Chasing Demons (Book 2) Rated R

Chapter 35

~Aimee~

I woke in a dark room, cast in a soft orange glow by a single lamp.

The silhouette of a person in the chair next to me shifted. A sliver of moonlight filtered in through a crack in the heavy red curtains.

Christian's face, half in shadow, eyes cold and still as a winter lake, landed on me as he came to sit beside me on the bed.

"What happened?" I asked, mouth dry as if I'd been chewing on cotton.

"You fainted."

"The last thing I remember was arguing with you."

"You fainted after that. Grandfather Nandru said you had a fever, but he was able to get it under control."

"Oh," I muttered. I glanced around the room, at the white towels dipped into water on the bedside table, at his wrinkled shirt. How long had he been sitting here, watching me?

"You stopped breathing for a moment." He said, in a low, soft voice.

"Chris--I--"

"Has that thing, that dark entity been tormenting you, again, Aimee? Please be honest."

"Honest..." I mumbled. "Like you even know what the word means."

He sighed and stood.

"Fine. Yes. It's been sporadic ever since...ever since the night of the battle. But I have it under control."

"Do you?" He asked as he sat back down. "Because it attacked you again, last night. I couldn't...I didn't know how to fight it off, Aimee."

He reached behind him, and something rustled.

It was a plastic bag. From it, he pulled out what was unmistakably a pregnancy test, though the words were in a foreign language.

"Please," he said. "Please take it. We need to know what this is. If it's not a pregnancy, then we need to figure out what is wrong with you."

"Christian, I already told you, I don't want to...know..." I trailed off pathetically.

"Would it be so terrible, having my child? Is it such a horrible future you imagine that you refuse to find out?"

"It's not that." I sighed. I ran my hands over my face. "It's the way you've been acting. You won't let me in, and you keep pushing me away as far as you can. How could I want this when I know I'll be doing it alone?"

"You wouldn't. I may be many things, but an absent father would not be one of them."

"I know that. That's not what scares me."

"Then is it what you said at dinner? Do you truly believe I would lock you up?" His tone was careful, his face guarded but I could hear the undertone of worry. Despite everything, I knew that Christian did not want to be like his father. I dared to say it was probably what scared him most in this world.

"I don't know." I said, honestly.

His face closed off and I knew right away that I'd say the wrong thing. Errant rays of moonlight caressed the sharp line of his jaw as it hardened. A muscle jumped in his cheek, and he looked away from me and toward the door.

"I don't mean it like that...at least, I don't think that I do. But I do know you'd make yourself the villain if it came down to protecting those you love and sometimes, Chris, sometimes that scares me."

Christian said nothing. He sat quietly, twirling the pink and white paper box in his hands. Dark shadows circled his eyes, the hollows of his cheekbones even more pronounced than they had been at dinner.