Disclaimer: The characters in my stories are completely made up characters and have temporally been given borrowed names for the sole purpose of satisfying the qualifications for posting on this fanfiction site. These stories are fiction and should be perceived as such. They in no way reflect the lives, beliefs or views of any persons living or dead and any similarities are coincidental. I am not affiliated with any company or professional wrestler in any way. No disrespect or copyright infringement intended. And if any of my favs happen upon my stories, I hope your not offended because this is not about you, it is about feedback on my story ideas. :) I love and respect what you do and I thank you for all the joy and entertainment over the years.
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Chapter 7
"Randie, Oh my goodness. Sweetie?"
Randie laid discarded in the shallow water of the river. She awoke to a woman's sweet worried voice. Her Aunt Peg was on her knees beside her, wiping strands of bloody hair away from her face.
Randie stirred. Her face hurt. Her arms hurt, but thankfully she felt no pain in her abdomen. She held her belly as her aunt helped her to her knees. She touched her face. There was so much blood that it was in her eyes and her mouth. She felt the sting of fresh cuts she had no idea how bad her wounds were but her Aunt's panicked expression hinted.
She laid in a bed in the emergency room that night. She had over fifty stitches in her face and the doctors said that thankfully most of her wounds were superficial. She didn't understand how people could be so cruel. She thought she'd made it obvious that she didn't want to be with Logan. She'd told him so. She'd made it clear that she only dated him because her father made her. Yet, he still insisted on coming around. It didn't seem fair that she couldn't choose who she wanted to be with.
Her father was angry when he showed up. He blamed her. He called her so many horrible names and spewed out many threats. She didn't care. She was numb from the pain and she'd refused pain medicine and she'd had to admit to the nurse that she was pregnant. But only her Aunt Peg had been present and her father left, abandoning her and demanding she find her own way home before any of the medical staff could come and possibly reveal her secret.
She hugged Matt's tee shirt close to her body. It was stained with her blood, but it still smelled like him. Her aunt returned bringing some of her own clothes for Randie to wear.
"I thought you might want this." She set Randie's purse down on nearby table. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and caressed Randie's hair.
"You think I'm a horrible person too now." Randie sobbed. Her Aunt had always thought so much of her and she thought she would feel differently after learning about her pregnancy.
"I was pregnant at your age." She smiled. "But it wasn't meant to be." Her Aunt was the only person she could remember showing her kindness besides the woman she had thought was her mother. "Having a baby when you're young doesn't make you a bad person."
"Daddy will never let me keep my baby." She didn't have to explain her fears to her aunt. She didn't' have to tell her that her father would either cause her to miscarry or start looking for a buyer for the child as soon as he heard the news.
"Miss. Parker. We're taking you for an ultrasound now." A nurse came in and helped her into a wheelchair. Her Aunt accompanied her and she laid her eyes on her baby for the first time. Her baby girl. She was so tiny and her hands and feet had yet to develop, but she was beautiful.
"You know, when you turn seventeen, you can live where ever you want and there is nothing your father can do about it." Her Aunt smiled as they awaited her discharge papers, then she stuffed a handful of hundred dollar bills, a bus ticket and an address in her hand. "Run baby." She kissed her forehead. "Run."
XXX
Matt started his truck. He'd worked a double shift and he was so tired he wasn't sure if he'd make it home. He backed out of the parking lot, glad that his home was only ten minutes away, but when he put it the truck in drive, something stuck under his wiper caught his attention.
"Damn flyers." He muttered. Someone was always putting shit under his wiper. He put the vehicle in park, stepped out and pulled it out of his line of vision. The last thing he needed was a ticket if the thing should dislodge and fly off while he was going down the road.
He took a quick glance in the streetlights glow and his face screwed up in confusion. An ultrasound picture? And there was something written in the small white border at the bottom. He flipped on the interior light of his truck. "I've always been yours" With a little heart written in red ink.
Someone's idea of a joke. He'd always been careful. Always wore protection. Well, accept with one. Randie. The first time had been five months before and her belly would have grown a bit by then and the last time was the day before. Far too soon to know if a baby had been made.
He tossed the paper into his glove box. His coworkers had a sick sense of humor and knew about that temp he had messed around with, but she was already pregnant when they had gotten together. Not far along enough to tell, but she had told him before they had hooked up. He thought about the words again. Yeah, it was another one of their jokes. They always loved to get a laugh at his expense.
He didn't see Randie after that. He'd heard that she had ran away. Heard she had ran off with some older guy. He heard that her father had sent her to some kind of boarding school which must have been true because no one had called the law to report her missing. . Six months went by and thoughts of her never entered his mind. Or he hadn't let himself think about her even though it did feel odd not seeing her around. It was only at night that he would think about her, when there was nothing else to distract him. He wondered why of all the girls he knew, why she was the only one that he thought of. Most all his memories of her were from childhood. He remembered how they had laughed and joked while pretending to do household chores in that old treehouse and it made him wonder if they would be that way as adults. Some days he was tempted to tear down that stupid thing. To erase the very last thing that triggered his memories. And he would have if Marty didn't love it so much.
The things he thought was silly. Of course it was easy to believe it was all fun and sunshine back then. Kids didn't know the stresses of adult life. Adults had fights. Adults had responsibilities and real marriage wasn't about love. It was a partnership. It was finding that one person to go through hell with that you didn't want to kill every day. It was about having someone to help with the everyday chores of life so one person wasn't stuck with it all.
That's what he decided he needed. He couldn't keep up with the house and watching the kids. He needed someone to help with laundry and cooking. Someone who wouldn't mind watching out for his father. That's all a marriage was really about and he knew of a few girls who weren't blessed – at all. He thought of Carrie Middleton and Joanie Wilson first. The girls voted most likely to become old maids because of their homely appearances. They were cousins who had grown up as sisters on the only other farm in town, but they both looked and acted like men. That was the only thing he found unattractive about them. But they knew hard work. They knew how hard life could be even though they're family wasn't as poor as his. He decided that night that he would ask Joanie out because she worked as a maid at the plant and he saw her every day. Carrie he really didn't know at all and had heard that she preferred women to men.
He was off the following weekend and he had planned his date with Carrie for that Saturday night.
"You have to stay home Saturday." He'd told Jeff early in the week so he wouldn't make plans. Jeff worked days on the weekends so he could be free for his own dates. "I have a date."
"You? You're joking?"
"Despite what you guys think, I am not a robot and I do need female companionship from time to time." Matt told him.
"With who?" Matt had never taken any girl on a date before and his news made them all stop eating dinner that night. Even the twins gawked at him with open mouths full of food.
"Carrie Middleton."
Jeff started laughing.
"Where are you taking her? The Pit?" The Pit was a bar that had a big ring in the center where the customers came to fight each other. "Oh I know, you're taking her to the fair so you can get in half price. They'll probably think you're with the bearded lady from that freak show."
"Shut up." Matt warned, even though he wasn't looking forward to it himself. All week long Carrie had been punching his arm as she passed him. Saying how she couldn't wait for their date and calling him her buddy.
When Saturday arrived, he put on his nicest pair of jeans. His father's old dress jacket and pulled his shoulder length hair into a neat pony tail.
Carrie looked like she did every day when he picked her up. Her apple shaped body was covered with men's jeans and a flannel shirt just like it was at work. Her short mousey brown hair was combed to look like a boys bowl cut and she didn't apply a bit of makeup to her blotchy pale skin, but he remembered his mother's words. Beauty is on the inside. Even the prettiest packages can contain a venomous snake. So he kept an open mind.
He took her to a nice restaurant. Or the nicest he could afford which was basically a family steak house with a cheap all you can eat buffet which seemed to please Carrie who came back from the bar with her first plate piled so high it was dripping off the sides. She also talked with her mouth full, smacked on every bite and even reached across the table to snag a piece of cantaloupe off his plate. He thought she was trying to be cute, but her attempt left him nauseous the moment he saw the dirty fingernail of her stumpy finger touch his food.
"Well, look what just walked in." She stared behind him and he had to turn around to see what she was talking about. A group of girls that they had both gone to school with walked in. "I figured that group would have broken up by now." She cackled. "Geeze, attached at the hip, still clones of each other. Smiling to each other's faces and probably still screwing each other's boyfriends behind their backs."
"Maybe." Matt agreed, then went back to his meal. The group was shown by the hostess to a table in the same section as his.
"Oh great. There goes my appetite." Carrie said so loud that the people sitting next to them all turned to look.
Matt glanced at the group. They looked the same. Same designer clothes. Same designer hand bags. Probably still paying with their daddy's credit cards.
"Why don't you just go sit with them?" Carrie spat hatefully.
"What?"
"You can't take your eyes off of them. I'm sure that starved bony look is more appealing to you.
"You pointed them out Carrie." He said flatly.
"I know what guys like you think. All you good looking guys want a frail little princess that couldn't pick up a gallon of water if their life depended on it. You're turned off by a real woman. I don't know why you even asked me out if you planned on spending the entire night wishing you with one of them." She shout pointing at the group that was just sitting down, paying no attention to them. "They don't even know you're alive. Never did, Matt Hardy. But I did. I noticed you. I always noticed you even though you couldn't' see me. Wake up Hardy. You've got a decent girl who will have you sitting right in front of you – oh and here she comes – the queen bee of them all – making her fashionably late debut I'm guessing." She spat hatefully.
Matt's head was whirling as he tried to makes sense of Carrie's jealous outburst. He had tried to have a conversation with her, but she was hung up on the girls from school. It seemed just seeing them made her angry.
He tried to eat the desert he had gotten off the tray while Carrie kept talking about the woman who looked to be reuniting after who knew how long of not seeing each other. He knew that several of them had gone off to college and one had enlisted in the Air Force.
"I don't see what's so special about her." Carrie spat her attention on the woman who had walked in last. Matt didn't look up. Or tried not to, but after Carrie continued to insult the girl's wardrobe curiosity got the best of him. "I wish she had stayed under whatever rock her daddy had hidden her under. Sitting there like that. How dare she show her face here when her daddy has ripped off almost everyone in town."
Randie Parker sat down with the girls from school. She wasn't smiling like the others, but she looked as pretty as ever despite her hair being partly in her face. It wasn't over one eye anymore but it still hid part of her face.
"That's her father. Not her."
"You too? Is there no one in this town that can see her for the manipulative slut she really is? Go. I'm sure you want to cancel our date now that you know she's back."
"Carrie." Matt said pushing back from the table and wiping his mouth. "This is the first night I have been out in many years, but you're right. I do want to cancel our date and it's not your appearance or your weight that turned me off and it's not that group of woman either. I think I was turned off somewhere between your noisy chewing and your dirty finger in my plate. Your obvious jealousy over other women is just the icing on the cake." He put a tip on the table and then stood. "But I'm not an asshole. I'll take you home, but that will be the end of this date and we damn sure won't have another. I don't have time for the drama in my life."
And Carrie had a hell of a story spread around his job by Monday morning.
"Hey Hardy. I heard you got turned down by the maid? Geeze, dude. You must be more of an asshole than I thought if you can't get into the He—she's pants."
But what could he do but ignore them. He couldn't quit and he wasn't there to make friends.
