Emergence (Awakening Series Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

know what the heck he was thinking. Before all the baby talk he was never like this with me. He used to be loving and kind. But after a year of trying and no baby, he had started to blame me for our problems, and was obsessed with proving his virility. It might have been the stress of trying to please his mother. Maybe he felt pushed to make our marriage what he thought she said it should be. Maybe he thought getting me pregnant would fix all our problems, get his mother off his back, and keep me home where he liked me and could control me.
    He shoved me back against the pillows and plunged himself into me even though I wasn't ready. Not that I found him the least bit attractive anymore. His words, actions, and attitude made him increasingly ugly to me. He didn't even resemble the man I had married. I closed my eyes and bit my lip, so I wouldn't cry. Sex had become a chore, not that it was ever great to begin with. If I was honest with myself, I knew what he was doing to me was wrong, sexual abuse actually, but he was my husband, and it was only because he was so determined to have children. He was just hurting inside, so I overlooked it. Plus, he was always apologetic afterwards.
    Derek had become a miserable person, he seemed mentally unstable and I had finally started thinking that our marriage wasn't going to last if he kept it up, and while I didn't know if I was ready to give up on him just yet, sometimes I still worried about staying with him for that reason alone. I kept hoping I could somehow get the old Derek back though. He was in there somewhere and I thought that maybe having a baby would bring us closer, but most times, especially when he was like this, I shivered at the idea of raising a child with him.
    After Derek finished he rolled off me, his chest heaving. I sat up and went to the restroom to wash up, my hands shaking.
    "What are you doing in there?" Derek yelled, coming into the bathroom. "You're just going to push out all of my sperm aren't you?"
    "Derek, that's not even possible, and seriously, I just needed to pee," I reasoned with him.
    "Mom said you should lay down for like fifteen minutes or so afterwards, just to give it time to get up in there."
    "That's an old wives tale. It only takes one sperm to get pregnant, and seriously, with you shooting that stuff all over my insides, I'm sure one can manage to get where it's supposed to go," I said sarcastically with a huff.
    He slammed his fist against the door frame, startling me.
    "This isn't funny, Louise! You're such a goddamn bitch! You don't even want to have my kids do you? You just want to squeeze all my stuff out so you don't have to be pregnant. You are so fucking selfish!"
    His anger was completely unjustified, immature and hurtful. I wasn't doing anything to deserve this type of hostility. I wanted to have children, I did. I just wasn't sure if I wanted them to be his, but the reality was, I wasn't doing anything to stop us from getting pregnant. I wasn't taking my pills anymore and I let him have sex with me whenever he wanted. Not that I had much choice in it.
    "Derek, Liz went through this too," I tried to placate. "She says sperm  can live in your body for up to 72 hours. So even if I haven't ovulated yet, if I do in the next few days we should be good."
    "Except you're pushing it all out of you!" he yelled, pounding his fist on the door jamb. "You know what? Fuck Liz and her perfect little life. Why don't you just move in with them if you like them so fucking much?"
    I stopped talking, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath, realizing the conversation was going nowhere fast. He stormed out of the bathroom, and I finished up and went to wash my hands.
    Liz, my boss, and her husband did have a great life, but they had been through fertility procedures in order to have their two children so it hadn't always been sunshine and roses. All marriages had their ups and downs as far as I knew, it was just a matter of how you dealt with the