Page 1 of Baby Me

Chapter 1

Kate

There’sno sound more gut-wrenching than the sound of your bones breaking. It’s somewhere between the grinding of stone against stone and scratching your nails over a chalkboard, but a lot more painful. It’s the kind of sound that draws out every last goosebump on your arms and makes you want to vomit at the same time. Except add to that pain. A lot of pain. A pain that’s not quite explicable to someone who’s never had a broken bone. Imagine peeing acid for the rest of your life. Every single time you let go of your bladder, your urethra burns like you’ve eaten a gallon or so of ghost peppers. That’s pretty much what breaking three bones at the same time felt like, and well, it was pretty fucking painful. One crack after another,crack…

Crack…

Crack…

I’ve dreamt about the night I almost died every night since the incident. I’ve dreamt about Aaron Cortez prepping his bat like a professional batter — no, make that a scum-eating maggot shithead of an asshole batter. Each time in my dream he’d aim the same way he did that night, with precision, giving my shin a taste of his strength first. The bone shattered as soon as it came into contact with the bat. I fell down to my hands and knees. As I crouched, barely holding myself up, he aimed for my arm. I didn’t even get a chance to prepare myself for the hit. That second swing brought my entire body to the ground. I grazed my face along the gravel and curled into a fetal position, then waited for the pain of both the first and that second blow to travel through my body and out my limbs. It felt like it all lasted forever. Then came the third one to my ribcage, repeating the aching cycle all over again. That last one knocked the wind out of me. I was barely holdingon.

Leg, arm, ribs, leg, arm,ribs.

The eager vibrations in every tensed muscle turned into sharp pinches as their pain radiated from the surface of my skin and then softened to a unified ache which traveled from my head all the way down to my toes at the slowest speed possible. I waited for my body to get accustomed to the pain before I completely gave in, but it didn’t work. My body had finally been pushed past its limits, and Ifainted.

I could have survived the additional broken nose, fractured pelvis, internal bleeding, and nearly complete organ failure from dehydration. I knew I could have pulled through anything, and I never thought they’d find a way to actually break me. But they did, and I was afraid the damage would be permanent. This time, the pain of loss hurt me so much that I wanted to die, but my body wouldn’t let me. My body kept me alive through the terror of being told that I miscarried a child. My and Cameron’s little baby, conceived about eight weeks earlier. Aaron Cortez took away the one thing in the world I didn’t even get a chance to love while it was inside me because I didn’t know. And now that I knew the baby had been there and I couldn’t have it back, I wanted todie.

They broke my bones and bruised my skin, slapped me, kicked me and pulled my hair, then spat at me. All that did nothing to my soul. It wasn’t until I realized the abuse attributed to my ultimate loss that I felt like Aaron Cortez actually broke me. He reached deep into my chest and tore my heart out. He took away that last part of me that I needed to hold onto.

So yeah, since that day, that nauseating sound of breaking bone had been playing in my mind over and over, reminding me that a month and a half ago I still had a baby in mybody.

That sound became my anthem for failure. It became the sound of insufficiency and inadequacy.Ifailed her or him.Icouldn’t save mybaby.

“Hey, sweetheart.Kate?”

The voice I heard through my dream was low and soothing. It carried a ton of compassion with a hint of autumn warmth, and I immediately felt better. The window in our bedroom must have been open last night because I felt the morning breeze. The sun’s warm rays shone on the lower part of the bed, making my feet feel nice and toasty. Hearing his voice and feeling safe and secure was usually my favorite part of themorning.

Cameron hadn’t left my side since we arrived at his family’s secluded cabin in the mountains, somewhere in the forests and valleys of Michigan. I had no clue where we were. There were no cell phones; no phones period. No television and barely enough electricity generated and stored through the solar panels to ensure we’d have a working refrigerator. Everything else ran on burning wood. I loved the smell, but the amount of work was exhausting, especially since Cameron organized the quaint cabin all by himself and wouldn’t allow me to help. I’d sit on the back porch and watch him prepare the wood. He had become quite the lumberjack, chopping at the trees and splitting them into burnable sizes. Turning and twisting, forcing his muscles to bunch up. It was a beautiful sight, one that definitely took my mind off mywoes.

“Kate?” I heard his voice again. “Are youawake?”

A sudden urge to stretch my arms out flew through my body, but I quickly realized that I could barely move. Feeling somewhere between my dream and a woken state, I heard myself gasp and I opened my eyes. The man who’d risked his life to save me was sitting at my bedside. I’d ruined his entire family when I blew up a warehouse with millions of dollars worth of Mafia narcotics. The ultimate blame fell on Cameron, who happened to be there at the time, and placed his entire family on the Mafia’s radar. Yet Cameron still chose me. He returned to Pace and saved me from certaindeath.

“Did you have another nightmare?” Cameron asked, gently running his hand over my arm. It was warm andtender.

“Yeah, the same one. It’s always the sameone.”

He helped me to sit up and rest against the headboard. “I’msorry.”

“I’m fine. Really. Anynews?”

He shook his head, and I sighed. I had a feeling it would be a while before we heard a single word about Cortez’s capture. Aaron Cortez had escaped prison, and now we were blindly counting on the authorities to find him and put him back behind bars, while we were hiding out in the deep forest. How had he been able to escape from jail? It had to be an inside job. The cop in me had a gut feeling, except no one wanted to listen tomyopinion becauseIwas a victim.Iwas a crippled cop on disability, unable to do anything for myself because my arm, leg, and torso were in acast.

Stupidassholes.

Men with too much power acquired what I called theking syndrome. They acted like know-it-all royalty. They became inconsiderate jerks and traitors. Like my ex-fucking-boss, the captain at my precinct, who turned out to be my half-brother and tried to kill me because of some vengeance for his dead father, Aaron Cortez’s brother. They thought the law could never touch him. Well, it touched him – except Mike was serving time in a Martha Stewart-type ofjail.

Bastard.

Aaron Cortez escaped from jail in the first twenty-four hours after he was sent there, and I’d been wanting to scream “I told you so” at the top of my lungs every day since then. People like Aaron Cortez were a special breed. Their movements were calculated, and if I were a betting woman, I’d bet that Aaron Cortez would ultimately come after me to finish the job. This time when he swung that bat, he’d ensure that it connected with myhead.

Dweebs.

They’d never find him. Not unless someone like Cameron hunted him down. Unfortunately, Cameron’s number one priority at the moment was taking care of me, and I loved him for that from the bottom of my heart. I loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone, and I hoped he’d finally shed the guilt he’d been carrying with him. I hoped he’d finally forgive himself. My kidnapping wasn’t his fault. Losing our baby wasn’t his fault. It was Cortez’s. But Cameron wanted vengeance. He wanted to put his fist down that bastard’s throat until he could reach his heart and rip itout.

Or maybe that was just my own wishfulthinking.

Unfortunately, he wouldn’t get a chance — not yet, at least. We were under strict orders to not interfere with the investigation. Cameron took me up to the Madden family cabin so that I could recover. Given its secluded location, it was the perfect spot in which to hide out while Cortez was on therun.

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