Wanted For Pleasure

Chapter Forty-six: bye bye butterfly

"And maybe in some masochistic way
I kinda find it all exciting
Like, which lover will I get today;
Will you walk me to the door or send me home cryin'?"

Morgan Ann Bennett

4:30am

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

I groaned, already knowing it was time to start the day.

October.

"Morgan, get up," Malcolm spoke first thing.

I cracked my eyes open and walked around to the other side of the bed- or should I say stumbled to the other side of the bed- to help him out of it.

I hadn't been sleeping beside Malcolm because his prescribed pain med, which was over the counter as he couldn't be given any hard drugs per his addiction, put him out cold usually. I just happened to have had my hands fuller than usual with him last night and knocked out there.

He was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down but it was slowly coming back to him, the feeling.

The doctors said he'll be able to walk again one day, "hopefully," it was a peculiar thing.

He kept saying he was a miracle and nothing could take him out. God how I hoped that wasn't true.

Although, it was somewhat heartwarming to see him in rehab weekly, getting stronger slowly but surely.

It pained someone like him who was once so independent and could roam freely, to now be in a wheelchair, relying on myself and Teddy and Sage to help him manage. That's karma for you.

I felt bad for him, but only a little.

As much as I tried to tell myself at first that it wasn't my fault, I felt it was. I know he's crazy on his own and had problems well before me, but my sneaking around with his nephew only kept me from paying attention to Malcolm which is all he apparently craved and since I didn't give that to him, he couldn't handle rejection for once in his life and tried to end it. So you see, that's not necessarily something I want to live with. The only body count I want to have is concerning sexual partners and that's only two.

Speaking of, I missed him. Um, no, not Kyle, who is doing much better and back in Arizona, by the way. No, I mean Chris.

I wasn't over Carter's words, the way he talked down on me and rebuked our relationship basically. Every time I saw him around town since that second week of September, he would try to wave or straight up avoid confrontation. Sometimes I'd wave, other times I would keep my head down. When we did run into each other and have to speak, it was short. I asked about Chris once or twice, he just told me that he's fine, busy working. Good for him.

Mary was still my angel on Earth, letting me be so hands on with the new restaurant and the B&B whenever the other two Vaughn's weren't around.

It sucked that things were like this but I did have a plan. I was going to aide Malcolm back to health and hope that once he's back walking and working, he'll let me go seeing I'm a good person and that we didn't have to be intimate for me to be here. I hoped this hit him as a second chance at life. Err, third, or fifth, or hundredth for him. Either way, my fingers were crossed that he'd come around, have a change of heart, and lift my sentence.

Otherwise, what would it take? I can't kill him, can't have anyone else kill him.
Do I have to get hurt? Be absolutely repulsive? Have a child-

Wait, actually. . .

*

"I'm pregnant," I announced to Malcolm.

"You what?" He questioned as I drove from rehab to his estate.