“I already fell, Pike. I want out. I’ll finish this; I’ll divorce Bennett, and no one will ever have to know about this.”

His fingers tighten around my shoulders, painfully. “You don’t love him,” he whispers, and I hear every morsel of pain he’s trying to hide, but I can’t lie.

“I do love him,” I say under my breath, and as soon as he drops his head, he lifts it right back up. The look in his eyes turns to cold stone, and he takes a couple steps back, releasing his hands from me.

His sudden shift in demeanor rattles me as I watch him start to subtly shake his head before questioning, “Are you not telling me something?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the fact that your hand hasn’t left your stomach for the past few minutes,” he says, and when I look down, I see that I’ve got my hand right where he said it was—an unconscious act of protecting what’s inside—and suddenly, all the blood drains out of me, leaving me utterly terrified as I watch the viperous hate surface in his eyes.

You’ve heard of Newton’s first law of motion, right? The one that states that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force? It’s a science that can’t be negated, and with the game in full speed, I’m about to learn the catastrophic consequences of that law.

“Pike,” I soothe, needing him to calm down.

“Tell me that I’m losing my mind right now. That I’m not thinking clearly. That I’m not—”

Holding my hand up in front of me, I try coaxing my words as I speak slowly, “Please, Pike. I need you to just—”

And then he loses it, exploding like a grenade, screaming in sulfur, “Tell me you are not fucking pregnant!!”

“Pike!” I yell as he grabs my arms violently.

His face—raging red, spitting his words, “What the fuck have you done?”

“Nothing! Let go of me,” I yell, panicked, jerking to break free of his hold on me.

“Tell me!”

“Yes!” I immediately shout back, and he releases his grip.

He turns away from me, raking his hands angrily through his hair, as I stand here, nervously awaiting his next move. He keeps his back to me when he continues to talk, “You’re fucking pregnant. Jesus Christ. And it can’t be mine because you haven’t been fucking me.”

I don’t correct him because he assumes that I’m not as far along as I actually am. This baby could very well be his.

He turns back, and the look in his eyes scares the living shit out of me. I don’t see Pike behind them, only a monstrous version of what could be my brother. And when he starts moving towards me—body tense—the shrill of horror stabs me.

“This is over right now. I’ve spent too many years for you to fuck this up.”

“What do you mean?” I ask as I start backing away from him.

And then my world goes into a paradox of raging fast slow motion.

His arm rises with a tight fist.

My arms wrap around my stomach.

Fist barreling down.

My eyes squeezing shut and coiling away.

A collision of knuckles against jaw.

Blow after blow, he’s relentless as I fall lifelessly to the ground. The light begins to fade as my screams lull me into the blackness. My lungs cave with every fatal kick to my stomach, and there’s nothing I can do as I lie here defenseless to this monster above me. A beating fire of pain ruptures inside, paralyzing me to a corpse as I feel everything breaking inside of me. My screams turn breathless and everything vanishes as Pike grunts like a wild beast, hammering his booted foot over and over and over into the womb that carries the purest part of me.

Black ink bleeds over me as I drift into nothingness. I’m a hollow tomb. Looking up, I see a dark sky, flickering with diamonds. Thousands of them. There’s no more pain—there’s nothing in this solitude of pure, deathly silence as I lie here and stare into the endless black hole.

Wishes.

I could make an infinite amount of them with all the stars that shine down upon me. But I’m not lying on the ground. I don’t feel anything as I float in negative space.

Where am I?

How did I get here?

And then I see him. My old friend. He never changes and that constant nurtures the despair that has always followed me. His green and yellow accordion body slinks over to me, and it’s then that I realize how small I am because he appears to be the same size as me.

“I’ve missed you,” he says in his eloquent English accent.

“I’ve missed you too, Carnegie.”

“Where have you been?”

“In hell.”

“Is that why you came back?” he asks.

“I don’t even know how I got here,” I tell him, and he smiles, saying, “Maybe someone knew you needed a little break from hell,” as he gives a nod up to the heavens.

“Maybe,” I whisper and roll over onto my belly. It’s then I see where I am. Large, green blades of grass standing high above the mass of earth beneath. Gigantic trees that border a sea of dark water. Brilliantly massive blooms are illuminated by the full moon above, casting its glow on the array of colorful, exotic flowers; pink, orange, yellow—but no purple in sight. And when my eyes shift down, I take in a breath of awe when I realize why Carnegie doesn’t look so tiny. My body, a tube, roped in pink and black, and when I look back at Carnegie, he laughs, “It’s spectacular, isn’t it?”

“I’m a caterpillar!” I say in wonderment. “Carnegie, do you see this?!”

“I do.”

And then it all comes together. I finally made it. I’m here . . . in the magical forest . . . and I’m a caterpillar, floating in a pond that seems like an ocean because I’m so tiny. I begin laughing as we float on our lily pad raft.

“It’s good to see you smiling,” he says as I scoot around the large, green leaf, reveling in my new form.

Meandering around, I respond, “It’s been a while since I’ve felt this free.”

“May I ask you a question?”

Giggling after I round my body into a ball, discovering I can roll, I take a few seconds to play around before acknowledging his request, answering, “Of course,” as I straighten my body and inch over towards him.

“Why do you feel like you’re in hell?”

His question dulls my zealousness, and when I flatten my body against the lily pad, I tell him, “It’s always been hell, Carnegie. But lately, it’s become overwhelming.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Look around,” he says. “I’ve got nothing but time.”

“I’m sure, but to relive everything isn’t something I wish to do.”

“Then tell me what happened last.”

I blink and then look up at the black sky, glittered in stars, and tell him, “I fell in love.”

“Ahh, love,” he says as if he’s wise in that spectrum, so I ask, “You ever been in love?”

“Me?” he questions and looks out over the water. “No. I was turned into a caterpillar before ever having the chance to experience such an emotion. But I wonder why it’s hell you feel.”

“The love is the only part of this story that isn’t hell.”

“Tell me what it feels like. Love.”

A few fireflies above catch my attention, and as I watch them making skittering dashes of swirling light, I answer, “Amazing. It’s like an urgency that can never be sated because you can’t get enough. One day, you’re walking through life, thinking you’re satisfied, well, as satisfied as you can be, and then, when you finally feel the click and get your first taste of love, you realize you’ve been starving your whole life but never knew it. And that one person is all you need to truly feel alive.”

“And you found that?”

Giving Carnegie my attention again, I reply, “Yeah. I never knew what it felt like to breathe until I met him.”

“So what’s hell?” he asks.

“The man I’m married to.”

“The one who allows you to breathe?”

“No, the one who slipped the noose around my throat and caused me a life of suffering,” I tell him as his beady eyes widen.