Blackbird (Redemption 1)

Briar

After making a sandwich, I downed a bottle of water as I padded through the house to the office then cracked another bottle open when I sat down in front of the computer.

I’d spent hours outside, alternating between swimming and just lying on one of the chairs, soaking up the sun. After the first morning Lucas had taken me out back, I had spent nearly every day out there. The days I didn’t think I could take any more sun without getting heatstroke, I lay in the cabana reading.

Anything to be outside.

I slowly picked at my sandwich as I opened up Lucas’s e-mail and started one to him.

He had given me his credit card number a few weeks ago, but I didn’t want to have control of his money.

I’d shredded the paper that contained the number in front of him.

But I couldn’t have a job, not without risking men from Lucas’s world finding out—women working was not allowed—and sometimes this house and my life became very mundane when Lucas was gone during the day.

So I’d finally given in.

/> Now I e-mailed him the titles and authors’ names of the books I wanted from his own e-mail address, and he bought them for me.

Once the e-mail for new books was sent, I scrolled through the list of his unread e-mails, looking for any he had flagged and unlocked for me to read.

I straightened in the chair and smiled when I saw three from William, the subject showed they were just a few of many replies in the chain of Recipes for Briar e-mails from William’s women.

I scrolled through until I was at the beginning of the new ones, and printed out two recipes, then scanned the conversations from today.

Lucas, it has been weeks since we last saw Briar. Let her come over!

We love you.

All of us.

No. You can come see her.

I rolled my eyes at his terse reply. It wasn’t any of their faults I couldn’t stand being around William.

A chime sounded through the computer, and I glanced around the large screen until a small conversation window popped up in the corner after a delay. All it said was ‘Hello?’ but I couldn’t see who it was from. There was only a gray circle with an X through it as the sender, so I exited out of it and went back to finishing the e-mail.

Always so grouchy, Lucas! Karina has now grabbed the wooden spoon; you have been warned. If that is how you must be, let William know what day we can come see her. Sahira wants to know if Briar would like us to schedule a spa day at your house, and we all want to know if she is pregnant yet. We need a grandchild to play with now that all of the children are grown and gone.

I knew I had to look horrified as I stared at the e-mail.

Pregnant? Kids with Lucas?

Of course I’d wanted to be a mom. I’d wanted that for so long, to be someone as nurturing and kind as Nadia had been to me before she abandoned me. I thought that coveted future was going to be a reality sooner rather than later. But then everything I thought I’d known had been torn from me, and I’d learned that while I’d loved before, I’d never loved wholly.

And now I had that love . . . but I couldn’t have children. Not with Lucas.

I was sure—I was so sure that he loved me too, even if he refused to understand he was capable of loving someone. But I knew that despite that love, and despite how different we were from the rest of the people in his world, he still had every intention of buying another girl. And another. And it would destroy me when that time came, destroy what we had.

If we had a child, it would just push my heart and my mind into thinking we could have more than this; that we could have everything. And I wasn’t reckless enough to not take his words to heart; I knew we couldn’t.

“No. No babies,” I whispered numbly, and tried to ignore the aching in my chest as I exited out of the e-mail.

I took the last bite of the sandwich, and started to roll away from the desk as I dragged the cursor up to shut off the computer when two chimes sounded through the computer. After another delay, the same conversation window popped up.

X: Are you there?

X: Briar?