Rouge Read Online Free PDF Page B

her, and there were times where she appreciated the
beauty of the mountains, but often she craved the comfort of her apartment.
Actually, she just wanted Leo.
    Liz hauled herself to her
feet and peered in the mirror. The dye she’d used to get rid of her fiery red
hair was already fading. Now it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of
tomato sauce on her head and mixed black ink in it with a brush. She hated it.
Liz groaned, wondering if the off feeling in her stomach was more sickness or
just the baby rolling over.
    “You really are a woman’s
nightmare, aren’t you?” she whispered to her swollen belly. She lifted up her
shirt and traced her fingers over the lump, across the little holes that
Joshua’s needle had made.
    Sighing, Liz slumped down
the hallway and into the kitchen. Joshua was outside on the porch. She made
herself a cup of tea and went outside to join him.
    The shack had a view of the
clearing of trees, and just through them, the white sandy beach on a small
alcove of water. Joshua had made a hammock on the porch that Liz sat in
everyday and watched the sun set over the trees and thought of Leo. She often
wondered what her life would be like if everything was back to normal and they
were having a baby just like any other couple. Not in some foreign country with
her dead husband’s best friend as company.
    But Joshua wasn’t all bad. He
was better help than Liz could’ve asked for, always checking up on her and
making her tea and ‘trying’ to cook. It was just that, lately, things about
Joshua had started to change. Ever since they took the experimenting further,
Joshua’s sweet and innocent nature had suddenly turned… well, not so sweet. And
every so often, Liz could sense this poisonous cool about him, as though he
were a very thin stick of ice that would crack in two if she so much as touched
him.
    “I’m glad that storm is
over,” she said, leaning over the railing and listening to the sounds around
her.
    Red macaws were screeching,
forest animals were scattering, and the soft tinkling of the chime hanging by
the door was almost like a song in the background. The rhythmical crashing of
the waves could just be heard over the wind whispering through the trees.
Everything was fresh after the torrential rain that blew over them two nights
ago.
    “That was terrifying,” he
said.
    “Sorry about shouting at you
before.”
    “That’s okay,” he smiled.
“I’m starting to get used to it.”
    “Can I ask you something?”
She turned to him, dunking her tea bag in and out of the water.
    “If it’s about your
nightmares or that burning feeling you get, it’s not the baby Liz. It’s just
the Feucotetanus wearing off in you.”
    “How can you be sure of
that?”
    He took a moment to stare
out at the clearing. “Because it’s one of the symptoms. I’ve been emailing a
professor in Sweden who studies it.”
    “I thought they wouldn’t
talk to you.”
    “The manufacturers wouldn’t
talk to me. They weren’t aware that any knowledge of the drug had ever crossed
Swedish borders. But I managed to get in touch with someone who knows about
it.” Joshua put a cautious hand on Liz’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about the baby
Liz, okay? What you’re going through is perfectly normal in childbirth.”
    She laughed bitterly. “I
really don’t think this is normal Joshua, I mean look what I can do.”
    “Speaking of-” he turned his
gaze back to the clearing. “We don’t actually know what it is that you can do.”
    “What do you mean? I can
walk through fire.”
    Joshua’s eyes turned to hers
again, pale and filled with doubt. “I’ve never seen you do it.”
    “Right. Of course you don’t
believe me.”
    “Oh come on Liz, if I came
up to you and said I could turn myself into an elephant, would you honestly
pack up all your things and move with me to the circus?”
    “That’s different,” she
muttered.
    “It’s not. I do believe you,
I just want to see it.”
    Liz shook