Perfect Strangers

“How would I know?” He shrugged. Taking her hand, he brought it to his mouth and kissed it. “Do you think it could be about, … you know, …what you told me earlier?”

He watched as her mouth opened and confusion swept across her face, “How? How would she know?”

So, Grace doesn’t know what happened then? Clearing his throat, he smiled softly “I’m sorry, I assumed your sister knew.”

“No, Kai. She knows nothing and neither does my father.”

With a deep breath and a feeling of trepidation coursing through his veins, he sighed. “Where were they when it happened, if they don’t know?”

She pulled her hand from his and dragged the duvet with her as she rose to her feet, leaving him completely exposed in all his glory. “Grace was away on a skiing trip, she had gone for two weeks so that left plenty of time for the bruising to clear up before her return,” she replied casually. She slipped herself into her Hello Kitty pajamas that had Kai let out a low chuckle.

“What is it with you and these pajamas? Every time I wear them, you laugh?”

“I’m sorry, but you look like a child in them. You should be wearing little lace camisoles with matching panties, something sexy, something that screams I am a wanton sex goddess, not something that screams I ate all my veg, please pass me the candy.”

She cracked up laughing and playfully threw her hairbrush in his direction, luckily, he had foreseen her action, he rolled out of the way and snatched the discarded duvet from the floor then slowly flopped backwards onto the bed, his eyes fixed on the plain white ceiling. “Where was your father?” He asked, desperate to keep her talking and opening up to him.

“Well, he was salesman at the time, he was never really at home. Growing up he was only ever home at weekends then Monday mornings would roll around and he’d be off again for another week.”

“Are you okay talking about this, Juliet? I don’t want to push you to the state you were in earlier,” he replied quietly. Propping himself up onto his elbows for a better view, he gazed at her.

“The hardest part is done, I’ve admitted it aloud and shared it with you. I know you’re going to have a million questions floating around in your head, and honestly? I’m thankful you haven’t bombarded me with them yet,” she replied as she leant forward and secured her long dark locks, that he had so enjoyed pulling on less than an hour ago, on top of her head.

He watched her pad lightly over the flooring into the en-suite and wash her face under the faucet. “Ask me,” she hollered into the room, dabbing her face with a towel.

“Ask you what?” He replied feeling confused at her question.

“I can feel your eyes boring into me and follow me around the room. You have more questions, so ask me.”

He pulled his lips into a thin line and mentally tried to think which was the best way to go. His heart became a swirl of emotions as his head bounced with a series of questions. With a heaving chest, he shuffled himself up the bed and balanced his head against the solid oak headboard. “Did your mother know about your condition that day?” He finally rasped out.

He watched her come to a sudden standstill and her eye’s fixated onto something on the wall he couldn’t see. Her face became stony and the red flush of her cheeks drained, leaving her with an eerie, ghost like presence. The sight made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle to attention. “I’d been to visit the sick bay several times that week at school and I remember the nurse asking me could I be pregnant. Of course, I scoffed and denied there being any chance in hell of that, but her question had caused my insides to coil up and when I couldn’t mentally remember when my last period was, I stopped off on the way home that day and stole a pregnancy test from the chemist.”

“Myla,” he whispered. He started to move from the bed. Without looking at him, she held her palm up in her trance like state and gently began to sway, side to side.

“I did the test and it was positive, I remember getting in a right state, crying myself to sleep that night, terrified. Terrified of telling Casper, my parents, terrified of being called a whore and a slut, but also terrified of being fifteen and having to face the fact I was pregnant. I’d hidden the test under my mattress. I thought no one would find it, but mother chose the next day to strip the beds and turn the mattresses, that’s how she found it.”

Kai let out the deep breath he had been unknowingly holding and raked his hand through his disheveled hair. That bitch knew she was pregnant?!

“After, she took me to the ER and told them I had accidentally fallen down the stairs. I was kept off school for a week and excused from sports for a month so my bruises could heal away from prying eyes.” She continued in a dull, lifeless tone.

Kai managed to shuffle to the end of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. His pounding heart beat wildly in his ears and his chest ached for her.

“I wanted to tell Casper so badly, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything so I distanced myself from him for a while and gradually, with the help of tapping my finger constantly I dealt with it as best as I could, alone.”

Kai flew from the bed and was in front of her within seconds. Grabbing her by the shoulders he forced her to look at him. “You haven’t dealt with it though, Juliet. You’ve buried it deep down, you’ve locked it away and pretended as though it didn’t happen,” he rasped, raggedly.

Her emotionless eyes looked up to meet his. “I don’t want to deal with it,” she whispered.

“You have to deal with it. This is eating you up inside, you will never move on from this, Myla if you keep quiet. It’s unhealthy.”

Her eyes went wide and fear suddenly appeared in them. “No. No, Kai. I can’t, don’t make me do this.”

“You are not alone anymore, I am here holding your hand every step of the way. You have to tell Casper what happened, he has a right to know, he was going to be a father.”

With her body trembling, she pulled back and stepped away from his grasp on her shoulder’s. “If I tell Casper now, after all this time, Kai? He will come around here and tear her limb from limb, I can’t do that to Grace, she gets married in twelve hours.”

“We postpone going home then, just another day and we get all of this out in the op