Page 2 of Hide My Heart
“I want to go home.” I lift my chin stubbornly, knowing that home was the last place I could go in my condition.
Hunter knows it, too. He tosses his head back laughing, “The preacher’s daughter coming home knocked up.”
Chills whip through me. I squeeze my eyes shut and shudder. He’s right. I can’t go back. I didn’t obey my parents, and I’ve shamed them.
They never let me have a normal childhood. They kept me shut in, kept me away from everyone who’d be a bad influence. Which was everyone I could have been friends with. Is it any wonder I hightailed it out of there when I turned eighteen?
And now, I’m in trouble. And I can’t go back.
Hunter swings the pickup, fishtailing out of a turn onto a slushy highway. He reaches for my hand and squeezes it, always too hard. I try not to cringe.
No fear. No fear.I whisper under my breath.
“Babe, you’ll feel one hundred percent better after it’s over. It won’t hurt a bit, and afterward we can celebrate. I’ll take you to that pizza joint you always want to try.”
“Celebrate? The death of our baby?” The words bubble from my throat before I can take them back.
He guns the engine to pass a tractor trailer, then sweeps his hand over his mop of red-brown hair. Eyes blazing, he says, “Stop getting so dramatic about this. We agreed to get rid of it.”
Sure. He agreed and dared me to disagree. Same with everything else. That I move into his cabin, stinking with the pelts of foxes, beavers, and muskrats he traps for a living. That I stay home without a TV, without a telephone, and our nearest neighbor is miles away.
Stupid. You have no job skills. You don’t even know how to work a computer. You were supposed to be a preacher’s wife. Play the piano and pray.
He has me trapped. Just like my parents had. The irony almost makes me laugh. I do laugh. I slam my head back and hit the sliding window behind the bench seat and laugh. When Hunter swept me off with him last summer, I thought I was getting away from home. Seeing the world for the first time. On a grand adventure driving across the country.
“What’s so funny?” He swerves around a lump of frozen deer body parts on the highway. “Look, we’ve been over this a million times. I still want you. I’m just not ready to be a father. I can barely feed you.”
My stomach growls in agreement. I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink because of my appointment. A curl of nausea reminds me why. I cup my hand over my mouth and swallow the bile, noticing the lump in my throat for the first time. “Can’t we get help? Welfare?”
“No. I’m a man and I take care of my own.” He jogs my arm. “Look, I still want you. Care about you. Let’s get it over with.”
As if that’s any consolation. He wants me, but he doesn’t want my baby. Our baby. What kind of man is that?
Miles later, Hunter pulls the pickup into the driveway of a concrete building. Snow swirls around, dusting the windshield as soon as the wipers stop. Everything is a shade of gray, even the crusted snow.
Before he can get out of the truck, I swing open the door and make a run for it. The streets are bereft of bystanders, and a few cars slog through the snowy street.
“Hey, where are you going?” Hunter yells and comes after me.
I approach a man with a woman walking bent over and wrapped in a thick blanket. She staggers as I step in front of her.
“Can you help me? I need to use your phone.” I make my appeal as sweetly as possible.
The woman’s mouth drops open, and she swallows like she’s about to throw up. The male glares at me as if I’m about to mug them.
They avert their eyes and turn back the way they came. That’s when I notice letters missing on the double glass doors proclaiming it a Women’s Health Clinic.
Hunter snags my arm and throws me against the concrete wall. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”
“I, uh, nothing.”
He clamps my neck with one hand, and his pupils narrow into pinpoints. “You get rid of the baby, or I’ll hunt you down and get rid of it myself.”
He’s cutting off my air supply. I grasp at his hand with my fingers, struggling to breathe. I can’t do anything but nod.
He lets up the pressure and smiles again. That wide wolfish smile like he knows I’m toast. I have no choice. After Hunter opens the door, a gust of wind pushes me into the clinic along with a flurry of snow.
Without letting me dust myself off, Hunter trudges to the receptionist with me in tow.
