by Sam Mariano
“Can’t have you going anywhere,” I explain. I hold up the key to show her then climb back in bed. Once I’m comfortable, I reach beneath my back and push the key under my body.
She stares at me, her jaw hanging wide open. “How rude.”
I crack a little smile at her outrage before warning her, “If I wake up to your hands on my body, I’m gonna want to fuck you again, so I wouldn’t try it.”
“You didn’t have to take my things. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere,” she says, like she’s offended I don’t trust her. “I don’t even know where I am.”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmur skeptically as I close my eyes.
“Will I get them back tomorrow?” she demands. “You told me to pack things so I wouldn’t have to be naked all the time, and now here I am, forced to be naked.”
“Close that pretty little mouth and settle in,” I tell her. “It’s time to get some sleep. I’ve got another long day ahead of me tomorrow, and I don’t need you yapping and keeping me awake.”
She huffs, yanking the sheet up around her bare body and rolling over with her back to me. I open one eye and look over at the back of her blonde head. Suddenly, the small distance between us on the bed feels too far.
I slide my right arm under her body and yank her across the bed until her ass is back against my hip. I curl my arm around her small waist so I can hold her close, half-expecting her to fight my hold since she’s pouting, but she doesn’t.
“If it counts for anything, I’m glad I didn’t kill you tonight,” I tell her.
“You’re a true romantic,” she spits back acerbically.
I smirk at her temper and my arm tightens around her. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. I’ll take better care of you tomorrow.”
After a minute or so passes, she says, “It’s not really your fault you hurt me.”
I frown, opening my eyes and glancing over at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you gripped my hip too tight and your nails bit into my skin, but inside me... I think something that happened the other night… I think I might have a tear or something. It stings just to pee, so of course it wasn’t comfortable to have you thrusting inside me. It wasn’t anything you did, though. It was because of something else.”
The blood in my veins drops several degrees and a lump of something unpleasant settles in my gut. When Theo told me the story earlier, I didn’t especially care, but the way she stumbles apologetically over this explanation of why it hurt her to be fucked tonight by someone she didn’t even want to fuck her… well, I’m feeling a little salty about it.
“Theo?” I ask sharply.
She swallows audibly and looks back at me, uncertain. “Yeah. When everything ended, it didn’t end nicely. He hurt me, and I know you probably don’t care because you’re Bri’s brother, and that’s okay, I just—I know I kept making noises like you were hurting me, and I thought I should explain why.”
I stare up at the ceiling, suddenly wide awake. “Did he hurt you before?”
“No. It was just after I told him I was pregnant. He completely changed. Before, he was nice to me, but that made him desperate and ugly, and…” She shakes her head, falling quiet for a minute before finally saying, “I probably shouldn’t even be surprised he hoped I’d die after that. I think he thought about killing me himself.”
He did, but I don’t tell her I know that. There’s no reason for her to suspect Theo would’ve told me as much as he did, and the only thing verifying that would accomplish is hurting her feelings.
On instinct, though, I tell her, “You stay away from Theo from here on out. I don’t expect you’ll ever see him again, but if you do, you keep away from him, you hear me?”
“I will,” she answers, her voice still small.
“I’m not saying it to lecture you,” I tell her, pulling her toward me again so she’ll face me. “Roll over, look at me.”
She sighs, but she rolls over and curls up against me like she was before I made her mad.
“A cornered animal can be dangerous, and Theo knows you could cost him a lot if anyone but me found out about you. That’s another reason you need to stay put here. As long as you’re in my house, you’re in my hands, but if you get away, your fate’s up in the air. I don’t know what Theo would do if he saw you again, and I don’t think we should find out.”
Alyssa nods her understanding. “I already told you, I never want to see him again. I meant that.”
“Good,” I tell her, relaxing my arm around her.
“I’m sorry I ever let anything happen with him,” she mutters.
“Good,” I say again.
Sighing huffily, she says, “He’s such a stupid jerk.”
I crack a smile. “On that, we can agree. Useless little prick. I wish my sister would get rid of him.”
After a minute, she asks, “Do you think she would, if she knew about me?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I like to think she would, but I could be wrong. Either way, it’d cause her a lot of hurt.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. After pondering for a minute, she asks, “Do you think it’s selfish that I want to keep my baby?”
I look over at her, at those big, pleading eyes, searching for someone, anyone to tell her she’s not wrong. “No,” I tell her, and I mean it. “I don’t think that’s selfish at all.”
Her eyes brighten a little, and a tiny smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Okay. I’ll let you get some sleep now.”
I let my head drift over closer until it’s on the edge of the pillow, right next to hers. “Good night, Alyssa.”
“Good night, Brant.”
4
Brant
When morning comes and Alyssa’s still asleep in the bed beside me, I breathe a little easier. I climb out of bed, careful not to wake her, and go in to take a shower, taking the key to the chest with me.
I bathe as quickly as I can, then pull on clean jeans and a T-shirt. I’m still running my fingers through my dark, damp hair when I walk back into the bedroom and my heart damn near stops.
She’s gone.
Her spot on the bed is empty.
My heart jolts back to life, racing so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t explode.
“Shit,” I mutter, tucking the chest key into my pocket and running out of the room.
I hustle down the steps, trying to think how long I was in the shower. She couldn’t have made it too far. Not only is she naked with no clue where she is, I wasn’t in the bathroom for long. As long as she wasn’t faking sleep and didn’t make a run for it as soon as she heard the water turn on, I can probably catch up to her.
“Fuck,” I mutter when I realize I forgot to grab my phone off my nightstand. Then horror dawns on me, because maybe she took it. Maybe the cops are on their way right fucking now. I never grab my phone until I’m about to leave, so I didn’t even think about it when I went to shower, but it was right there on the nightstand where she could have easily grabbed it if she woke up and I wasn’t in the room.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” When I get to the kitchen, I see the door cracked open and my heart sinks. “Goddammit,” I mutter before walking toward it.
“What’s wrong?”
My gaze snaps to Alyssa standing at my counter, her long blonde hair a little frizzy and a lot wavy since she took it out of the braid. She’s not naked, though. She grabbed one of my T-shirts and put it on, and now she stands here in my kitchen looking over at me while she absently whisks something in a bowl on the counter.
I open my mouth and close it again, then I look at the door.
“What…? Why’s the door open?”
“Oh.” She looks back at it. “I let Scout out to go potty. I was going to wait and let you do it, but he was whining at the door, so I didn’t see any point in making him wait.”
Still frowning, I walk over next to her and peer into the bowl. “What are you doing over here?”
“Making breakfast,�
�� she tells me. “This is the last of your eggs, by the way. You need to get some more.”
I stand there, confused as hell, and watch her finish scrambling the eggs and move over to the stove. Without needing conversation, I guess, she whips up the eggs, takes a grapefruit I had on the counter, slices it in half, and then puts it on a plate with the eggs and hands it to me.
“I had to improvise,” she tells me. “You desperately need to go grocery shopping.”
Damn sure didn’t expect her to make me breakfast, but okay.
I shake my head, walking over to the fridge and grabbing some orange juice. “Want some?” I ask her as I open the cabinet overhead where I keep my drink glasses.
“Yes, please.”
Most of the time I eat standing at the counter, but since Alyssa went to the trouble of making breakfast, this morning we sit down and eat at the kitchen table.
I’m still confused as hell that she got out of bed when she knew I was in the shower and didn’t try to leave, but I don’t want to ask her about it, because maybe she’s just not that bright and it didn’t cross her mind to leave. If that’s the case, I’d hate to be the one to give her the idea.
“So, Theo mentioned you brought flyers around advertising your babysitting services. Did you have other clients?”
Glancing up at me, she says, “Yeah, I have a few regulars.”
“Sleep with any of the other fathers?”
She slides me a look of clear disapproval. “That’s not very nice.”
I shrug, taking a bite of grapefruit. “It’s an honest question.”
She rolls her eyes but answers me anyway. “No, I did not sleep with any of the other fathers.”
“That’s good. Seems like it’d be bad for business.”
“Unless it was a single dad,” she shoots back. “Then it could be very good for business. I bet he’d be a repeat customer.”
I crack a smile, shaking my head at her. “I guess you gotta make money somehow, huh?”
“I’m just kidding,” she tells me, her tone more amiable. “None of the other fathers came on to me, only Theo. And aside from you last night, he’s the only man I’ve been with, in case you were wondering.”
“Man seems a generous term for Theo,” I mutter. “So, are any of these other clients gonna notice you missing?”
Before we left her house last night, since her sister hadn’t come home yet, I decided to have her leave a note instead of sending that text message. Texting her sister that she was going to sleep would have bought me time last night, but it wouldn’t have explained her disappearance the next morning. When my plan was to kill her and dump her body, that would’ve been okay. Someone would have noticed her missing before long, anyway.
Now that she’s alive and well at my house, though, that complicates things. She’s still a missing person, but I don’t want her to look like one, because then people might start searching for her. Then it becomes a whole thing.
To buy myself a few days to figure out what I want to do with her, I had her leave a note saying she got a last-minute call from one of her babysitting customers and had to go babysit for the weekend. I knew she was willing to do overnights since she did one for Bri and Theo for their anniversary, so it shouldn’t seem too out of the ordinary.
Less ordinarily, she had to say they picked her up and brought her to their house, since her car is still parked in the driveway at hers.
The clock is definitely ticking.
“Depends on how long you keep me here,” Alyssa answers. “I’m supposed to do a job Thursday night, and since you didn’t let me bring my phone, I can’t message them and cancel. I’ve never not shown up for work, never called off, so if I don’t show up Thursday night at their place, they’ll probably think something is wrong.”
Today’s Saturday, so that gives me a few days if I need ’em. Of course, her parents will probably be expecting her back Monday morning.
I did bring her phone, but she doesn’t know that. I thought her parents would find it strange if she went to a weekend babysitting job without her phone and charger, so I grabbed both while she packed her clothes. They’re in my truck now, but I’ve gotta put ’em somewhere today. I wasn’t worried about them locating her by her phone last night since they don’t know she’s missing, but if I don’t take her home, that’s bound to change come Monday.
“Tell me about your family, the ones you live with,” I tell her, grabbing my orange juice to take a sip.
“All right,” she says, easily enough. “Well, we live in my Pappy’s house—my mom’s dad. He’s an alcoholic, but not an abusive one or anything. Half the time he falls asleep in his big brown recliner chair in the living room. You’re very lucky he wasn’t in it last night,” she tells me, pointing her fork at me.
“I’d say he’s the lucky one,” I offer mildly.
Ignoring that comment, she goes on. “I live there with my mom and my sister, Amber. We have different dads. My mom got pregnant her senior year of high school with Amber, and her dad moved to South Carolina… or North Carolina? I don’t remember which. Anyway, he went off to college there and Mom never heard from him again.”
I frown, but she says it like it’s normal.
“My dad was a couple years later. She had signed up for community college classes, wanted to take advantage of some grant or something and try to get a better job. Anyway, they were partners in English class and I guess they spent more time making me than studying. He stuck around for a while, but their relationship didn’t work out, and a year or so after I was born, he got engaged to someone else and they moved away. I never saw him again after that, so I don’t remember him.”
What the fuck? Who are these men who leave their daughters behind and move on with their lives like they never even existed?
Brightly, she says, “So anyway, as far as adults go, it’s just Pappy, Mom, Amber, and me, but then my sister Amber has two kids.”
“How old is she?”
“Almost 21,” she answers.
“And she has 2 babies,” I reiterate. “She went on a date last night, so I guess there’s no man in the picture for her, either?”
Wrinkling her nose up with displeasure, she says, “None worth calling a man, kinda like Theo. She hooks up with the hot ones, but they’re always unreliable assholes. I love my sister, but she has terrible taste in guys.”
“Sounds like that runs in your family,” I murmur, putting down my fork.
Instead of being offended, she laughs a little. “Yeah, I guess it does, huh?”
“Does she go for older men, too?” I ask, out of curiosity.
“The first time she did. My niece’s father was a lot older than Amber. He wasn’t married, but he did have a girlfriend or fiancée or some kind of thing like that. They met at work, and he lied to her, told her he and the woman were on a break. Amber was already pregnant when the girlfriend came in wanting to surprise him with lunch one day and it turned out he was just a lying sleazebag.”
“Jesus Christ,” I murmur, shaking my head.
“My nephew was with a guy her age, though,” she tells me. “It was just a drunken hook-up and nobody had a condom. They were never together.”
“Your mother never told either of you about birth control? I know you don’t have daddies, but fuck, where’s your mother while all this is happening?”
“Mom works a lot,” she tells me. “She’s an STNA at an old folks home, but she also has a boyfriend she spends most of her time with if she’s not working. The house is pretty full, so she sleeps at his place most nights. We don’t see her much, but the kids keep us busy, anyway. I started babysitting so I could make some money and help my sister out. Obviously, since she’s raising two kids on her own, money’s pretty tight. I wanted to be able to pitch in and help out with the extras from time to time.”
I try to process this abundance of information. The environment she’s describing does match the impression I got of her house last night, but it doesn’t
sound like the kind of environment another baby should be brought into. She’s barely an adult, surrounded by other women who are barely adults and raising their babies in this potluck family of hers. That’s not how I think it should be.
Aside from their sorry excuse for a father, my nephews have got the kind of stable life a kid should start out with. It sounds like Alyssa’s family life is a mess.
I’m not the most tactful person in the world, but I think about how best to avoid offending her for a minute, then I ask, “And, uh, where are you planning to put this new baby? I mean, where does he or she fit into all this? You said the house is tight already. Were you planning to stay there?”
“I’m not sure,” she answers, shrugging one shoulder then reaching for her orange juice. “I only took a pregnancy test a couple weeks ago, so I haven’t figured it all out yet. My sister already has baby stuff for a boy and a girl, though, so I can just use a lot of her hand-me-downs.”
I don’t say anything with my mouth, but my face must be doing some talking, because after a minute, she narrows her eyes at me across the table.
Sounding a little guarded, she says, “What? You don’t think I can handle raising a baby on my own?”
“I didn’t say anything like that,” I point out.
“It doesn’t seem like you approve of this plan. I didn’t even say it was my plan—you’re just assuming, like you assumed I must have run off when you came downstairs and saw the door open, right? Maybe you shouldn’t assume so much, ’cause sometimes you’re wrong.”
I shake my head, picking my fork back up so I can finish my breakfast. “I didn’t say anything about you not being able to raise a baby yourself. I just don’t think you should have to, that’s all. The situation you’ve told me about seems far from ideal, and it doesn’t seem like you and your sister grew up real well without a father in the picture, so maybe it’s not the best cycle to keep going.” I shrug again, raising my hands in surrender. “I’m not judging you, just making observations.”
“I think I grew up all right,” she says, clearly defensive.