It feels like forever before he finally speaks. “You’re sure?” he asks finally. There’s no hint of emotion in his voice--only a calm, measured tone that betrays nothing.
“I’m pretty sure, yes,” I say. “But even if I wasn’t… I wanted to tell you since the party and I just didn’t have the courage. I’ve always wanted kids.”
He claps his hands twice, making me jump with surprise and then squint my eyes against the sudden flood of light.
“Wait a second,” I say, shielding my eyes with my hand. “Your BDSM dark room had a freaking clap light?”
But I forget the ridiculousness of it in a moment when I see the look on his face. It’s not what I expected. He’s not angry, but he’s not happy. There’s an almost sad curl to his lips and angle of his eyebrows that takes me by surprise.
“Jayce?” I ask. “Can you please say something?”
“I’m sorry I did that to you,” he says. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
I roll to my side so I can properly give him a full-dose of what the hell did you just say? The cum on my back gets on his comforter as I do, but that’s the least of my worries right now. “You’re sorry?” I ask.
He closes his eyes, breathing out a long, slow breath. He’s wrestling with something internally, clearly searching for the right way to say what he’s feeling.
“My mom died a few months after she had me. There was some complication with the pregnancy, so they had to perform a C-section. A few weeks later--I don’t know exactly when because Leo only talked about it once, and even then he was sparse on details--some kind of infection set in from the surgery. She barely had enough to get by without our dad in the picture, so she didn’t think she could afford to get treated for it I guess. But it cost her her life.”
“I’m so sorry, Jayce,” I say. My stomach twists as I start to piece together how that must have shaped him and changed his views on having children even before he tells me the rest. It starts to make sense, but only little by little, like pieces of a puzzle sliding together.
“I know it wasn’t my choice. I know that,” he says again more quietly, as if to himself. “But I’ve never been able to shake the sense of guilt, like it was my fault somehow. So any time I ever thought about what it’d be like to find the woman I love, I’ve always told myself I’d never get her pregnant. The risk is too great. It feels like such a selfish thing… wanting kids and forcing the woman I love to take that risk for me.”
“Wait,” I say, heart pounding. “So you do want kids?”
“God, yes,” he says, lips flickering into a smile for an instant. “Yeah, I just always thought I’d end up adopting. Maybe. But yeah, as much as I know adoption is right and there are kids who need it, part of me still wanted this,” he says, pressing a hand to my stomach so gently it makes my skin tingle. “I wanted to know the woman I’d spend the rest of my life with was carrying my child, that I’d marked her so permanently nothing on the Earth could ever fucking change it. She’d be mine, and so would her baby. But I could never make that decision knowingly. When I took you in the club that first night, I wasn’t even thinking. I was so damn hungry to have you right then and there it was like my brain just shut off.”
“I’m not going to get an abortion,” I say firmly. He hasn’t asked me, but it seems like he’s dancing around the topic. On one hand, he says he wants this, but on the other he still seems to think the risk is too much. “I can’t do that.”
“I’d never ask you to,” he says.
“Then why do you look so grim?” I ask, barely holding back tears. It feels like he’s moments away from telling me he can’t bear to be around it, or that this isn’t a commitment he really wants.
He touches my cheek softly, staring into my eyes. “Sorry,” he says. A grin splits his face. “I was just saying a silent prayer that it’d be a boy.”
I put my hands to my face, smiling and laughing even though some confused part of me still feels like crying. “Seriously?” I ask, burying my face in his chest. “I thought you were going to break up with me and you were just trying to bargain with God for it to be a boy?”
“Break up with you?” he asks, kissing the top of my head. “So we are dating, then?”
I sigh, glaring up at him, but I can’t even glare without smiling right now. The relief hasn’t hit me completely, and I know it’s going to come in waves. Even when I can tell the good news hasn’t sunken in completely yet, I already feel so relieved and happy that I could jump up and down with excitement--if I wouldn’t be mortified to do that while completely naked in front of Jayce, that is.
“We had better be,” I say, biting my lip.
“As long as you promise Darla never comes on a date with us again,” he says.
I laugh. “She wasn’t that bad. Come on.”
“It was like having the grim reaper along, or maybe just our own personal black rain cloud.”
“You had better stop teasing her. I’ll call her and tell her what you’re saying. I swear I will.”
“Not when I’m done with you. You’ll be too exhausted to even dial her number.”
I raise an eyebrow.
He rolls me over, pinning me down and planting his strong arms on either side of my head. “You thought you could just tell me you’re pregnant and get away with getting fucked once? Princess,” he says, voice growing slow and raspy. “I can cum inside that beautiful little pussy of yours again, and I’m not going to be satisfied until I do.”
“I think that’s the last box,” I say to Darla, who is sweating profusely--probably because she opted to wear a thick, black ankle-length dress and long sleeves when she knew she was coming to help me move.
“Remind me again why Mr. Perfect couldn’t help with this? Or your stupid brother?”
I give her a wry smile. “Because it was only like four boxes and I didn’t want to make Jayce miss work for that. And Kyle’s upstate until the weekend visiting his new girlfriend’s family.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Jayce works?”
I sigh. “Yes, Darla. He… I don’t know. He buys things, I guess. But he makes more money when he sells them later, or something like that.”
She grins. “You don’t even know what he does.”
“He does business,” I snap. She has a way of getting under my skin so quickly sometimes, but I’m always struggling not to smile even as I’m yelling back and forth with her. “He probably invests. You know, business kinda stuff.”
“Right,” she says dryly. “What you’re saying is you’ve been too busy humping him like a rabbit to know what he does.”
“I have not--” I start, except I guess for a guy I haven’t known that long, we have had a lot of sex. But it’s not like we don’t talk, too. I already know him better than anyone I dated for months and months. I’m carrying his baby, too, if that counts for anything. “Just forget it. I don’t need to know the details of his job. I know he’s good to me and he takes care of me. That’s enough.”
Darla makes a gagging sound and rolls her eyes. “So is your friend, who took off work to come help you move four fucking boxes because you’re Miss Pregnant Princess who can’t lift a feather.” She gives me the faintest hint of a smirk to take the bite out of her words before she walks the box out into the hallway.
I shake my head, smiling after her. It has been two weeks since I told Jayce I’m pregnant, and I think the freedom of having the truth out is finally starting to set in. He’s already having me move in with him. We’re together practically every single day, and instead of getting sick of him, it’s like I keep getting more desperate to see him by the hour.
And right when I am starting to think things have taken a turn for the better, I look up to the doorway and see Cade. His arms are crossed and his eyes are boring into me. He looks sober, too, which for some reason scares me more than if he were drunk.
“Going somewhere?” he asks.
My old instincts scream for me to cower, to back into a corner of the ro
om and just let him do what he’s going to do--whether it’s hit me or yell at me or call me names. Then when it’s all over, I can just try to bury it along with the rest of the bad memories. But for the first time in my life, something else stirs in me. I don’t know where it comes from, but I feel a strong sense of Hell no that comes roaring up.
Hell no he’s not going to abuse me again.
Hell no I’m not going to just let him get away with this.
Hell. No.
I discreetly pull my phone from my pocket, turning my back to him like I’m shooting off a text, but instead I dial 911. I put the phone on speaker in hopes that it’ll pick up our voices, but mute the speaker on my end so Cade won’t hear. “What do you want, Cade?” I ask, trying to sound bored.
“I want you. That’s what I’ve always wanted,” he says.
I act like I’m setting my phone down carelessly, but I make sure the receiver is aimed outward where it will have a better chance of picking up our voices. “I broke up with you,” I say firmly. For once my voice doesn’t shake. I don’t feel like a cowering child beneath the huge shadow of my father. “It’s over. It has been over, Cade. You need to leave.”
He steps inside my apartment, eyes never leaving my face. “Leave? It sounds like I need to slap you around a little, maybe. You never were very good at listening until I fucked up that pretty face of yours with a bruise or two.”
I take a step back from him, trying not to move too far from the phone as I struggle to think of a way to say my address without tipping him off that an emergency operator is listening in.
“That would be a bad idea, considering Jayce is just in the other room taking a nap.”
I wait, hoping Cade will check the room and take the bait so I can quickly speak to the operator.
My stomach turns to ice when Cade pulls out a switchblade and clicks it open. “Good. Then I don’t even have to wait to fuck him up, too. I’d tell you not to go anywhere, but I already know you’re too fucking scared and weak to run away. Why don’t you just wait here and cry while I go carve up your boyfriend?”
He stalks off toward the bedroom. I lean down and whisper my address into the phone as quickly as I can. “Please, I’m alone. Send help as soon as you can. I’m going to run outside but he’ll come for me.”
I grab my phone and head toward the door just as Cade swears and comes stomping back out after me. I’m already in the hallway and about to go down the stairs when he bursts out of the apartment and yells for me.
“Get the fuck back here, bitch!”
Not this time, asshole.
I tear down the stairs, nearly knocking Darla over as she is heading back up and mopping her brow with her sleeve. She raises her eyebrows. “Oh you can run like a lunatic but you can’t carry a--”
She spots Cade coming for me, and I glance over my shoulder just in time to see her actually body check him to the side when he tries to push past her. She’s probably a hundred pounds lighter than Cade, but he was moving fast enough that the shove makes him lose his balance and tumble down a few steps, dropping his knife before he gets his feet again.
“Help,” I say quickly to a guy in his twenties who’s coming in the main entrance of the apartment complex on his phone. He looks up and fails to take the situation in before I’ve already blown past him and Cade has shoved him to the side.
I swing the door open and run to the right, but instead of going anywhere, I tuck myself between the door and the building, holding onto the handle so the only way Cade will see me is if he turns around and presses his head to the wall once he’s outside.
I hear his heavy footsteps come thumping out of the building and then falter a few steps after he has started in the direction he thinks I went. He’s probably wondering how I could already be out of his view. The streets are always crowded though, and he must figure I’m hiding in the crowd, because I hear him push forward again.
As much as I want to stay hiding, I know the chances of anything happening to him are slim to none if he’s not still after me when the police show up. It goes against every instinct I have, but I step out from behind the door and yell after him. “Hey, asshole!” I shout.
To my amusement, Cade turns around immediately, as if his identity as an asshole is so internalized that he reflexively answers to the name.
Some people in the crowd seem to notice, but no one actually does anything. Everyone is too busy trying to get to work or to class or wherever they’re going, and now it probably looks like I’m the one who was antagonizing him.
I start running from him as fast as I can while having to shove through the packed street. I can’t do it as fast as Cade though, who has the strength to physically shove everyone out of his way much more easily than me. A glance over my shoulder tells me he’s almost caught up with me, but Darla is also rushing out of the apartment now, too, heading toward him.
Cade’s hand grips my shoulder from behind and yanks me backwards.
“You should’ve stayed hidden, bitch.”
“Hey,” says a guy in an indignant voice, as if he’s offended to hear Cade talk to me that way. But the guy doesn’t even stop walking, like his angry glare and word were enough to assuage his guilt over doing nothing.
“The police are coming,” I say to Cade as he drags me toward an alley between the apartment building and the highrise beside it. “They’ll be here any second.”
“Right,” says Cade. “You never called the cops before. Why would you now?”
The sound of sirens makes him stop mid-step. He tilts his head, as if trying to make sure he’s not hearing things.
“You’re hearing what you think you are,” I say triumphantly. “That’s the sound of you being fucked.”
“I’ll just come back for you another time,” says Cade, who shoves off me and starts trying to run.
Darla shows up behind him at just the right moment, pushing against his chest and trying to slow him down. “Not so fast,” she grunts through gritted teeth as she tries to hold him from moving.
I run up behind him and pull on the back of his shirt.
He becomes more desperate, swinging at Darla and I in his haste to try to get away. People nearby finally start to notice something is wrong, and an athletic guy about Cade’s height even steps in and pins Cade’s arms to his side.
“The fuck you doing, man?” asks the guy.
Two officers come jogging toward us, which causes almost everyone on the street to stop now and watch the spectacle as red and blue lights wash over everything.
“You the one who called?” asks one of the officers, who glances toward my apartment building.
“Yes,” I breathe.
The next few minutes play out like I’m watching from far away. I see them cuff Cade and the way he struggles and tries to headbutt the officers like some wild animal. I see them throw him in the back of their cruiser and drive off as an ambulance arrives for me. I try to tell them I’m fine, but the EMTs still insist on sitting me down and checking Darla and I over for injuries.
“Any pain here?” asks the woman examining me while I sit on the back of the ambulance.
“None,” I say distantly.
Beside me, Darla is blushing furiously as a male EMT with dyed black hair, tattoos, and about fifty black wristbands is looking her over.
I can’t stop thinking about how I actually did it. The old me would’ve become a victim to whatever Cade was planning. If I made it through, my brother or Jayce probably would’ve ended up taking their anger out on him in an attempt to protect me, but like always, the damage would’ve already been done. I would’ve had the same, lingering self-loathing that always comes after the abuse.
The oddest part is that even though Jayce wasn’t here, I know he’s the one who saved me. I’m the one who finally stood up for myself, but Jayce was the one who helped empower me. Strangely enough, it was surrendering to him that taught me how strong I really could be. I’ve been surrendering by instinct my whole life, a
nd it was only when I learned to do it on purpose that I saw how to stand up.
Jayce
All Miley’s things are in my house now, and they barely take up a quarter of a room. I lean against the wall and look at the boxes and sparse bits of furniture that she has spent a lifetime accumulating. My little princess… I can’t fucking wait to start spoiling you. She deserves so much more, and I’ll make sure she has it.
She’s in the kitchen now sipping on a hot chocolate. She tried to turn down the drink, but I thought she could use something comforting. Thinking of what she went through earlier today still makes me want to punch a hole through the wall. That, and I want to lock her up in my house where I can swallow her up in my arms, keeping her safe from all the shit out there. But then I guess I don’t need to.
When she told me how she handled herself, I was so proud of her I could barely hold it in. I think back to the broken little bird I saw when she came to tell me about Cade that first night I met her. I knew she was strong and beautiful beneath the broken woman I saw, but I don’t know if I ever even imagined she could pull off something so incredible. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she spent her whole life carrying the scars of her past, but she’s better than that. She overcame it all.
“Sorry,” she says, sliding up beside me and threading her arm around mine to nuzzle against me. “I know it’s a mess right now, but I’ll get it all sorted out soon.”
“No,” I say. “You’ll relax and enjoy yourself, because you don’t need to be doing all that work.” I put my hand on her still-flat stomach and grin. “We don’t want to go shaking things up for our little boy and scaring him off.”
She laughs. “You had better stop assuming it’s a boy. I don’t want you to find out it’s a girl and be disappointed.”
“I won’t be. I’d love her just as much. Besides, it would mean we could keep trying for more.”
She raises an eyebrow and turns to look at me sharply. “You’d be willing to have more? But I thought…”
“I know,” I say. “What you did today though… You stopped letting your past control your present and I want to do the same. Besides, if I had known you were such a tough son of a bitch, I wouldn’t have been worried about you making it through a pregnancy in good health.”
Baby for the Beast Page 26