I watched as the old anger that haunted him when we first met seeped back into his body. He fixed his scarab eyes on mine, stormed over to my bedside, and lifted me, pressing his lips harshly against my mouth.
I didn’t kiss him back, and he dropped me to the mattress, practically growling in frustration. “For f**k’s sake! Please. Please. You’re scarin’ the shit outta me! You need to start dealin’ with it, dealin’ with everythin’ that’s happened.”
I just turned away and stared at nothing.
“You can’t even bear to look at me, can you?”
I narrowed my eyes, whipped back to face him, and bit out, “There! I’m looking at you! Tell me, Rome, what would like me to deal with exactly? The fact that your mother killed my f**king baby?”
Romeo withdrew as if I’d punched him and he answered through gritted teeth, “Our baby, and don’t you ever forget that. I was with you all the way until the end… still am! I’m still f**kin’ here, tryin’ to pull you outta hell!”
I shrugged nonchalantly and turned my back, my sorrow and guilt trying to bubble up my throat, but I pushed it down—deep, deep down. I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
“You know what? Fuck this! I’m out!” Romeo marched out of the door and I watched as he bolted down the corridor, his back rigid from stress.
I breathed out slowly and closed my eyes, wishing to just never wake up.
* * *
A newspaper being slapped on the bed table awoke me from my sleep. A very drunken Kathryn Prince stood at the end of my bed, the door to my private room tightly shut, blinds closed.
I was trapped.
“What are you doing here?” I asked angrily, scurrying to prop myself up on the pillows.
She smiled and wobbled to the chair, dropping herself on the seat beside me, whiskey once again reeking from her pores. She appeared completely dishevelled, her perfect blond hair was sticking out in knotty clumps, and her eyes were surrounded by deep, dark circles, her red lipstick slightly smudged.
Leaning forward, she pointed her boney finger at me and her face contorted into a vicious expression. “You’ve ruined us, you little whore.”
I regarded her blankly, fighting the disabling anxiety I could feel blooming in my chest. “You ruined yourself. You murdered our unborn baby! Your grandchild!”
“That abomination should never have been conceived. It was scum, just like its mother!”
I felt like I’d been hung up, nailed to a cross, and crucified. My baby was not scum. It was perfect; it was ours.
Mrs. Prince pushed the newspaper farther in my direction. “Read it. The editor and my husband’s not-so-biggest fan sent us an early copy. A little treat for suing him a few years back.”
I reached out and with shaking hands picked up the paper. “Oh my God. That’s why?”
“Fantastic reading, isn’t it?”
The front cover had a picture of me, the night of the dinner, on a stretcher outside the plantation, being carted to the ambulance, my white dress soiled by a mass of blood, an oxygen mask on my face, and Romeo gripping my hand tightly, his expression distraught, also covered in my blood. The parallel picture showed Mr. Prince in a suit outside Prince Oil headquarters.
The title read:
“Tide star QB’s girlfriend miscarries amidst Prince Oil money laundering scandal.”
My chest felt like a sprung coil, and I lifted up, rubbing at my sternum, trying to ebb the aching strain.
I couldn’t.
The picture… the picture of me losing my baby…
Pain devoured me from the inside out. I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t take the reality of the image, of Romeo’s crushed expression as he held my hand.
I heard a wicked laugh and Kathryn hovered over me. “That look on your face may have made it all worth it!” She closed in. “You’ve made a mockery of my family, you evil bitch. Leave. Leave Alabama and never come back. You’ve nothing left here. Rome won’t want you after this, after you tainted his reputation and destroyed his family’s business. If you stay, I’ll make sure I bring you down with me, so help me God! The Princes will be the laughing stock of all of Alabama because of you…”
“That’s why you were pushing him to marry Shelly? You wanted her father’s money, needed the legal connection before he found out what you’d done.” It suddenly all made sense. Romeo was right to have been suspicious.
“And that spawn of my husband’s tramp would’ve if he’d never met you! Now everyone knows. My husband’s been arrested. We’ve lost everything because of you! Everything!”