by Sherie Keys
"What did she want?" Alice asked curiously.
Brandy shook her head. "She had a list of requests. The first is that she wants me to stop seeing Kyle and break up with him."
Alice shrugged. "So? You already did that. Did you tell her you already broke up with him?"
Brandy shook her head. "No, I didn't. I let her do all of the talking and I think it's a good thing that I did. She told me that if I don't break up with him, that she's going to go to my boss Hannah and tell her what happened between Kyle and me, and then she's going to try to get my licenses revoked. I have to have a job. I can't get fired or lose my licenses."
Alice made a face. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Well, it shouldn't be a problem then, because you already broke up with him."
"Well, I did break up with him, but now I am having his baby, and she doesn't ever want me to see him or talk to him ever again. She wants to pay me off. She said she's going to give me fifty thousand dollars and then she wants me to disappear and never ever come into contact with him again." Brandy sighed deeply.
Alice's eyes opened wide again. "A payoff! But you have the baby..."
Brandy nodded. "But I have the baby, and that means that if I take her offer, I can't ever let him know about his own child. I would have to take her money and leave and be on my own for the rest of my life. This child would never have a chance to know its father, and Kyle would never have a chance to know his own child. I would be taking that away from both of them for the price of fifty grand.
“If I do tell him, then he has a chance to make his own decisions about the baby, but then she's going to tell my boss and get me fired and cost me my career. I have to be able to afford to live and finish school."
Alice whistled low and sat back in her chair staring at her friend. "Wow. That's a tough spot to be in. I don't envy you what you're going through right now. I'm so sorry that it's happening. What do you think you're going to do?"
Brandy shrugged. "I have no idea what I'm going to do, but I have two days to make up my mind before she demands an answer."
Alice shook her head. "I have no idea how to help you on this one. I wish I could, but this time you're going to have to do what you feel is right, whatever that might be, and you'll have to stick with it. What a hard decision. I'm so sorry."
Brandy nodded. "It is a hard decision. I wish I knew the answer."
She and Alice spent the remainder of their time together talking about school and classes and Alice's new boyfriend, Harry. In the back of her mind, Brandy was constantly thinking about the decision that she had to make and what the best route would be for her to take; not only for herself, but for the baby and Kyle as well.
She went home after her visit with Alice and checked the mail. There in the stack of envelopes was a letter from the school.
She took a deep breath and opened it up. Inside was a letter from them that told her she had not risen above the grade point average she needed to reach for her academic suspension to be lifted. And if she did not reach that point within one month, her grants and scholarships would be revoked and she would have to pay back the money she had been given.
It was a devastating blow for her, and as her eyes filled with tears, she looked at the date on the calendar which the school had told her would be her cutoff date, and she knew that she wasn't going to be able to raise her grades by that point.
The reality of all the obstacles in her life crashed down on her and she dissolved into a pool of tears. She took herself to bed and sobbed hard into the night until she cried herself to sleep. There was nothing else she could do.
*
Kyle walked into the house after work, his mind torn as much as his heart was. It had been too long since he had heard from Brandy, and he ached for her. More than just the physical need for her that seemed to constantly plague him was the emotional need that he had for her, and that was more difficult for him than anything else. He longed for her body, but more than anything else, he sorely missed her company; her laugh, her wit, her sweet thoughtfulness. He missed her speaking his name and talking to him.
More than once he had picked up his phone to call her, and every time that he did, he knew that he had no right to do so. She had left him and he had to let her go. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. He tried as hard as he could to focus on his work, but that only took so many hours of the day. No matter how far he would try to stretch it, she would be on his mind and in his heart, and there was no way for him to rid himself of his need for her.
He walked into his bedroom and stopped short, staring. There in his bed was his wife, wearing a thin sheer gown, lingerie, and a smile. He didn't move. He couldn't. All he could do was stand there and stare at her.
"What are you doing in here?" he asked her incredulously.
She smiled at him coyly. "What? Well I thought I would come and pay my husband a visit in our marriage bed. It's been a long time since we made love, hasn't it? I miss you. I want you, Kyle."
He lowered his eyebrows and frowned. "I'm not buying the yacht for you, Veronica." he told her as he turned away and began walking to his closet.
"I'm not here about the yacht!" she called out to him, hopping up off the bed and running after him. "I mean, of course I still want it, but I want you too," she said, going to him and reaching for his shoulders to stop him from walking away from her.
"I... I just miss you so much since I have been in my own room. That's all. I want you to spend the night with me,” she said, walking around him as he looked down at her in surprise.
"Why?" he asked her, in utter confusion. "Why would you want that? You haven't wanted me in ages. What changed?"
She frowned and pouted, running her hands over his chest and looking up into his eyes.
"I just want you to feel appreciated. That's all. I want to give you what you need. If you're lonely, it would make me sad. I just want to take care of you. Let me give you a good time, okay?" She slid her hands down over his crotch and for a moment they both looked uncomfortable, but then she smiled at him began to rub her hand back and forth over him.
He reached out his hand and took her wrist in his grasp. "Please don't," he said tiredly. "I don't have the patience for this right now."
She looked offended, but then she smiled and tried again, leaning up to kiss him. She pressed her lips to his and slid her arms around his neck, holding him close as she parted his mouth with hers and slid her tongue over his. It did nothing for him, but she began to moan softly and pulled him closer to her, and then when she realized that he wasn't reacting to her, she looked up at him and pouted again.
"Come on, honey, give me a kiss." She smiled and he could see how hard she was trying. He could not begin to figure out why she was trying so hard, but she hadn't made an effort like it since before he married her.
He lowered his eyebrows again and looked at her through narrowed eyes. "What do you want?"
She laughed lightly and slid her hands around his waist, looking up at him with parted lips and half-closed eyes. "I want my husband to make love with me. That's not so much to ask, is it?"
"And what do you want after that?" he asked suspiciously.
She smiled and shook her head. "Nothing. That's all I want. Isn't that enough for you?"
Veronica ran her hands up and down his arms and shrugged. "I just want to take care of you. I don't want you to need anyone else to take care of you, that's all." She looked up at him again and leaned up to kiss him.
"You're mine and I want you to stay that way. Always. I want you well taken care of." She blinked her eyelashes in what Kyle could only assume was meant to be a seductive move, and she pressed her lips to his again.
He remembered all the times he had wanted her and she had turned him down. And all the times that she had teased him and taunted him with her affections and her body, never meaning any of it, just so she could get him to buy her things or give her large amounts of money. He had fallen for it and for her every time. But thi
s time, but this time there was no interest in him. There was no need. There was no desire.
After having been with Brandy, he could not see himself wanting anyone else, not even his wife. Nothing she did gave him any kind of amorous feeling whatsoever.
He grasped her shoulders and pushed her away from him. "Veronica, just stop," he told her. "Just leave me alone. Go back to your own room. I'm not in the mood for this right now, and I am not interested in it, or in you. Now please leave me alone, and don't let me find you back in here again. If for some reason I want to find myself in your arms again, I will come to your room. Until that unlikely day, you need to go and give me some peace."
He pushed her aside and walked into his closet to undress. She stood there, staring after him, a look of sheer anger crossing her face, and then she turned and marched from his room, slamming the door behind her.
He could not believe she had tried to seduce him in his bedroom. He couldn't remember the last time she had tried to seduce him at all. The idea of it was laughable to him. He pulled his clothes off and stepped into his shower, washing away the cares of the day, and as he did, thoughts and memories of Brandy filled his mind and made him hard for her again.
He turned the water to cool and waited for the desire to leave his body. He knew that they were broken up, but the more she was away from him, the more he felt as if he needed her and wanted her, and the harder it was to keep her from his thoughts and mind.
Kyle was trying to let her go, but the further she got from him, the closer she felt, and the more he struggled with his feelings for her. He was determined not to fall in love with her. He refused. It wasn't going to happen, if there was anything he could do to stop it from happening. He was absolutely not going to allow himself to fall in love with her.
Chapter8
When Brandy woke up, she dragged herself out of bed. Her emotional meltdown had taken a toll on her and she felt weak and tired, as well as nauseous. She made herself some tea and sat down to look at the letter from the school once more. It was clear that she wasn't pulling her grades up far enough, fast enough, to enable her to stay in school and make the difference before the cutoff date that they had given her.
She was devastated that she had spent so much time on her classes and tried so hard to bring her grades up and it was not happening fast enough. She knew she could make an appeal since it was the first time that anything of the kind had happened to her. She would be able to get her cutoff date postponed.
Then she thought about the baby and what she was going to have to do to support it. School had become the thing she would have to give up; she needed to work more so that she could make enough money to support her child and herself.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she promised herself that she would go back to school to finish her degree; even if it took so long that she and her child would graduate from college together.
She texted Alice and asked her to meet for coffee, and Alice texted back that she would.
Two hours later they were in their favorite coffee shop, Alice with her latte and a cinnamon roll, and Brandy with an orange juice and a blueberry muffin which she was hoping to get down without having it come back up. Her morning sickness had been difficult for her to get through.
Alice hugged her when she walked in, seeing the exhaustion, worry, and pain on her face and they sat down with their brunch to discuss it.
Brandy launched right into it. "When I got home last night there was a letter from the school that said they aren't going to lift my academic suspension if my grades aren't up in a month, and I know there's no way I can do it. I'll have to pay back all the award money I have gotten for the semester and I'll probably flunk all of my classes," she said miserably.
Alice was immediately sympathetic to her. "I'm so sorry, Brandy! I know how hard you have worked in all your classes to make it happen and to bring your grades back up. I wish you had been able to do it.”
Brandy nodded and sipped her orange juice. "I could really give it all I've got for the next month and try to raise my grades, but then I've got this baby coming and I am going to need all the money I can earn between now and when it comes. I still have to go to the doctor for an appointment about the baby and I haven't had a chance to do that yet."
"You probably want to try to do that as soon as you can, you need to make sure that everything is okay with both of you," Alice said seriously.
Brandy nodded. "I know, you're right. I will. I gave it a lot of thought and I think that the smartest thing I could do would be to drop all of the classes right now so that my poor grades also drop; my grade point average until this semester has been excellent. It's why I won the awards, because I'm a good student, but this semester had just about pulled me under, and then with the job and Kyle, and now this baby, things are just too much for me.
“I've decided to drop out of college for now, as much as I hate to say it and as much as I would love to finish my degree, I just can't. I chose to keep the baby and now that is what my top priority has to be. Everything that I do has to be for the baby."
Alice nodded and smiled. "Well, it might be a tough road to take, but you're already working on being a good mom. Putting that baby first is the best thing you can do. I'm so sorry that you'll be dropping out of school. I hope you can get back to it soon."
"Well, what I need to do right now is focus with everything I have on working more and earning as much money as I can. I need to save up for when the baby is here. I can't take the risk that if I do tell Kyle about the baby that he'll provide for us at all.
“I don't want to assume he will do that, and then be caught low on cash right when I need it. So, I'm going to leave school for now and work as much as I can. I thought I would go ask Hannah for full time hours tomorrow, and spend today getting all of my exit paperwork for school done."
Brandy was downhearted about her choices, and they were hard on her, but she knew what she had to do. She knew what the best decisions were for her and the baby, and no matter what, that was what had to happen.
Alice shook her head and sighed. "That's just awful. I wish none of this was happening to you. What about Kyle? Have you told him about the baby yet?"
Brandy shook her head. "No, I haven't. I don't know yet what I'm going to do."
Alice took a big bite of her cinnamon roll and a sip of her coffee, swallowed it and then asked, "What about that crackhead wife of his? Did you decide what you're going to do about her? I mean, you could take the money and then you won't have any financial problems for a little while, but then you can't tell him about the baby, and you'd be keeping the baby and him apart forever, and that's just not fair."
Brandy nodded. "I've thought about all of it, and it's hard to know what to do. God, that woman really put me in a tight spot. I can't believe she threatened my job and my license if I don't go with her proposal of the fifty grand and never talking to Kyle again."
Alice bit her lip and tilted her head. "Here's a radical notion; what if you told her about the baby, rather than him, and let her change the options of your agreement. She might give you some other choice if she knows there's a baby involved."
"You haven't seen this woman," Brandy told her. "She is a cold, calculating piece of work. She already wants to keep me as far away from her husband as possible. If she knew that I was pregnant and that it was his, she would lose her mind.
“She doesn't want me around him at all anyway; putting a baby into the mix means that he will have to be involved with me for the rest of his natural life, and she isn't going to like that one little bit. So no, I don't think telling her about the baby is going to help the case at all."
Alice chewed another bite of her cinnamon roll thoughtfully, and shook her head. "Well, I don't know what you're going to do,” she said, with worried eyes.
Brandy finished her orange juice. "I'm going to go drop out of college today and then I'm going to call her and tell her to keep her money. I've already been bought by one of them and
look how bad things have gotten. I don't need to be bought by the other one of them as well. I guess I will deal with whatever she doses out after that. I can't keep his child from him forever. I'll have to tell him at some point that I'm pregnant."
Alice nodded. "I feel like you're making the right move here, both for you and for the baby. I think it's a good decision. You can always pick school back up later, he can find out about his child and in a worst-case scenario, he sends you packing. You would be in exactly the same situation that you are in right now, or in a better scenario -- he decides to step in and do his duty to you and the baby. He is rich, isn't he? Maybe he could help you out a lot. Things will be alright."
Brandy nodded and sighed, looking at their empty places and cups. "Well, I guess I should get to the school."