The Freeman Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection

by Natasha L. Black

  It didn’t take long for Quentin to come corner me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, let along my boss. I just wanted to be by myself and work until I forgot my problems. But he wasn’t going to give me that option.

  “Greg, what the hell is going on with you today? I get that you’re still going through a lot with your dad dying and trying to figure everything out, but the last week, you’ve been really off. Did something happen?” he asked. “Is there something any of us could do to help you?”

  I wanted to push him away. I wanted to just get in his face and tell him it wasn’t any of his business, that he needed to back off and leave me alone. But that was just my fury. It was my frustration and anger talking. Quentin didn’t do anything wrong. None of this was his fault, and all he was trying to do was be a friend and extend support and encouragement to me.

  And right then, I couldn’t just throw that away. I needed to let it out, to release the pressure and strain, and to have someone else give me their perspective.

  “I’m sorry. There’s just a lot going on.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “We just got back in from lunch,” I said.

  “Good thing I’m the boss then,” he said. “There’s some donuts in the breakroom. I noticed you didn’t have any dessert with your lunch. Let’s go fix that.”

  He brought me to the breakroom behind the garage, and we sat down with glasses of juice and donuts. He let me nibble at it for a few moments before he gave a leading nod toward me.

  I sighed, wondering where to begin. Finally, I just dove in.

  “It’s Maya. Everything has been going really, really well between us,” I said. “Like, better than I ever could have imagined it could have gone. But then a little more than a week ago, she said she wasn’t feeling well and that it was the takeout we ordered. I was really worried about her, but she seemed to have it totally under control, so I didn’t press her about it.”

  Quentin nodded, a knowing look on his face. “I think I might know where this is going.”

  “It was the weekend of the race when we stayed out of town. I wanted her to just be able to relax, so she stayed home and rested. Then when I got home, I expected her to be up, but she was asleep. I went into the bathroom to take a shower and accidentally kicked over the trash can. There were a bunch of pregnancy tests at the bottom. Totally hidden.”

  “Were they positive?” Quentin asked.

  “The results weren’t readable anymore. They had been sitting around too long. So, I decided I was just going to let her bring it up when she was ready. I figured if they were negative, she would tell me she took the test and was still feeling sick, so she was going to go to the doctor. And if they were positive, I figured she would tell me that, too,” I said.

  “And?”

  “And she hasn’t said anything. Nothing at all. I’ve been doing my best not to push her, but she just keeps pulling further and further away, and I just can’t believe she hasn’t said anything. So, then it occurred to me that the baby might not be mine.”

  “What do you mean?” Quentin asked.

  “Maybe she is pregnant but is far enough along that she knows it’s Marshall’s and not mine. And she is just hanging around until she figures out what she’s going to do. And what if that’s going back to Marshall? I just don’t know what to do.”

  I looked at Quentin, waiting for him to come up with a brilliant response for me. He was one of the most levelheaded men I knew, and he didn’t disappoint. He didn’t even have to think.

  “I know exactly what you should do,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Talk to her.”

  “Talk to her?”

  “Yes, talk to her. Don’t guess. Don’t assume. You don’t actually know what’s going on at all, and you’re letting yourself get all worked up and upset over something that might not even be real. You need to talk to her,” he said.

  I thought about that for a few minutes and tried to come up with a reason to argue against his point, but I knew deep down that he was right. I needed to just grow some balls and talk to her.

  “I will,” I said. “Thanks.”

  As easy as it was to say that I would talk to her, I knew actually doing it was going to be much more difficult. In all honesty, I didn’t know if I could handle the truth if my suspicions were right.

  31

  Maya

  Like Sunday, Thursday had taken on a new, strange feeling. Before now, Greg and I both looked forward to Thursday all week. We knew that was an evening we would get to spend together. I was really enjoying my job, especially now that I was helping out more with the cooking, but I was always eager to spend more time with Greg.

  At least that’s the way it used to be. Thursday I woke up not sure if I even wanted to be at the house when he got home. I didn’t know what to think about what was going on between us. It wasn’t unusual for us to not see each other much during the week. That had been the way it was since I started working for Lindsey.

  It was essentially the same routine, just in reverse, a constant rotation. The only times when that was broken up were Sundays and Thursdays. And occasionally on Saturdays if he didn’t go up to the complex to finish things up before I went to work.

  So the fact that I hadn’t spent any time with Greg in days in and of itself wasn’t all that strange. It was actually to be expected. And yet, it felt uncomfortable and uneasy. It was like just one more reminder that something wasn’t right between us.

  We had fallen out of the habit of leaving each other food, and we didn’t even text during the day. There were even moments when things happened or I thought of something and wanted to share them with Greg, but I stopped myself because I didn’t know how he would think or react if he heard from me. It was easier to just not say anything to him than to reach out and have him ignore me.

  All that morning I pattered around the house just trying to fill time. I cleaned and did laundry. I tried to do a little bit of baking but couldn’t find the heart. At lunch, I sat in front of the TV and watched mindless old shows while I ate.

  By the middle of the afternoon, the sadness was really getting to me, and I knew I needed to do something to shake myself out of it. I didn’t want to get in the car and go anywhere, but I needed to get out of the apartment.

  I changed into my bathing suit, checking myself in the mirror to see if anything had changed about me. I was still very early in my pregnancy, so I couldn’t really expect to have a pronounced bump. But it looked like there might have been a little bit of new softness there. Just a very slight difference that meant in the weeks to come this baby was going to let itself be known.

  I was going to have to come up with some way to either tell Greg or to finally come to terms with having to walk away. As I walked toward the pool, I hoped nobody was there. Especially those guys who’d shown up the night I was there with Greg. They were obnoxious and rude, and I just didn’t have the patience to deal with them.

  Fortunately, I saw the entire pool deck was empty. In a strange twist that seemed a little bit like the universe was taunting me, my apartment complex resident card showed up in the mail early in the week. It meant the landlord had added me to the lease, and now I had a card to access the pool and the mailbox.

  It was like right when things should look like they were falling into place and becoming permanent, that was exactly when it was all falling apart.

  I walked through the gate and chose the chair that was in the fullest sunlight. Draping my towel across it, I sat down and put my sunglasses on. Letting out a sigh, I rested back and let the sun wash over me. Its warmth was reassuring and comforting, and I felt myself finally relaxing.

  The afternoon started to slip by as I lay there, and soon I felt hunger starting to rumble in my stomach. I had learned what that meant. Not just that I would be hungry and very quickly move to ravenous if I didn’t heed the call, but that it was very likely I would start to feel sick as well
.

  It was something I’d learned both from listening to my own body and from reading the papers the doctor had given me. Apparently, keeping a little bit of food in your stomach at all times helped to keep blood sugar levels stable and ward off pregnancy sickness.

  I was starting to reluctantly sit up and pull off my sunglasses when I heard something so unexpected I barely even knew how to process it.

  “Maya?” a whimpering, tear-filled voice called from a distance.

  It was a voice I knew very well. But one I never would have expected to hear in Charlotte, much less in my apartment complex. I sat up straight and pulled off my sunglasses, my head snapping over to the gate leading to the pool. Ashley stood there with her hands wrapped around the bars of the gate, her forehead resting on them as she stared through at me. Even from this far away, I could see how red and swollen her face was.

  I got up and walked toward her, opening up the gate so she could come through.

  “Ashley? What the hell?” I asked.

  She looked horrible. She was pale and thin, and I couldn’t help but notice dark bruises stretching from her shoulder to her wrist on one arm. She stumbled a few steps toward me, shaking her head.

  “He… he… I couldn’t let him,” she stammered.

  I put one hand on her back and gently guided her over to the chair where I was sitting. She sat down on it. Despite the anger, betrayal, and disgust I had felt for my former friend, I couldn’t help but be worried at how awful she looked and sounded.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  “I couldn’t let him hurt my baby.”

  I was stunned at her words as she broke out into sobs, and I reached out to gather her up in my arms and hold her tight to me. She shook and trembled, her sobbing hard enough to rock her entire body. I held her that way until she calmed enough to stand again.

  “Come on with me,” I said. “We’re going to go to my apartment.” Wrapping my arm tight around her shoulders, I helped her to her feet. “Are you okay? You feel like you can walk?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  We walked slowly back to the apartment. I unlocked the door and let her inside. I brought her right over to the couch and sat her down.

  “I’m so sorry,” she managed to get out.

  “You don’t need to apologize right now. I’m going to go make you some tea, then we’re going to talk about what’s going on. Just relax.”

  I went into the kitchen and filled the kettle with water. Setting it on the stove, I reached into the pocket of the jogging pants I had thrown on over my bathing suit. I took out my phone and quickly sent a text to Greg. If there had been anybody else I could have contacted at that moment, I would have. But I didn’t have an option. I needed help, and he was the most reliable.

  It was quick and to the point, simply asking him to bring home pain medicine safe for a pregnant woman. I was fairly certain that was going to lead to a whole conversation we needed to have anyway. But I couldn’t think about that right then.

  I’d never seen Ashley like this. Even when we were at our closest, I’d never seen her this upset, this clearly devastated and afraid. I was extremely worried about her, especially her mention of a baby.

  It made my stomach turn to think of Marshall doing something to her that would put her in this condition. He’d never laid a violent hand on me, but I knew that he had a temper.

  Being pregnant myself only made it more difficult, and I could put myself in her shoes. I knew how vulnerable she was already feeling, how scared and unsure of her future she might be. To add being terrified of the man you lived with and who was supposed to love you sounded horrifying.

  The water finished heating, and I poured it into cups with my favorite tea bags dangling over the side. I let them sit for a little while as I filled a tray with honey, milk, sugar, and cookies. When I went back out into the living room and sat down beside her, Ashley was curled up, her knees to her chest as she rocked back and forth.

  “Drink this,” I said, handing her one of the cups of tea. “Do you want anything in it?”

  She shook her head. “No, this is fine. Thank you. I’m so sorry to just show up here. I know you must hate me, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that right now.”

  I mixed a little bit of milk and some honey into my tea and breathed in its wonderful smell. I took a couple of sips, then reached for a cookie. As much as I wanted to know what had happened and what brought her all the way out here to Charlotte to find me, I could tell she just needed a few moments to regroup.

  She drank her tea and nibbled her way through a cookie. It looked like she was just about to start talking, and I reached over to take her hand. Suddenly the door to the apartment burst open and Greg rushed in. Ashley jumped, letting out a high-pitched gasp like she was afraid of who it might be.

  Greg stopped short just in front of the couch. “Fuck.”

  He lifted his hand up from his side, holding out a pharmacy bag. I took it, and he sat down in the chair across from us. I couldn’t look him in the eye. Not yet. But I would eventually. Once I knew what was going on and was able to help Ashley, I could figure out what was going to happen next for Greg and me.

  “You got here fast,” I said, still not looking at Greg but pouring some of the painkillers into my hand.

  “I left as soon as I got your text,” he said.

  I nodded and held the pills out to Ashley. “Take these. Don’t worry, they’re safe for the baby. They’ll make you feel better.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She tipped the pills into her mouth and swallowed them with a gulp of tea. I reached over and rubbed her back.

  “Just relax,” I said. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No,” she said.

  She looked exhausted, but I didn’t push her. She needed to be able to decide what she was going to do and when. It looked like she hadn’t been allowed to make a choice like that in a long time.

  32

  Greg

  If there was even the slightest bit of lingering question about my feelings toward Maya, that one text message from her took that all away. When I first heard my phone alert me to a message, I didn’t think much of it. My mother and I had been communicating more recently, though there were still a lot of things up in the air. It also could have been Darren, who wasn’t at work that day, checking in.

  When I saw Maya’s name on the screen, I was surprised. She and I had been barely even acknowledged each other’s existence for a few days. It just seemed like everything about our connection had fallen apart. There were no more lunches tucked in the refrigerator with sticky notes. No more dinners to come back to when she was at the bar.

  We didn’t text each other, and she was sleeping in the spare room every night rather than coming into bed with me. Taking Quentin’s advice when he first gave it to me seemed so easy. After all, it was logical. Just talk to her. There was something serious going on, and I needed information, so I needed to get it straight from her.

  But just as I thought, it wasn’t as easy to actually do it as it was to acknowledge it was what needed to be done. I tried to come up with how I was going to start that conversation. It would need a careful introduction. Or not an introduction at all.

  I was still in a place where I wasn’t sure how to feel about the situation.

  At least, I was right up until I read the text message from Maya. She needed me to bring her painkillers that were safe for a pregnant woman. Right there, the hammer came down. Not only was she pregnant, but there was something wrong. She needed medicine, and whatever was going on was serious enough that she didn’t want to leave the house, or couldn’t leave the house, to get it on her own.

  There was no way I was going to make her wait. I needed to talk to her. I needed to be there with her and make sure she was okay. My heart started pounding so hard in my chest I could fee
l it in my throat, and my head felt a little woozy.

  I shoved my phone in my pocket and gathered everything up, cleaning my station just enough that my tools wouldn’t be a danger to anybody else in the garage. As I headed out, I looked over at Gus.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m really sorry to be dipping out like this, but I need get home. It’s an emergency. I’ll let you know what’s going on when I get a chance.”

  Before even giving him the opportunity to answer, I rushed out and ran to the parking lot. That was one of the mornings when I took my bike to work, and I pushed it to its absolute limit to the pharmacy. I didn’t know what medications were safe for a pregnant woman and a developing baby.

  With that in mind, I went straight for the pharmacist to ask for his recommendation. He looked at me with widened eyes, obviously startled by my intensity. He clearly thought I was on the edge. To his credit, he stayed calm, gave me the information I needed, then got out of my way.

  I bought what he pointed out to me along with a bottle of ginger ale and raced back to the apartment. Horrible images were going through my head by the time I got there. Maybe she’d hurt herself. Maybe she was sick. Maybe something happened to the baby.

  But I never would have expected to run into the apartment and find Ashley sitting there on the couch beside Maya. The only reason I recognized her was because of the picture Maya showed me on Marshall’s social media the day the two of them moved in together. This was the girl who had been one of Maya’s close friends.

  She was also the girl who Marshall had apparently cheated on Maya with. But now there she was, sitting on the couch in our living room, her face streaked with tears and looking beaten to hell.