By the time I reach DTW, my lip is swollen from biting on it so hard.
I nearly let out a sob when I remember how biting my lip drove him crazy.
Part Three
Colton
Chapter 14: The Unborn Song
Two Days Later
I’m nearly rabid with worry by the time I’m able to leave the shop and catch a cab to Nell’s Tribeca apartment. It’s been two days and I haven’t heard shit from her. No calls, no texts. She was supposed to come over after her Theory class, but she never showed. Phone goes straight to voicemail. Text don’t get delivered. Her boss at the little dive bar where she works a couple nights a week says she never showed up for her shift. I contacted her on FB Messenger, no answer. Finally, I leave Hector to lock up the shop, because I just can’t take it anymore.
I toss a bill over the seat of the cab and don’t wait for change. I have to take a few deep breaths before I’m calm enough to unlock her door with the key she gave me.
We just exchanged keys last week; I thought things were great.
Up the stairs three at a time, nearly knocking over a little old lady in the process. There’s a piece of paper folded in half and taped to the door. Shit, no. Fuck no. What is this?
I rip the note off the door, and it’s oddly heavy for a piece of paper. There’s a plastic baggy inside the paper, and inside the bag is a pregnancy test. Oh hell no.
Oh hell yes.
Positive.
And no Nell. I search her tiny apartment more than once, as if it’d reveal her hiding in a cupboard or something.
Just the test in the stupid baggie, and three scrawled words: I’m so sorry.
She f**king ran. I’m angry, I’m panicked. I’m so many things it’s all a jumble in my heart and head, and I can’t think straight. I’m on a plane suddenly, with no memory of having gone to the airport or buying a ticket or anything. I’m in a bad, bad place.
Memories are surfacing, things I’ve never told anyone, ever, not even Nell, and I’ve told Nell pretty much every sordid detail of my f**ked up life…except that.
A couple long, brooding hours later, the plane has landed and I’m in a rental car—I don’t even know what kind—and flying far too fast north on I-75. I’ve shut down. I’m a blank, empty. No thoughts. Thoughts are dangerous. I can’t feel. All I can do is act, move, be.
I have to find her.
Fucking have to.
Miles flash, stoplights change too soon and slow me down. I barrel through more than one red light, earning blaring horns and flashing middle fingers. Then I’m approaching my parents’ house and it’s dusk, but I know she’s not there, why would she be? I skid to a stop in the middle of the road in front of Nell’s parents’ house. I leave the car door open, leave the engine running. Unreasoning panic drives me, panic so deep I don’t understand it, but I can’t stop it. I can only move with it, let it have reign over me.
I burst through the Hawthornes’ front door, slamming it open violently. I hear a glass shatter and woman scream.
“Colt! What the hell—what are you doing here?” Rachel Hawthorne has her back to the sink and has a hand pressed to her chest, confusion and fright in her eyes.
“Where is she?”
“Who? What—what are you doing here?”
“Where…is…Nell?” My voice is low and deadly.
She hears the threat in my voice and pales, begins to shake and back away. “Colt…I don’t know what you’re—she’s out running. She went for a run.”
“Where does she go when she runs?” I demand.
“Why do you want to know? Are you two…”
“Where does she go, Rachel?” I’m standing inches from her, towering over her, glaring. I should back down, but I can’t.
Rachel is trembling, white as a sheet. “She’s—the old county line road. North. It goes in a big arc and she—she cuts across Farrell’s field back this way.”
I’m out the door and running, full-on sprinting. Terror claws at me, and I can’t fathom it, can’t get out of its grip. It’s hounding me, pushing me. She’s pregnant and she ran from me rather than talking about it, but that’s not enough for the kind of reaction that’s driven me since this morning. It’s coming from way deep inside me, a kind of psychological foreknowledge that something is horribly, horribly wrong and I have to find her.
My feet stomp in the dirt, pushing mile after behind me. Dark now. Stars out, moon low and round. My blood is on fire, my heart pounds and my head throbs and my hands are clenched into fists.
I’m shaking, I’ve been flat-out running for at least two miles and I’m not in that kind of shape, but I can’t stop. Can’t.
Not won’t…
Can’t.
Another mile, and I know I’ve slowed, but I’m pushing myself, because I have to find her.
Farrell’s property, a wide expanse of high grass and old fallow fields and lines of trees subdividing properties. If she fell in the grass out here, I could pass right by her and never know it.
But there she is. Jesus, thank you.
She’s just sitting, hunched over, face in her hands. She’s sobbing. Even when she told me everything and cut loose with years worth of pent-up grief she didn’t weep like this. It’s…god, it’s the single most awful sound I’ve ever heard.
Worse even than the wet thunk of the bullet into India’s head.
Nell has been absolutely broken, and I don’t know by what.
I crouch beside her, touch her shoulder. She doesn’t even respond, doesn’t look at me. I scoop her in my arms, and something hot and wet coats my arms.
The ground where she was sitting is wet, black in the dim light. A huge swath of grass is blackened with dark liquid.
Blood.
Fuck.
“Nell? Baby?”
“Don’t call me that!” A sudden, vicious scream. She wrenches out of my grip and falls to the grass, crawls away, heaving so hard she’s close to vomiting. “It’s gone…it’s gone, it died…”
And I know what happened but I can’t even think the word.
I scoop her up again, feel hot sticky wet flowing from her. She’s still bleeding. “Nell, love, I’m here.”
“No, no…you don’t understand. You don’t—don’t get it. I lost it. The baby…I lost the baby.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know. I’ve got you, I’m here.” I can’t keep my voice from cracking. I’m as shattered as she is, but I can’t let on.