The Quarterback's Love Child (A Secret Baby Sports Romance Book 1) Page 5

  To everyone I was the priest’s daughter, but to my girlfriends I was the one with the older boyfriend and they had stars in their eyes as they asked me about the pain of having my period. They commented on my breasts no longer being nipples, but the fact that I was filling out. The problem was that they were not the only ones who noticed. My dad became even worse.

  No longer was I allowed to socialize with my girlfriends and even go on the odd sleepover. It wasn’t often, but at least once or twice a year. Those stopped.

  I was locked in this cage until Sunday, with only one thing to do, and that was to pray.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Carl

  Her friends had told me that she had the flu, so she was in bed resting. I asked if Harmony or Faith had seen her.

  “I went there like I said after school, but her dad was there and he said that it was best I kept away, because he didn’t want me to get sick too.”

  I could tell that she wasn’t comfortable with the whole situation. There was something she was hiding and I wanted to know what it was.

  “So, you didn’t believe him?”

  She didn’t answer, but instead whispered, “We’ll talk at lunch.”

  I nodded, thinking that at least we would get to the bottom of it and find out what was going on. I knew Mom didn’t care, she would probably say something stupid like, ”The demons have taken ahold of her and are making her sick.”

  But, Dad, he was a different man these days. He would listen. Someone had to listen in Stowe Peak. Someone had to stand up to Father Roger, even if it was only me.

  ***

  As soon as it was lunch time, I rushed out of class, as if I was on the field and heading to make a touchdown. No one was getting in my way. I knew that tomorrow we would win our final game. We always did against Rhinebrook, the neighboring town. The championships were in our hand, so I wasn’t worried about that. I was just concerned about Michelle.

  What had happened when I’d left?

  I checked my backpack a dozen times, thinking that I’d done something stupid, like leave an item of clothing in her room. Or, even worse, left my damn backpack there, but I hadn’t. I was so damn careful. I knew what was at stake. And when I heard from Harmony that there was no choir practice this week or the next, I knew that something was really wrong.

  “Faith!” I waved to her as she entered the dining hall.

  She rushed over to me, “Okay, I just heard some news.”

  My heart skipped a beat, wondering what she had heard. I was getting to that stage that I didn’t care if she had any news. I needed to see Michelle. That was the only reassurance that would tell me that everything was alright. Unless Faith was telling me that Michelle was coming back to school tomorrow then her words were pointless.

  I didn’t wait for her to speak. She moved me to the side to keep us away from prying eyes and ears, but there was no such thing here. Everyone was already talking about us being huddled in a corner talking.

  “So, her mom came in and asked for stuff for her to be homeschooled, because she was really sick.”

  What?? Michelle wasn’t coming back?

  This whole thing was getting out of control.

  “I don’t know, this feels like last time,” she sighed as she ignored my stare.

  I shook my head, “Last time?”

  She nodded, “Uh-huh, last time she didn’t come back to school after the summer. The same thing. Her mom said that she was sick and then they both went to stay with her Grandma in Kansas. Then the weird thing happened.”

  It was as if she was reliving it and while doing so, she started to put the pieces together.

  “What weird thing?”

  “Oh, Michelle came back. She had put on weight and I remember thinking that if she was sick, would she have really put on so much weight?”

  I didn’t see what that had to do with anything.

  “Anyway, that’s when her mom turned up a few weeks later, with Mia. She said that she’d been pregnant and, after miscarrying so many times before she had Michelle, she’d needed to rest. So, Michelle was with her mom the whole time.”

  Memories of what my mom had said flooded through my mind. I wanted to ask Faith if she was thinking the same thing, but the whole thing seemed so obscure. I was going to ask Faith how long ago this was. It couldn’t have been last year, because she’d started in the fall like everyone else and that was when we started dating. If you could call it that, so it must have been the previous year. I couldn’t because Harmony came over and said, “Something’s up with Michelle. I don’t think she’s sick.”

  “Why?”

  I could hardly speak as I started to think of my first time with Michelle, the fact that she was so experienced. The rumor must have been true, but asking Faith meant that I was starting gossip. Rumors that I didn’t want to start, especially about the girl I loved.

  “Well, for one, the doctor’s not been to see her. She hasn’t been to the hospital. In fact, since Wednesday, she hasn’t left the house.”

  Harmony lived across the street from Michelle so she would have a better idea of what was going on.

  “And to make things worse, on Wednesday night, Ben - who’s a senior - said that he could hear screaming and crying from the house. He said he thinks that it was Michelle, but he wasn’t sure.”

  They knew.

  They’d found out.

  Michelle was being punished for it.

  My heart felt as if it had stopped beating as I walked away from them both. Now, I understood why Michelle had said that Harmony would make a good journalist. She had more information about the fate of Michelle than any of us did; the question now was what was I going to do with this new information? I had to do something, but what?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Michelle

  I gave in when the smell of my feces and urine became unbearable. I hadn’t bathed since I had been locked in the cage and the whole idea of starving myself and dying became the furthest thing from my mind. I thought about the people that I had read about in history class, the ones who had gone on hunger strikes for things that they had believed in.

  Why couldn’t I be like one of them?

  In 2013 the Californian prisoners had gone on a hunger strike, because they were being treated like animals and not humans. I remembered watching it on TV, one of the very few times that I was allowed to watch it in our house. Dad, at one point, said that the TV was part of the demons’ way of communicating with us all. Until he heard about the Three Angels Broadcasting Network when he went on one of his annual fellowships. For a full week he hadn’t been in the house, and even Mom was a different person and would take us out for ice cream treats when he wasn’t around.

  I sat on the chair and started to recite the pages that were left on the list, the ones that I was supposed to read every time they told me to do it through the camera. I read the first few pages and then someone opened the door, and bread and water was left at the top of the stairs and my bucket was replaced with a new one.

  It felt like seventh heaven as I indulged in it. It was gone in a matter of seconds and I started reading with some newfound energy, and it was replaced again.

  I felt the same way I did when I was sixteen and had come back from camp. That was when I saw Isaac again, and the reason he kept popping into my mind wasn’t because I’d missed him, or even wanted to be with him again.

  It was deja-vu being locked up here again. I went back to camp that year with clothes that Faith had generously loaned to me so that I would look older. I had my period and my breasts were filling out. At first my dad didn’t want mom to buy me a bra, until we were in church and he saw two boys looking at my nipples, which were blatantly on display through my dress. I had bras, nice clothes of the types that all the kids wore. Shorts, T-shirts and a couple of jeans. Dad had forbidden me to wear jeans, especially the skinny jeans which showed the curves of my figure. I think that was the first night that I wore them, when we had our pra
yer meeting. I wore a shirt and the skinny jeans that Faith had lent me.

  Later, Isaac took me to the side and he kissed me. He told me how much he’d missed me and that he had been looking forward to camp all year. Being the teenage fool that I was, I believed him. Mainly, because I felt the same way about him.

  He touched my breasts and that was when I had my first sexual experience. I knew that what we were doing was wrong. We hid and met in obscure places like all the other teenagers did to spend a few moments with a boy.

  I used to cover for one girl one night and she would do the same for me the following night. I remember after that camp experience I couldn’t think of anything else than giving him my body. I knew it was against the law, but I didn’t care. He was seventeen, and even though I wasn’t in numbers I had the body of an adult. He told me to wait one more year.

  I would be sixteen and under Montana’s law, the age of consent was sixteen and I could give myself to him completely.

  It felt like a dream come true. I never knew I would have a price to pay for doing that, I never knew the consequences were so great until that year came and all my nightmares became my reality.

  ***

  “Mom, you need to get me out of here. Tell Grandma to let me stay with her. I can get a transfer or something. Anything?”

  I pleaded with her as she crept into my cage and laid clothes by my side. I needed a bath. I needed to see light. Surely, she must have known that this was wrong. There was no way that God would think that it was okay to lock up children and treat them like this, as if I was some kind of savage or something.

  “Michelle do you know what you have done?”

  It played on my mind for a while, but then I got to the point that I didn’t care. I was cold, naked and had been urinating in a bucket for what felt like a lifetime. The reason for it didn’t seem important. Besides, Carl and I had decided to cool it for a while and soon we would be married and have babies and everything would be normal.

  No more Dad.

  No more Mom.

  No more being locked in a cage.

  There was only one thing that I needed to sort out. I had to figure out a way to make sure Mia would come to live with me. She had to know that she was my daughter, not theirs. I hated the idea of leaving her and, when she was my age, Dad would punish her the same way he had done with me so many times.

  She spat out, “You haven’t had your period.”

  I was locked in a cage eating bread and water, what did she expect to happen? I needed to be fed, clothed and not treated like a dog. My body, mind and soul were going through turmoil and she was concerned about me having a period.

  “So what? I haven’t eaten, bathed or anything. It’s dark here and I’m so cold, Mom. I’m scared.”

  She choked, “So what? You’re pregnant again and all you can say is so what?!”

  She started to walk away and then it hit me. My period was due, and that was the reason for him doing this to me. Because I had skipped a period. That didn’t mean I was pregnant, it could be for a number of reasons.

  “Mom, I’m never on time. Sometimes I go a day or two without it. It doesn’t mean that it’s happened again.”

  She nodded as she started to head up the stairs.

  “Yes, Michelle, but not three weeks.”

  I slumped down as the reality of what she had said hit home. She must have seen that I hadn’t used my period pads or something. I wasn’t allowed to use tampons. Nothing could be inside me, it was considered impure, just like me. I covered my face and I started to sob as the memories of what had happened before hit me and all I could think was no, not again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Carl

  After talking to Dwight, he seemed to think that the best thing to do would be to see her dad. I thought about my weekly confessions and that there was a game tomorrow, so I had no practice today. The last game of the season. Normally, I would be happy, but I just couldn’t think straight.

  Why were there screams?

  Were they beating her?

  I’d left her at home, naked on her bed. I’d kissed her forehead, then both her cheeks and finally her lips, vowing that our love would stay true and for that reason she was being punished. I felt sick to my stomach knowing that I was the reason for that punishment.

  Normally, when I went to church I would step right in. It felt like my place of haven. One that understood me and knew that everything I did was because I was young and easily influenced. I didn’t feel that way this time.

  This time, I hated stepping inside. I took a deep breath as I held on to the door handles, wondering if this was all a mistake and if I should just get my dad and some of the other guys. Dwight said that he would talk to his dad about it and then we could confront Michelle’s father about it.

  The problem was that in this small town, there was hardly any man that would defy Father Roger, he was considered a saint. I had got to know that he was anything but a saint. In fact I wondered if he was the devil. I had seen the marks on Michelle’s body. She had never told me what created them, she just said it was part of her punishment. How could scars be considered a punishment for someone as beautiful as her?

  The church was quiet, as it was normally around this time. I bowed in front of the sign of Jesus on the cross as I entered. I didn’t know what I was going to say or do, apart from stand up to him. The question was, what choice did I have when he was the superior one? The one that people looked up to. I was just some eighteen-year-old son of a woman who thought that she was better than everyone else in town. She gave the appearance of being a happily married woman. But I knew the truth about my parents’ relationship and, as a show of respect, I just never talked about the fact that they slept in different bedrooms. Or that on the weekends, when dad was fishing, he was really off to Rhinebrook to see his mistress. My parents had secrets like most people in this town. No one spoke about them, but most people knew that they existed.

  “My son, how can I help you?” He asked as soon as I sat in the confession box.

  Part of me wondered if he had been waiting for me. If he’d known that today I would come to talk to him, but not about my sins. Only his.

  “I want to know, where is Michelle?”

  He cleared his throat as he had done so many times, but normally it wouldn’t annoy me as much as it was doing right now.

  “You are in my confession box. In the Lord’s house. Confess your sins. The same way my daughter has been doing over the last few days.”

  So, she was locked up somewhere confessing her sins? Was that what he was trying to tell me?

  “I have no sins. I want to see Michelle,” my voice rose. I was sitting waiting for him to tell me how to repent. Michelle had said to me that the church was a haven, a place that people went to, to justify all the bad things that they did in their lives.

  I thought that she was being melodramatic and was looking at life in a simplistic view. It was only now that I realized she wasn’t. I was the fool for believing that any of this was true.

  “I want to...”

  Before I could even finish my sentence, the door was swung open by Father Roger. He was standing by my side and pulling me out. I tried to fight him, but he was stronger than I, which surprised me.

  “Leave my daughter alone. You hear me?”

  I should have nodded and told him that I would be a good boy. That I wouldn’t go near Michelle again, but I couldn’t because I was scared. His face was so near to mine that his glasses touched my head.

  I moved his hands off my collar and, before I could say another word, my dad came to the rescue followed by Dwight’s dad. Just as my best friend had promised, he had followed through.

  “Let go of my son!” Dad yelled out as he ran to my side. Father Roger let me go and pointed to me and said, “Stay away from Michelle.”

  “Son, you okay?”

  I nodded and tried to catch my breath. Dwight’s dad and mine were talking about going after Father
Roger and getting to the bottom of it, but I realized that I had made the mistake. The reason Michelle was being punished was because of me. Anything my dad or Dwight’s dad did would make it even worse. I couldn’t risk her being hurt any more than she had already.

  Eventually, he would have to let her go to school, now that he knew there were others going to stand up to him.

  He couldn’t afford to diminish his reputation.

  I was telling dad and Dwight’s dad, Ken, to let it go. They stood and said that if he did this to me, then what was he doing to Michelle? They hadn’t thought that he was capable, but seeing it with their own eyes had made it clear that Father Roger abused his power as the town’s priest to do whatever he wanted to do.

  I didn’t understand why they had never seen it until now. The Mayor didn’t implement any changes to the town without Father Roger’s consent. Even the sheriff consulted him on matters that only the police enforcement should be party to. It wasn’t until we got outside that I heard them speak and I realized why they had been blinded by Father Roger’s actions.

  “He’s been using his power of authority and pulling the wool over our eyes,” Dad sighed and then it hit me.

  They thought that Father Roger was a man of God, that he did everything in his power to protect them.

  “For far too long,” Ken sighed as he headed in the opposite direction for his car. I was happy that I had opened their eyes, because now I knew that there were not only kids on my side, but adults too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Michelle

  I needed to escape. Run away from home. I wouldn’t involve Carl in it, otherwise he would have to give up his football scholarship or, even worse, his offers. It was better for him to go to college and then, after I had the baby we could be together. I had heard about shelters that helped girls like me. I just had to behave, get out of here, and then I could be free.