“I know a thing or two about that,” Seven murmured, his words huffing into my hair. “I had a few nights where I must’ve had an angel watching me or something, because I was so fuckin’ stupid.”
“We have a lot of parallels, don’t we?” I whispered. Louder, then. “He didn’t take me home. He took me to this overlook. One of those teenage make-out sex spots. God, I was so drunk. I just wanted to go home. I was worried about Zoe, because she’d never really had to spend much time alone with Mom, and I was worried they’d fight. Zoe was always more outspoken than me. And honestly, I just wasn’t feeling good. You know that feeling, when drunk stops being fun.”
“Oh, I know it.”
“He wanted to have sex.” I swallowed. “I was all but passed out. He managed to get me to lay in the bed of his truck with him, but I don’t even remember getting out of the cab. I just remember him pulling on me, talking to me, cajoling me. Like, ‘c’mon baby. Let’s go look at the stars. I wanna be with you,’ that kinda stuff. I barely remember what he was saying. I remember trying to tell him I wanted to go home, but I’m not sure I got anything coherent out.”
“Fuck, Autumn.”
“You see where this is going, huh?” I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. “I don’t think I ever said the word no, but I don’t think I was capable of it. I don’t think I fought him, but again, I’m not sure I could have. And I’m not sure he was totally lucid himself, he was just as drunk as I was.”
“Quit makin’ excuses, goddammit,” Seven snarled.
I sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. You know what happened. I remember it, bits and pieces. Him pulling at my clothes, being on top of me. Feeling sick, feeling him…you know. Finish inside me. I wasn’t on birth control. I couldn’t afford it, and it’s not like there was anywhere to get it for free where we lived. I remember waking up in the bed of the truck, naked from the waist down, shirt pushed up. Bobby beside me. Snoring, pants still open. Like we’d had sex, the voluntary kind. But…I knew. I knew I hadn’t agreed to it. I knew I hadn’t wanted it. And I knew he hadn’t cared. He’d just taken what he wanted. Assumed because I was his girlfriend he could just…do it to me, even if I was dead drunk.”
“That’s rape, Autumn.”
I nodded. “I’m not sure I’ve ever used that word. But now, yeah, I guess it was. Back then, I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I was…so fucked-up about it. I didn’t know what to do. He was my boyfriend, and I was drunk. And this was way, way before informed consent was something people talked about like they do now. I knew a girl in my grade who’d been flat-out raped, like by a stranger, violently, in a park, and she’d been slut-shamed for it. They never even looked for the guy. The girl had a rep of being one of the school sluts, and everyone knew it, so the consensus was she’d done something to deserve it.” I could barely whisper. “This was my own boyfriend, and I was drunk, and I couldn’t remember if I’d actually said no. I didn’t think anyone would believe me, or care.”
“Makes me sick. Makes me so angry I could—” he growled. “Fuck. I’m so sorry that happened to you, Autumn.”
I patted his shoulder. “Thanks. Not over yet, though.”
“Ah, hell.”
“I got pregnant.”
He tensed. “Shit.”
I felt the tears squeeze out. “You can’t imagine how scared I was. I told Zoe, and she told me I should get an abortion. But we couldn’t afford it. I swallowed my pride and asked Mom, who’d been working by then, if she could help. She said no, she wouldn’t. No one had helped her when she’d had me at sixteen, and clearly I hadn’t learned my lesson from her example, so why should she help me?”
“That’s…that’s so fucked-up and convoluted, I don’t even know…I don’t even know how to comprehend that.”
“I couldn’t either. I begged. I pleaded. I even told her what had happened. How Bobby hadn’t asked, how I hadn’t wanted to. She just said I shoulda been more careful, then.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Yeah. So I went to Bobby. I confronted him on the whole thing. How I hadn’t been sober, how I hadn’t wanted to have sex with him, and now I was pregnant, and I needed his help getting rid of it.”
“And? Did he?”
“Nope. He said he figured I’d be okay with it, and I liked it when he fucked me anyway, so what did it matter if I’d been drunk. And when I told him I was pregnant, he said that wasn’t his problem.”
“Not his problem?”
“Not his problem.”
“After how long of being there for you?”
“A fucking year. He told me he loved me. I’d told him I loved him. Then he…he rapes me and tells me the pregnancy he’d caused was my problem.”
“Shit. I should find him and kill him.”
“No need. He was killed in action in Afghanistan several years ago.”
“Oh.” A sigh. “Dying serving our country doesn’t change what he did.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So, what’d you do?”
“What could I do? I worked my ass off, saved money, borrowed from Zoe.” I swallowed, blinked, but the tears came anyway. “You ready for this? Don’t say you are, because you aren’t. Mom stole the money I’d saved up to buy drugs.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t have enough left in me after all these years to sob about it, but it still hurt enough that tears burned hot and salty in my eyes. The betrayal still bit, hard. “By the time I’d saved up enough again, I was too far along to get an abortion.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Yeah.” I breathed, wiped at my face. “I saw Mom buying drugs—with my money. That’s when I disowned her, told her I was done and left home for good.. Zoe came with me, of course. We got jobs and lived in our car until we could afford a deposit on an apartment, and I carried the baby to term.” This, I did have sobs for. “Gave it up for closed adoption. Never saw it.”
“I don’t regret that. It was the right thing to do. I couldn’t have taken care of a child.”
“But still. I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”
“No, I guess you can’t, not any more than I can imagine how hard it must have been for you, the foster homes, getting beaten, your mom dying, everything.”
“True.”
“I never saw Bobby again, never saw my mom again. I’ve never looked for that child, and I don’t imagine the child will ever look for me. I wonder, sometimes, obviously…who he or she became. I gave birth just after my nineteenth birthday, and I’m thirty-eight, so they’d be nineteen.”
“You’ve overcome a hell of a lot, Autumn.” He leaned back, touched my chin to turn my gaze to his. Wiped tears away. “You’re successful. Well-balanced.”
I snorted. “I am not. Well-balanced, that is.”
“Sure you are. We’re all fucked-up in one way or another. No one gets out of life alive, Autumn. Everyone, everyone has shit. Some more painful than others, like you and me. But after all you’ve been through, girl, you oughta be proud as fuck of yourself for being where you are.”
I blinked hard at that. “Seven. Shit.”
“What? You aren’t proud of yourself?”
I shook my head. “I dunno. I guess…I guess not. I feel like I’m just barely surviving. Like I’ve made this far, but I’m still just tricking everyone. I’m still that girl with the addict mom, the girl who never graduated high school, who had a child out of wedlock at nineteen and never even saw its face. The girl who was wild in college because I thought it would help me put distance between the past and who I was.”
“You’re the woman who overcame neglect and abuse, who survived an addict parent and an absent father, who took care of her mother through one of the worst things anyone could go through, who experienced being raped, who was betrayed by the mother you sacrificed everything to take care of. You’re the woman who gave a child a better life than you could have provided, the woman who got her GED, who went to college, who got an e
ducation and a degree. You’re the woman who has a nice car and a nice condo you paid for your fuckin’ self. You got a closet full of nice shit you paid for by workin’ your ass off for it. You have four friends who from what I can tell love the shit out of you, a ride-or-die sister, plus a career you love.”
“I was…I’ve been holding on to it. Zoe has been trying to tell me this for years, but some things you have to figure out for yourself, I guess. I was holding on to the pain, to everything that happened, to…being the victim.”
“You’re not a victim anymore.”
“No, I’m not. And I guess…” I sighed, swallowed hard, tried to find the right words. “I’m putting all this together right now, like as we talk about it, so I’m not sure how much sense it makes. But…I guess I realized that if I don’t make the choice to trust you, when you’ve not only never done anything to make me not trust you, but everything exactly the opposite. You’ve even protected me from myself. So, if that’s true, and if I like everything about you, if you’re trustworthy and attractive and successful and we clearly have hella chemistry, then how stupid would I be to not take this step? To trust you with all this? Especially since you’ve trusted me with your stuff, and I get the feeling you don’t do that any more easily than I do.”
“I do not,” he confirmed. “My agent knows some of it. I think you’re the only person I’ve ever told everything to.”
“Even the ex who gave the clothes back?”
“Yeah, and maybe that was part of how things fell apart. She wanted more and I wasn’t ready to trust her. I dunno. I can’t claim I was perfect in the whole thing. I probably wasn’t a great boyfriend, in terms of emotional intelligence or availability.”
“Well, I guess the fact that you even know what those things are is pretty amazing, and says a lot about you.”
“Can I ask you something?”
I turned around on his lap, hooking my legs around his waist to sit facing him. “Sure. I figure you’ve earned a couple questions.”
“I’m confused about the ad.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I can see how that would be.”
“Like, considering all that’s happened, why would your sister be part of an ad like that? I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t know they were doing it. Like, after what you’ve told me, the part about getting pregnant via rape especially, it just seems kinda weird.”
“You can’t hold it against her. All that happened twenty years ago. She’s not exactly saying, like, you should just be over it, like just get over it. But, her point the last several years especially is that I’m not trying to get over it. I’ve never really allowed anyone close. I haven’t been in a real relationship, at all, since Bobby. The moment I get a whiff of feelings from myself or the guy I’m seeing, I bolt. I dump them. More frequently, I don’t even let it go that far. I get what I need from the guy, and then I move on. And Zoe has been after me for a long time to at least try, to trust someone. And the thing with the ad, it’s mostly a joke.” I laughed, a sighing sound. “It started with Lizzy.”
“Your boss.
“Correct. We were out for her fortieth last year and we were all super drunk and we started talking about men and relationships and how they suck, and, I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but I think it was Lizzy who was like, you know what I need, is a billionaire. If you read romance novels, throw a stick and you’ll hit a dozen hot rich guys, right? And all she really wanted was a baby without the hassle of a relationship. Except, she was drunk and not really in touch with the fact that she actually did want a baby, more than she knew, and she had her own relationship and love hang-ups, and so we all thought it would be funny to put out an ad the LA Times, with the text of what you saw in that ad of me. Our friend Laurel, however, went a step further and put Lizzy’s actual real personal phone number in the ad.”
“No shit,” he laughed. “That’s an oops.”
“Yeah. Well, it worked, is the thing. I mean, the first guy who called her was this sixty-something guy who invented something to do with apps, I think, but then Braun Bennet called her, and they just…clicked. They fell in love. They have a baby, and they’re all over this whole happily ever after.”
“Well…damn.”
“Right? So I guess they figured if any of us needed a little…push, it was me. I can’t say I wasn’t mad, at first. But so was Lizzy, and now I don’t think she’d do anything different. It wasn’t easy for them, her and Braun, but they figured it out, after some…hiccups.” I shrugged. “And here we are, so…”
“But the whole get you pregnant the old-fashioned way part…”
I sighed. “That’s…the tricky part. It’s the part of the ad that really gets the attention, right?”
He laughed. “I mean, it for sure piqued my curiosity. But honestly, it was your smile in that photo that got me.” He smirked. “That, and your body.”
“But do I actually want to get knocked up the old-fashioned way? Or at all? I don’t know. I’m still working on not being scared shitless of letting myself have feelings for you.”
He stood up with me. “Babe. Forget the getting pregnant thing. I called because I was interested in you.”
“Do you want to be a father?”
He let me slide down to my feet. “Yes…someday. Not now.”
“So…what if I had wanted you to knock me up?”
“The way the ad is phrased made it sound like once you were knocked up, that would be the end of things. Like, no strings, no commitment.”
“But would you have been willing to put a baby in a stranger and then walk away?”
He hummed a musing sound. “I dunno. Good question.” Another hum. “I don’t know that I could have, honestly. I grew up without a dad, until I was twelve. And after that, it was never really a…close father-son thing for us. He was fucked-up from the war, from losing his legs, and I was fucked-up from how I’d grown up. We coexisted well enough, and he did his best for me. I’m grateful as hell I had the time with him I did. He got me into boxing. He took care of my basic needs. He was never, like, affectionate or loving, but he wasn’t mean. He didn’t drink like some vets I’ve known since. But he was hard to get close to, and we just never really…clicked, I guess. Both of us were too stubborn and too messed-up.”
“And he’s still alive?” I asked.
“Oh yeah. He’s a personal trainer in Virginia, specializes in training for people with disabilities like his. I see him a few times a year—he had an issue with his accessibility ramp at his house and needed my help fixing it, which is why I had to go down to Virginia after we met. He’s proud of my success, and we get along. Drink a beer, shoot the shit. But we’re not close.” He shrugged. “Point is, I’m not sure I could knowingly walk away from a woman carrying my child. I mean, if that’s what she wanted, like, she wanted a baby but for whatever reason just didn’t want to go through IVF or whatever? I might be able to do that. Not sure I’d want to get involved with that, though. Even if it’s what she wanted, I think part of me would still feel like I’d abandoned something that’s my responsibility to take care of.”
I nodded. “I see. I think that makes sense, and I think that says a lot about you.”
He held my hand, squeezed it. “Let’s go back. We can talk on the way. I think both of us need a break from talking about this shit, huh?”
I laughed and fell against him, his arms wrapped around me and he held me, inhaling my damp hair. “It’s like you read my mind.”
He touched my temples with his fingertips. “I’m getting a reading…you want a big juicy cheeseburger, a beer, and an orgasm. And not necessarily in that order.”
I gasped in faux shock. “You are telepathic.” I put my hands over his, on my temples. “I’m sending you a number. It’s the number of orgasms I want. Hint: it’s more than one.”
He gave a weird, funny, ommm sort of sound. “I’m getting a number…it’s a really big number…forty-seven?”
I cackled, knocking his hands away
. “Holy shit, man, are you trying to kill me? Forty-seven orgasms? I’m not sure either of us would survive that.”
He shrugged, rolled up the blanket and snagged the basket, shoving the blanket under his arm and carrying the basket with that same hand, leaving the other free. “I mean, I can think of way worse ways to go.”
“You volunteer as tribute, is what you’re saying?”
He laughed, popping my ass as he headed up the beach for the truck. “It would be an honor to die serving your pleasure, my lady,” he said in a deep, stentorian voice. “Morituri te salutamus.”
I snorted. “And now you speak Latin?” I shook my head. “Isn’t that what the gladiators said before the games?” I asked.
He shrugged. “From what I’ve read, most historians actually doubt it was ever said, or if it was, it was a single, isolated event.”
“We’re getting offtrack, but it’s impressive you know that.”
He laughed. “I read a lot, and I really like history. It’s interesting.” We reached his truck, and he set the blanket and basket in the back seat, then held my door open for me. “Back to more serious matters. Namely, the number you were thinking of.”
I waited till he was seated behind the wheel. “I was joking, Seven. You never let me do anything until I’ve come at least twice. The last thing in the world I’m worried about is how many times I’m going to come, because I know you’ll take care of me.”
“I don’t want to just take care of you, I want to blow your mind.”
“You already do.” I rested my hand on his thigh; my casual physical familiarity with Seven was something that still surprised me; I wasn’t normally this affectionate outside of sex. But with him, I just…wanted to touch him all—the—time.
Autumn Rolls a Seven (Billionaire Baby Club Book 2) Page 19