OffSpring | ✎

Chapter XXVII

Chapter Twenty-Seven | I'm Sorry
______

"I don't think this was a good idea," I mumbled out loud.

My hands shake in my lap as I clench them tightly together to keep them from moving, but nothing worked, my rising anxiety with every mile we ride, my legs quake and my eyes skirt back to the mirror to gaze behind us; my heart pounds, each vibration heard through my ears.

"I shouldn't have listened to you. I should have stayed where I was, safe," I utter, wiping my hands down my jean pants.

"Look, we got out of there, that was the biggest part of the plan." Maddie cuts her eyes over toward me before glancing in the review mirror and back to the road ahead.

I notice her hands were clutching the steering wheel, tightly, her fingers trembling.

"I should have stayed."

For some reason, my heart was growing heavy and it felt harder to breathe, the distance away. . . the distance away from him was doing something to me.

"This was the best way and thing to do—"

"But for who!?" I suddenly shout causing Maddie to jerk in her seat, "Who does this 'escape' benefit? Me or you? Because my actions from now on will be for the children I'm carrying."

"All this is for you!" she argues, "I'm doing this for you. You don't know what they will do to you after you give birth, Kaitlyn, these are Vampires we're dealing with."

"You're right," I run my hands through my hair, yanking on loose strands. "But that doesn't mean you know either, you're as in the dark as I am about everything."

Maddie sighs heavily through her nose, one of her hands coming off the steering wheel to rub her ear; a habit she was getting annoyed. "Why can't you see that I'm risking a lot for you not because I love you but because you're the only family I have left."

"Maybe I don't want you to!" I whip around to face her, glaring at the side of her face, "I need you to come to the conclusion that you can't always be there for me and that everything doesn't need something drastic as this to 'protect' me."

A muscle in her jaw ticked as she clenched her teeth, keeping silent.

"You're not one of those superheroines in the comic books that wish to save every single person they see in distress; it's stupid and can't always happen. I've come to the mindset that there will always be someone, better, stronger and smarter than me. You need to too."

"I was safe when I was them, him, Delano kept me safe even when I doubted him."

"I'll do whatever I can to get you three back to the manor. ."

I squeeze my eyes shut, balling my hand into a fist as I push back in the seat and turn away from her, facing the window.

"Maybe it was better off for you to stay away, I didn't need you then and I don't need you now."

•••

From the side mirror, I watched as Maddie pumped gas into the car, her eyes flickering around the area in an alert. Since the heated conversation neither one of us spoke to each other, the car was filled with silence so quite it was too loud for me to handle; the sound of Maddie placing the gas pump back causes me to blink and flicker my gaze back to where she was in time to see her round the back of the car, the driver's side opens and close and we were off once again.

We pulled out of the deserted gas station and onto the empty road that stretched for miles and was surrounded by fields of grass on either side of the road. Silence encased the car in a poisonous bubble, my hand strokes my belly underneath my shirt, the hard ridges under my fingers.