Free Chained (Caged Book 2) by D. H. Sidebottom Page B

down.
    “Babe, please don’t cry. I always hated it when you cried.”
    I looked up at him from where my head rested on his strong chest. Tension simmered thick between us, the oxygen in the air thin and stifling. For a long moment we both got lost in the blue of each other’s eyes, both of us remembering and struggling to distinguish the feelings that had started to seep into us.
    But I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. What we felt was need for compassion. We looked for support and companionship, and refusing to see what our connection actually was would be lethal.
    I pulled away but held his hand tightly in mine as I swiped at my tears with my other hand. “I’m sorry.”
    “Don’t be silly.” He sighed and regarded me. “I need to say this Kloe, or I’ll regret it.”
    I nodded, bracing myself for what was coming.
    “Whatever has happened between you and the father, it doesn’t mean you can’t do this on your own. Well, I’ll be there every step of the way. You will make the most fantastic mother. And whatever happened in your past, it won’t inflict the love you will have for your own child.”
    “I know that, Ben. This isn’t because of my past, or that I don’t think I’ll cope on my own. There’s so much that you don’t know, so much even I don’t know. I can’t make sense of anything. It’s all so damn hard. But this also isn’t my baby’s fault. So much has happened and I know that bringing a child into the middle of this is so very wrong.”
    “You’re right, it isn’t the child’s fault. But you’re making it his fault. You’re blaming it for whatever is going on. It’s innocent in all this, Klo.”
    “And that’s why I have to do this. Innocence is so fragile, so breakable. And I’d rather die than break something so precious.”
    “But having a termination isn’t ‘breaking it’?”
    It was all such a mess. And although Ben was being harsh with me, I knew he was only trying to make it all better. But no one could ever make this better. It was all so fucked up that I wasn’t sure I’d come out of it in one piece, and that was what scared me. It terrified me. If I broke, or Anderson kept his promise of using me for his revenge, then who would my child have? How would it survive? I had no one and Anderson was too broken himself to care for a child. Yet something in the back of my mind told me he would care for it, he would love it. Just as much as I would.
    A child was our redemption. A chance for us to begin what others had ended for us. A purpose for all this love we had inside us.
     
    Knowing he was getting nowhere, Ben shook his head. “End of subject.” Jumping up and making me start, he grabbed my hand. “We need a dance. It’s been years.”
    And so that was what we did. We forgot everything. We forgot how shit life was.
    And we danced.
     

     
    Going back to work was like I’d never been away. The Three Ferns, the convalescence home I had worked in for the last four years was my diversion. The patients were some of the hardest I had ever worked with – other than Anderson.
    Most ranged from severe depression after having an accident, to self-harmers that couldn’t find any other way to deaden the pain that lived inside them. For obvious reasons I connected with these cases more than others. Because I understood what a simple slice of the skin could do for the soul.
    There’d been a time when I had mutilated myself, self -hatred conquering me until I could release some of that pent up revulsion that forever lived inside me.
    When Robbie and Anderson had cut me during sex, I had been surprised by the differing feelings that had engulfed me. One simple slice hadn’t released the tension; it had built it. A single stroke of the blade across my skin had consumed me in sensations that made my mind shiver in ecstasy. Pain + arousal = fucking bliss!
    Self-harming was a completely different distribution of pain. I was one of the lucky ones, if one could say