Unchosen (Chosen #2)

UNCHOSEN

Book Two

The Chosen Series

By Alisa Mullen

This book is a work of fiction and all persons appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Alisa Mullen

All rights reserved.

ISBN:
1499198469

ISBN-13:
978-1499198461

The Chosen People Page

This book required a village.

Thank you to the lovely ladies - Alexandra Lied and Vanessa Lofton

I adore my fabulous assistants -Krysta Anderson and Marina Acosta! You keep me organized and sane every day.

A special thanks to the original awesome street team, Team Chosen / M^3!

Melissa Cheslog, Jessica Gomez, Sarah Ratliff, Sandra Love, Laurie Schmidt Lee, Rachael Berkebile, Carrie Klein, Dawn Duhamel – Stanton, Tracey Parker and Malinda D. Spriggs. You are so special to my heart and to this series.

Lots of thanks to Kim Black and Kris Kendall

****

For my fabulous family

William, Shea and Tyler

I promise I will consider therapy for my writing obsession.

I love you so much!

Thank you for always being there and supporting my dreams.

********

PROLOGUE

Choice and change are synonymous in life. At any given moment, we are forced to choose between different paths and whichever one you decide to venture down, there will be an end result. Perhaps it will be a joyful prize. Perhaps it will be a life changing consequence. My path led me to places where dark encompassed my soul and when it ended, I could not comprehend how to move on. I suppose that is where my faith took over and I had to accept and say, “Well, shit. This sucks.”

My chosen path was with Teagan Gallagher but in the end, he didn’t choose me. My choice to love Teagan resulted in becoming a mother. The experience is scary and I am left with just one road to choose. I am the unchosen one. The baby that grows inside me was admonished by its father. I have no other choice now but to love my child and survive the pain of being left behind.  My well groomed reckless behavior led me to a road of stability and responsibility. So as an experienced traveler, my advice is to always remember that your consequences will lead you back to that one choice you made in the past. Take caution when you choose your paths because you never know where they will lead.

I sat on a Boston city bench outside the tall white granite skyscraper where I worked on Custom House Street. As time
passed, I raked my eyes up and down the street in earnest. My older brother, Conner, was ten minutes late and with Boston’s notorious four o’clock traffic, I felt a sinking anxiety that I would be late for my doctor’s appointment.
Frigging Conner
, I thought. Of all the days to rely on anyone but me to get me across town, it would be the day I find out if this colossal human growing inside me is male or female. Custom House Street was a one way street but that didn’t deter me from looking at all the side roads it met up and down the block.

Short cuts were the key to navigating in downtown Boston. Trick streets that only knowledgeable drivers knew about outsmarted the standstill lights and the unaffected pedestrians crossing the road. I imagined that my Geo Prism would choose today to fall apart, just as an added bonus. That seemed fitting since I was nearly falling apart and it had nothing to do with cars or traffic.  I was going to be a single mother and the proof was undeniable.

It was a blistering cold and windy day in Boston but I was a walking furnace. My ankles felt like they were going to burst out of my boots. The water retention women talked about in those pregnancy books was no joke. This side effect of pregnancy was probably the worst of my symptoms. There wasn’t a pair of shoes in my closet that fit at the end of each day. For months, I complained of all my pregnancy ailments and while the ankles topped the charts, sitting down and standing up with a watermelon on my pelvis was pretty rough, too. I was a whale.
There is a sound a whale makes and I was ready to learn the massive mammal’s cries of agony.

“Look at that poor pregnant girl on the bench, looking lost and fat,” I murmured to myself. Someone made a gurgling
noise behind me. Peering behind me, I saw an older homeless man who obviously hadn’t showered in a week. His eyes were charged up and his step shaky. I gave a half smile to the man and turned back to try to see Conner and my car.
Anytime now.
Please?

“
Got change, darlin’?” he asked. I nodded, quickly dug into my purse and handed over some coins. The man gave me a half toothless smile and rubbed his dirty hands down his pants to accept the money. I could smell the booze and the sweat and oh, how that smell was so familiar. He leaned into my personal space a bit closer than I preferred and I stiffened.

“God bless you and honey, you don’t look lost,” he said, running his dirty fingers through his hair. “Maybe just not yet found.” He winked at me and turned away.

I stared after the man, dumbfounded at his response.
Not yet found?
I quickly sat back on the bench. I regarded the man as he slowly and drunkenly made his way back towards the center of downtown. Did that guy just totally Jedi mind trick me? Maybe that was some sort of sign to buck up and be happy.
Maybe not.
I could so totally rock the homeless scene if I didn’t have a baby growing inside me. If wisdom came from walking the streets, then shit, my days as a financial advisor were for nothing.

I quickly called bull shit on myself. My days as a financial advisor hadn’t been for nothing. I came to the conclusion soon after Teagan left to go home to Ireland that I needed a paycheck. I gathered up my pregnant ass one day and went to a seminar about the occupation of a licensed financial advisor, a.k.a. stock broker. Think the movie, “Boiler Room.”
Ah, yes, the magnificent financial triumphs of making money from other people’s money.

I was the only female in the seminar but
I wasn’t threatened or intimidated. I needed to make a good living for me and my baby. Since Boston was the little finance sister to New York City’s Wall Street, I worked exceedingly hard to pass the Series 7 license exam in the shortest turnaround time in history. I desperately needed a slice of the money pie that was virtually changing accounts every second of every work day in the financial district. I looked down at my belly and reminded myself I once was temporarily without a home. Ironically, I was less lonely then.

I was offered a position from Leeman and Strauss Financial Firm based on my high test score. Accepting the Junior Financial Advisor position was the best decision I had ever made. I never worked so hard in so little time in my life. I ate, slept and dreamed finance.  My career started with small educational accounts and I gradually worked up to a mid level position with my own office. The first big commission check was last week and it was five figures. I nearly choked on my coffee when I looked at my bank account screen. I was a high-quality employee and everyone in the firm’s management was pleased with my quick successful results.

I believe I was successful because I got personal with my clients. The solid relationships I forged with my clients made them trust me to take over their accounts. I also loved it because they were my only adult conversations these days. My clients included grandmothers, women with issues against male stock brokers and the like. They were sweet and most times, lonely.

Ninety-five percent of our conversations, I listened to their problems. Three percent was the mumbo jumbo talks of a straight shooting, smart business woman that was me.
The other two percent of my time? Pathetic as it sounds, I daydreamed about Teagan and spaced out on the conversation all together.
Good God. I needed help.

My wonderful clients couldn’t ever know how desperate I was for someone to listen to my problems. Sure, I could talk to my family and I did.
A lot. But after a while my parents and my brother were out of answers that suited me, I could see from their faces they had no more advice to get me the answers I truly desired. I started a journal a few months ago. The name Teagan was in every other sentence.

If only I could re-wire my brain and stop thinking about Teagan Gallagher. If only I could take the commission checks ever since I started my job and buy back the summer I had with Teagan. Self-help books didn’t aid me in forgiving my past and looking forward to the future. Stupid fucking meditations every night before bed did not rid me of my dreams and nightmares I had of Teagan. I laughed at myself and looked back down the street to see the homeless guy was gone. Would he have listened to my problems if I had given him five dollars?

Several car honks blasted down the street, interrupting my wandering thoughts. I saw the Geo Prism round the corner. Driving like a reckless fool, Conner had the stereo turned all the way up with the bass pumping.
My poor little stereo.
At this rate, my stereo would die if he continued to keep the bass dialed all the way up.

I rocked on the bench a couple times before I stood and rolled my eyes at him as he came to a stop right in front of me.

“Hello, my beautiful prego sister,” Conner sang out loud with flourish. He was a cocky shit. His auburn curly hair was all tussled up, obviously just out of the shower and he donned an old Boston College hooded sweatshirt and ripped jeans. He was a ladies’ man. Girls strained their necks just for a glimpse everywhere he went. Throw in the fact that the guy was on his way to being a rock star and it was just preposterous.

As his baby sister, his love for me was unconditional. Our bond was tight. We were the only children in our family so we were forced to live, laugh, love, and fight with one another for decades. He had proven his love to me over and over this past year. I loved him so much for it. Still, he was a cocky son of a bitch.

“Shut your mouth,” I murmured sarcastically as I rounded the car to the passenger seat.

“Testy,” he sang in a lower melodic voice. He was all smiles as he looked at me and my pregnant belly. I considered slapping him. If only men could feel what it is like to be pregnant for one solid day, they wouldn’t say or do anything positive when a pregnant woman felt like shit.

“Well, you
are
late and
this
is the day, Conner,” I whined as I pulled my seatbelt over my belly. “I might be able to finally know what the sex is. Damn kid didn’t want to show us ten weeks ago and I want to know
now
.” I crossed my arms over my plump breasts and hissed.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he grabbed the gear shift and squealed away.

“Stop driving like a maniac. Baby on board.” I pointed down to my watermelon belly.

“Sorry,” he replied sheepishly, turning the stereo down. “How is the little man growing today? I don’t even know why you are getting another ultrasound done. It’s a boy, Lizzie. I am 100% sure that kid is a boy and I am the great Uncle Conner. It has such a nice ring to it. He is going to rock the guitar by the time he is three.”

I smiled inwardly at his excitement and started to feel the baby anticipation, too. “He has been kick boxing my bladder all day so I would say he is a fighter,” I replied. I was almost a mother and even though the little sucker did not want to show its private parts to me, I sort of knew it was a boy, too.

I could hardly stomach Conner navigating the streets towards Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  Instead of blowing chunks, I focused on the people in the city streets. The spectrum of people ranged from professional Bostonians, laid back tourists and college kids with earphones in and backpacks on. Life was full of these busy moments.
Moments with brothers in cars. Moments when you are about to find out the sex of your baby. Life can change in a matter of moments.

Were these people waiting for their moment to happen or were they experiencing their moment right now, too? So, yeah, I was being a little introspective. I have spent so much time engrossed in my own head these days. I am a single, pregnant twenty-four-year-old trying to forge through each day without collapsing into a self-pity abyss. I wasn’t drinking or smoking and miraculously, I didn’t even want to anymore.

The moments that changed me into the person I am now were obvious. The first moment I met Teagan and took his hand to play a game of darts. The moment we blindly conceived a baby together. The painful moment when I saw him kiss the girlfriend I didn’t even know existed. The blessed moment I decided to tell the doctor to stop the abortion. The agonizing moment I said goodbye to Teagan in the parking lot. The one-sided moment I decided not to tell him I didn’t go through with it.

Twenty minutes later, I practically jumped out of the car and screamed to Conner to go park and I would find him after the appointment. I never wanted any family or friends at my doctor’s visits. It was a personal time for me to both grieve and anticipate the birth of my baby in privacy. Of course, my family offered to accompany me but I politely refused. I always sobbed when I heard the heart beat, when they measured me and when they told me the baby was growing. It was exhilarating and devastating concurrently. I didn’t want anyone I personally knew to see the mixed emotions I experienced when I heard or saw my baby. The game face was what I wanted them to see. From the first appointment, I knew I couldn’t be my true self if anyone else was experiencing the moment with me. It was embarrassing and I was ashamed of my feelings. I wanted my family to only see the excitement I had about the life I was carrying inside me.

Of course, the doctors and nurses were very professional and never questioned my sobbing fits. They simply gave me a tissue, a comforting moment alone afterwards and sent me to the registration desk to schedule my next appointment. Those few moments that I was left alone in the examination room, I cried for the baby and for Teagan. He was the man who broke my heart and my soul and then hightailed himself back to Ireland. He was the man who didn’t even know his baby existed after all.             

It figures that the little sucker didn’t show its private parts until six weeks later when I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. With a midwife, an epidural and my mother’s hand, Niall Conner O’Malley, 7 pounds 8 ounces, came out of me screaming mad. I couldn’t blame him and cried right along with him. That was the only time my family saw me cry over my son.