about changing our plan. What you’re doing is too dangerous. Having you in jail is bad enough. I can’t sit around knowing my child could be born in a prison.”

“If we don’t go through with this, Ivy wins.”

“Do you know how immature that sounds? We are going to be parents. I think it’s time we start making smart decisions. Tell your parents the truth Willow. They deserve to know what’s been going on.”

Our food came and we started to eat. I considered my options while chewing my first couple bites. “Ivy needs to pay for what she’s done. Our baby is in danger if she’s set free and you know it.”

“I didn’t say she should be set free. I said you should tell your parents. I’ll be with you the whole time. We’ll do it together.”

That did make me feel better, however, it wasn’t enough to set my mind totally at ease. My sister was smart and manipulative. She would figure out a way to ruin us all over again, if she had the chance.

“Fine!”

“Good. Tonight we’ll go over and talk. If they kick us out, we’re leaving this town together. I have contacts in every city and I can sell anything. It will be easy for me to get a job.”

We finished eating and headed back to his place. I brought a box of leftovers to feed Ivy. She didn’t deserve to have a meal ordered for just her.

When we pulled up at the house, everything seemed fine. It wasn’t until we walked up to the door that things were suddenly wrong. The door was busted open. Stosh ran in first. I followed behind him, running right for the room my sister was. Of course, she was gone. Stosh ran up and looked right at me. “ Don’t panic!”

“She’s gone! What are we going to do? She’ll tell everyone!”

“Hang on.” Stosh ran into the bedroom and came out with the diary and a large manila folder in his hand. “Go put this in the car while I call the police. We’re going to treat this like it was a normal break in. “

While waiting for the cops, we hid all of the evidence that my sister had been held hostage. The cops came in and dusted for prints. Whether they would find Rafe’s was the million dollar question. I played the part of Ivy, so nothing seemed suspicious.

It was all out of hand. I was shaking so badly, wondering if I was ever going to be safe. We’d just left the restaurant with a different game plan. Now, I was going to have to tell my parents everything. I had to get to them before Ivy could.  If she talked to them before me, my life could be destroyed.

The police took forever. They had to fill out a report and then insisted on checking out the main house to see if that too had been burglarized. I was trying to be patient, but every second that went by gave my sister ample time to make her next move. When the police left, we headed over to my parents.

There wasn’t anyone home. I tried to call their phones, but neither answered. We knew they weren’t working, since Stosh had talked to them earlier. On occasion they would catch a movie, and honestly, I had no idea what else they liked to do since I hadn’t been around them in such a long time. They could have belonged to a nudist colony for all I knew.

On the way back to the house, Stosh was quiet. He was still upset with me. I got why he was, but he’d also lied to me and put me through Hell. The only reason I had forgiven him was because he’d done it all out of love for me.

I reached over and grabbed his hand. “I love you.”

He looked over and finally smiled. “I love you, too.”