Bound By One Night With The CEO

Chapter four

Marlowe's POV

I picked up the test while on my way home that next morning. I had my sunglasses and was wearing cash instead of a card because part of me, without even realizing it, refused to have a clue of a trail. I told myself it was unnecessary. I said many things during the week that were in the end, untrue.

There were two lines already when I had only just set down the toilet paper on the ledge of the sink, both of them appearing so quickly and clearly I just gazed at them and didn't even notice that my legs suddenly became weak. And when they did, I was forced to sit on the bathroom floor!

Pregnant. With Callahan Winslow's child.

The very same man who not long ago, around eighteen hours ago, claimed I wasn't the kind of girlfriend he wants at all.

I chuckled. It wasn't a happy sound.

I am guessing about how long I just sat there, leaning against the cold tile wall with one hand flat over the stomach which didn't look changed at all yet but somehow it already felt like it was someone else's belly.

I thought about calling him. I got as far as opening his contact, thumb hovering over the call button, before I remembered the exact flatness in his voice . “I don't want this, I don't want you”

and set the phone face-down on the floor instead.

He'd made his choice. I wasn't going to hand him the power to make mine for me too.

That night I saw him in the dream as I do everynight since, but this time the dream did not stop where memory usuallydoes. In the dream, his hands were on my waist and his mouth was at my ear, murmuring something I couldn't quite catch and I was very aware of the acheunder my ribs the weeks before, but somehow I had managed to ignore it.

SuddenlyI felt so much and so intensively that I startled at my own body so much that Ididn't even stop and took my breath, the bedclothes entangled, the heart beatingwildly against a chest that, in a way, even now, wanted him.

I was lying there in the dark, despising how easily my body could reveal my feelings when my pride had decided against them.

I made up my mind by sunrise and decided not to be in a city which I might encounter him at a coffee shop, at an event, or even in the hallway of the same building where he once looked at me as if I was the only interesting thing in the room. I couldn't raise a child here where it is surrounded by the presence of a man who had already decided we weren't worth keeping.

I called my mother first. Then I called the airline.

I packed light, two suitcases, the essentials, and the version of myself I'd built over four years at the academy folded up small enough to fit in a carry-on.

I intentionally abandoned the rest: my badge, the last name I had borrowed, and the version of my past self who let her emotions get the better of her and fall for a guy who could reject her simply by making up a flat statement like that. For whatever was to happen after that, I decided it had to be by my hand using a name that had never been exclusively my own.

The taxi ride to the airport seemed the longest of my life to me, the city passing the window fast. I didn't even try to remember those images. I kept my phone switched off the whole time.

I didn't trust myself not to check it, not to look for a single missed call that would undo four days of careful, deliberate resolve.

At the gate, I sat with my hand pressed lightly against my stomach and let myself, for one unguarded minute, imagine the life waiting on the other end of this flight.

My mother's house. My father's company, quiet and waiting for someone to finally step into it fully. A child who would never once wonder if they were wanted, because I intended to want them enough for two parents.

That was the plan. That was the whole, careful plan.

And then the ache under my ribs surged so violently I nearly dropped my boarding pass.

It wasn't the same boring habitual pull I've been feeling all that time. This one was definitely more intense, like a warning that had gone off inside of me, and every part of my body was pointing to Truth is "he" was nearby.

I just couldn't believe the notion.

I told myself he had no way of knowing which airport, which flight, which gate out of an entire city.

I looked up anyway.

He was standing at the far end of the terminal, still in yesterday's suit like he hadn't slept, hadn't changed, hadn't done anything since I walked out of his apartment except come looking for me. His eyes found mine across the crowd instantly, like there had never been a single second of doubt about exactly where I'd be.

My heart did something violent and unfamiliar, caught somewhere between fury and a relief I refused to admit to.

He had no reaction. I also stood rooted to the spot. We just locked eyes with each other surrounded by lots of people, and in that fleeting, improbable moment, I was completely clueless if the hammering on my chest was due to fear or if it was from the same deceitful hope which I had been fighting to eliminate for the past seven full days.

The announcement over the speaker, for final boarding of my flight, came with a buzz.

I looked at the gate. I looked back at him.

He started walking toward me.

And that was the exact moment I felt it, a second pulse of sensation, distinct from the first, sharper and colder, like something entirely separate from the ache that had been living under my ribs for weeks. Not longing this time. Something closer to warning.

My phone buzzed once in my pocket. An unknown number. A single text, no name attached, sitting there on my lock screen like it had been timed to land at the worst possible second.

You should have taken the money. Get on that plane, Marlowe, and don't ever look back. This is your only warning.

I looked up. Callahan was closer now, close enough that I could see the exact moment his eyes dropped to the phone shaking in my hand, close enough to read whatever had drained the color from my face.

"Marlowe," he started.

The gate agent called my name over the speaker, the very last boarding call of the flight.

I had no idea, standing there frozen between a man I couldn't trust and a threat I couldn't explain, which one of them was about to change my life more.

For one wild second I actually laughed, sharp and disbelieving, because of course this was happening now, of course the universe had waited until the exact worst possible moment to hand me two impossible choices at once. Board the plane and let the warning win. Or stay, and let him.

"Who sent that?"

Callahan got close enough that I could feel the heat pouring off of him, close enough that the desire wedged deep in my ribs howled louder than the boarding call still reverberating through the room. I stared.

"I don't." I kept my voice under control.

"Do you?" A quick expression flickered on his face there and then was gone so quickly I almost didn't see it. Almost.

"Marlowe, whatever this is exactly, let me help you."

"Stop! You had your chance to help me four days ago," I said. "You chose to hand me a check instead."

"Final boarding call, " the gate agent announced a bit abruptly, doors closing in two minutes, and suddenly my entire body tensed up. It was still not a decision. I bent my head down again to look at the message light on my screen, which only had four words that I did not see as an alarm, but more of a vow. Don't ever look back

I never figured out who the smartphone belonged to at the end or how anyone could know with exact certainty that I'd be standing here at this moment, on the exact same date, unless the surveillance had been going on much longer than either of us were comfortable with.

At the peak time of a heartbeat, I made my choice and quickly, with a carry-on in hand, I headed straight for the departure gate without casting him a single glance. I walked on, my fingers still numb around the phone that had vibrated again in my hand even before I got to the jet way.

Looking down to the phone I didn't dare.