Unseen Messages(137)

A terribly, terribly hard choice.

Leave now...with meagre supplies and a body already stretched to its breaking point, or take my chances here and have an island birth.

As much as I feared my future, I didn’t have the strength to leave the only place I knew.

I didn’t have the confidence to willingly walk into the shadow of death when it was already dark enough on our piece of paradise.

Having it sink was the best thing for all of us.





Chapter Fifty


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G A L L O W A Y

......

THREE YEARS BEFORE THE CRASH

“YO, MATE.”

I swallowed my curse and faced the daily tormentors from E block. It wasn’t an afternoon in the yard without a sore jaw or verbal abuse. “What do you want, Alf?”

Alf lumbered closer, accenting a stupid swagger that didn’t hide the fact he was shorter than I was.

By three inches.

If I wanted to, I could knock the * out with one punch.

But I didn’t.

Because the rules were you got better treatment, more choices on work, and a cleaner slate for parole if you behaved.

Alf sneered, “Come on, *. Today’s the day.” He held his fists by his face, ready for a sparring match. “You’re never gonna get out anyway. Life, baby doll. Might as well have some recreational fun.”

I’d schooled my face to stay ragefully cold. He wouldn’t know what the words ‘life in prison’ did to my insides. He didn’t need to know how bloody twisted I was. Part of me agreed that I’d got a fair punishment.

I’d killed a man. I deserved to never be free again.

But the other part of me hated that my victim had killed so many others and he’d never been caught. He’d had the devil on his side.

Until me, of course.

.............................

“ESTELLE, YOU NEED to sit the hell down.” I pointed at her large belly. “If you don’t do as I say, I’m going to handcuff you to the bed.”

Estelle whirled on me, dropping the two water bottles she’d been carrying to give to Conner and Pippa playing in the shallows. The bottles weren’t heavy, but she’d been bloody waddling all over the camp since dawn. “With what exactly? We don’t have a bedhead and we don’t have cuffs.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean. How about you leave me alone?”

Whoa, what?

My heart shed its calm beat for a frenzied flurry. My voice was deceptively low. “I suggest you reassess what you just said to me.”

Damn woman didn’t know how to stop fussing. Her constant fretting made her tired. She shouldn’t be tired. She had to be healthy and strong for the birth.

The birth.

I swallowed hard.

Every time I thought about what Estelle would face in a few short months, my temper exploded out of control. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t take her pain. I couldn’t save her from agony. And I couldn’t do a f*cking thing if complications arose and she died.

I hated everything about this pregnancy, including the fact that Estelle seemed adamant at cutting me out of her life. “I don’t appreciate being told to leave you alone when all I’m trying to do is—”

“All right, that’s it! I’ve had enough.” Her eyes narrowed, hands flew to her hips, and her face darkened beneath her honey tan. “That’s all you do these days, Galloway. You follow me around muttering that I shouldn’t do that and I shouldn’t do this. You’re constantly under my feet. At night, you want to hear insistently that I forgive you for knocking me up and that I still love you. What the hell has gotten into you? I’m not dying, for God’s sake. I’m not an invalid.” She poked her stomach. “You’re so needy it’s as if you’ve turned into the baby and I don’t need this one.”

I froze.

The axe in my hands, from chopping firewood, dropped into the sand.

I should leave.

I should turn around and get some air before I said something I regretted.

But the air swirled with a fight.

I didn’t want to fight.

But this had been brewing for weeks.

We’d been off-kilter ever since the raft incident (which I still couldn’t think about without cursing the wasted time) and unable to find our way back to each other.

As the pregnancy progressed, Estelle shut me out. I didn’t think she did it consciously, but she’d done it nevertheless. She didn’t lean on me. She didn’t ask for my opinion. She shouldered more and more responsibility as if she didn’t trust me to do it right.

And it made me feel like an *.

Because the more she didn’t need me, the more and more desperate I became.

I needed her.

Not just sexually. But emotionally, physically, spiritually—every damn way. And it wasn’t enough that she cuddled into me at night and let me do the chores she normally would.

The chasm between us confused the hell out of me.

I felt...I feel second best.

Somehow, the baby that I’d shackled her with (the same spawn she’d been terrified of having) had stolen the heart of my woman before it’d even been born.

“Perhaps...we should talk about this later.” I gritted my teeth, doing my best to stay rational.