I tried to beg him to stop, but all that left my lips were grunts and cries. My bloodied hands reached for him in a silent plea, and he smacked them away.

“What are you taking?” Collin shouted.

Hard sobs left me and I shook my head against the tile as I lay there, no longer able to curl in on myself. Blood smeared from the tile onto my cheek from where I’d hit my head, and each sob that shook my body felt like someone was stabbing my stomach with a white-hot poker. I couldn’t take in anything more than shallow breaths, and breathing out felt impossible.

“I will find it,” he assured me in a dark tone. “When I do, you will be begging me for this.”

He kicked my stomach once more, and when I started to roll over to protect my stomach, his foot smashed down onto my back and pinned me to the floor. My tears and spit mixed with the blood on the floor, but I couldn’t move my head no matter how hard I tried. The pain was unbearable, and the way he had me pinned was making it impossible to breathe. It was all I could do to keep from passing out—I’d found out in the beginning that passing out wasn’t an option. He’d only start up again once I was conscious.

“Don’t move until I’m back. If I find birth control, Harlow, I’ll be sure to tell your mother that you are the reason she’s about to die.”

My face twisted in pain and fear as silent, agonizing sobs continued to torment me. I knew he wouldn’t find anything, but that never made the time while he searched for something any easier. Every time I wondered if I was making the right choice. He threatened my family—but I was saving a child. I just had to keep reminding myself that in the two and a half years of going through this every other week, those threats had been just that. Threats.

Because once he came back from not finding anything, everything would change. It always did.

I don’t know how long I’d been left there, but by the time I heard his bare feet on the tile as he entered the bathroom, my sobs and tears had stopped, and I was just lying there helplessly.

Collin rolled me over and hushed me when a cry bubbled up my throat. His dark blue eyes roamed over my face sadly for a few seconds before he said, “There was nothing, like you said.” Brushing my hair back from where it clung to my face, he gently trailed his fingers along my cheek and down my neck. Just as the tips of his fingers touched my collarbone, they were digging in behind it, and he was whispering, “Don’t show your pain, baby.”

More tears welled up in my eyes before leaking out, and I smashed my mouth into a tight line to keep any noise from escaping.

“Don’t show your pain,” he repeated, but I couldn’t stop crying. “Why aren’t you getting pregnant?”

I shook my head back and forth, and he nodded a few times before breathing out heavily.

“What good are you if you can’t do this for us? Don’t you want a family? Don’t you want to make me happy, Harlow?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm and soothing. When I didn’t respond, he dug his fingers in harder. “Answer me.”

“I do,” I cried out before clenching my shaking jaw shut again.

He seemed to accept my answer, and the pressure left before he was wrapping his arms under my body and pulling me up to cradle me against his chest.

Another cry of pain filled the bathroom, and he kissed my forehead. “Don’t show your pain,” he said without moving his lips away.

Collin walked me into the large shower, sat me down on the built-in bench, and pulled the shirt off my body. He turned on the water as he walked away, and I watched vacantly as he cleaned the blood off the tile. Once he was done, he stripped down and stepped back in the shower. Sitting on the bench next to me, he pulled me into his arms and looked at the back of my head for a few minutes.

“Very small cut, I had trouble finding it. You’ll be okay.”

I nodded and bit back a groan when he stood us up. He washed my body and the blood out of my hair before toweling me off and dressing me in one of his shirts. Once he had me in bed with a few pillows propping me up, he disappeared into the kitchen for a while, and then came back with breakfast for both of us.

He slid in between my back and the pillows, and gently pulled me into his arms so he could feed me.

“Are you hurting?”

The pain had the edges of my vision darkening, and my body responding too slow, so much that it was taking me forever to eat what he was giving me. “I’m fine,” I whispered when I swallowed a bite.

“Good girl. How’s breakfast?”

I couldn’t taste it. “It’s great,” I responded in a monotone voice. “Thank you, Collin.”

He kissed my shoulder and fed me another bite. “Anything for my girl.”

A lone tear slipped down my cheek as I tried to be thankful that I’d made it through, and started the countdown over again.

Fourteen more days.

Chapter 5

Harlow

Present Day—Richland

AFTER THANKING THE barista for my coffee, I began walking out of the coffee shop, only to stop. I didn’t want to go home yet. I didn’t need to start making Collin’s dinner for four more hours at least, and sitting in that house would only have me anxious and paranoid for that time.

Turning back around, I walked to one of the large chairs and sat down, ignoring the dull ache in my torso as I did. It’d been three days since the not-so-surprise negative pregnancy test, and while the bruising just got worse, the pain was getting more tolerable all the time.

Setting my cup on the table in front of me, I pulled my mini iPad from my purse and smiled to myself when I found there was still a charge. I set an alarm on it to know when to leave in case I was able to escape my reality for a little while, grabbed my coffee, and gently sat back in the chair as I tried to get into the book I’d been reading last week on my Kindle app. I had more than enough time to read during the days; that wasn’t the problem. It was whether I could push away my real life enough to let myself enjoy the fairy tale.

More often than not, I ended up staring blankly at my iPad long after it had shut itself off from lack of use as I thought about whatever was going on with Collin, or my own fairy tale that I’d given up.

Like now, I realized, when I noticed my screen was black again. I didn’t even know how long I’d been sitting there just staring at it. I took a deep breath in, preparing for a silent sigh out.