Life With The Boy Next Door - Lissie (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

sitting round my feet. I’ve been running from that old woman’s prophecy for the last eight years, Alice, and I don’t want it to come true. Nor do I want you to see that island girl again. We leave tomorrow morning, and you won’t talk to her between right now and then” Cale said in slow words, his eyes flickering from her face to the sand in his hands and back up again.
He finished on a low note and stopped talking, his hands resting in his lap and his shoulders rounded and hunched uncomfortably as he awaited her reply.
Alice at last lifted her head and ceased her long, unwavering stare at the sea. She looked instead at Cale, her pale eyes vaguely cold and unfeeling. She did believe him, no matter how extraordinarily strange and unbelievable the tale was. She had seen some strange things in her life, and Cale speaking honestly was the least of those events. He rarely told mistruths.
“I believe you” she said faintly, her hands lying still on her bent knees.
Cale waited again, sensing more was to come.
“But?” he finally prompted her, without looking at her face.
Alice sighed slightly and straightened her posture incrementally.
“I think I still need to talk to the girl. If she can give me any information I’m going to need about this child, I want to know it and I want to hear it from her. You have no extra knowledge, so you’ll be no help to me at all” she said tiredly.
She put both her hands on her belly and hauled herself to her feet. She didn’t expect Cale to rise up at the same time and grasp both her upper arms. He didn’t try to remove her hands from her tummy, but he did heave her up and toss her over his right shoulder. Alice screamed and beat his back and shoulders with her clenched fists, but he didn’t put her down. She caught a glimpse of the young island teen watching and staring at them from a few feet away. Alice fell quiet and hung limply against Cale’s back, staring back into the girl’s eyes. For the first time, she saw the red film and felt frightened of her. But she wasn’t as scared of her as she was of her husband right in that moment of time. The girl blinked twice, then turned her back on the both of them, her long white skirt flicking about her ankles.
“I told you so, Cale Vreeland. You are going to kill her one day soon. Right now, you don’t think you will, but you can’t stop it. No more than you can stop the Decreed getting what they want. Goodbye, Alice. Dream while you can, and live forever in the minds of those who love you” she murmured, the soft breeze again catching her words and sending them off.
Hearing them, Alice closed her eyes and held back her sobs. She held onto her stomach and didn’t reopen them even when Cale left her on the bed and returned to the door to keep watch and make sure she didn’t get up and try to leave.
Over the following hours before their flight back to America, he did not allow her to leave. Alice only slept, refraining from eating in the wild, vain hope that she could starve his baby out of her, kill it before it ever breathed in the air of the world.


When Alice and Cale arrived at the airport, Annabelle was there to meet them and take them home to the house that both sets of parents pitched in to help them buy. Immediately, she took hold of her daughter’s arm and steered her away toward the baggage claim area. She wanted to talk to her alone. Alice waited patiently, all her old impatience sucked out of her by Cale. She listened dutifully to her mother speak.
“Are you all right? Cassi woke up in the middle of the night on your first day away and told me that something was wrong with you. Did Cale hurt you? Are you sick or injured?” Annabelle demanded, her questions gushing forth from her in a tidal wave of aggravated parental concern.
Alice smiled benignly at her, her pulse slow and sluggish as Cale’s monster grew inside her and sapped all of her strength and free will.
“I’m fine, Mom. Just pregnant” she said softly, her eyes focused on her mother’s worried face.
Annabelle’s plucked eyebrows shot up.
“Already? How do you know so fast?” she asked, wonderment evident in her tone.
Alice just shrugged and kept walking over to where the baggage conveyor belt was. She waited, again patiently, for her suitcase to trundle by, and leaned forward to grab it. Annabelle got there first, fussing and saying that pregnant women shouldn’t lift or carry such heavy things. Alice didn’t object, merely nodded and allowed her mother to take over, which was what she did best. As she led the way out to her car, Alice kept perfect pace in time with her, as a means of being removed from Cale for at least a few blessed minutes.


4

The following day, Alice woke up to horror. She naturally slept with her hands on her stomach, and now her abdomen was more swollen than it had been the day before. Her grey eyes widened and she stared at her stomach.
“Oh no, no, no” she moaned unhappily, able to feel the swift kicks from within.
Cale sat up beside her and she screamed and fell over the side of the bed. Her weakened limbs quivered as he leaned over the edge and looked down at her. The wedding band was already loose on her finger; the baby was sucking everything out of her. She didn’t feel sick, but her own weakness disgusted her and she wanted to run away forever.
“What’s wrong with you?” Cale asked her, his tone not unkind.
Alice stared up at him, a dark expression on her face and storms in her eyes.
“Don’t you come near me” Alice spat, her words whipping him in the face.
She covered herself as best she could with her arms and shuffled away from him on the floor. Her back painfully struck the hard, sharp edge of their giant mahogany dresser. Alice stopped moving and remembered what sat on top of the chest of drawers. Her mirror, bought when she turned thirteen and her mother deemed it appropriate for her to have one in her room. And now it sat atop that chest. Slowly, her eyes on Cale, Alice stood up, inching her way backward up the front of the dresser. She could feel his green eyes burning into her back as she turned round and grabbed the mirror. She weighted it in her hands for a second before hefting it high and throwing it straight at Cale’s face. Alice didn’t wait to see what happened, instead choosing to wrench the bedroom door open and sprint as fast as she could in her terminally weakened state out of the room and down the stairs.
In a panic, her frazzled brain barely functioning, Alice headed for the front door and wrestled with the lock until she could get outside. She slammed the door shut behind her and ran as best she could down their front path, the hard cold shale cutting into the unprotected soles of her bare feet. She suppressed the slight whimpers by pressing her fists against her trembling mouth, and just kept running. She veered away from the comforting arms of the forest, knowing that it was Cale’s element. Instead, Alice began the run a mile long to her parents’ house.
Panting hard, an agonising stitch piercing her left side, Alice arrived on her parents’ doorstep and tried the door handle. It was locked. She pounded as hard as she could on the door and shouted, her tears leaking into the notes of her voice.
“Alice?”
She almost collapsed on the stoop in relief and pain at the concerned sound of her mother’s voice.
“Mommy, I need help” she cried, her arms locked tight around her abdomen.
Annabelle threw open the front door and knelt down in front of Alice. She urgently grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly.
“Honey?” she asked worriedly, glancing over her shoulder at Jared when he appeared behind her in the hallway.
He dropped down beside her and stared in shock at Alice.
“Ally?” he said softly, placing a hand on the back of her neck.
Alice raised her head and lurched forward, throwing herself into Annabelle’s arms. She rocked back on her heels, but managed to hold the girl upright and stroke her long hair.
“What’s the matter, Alice?” she asked quietly, pulling back slightly to try look her in the eyes.
Alice shuddered and struggled to stand up on her own two feet, leaving streaks of her blood on the concrete doorstep. Jared looked at the blood and stood up with her, his wife next to him. He leaned forward and lifted her over the threshold and into the house. He carried her into their lounge and lay her down on the couch, settling a puffy cushion under her head. Alice wrapped her arms over her stomach again and retreated to the very back of the sofa, facing out.
She knew that her parents were gazing at her protruding tummy, their eyes wide and completely disbelieving.
“Alice, is that…” Annabelle asked, her eyebrows raised and voice wavering.
Alice choked and nodded. Tears streamed down her pallid cheeks, flooding from the corners of her tightly closed eyes. The sobs racked her body, sending harsh spasms rocking through her shoulders.
Together, her parents watched her silently, unable to help her and not knowing what was going on. Annabelle’s eyes suddenly opened wider in horror and revulsion as she noticed movement in Alice’s body. The span of a tiny hand pressed up against her taut skin and Annabelle shrieked quietly, her hands covering her mouth. Alice groaned where she lay and pushed the hand away, back where it had never belonged.
“What is it, honey?” Annabelle finally got the courage to ask.
Alice grimaced and opened her eyes, at long last looking back at them. She swallowed hard before opening her mouth.
Both man and woman jumped back at least a foot when the thick, viscous torrent of blood and something black spilt from Alice’s open mouth. Annabelle screamed again, this time a lot louder, and Cassi ran into the room. She took one look at her sister, and hurried out at once. Alice couldn’t sit up, and so the bloody gush kept coming out of her, because she couldn’t stop it. She clawed at her stomach, trying to tear the ugly thing out of her body. She crying and gulping, trying hard to breathe and cry at the same time and failing. Finally, she sighed softly and drifted sideways down onto the sofa she was on, sinking even deeper into the cushions.
Annabelle and Jared stared incredulously at the dark bloody patch soaking their snow white carpeting, purple black globs sticking to the carpet fibers. Annabelle gagged and Jared patted her back, looking away from the mess on the floor. They could smell it now, overpoweringly metallic and sour, filling their noses until theere was no way they could smell anything else but that scent of death and decay. A slight trickle of blood lined Alice’s lips and her eyes flickered occasionally, visible beneath her eyelids.
“Oh, that’s disgusting” Annabelle whispered, turning her pale face into Jared’s chest.
“Shh” he murmured, stroking her hair and hugging her to him. “Don’t say that, Anna. She’s our baby.”
“Look at what she’s got inside of her! Whatever it is, it is not a baby!” Annabelle almost yelled, stricken.
Jared sighed and pulled her down with