Binding Attractions

Chapter 7

The heat was sweltering. It felt like she was in a sauna. Sweat rolled down the back of her neck and into her shirt, which was absorbing it like a sponge. Nadiya blew out a breath through her lips and then licked the dryness away with her tongue.

After a beat, she reached for the bottle of water in the side pocket of her backpack and took a greedy gulp. A few drops of cool water missed her mouth and dripped down to her collarbone. Nadiya removed her free hand from the wall where she had been using it for support and wiped at the water, even though she wished she could just empty the entire bottle over her chest.

Damn, she felt like she was boiling. And it probably didn’t help that she was standing outside her cheap motel room in the heat. She also concluded that being seven months pregnant possibly also made things worse. Her body temperature always seemed to be high, even when the weather was cool ever since she got pregnant. Nadiya finally understood the saying ‘bun in the oven’ and dammit, she was the oven.

Her free hand traveled down the stretched t-shirt to her rounded belly. She sighed softly. It still felt like a dream and a nightmare twisted up into one.

It had taken her a while to realize she was pregnant. Being on the run and stressed out of her mind had made it almost impossible for Nadiya to pay attention to anything other than staying alive.

But then she realized her body was changing. For example, her stomach got round like a penguin’s and her jeans wouldn’t fit around it anymore. Also, her bra felt two sizes too small. As though that was not bad enough, she felt sick and exhausted ninety percent of the time. In the beginning, she had written it off with every excuse she could come up with, but in the end, the truth had been too plain to ignore.

Nadiya was pregnant. And as though the universe just had to make sure she was totally f****d; she was pregnant with Glisson Barkley’s baby. The very man she was running from because he wanted her dead and had already tried to make it happen.

She shifted her legs a bit to change her posture and hopefully relieve the pressure on her lower back. It didn’t work. Nadiya needed to lie down and put her feet up. Preferably, after a cool shower and with something to eat that didn’t come from a box. Unfortunately, she wasn’t certain returning to her motel room would be wise at this point in time.

The Garden Rose had been her home for less than a week. While the name might have sounded classy, the place was a dump. But Nadiya hadn’t minded. She had just been in need of a new place to hide for a few days.

Her last location had lasted a whole month before she noticed the same car parked across the motel for two days in a row. Nadiya took nothing to chance. She had collected her backpack and gracelessly left the room through a back window. She was pregnant, not an invalid. And when the situation looked like life and death, she dug deep for her extra reserves of strength and flexibility.

However, Nadiya had to face the reality that she was getting bigger and more tired. She couldn’t keep running. To make matters worse; she couldn’t imagine running with a newborn baby.

The thought of terminating the pregnancy had never crossed her mind. Neither did the option of dumping her baby at some orphanage and just taking off. Logic suggested that would be the safest choice for her kid, but she couldn’t do it.

Nadiya already loved her baby, and she was going to do all she could to make sure they both stayed alive. Who had fathered the child didn’t matter. At least, she chose to believe that. She put Glisson Barkley in the category of an anonymous sperm donor and shut the door on those thoughts.

Being a mother hadn’t been in her plans. Maybe she had thought it would happen someday, but she hadn’t held her breath on it. But life had other plans, and she was going to be a mother in less than two months. But only if she could keep them both alive that long and after her child’s birth. Which was why she was now considering the option to look for a brother she had never met.

All she had was a name: Gabriel. And his age: thirty. He was born five years before her and their mother had already dumped him at the doorstep of a church before Nadiya ever came into the picture. The only reason Nadiya even knew Gabriel existed was because their mother would blabber and cry about him every time she got too wasted on alcohol and drugs to control her tongue.

Nadiya had never felt the urge to look for Gabriel. If she was honest, she would say she was angry at him, even though it was no fault of his own that he hadn’t been there to live through the horror she’d had to survive until she finally couldn’t take anymore and ran away at sixteen.

Of course, she had assumed a lot that he’d had a better life compared to hers. For all she knew, he might have had it worse, but her teenage, angry brain couldn’t have processed that. For her, Gabriel had been the lucky one, and she had hated him for it.

But now, she thought he was the only person she could turn to for help. That was, of course, taking another giant leap of faith and assuming he was alive. Alive and willing to help her or even believe she was his sister. Half-sister from a mother that had abandoned him as a baby. He might want nothing to do with her, or he could be a monster just like Glisson, she mused. However, Nadiya was at the end of her rope. She definitely couldn’t keep running. Glisson was hot on her trail like a shark scenting blood in the water.

As if to prove her point, Nadiya watched as a shadow appeared against the window of her motel room. There was someone definitely in her room. At first, she had thought she was being paranoid, but now she knew.

A wave of unease had woken her from her afternoon nap with a jolt. Nadiya hadn’t given it a second thought before she grabbed her backpack and quickly left the room. Still hoping she was just being paranoid, she had stayed close and watched.

With the confirmation that someone had definitely entered her room, possibly from the bathroom window in the back, Nadiya knew she had to move.

She patted her stomach again. “We need a plan, kid. And we need one fast,” she murmured quietly.

They were running out of time and money. There was only so much her hacking skills could do, given the circumstances. Nadiya hadn’t taken a job in months for fear of taking the wrong job and ending up at the business end of Glisson’s gun. Her resources, which she had completely withdrawn to stay off the grid, were dwindling. Fast. It was an understatement to say she had underestimated how expensive life could be when she had to pay for motel rooms every night and buy take-out food because she didn’t have a kitchen.

Nadiya gave the motel room one more look. She knew whoever was inside wasn’t going to leave through the front door. But she knew it was either Glisson in person or someone sent by him, since his face was all over the TV stations thanks to her.

Damn, Nadiya thought with a shake of her head. She had really put herself in a bind. And even though there was no use wallowing over yesterday’s decisions, she still wondered if she would do the same thing all over again, given the choice.

With her thoughts still spinning with her current reality, Nadiya made sure the cap she wore hid her hair and half her face, and then she turned and stepped onto the sidewalk, blended in with the crowd, and walked away from the grim reaper once again.