Lust

by Melissa Andrea

  I wasn’t exactly sure how happy my mother would be when she found out I was pregnant by a man I’d vowed to hate until the end of time after having drunken, mind-blowing sex with him. Especially if I told her just like that.

  “Yes, after the shock wears off.” I let out an awkward laugh.

  “What about the father? Have you told him?”

  I took a shaky breath. Reed was an entirely different subject, and I had absolutely no fucking clue how I was going to tell him. I had told myself I would because no matter how I felt about Reed, he deserved to know. This was his baby, too, and he would be as involved or uninvolved as he wanted to be. I didn’t need anything from him. I’d grown up without a father, and I would never keep Reed from the baby, but if he chose not to be there, my baby would never suffer from that decision.

  “No, but I will,” I promised. “I’ll tell everyone before I move back to Summerville.”

  That surprised Dr. Harris. “You’re moving back home?”

  “Yes. I think it’s best.”

  I had decided last weekend. With me being absolutely clueless about babies and how to raise them, I knew I needed all the support I could get from my mom and sister. After I made the decision, I’d told Carrie, who cried for an hour, and when she finally had calmed down, I explained to her why.

  She told me I had her and Dillon, and they would both be there to support me. She even went as far as telling me I could move in with them, and as much as I loved her for the offer, I knew that was unrealistic. I couldn’t do that to Carrie or Dillon. They were starting a family of their own and didn’t need the knocked-up third wheel encroaching on that.

  Of course, I was sad to leave Carrie, but I knew this was the best option for me. She too had asked me if I told Reed, and I promised I would before I left. I had a month to put on my big girl panties and tell all the appropriate parties my news and decision. A month was how long I had left in my apartment after I’d given them my notice to move out.

  I would give my job two weeks’ notice at the end of the week, and my life in Charleston would officially come to an end. I had no idea what I would do in Summerville, but I had saved, and I would be okay for a little while as I figured out my next course of action. I loved being a lawyer, and I wasn’t ready to give that up yet.

  “Meela? Are you okay?”

  I realized I hadn’t said anything for a full five minutes, and my cheeks warmed with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. I was lost in thought.”

  “Well, I’ll miss you. I was looking forward to seeing you through your first pregnancy.”

  My first pregnancy? I wanted to tell her this would be my only pregnancy, but I didn’t see that it was all that important to add that.

  I smiled. “So was I, but I promise to come back up and visit.”

  “You’d better,” she pretended to scold, and I laughed.

  I made one more appointment to see her before I left and then made my way toward the office exit and down the hallway.

  I was pretty obsessed with the sonogram in my hand that I hadn’t looked up once to make sure I was going in the right direction. Nor did I bother worrying about bumping into anyone. They’d see me and have no choice to get out of the way or be run over by the women infatuated with her baby’s first photo, right?

  Wrong.

  I collided into solid muscle, my hand and picture being smashed between my body and the strangers. My only concern at the moment was the picture that was sure to be destroyed by the impact.

  My head snapped up, a glare that would melt the flesh off the person standing in front of me aimed and ready. As soon as my eyes found his, the world stopped; everything froze at this moment.

  I could feel the blood draining from head to toe, my body suddenly feeling cold and numb.

  “What are you doing here?” I choked out the words. My throat had gone dry. “Are you following me?” I accused angrily.

  “What? I’m not a fucking psycho, Meela.” He growled, and his eyes narrowed at me. “I’m here ...” He started but stopped. “Wait, what are you doing here?” He looked around at the offices, and my heart began to pound out of control.

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” I snapped.

  Of course, it’s his freaking business, Meela! Tell him. What are you waiting for? Now would be the perfect time. The rational part of my brain tried to reason with me, but the other part was sending off alarms bells too loud to ignore. Get the hell of out here, Meela. Get out now, it chanted over and over.

  His eyes dropped to the crinkled paper between us, and the urge to hide it behind my back almost overrode every coherent thought I had.

  “Meela.” He looked up from the paper in my hand to my face. “What is that?”

  I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t answer him. Words were beyond my capability at the moment as I just stood there staring at him. Use your words, Meela. Say something, anything. Tell him the truth. Those were all logical musings, but I just stood there and said nothing.

  He moved, and his hand came up between us, his fingers closing around the edge of the sonogram. Ready or not, Reed was about to find out he was going to be a father.

  Nineteen

  Reed

  I couldn’t hear beyond the sound of my own blood as my heart pumped harder than usual to accommodate my current state of shock. I waited for Meela to stop me, but she didn’t. She didn’t say a word either. I pinched the corner of the picture between my fingers and pulled. She tightened her grip, and her reaction told me everything I needed to know.

  My mind was in a whirlwind as my brain fired off question after question with nothing but silence to answer them. How long had she known? How did she find out? Why hadn’t she told me? Or more importantly, had she even planned to tell me?

  My other hand closed around her wrist, my thumb rubbing circles over her pulse that seemed to match the speed of mine. Slowly, I continued to rub lazy circles until her hand relaxed its grip, and this time, when I pulled, the picture came free. She tugged on her wrist, but I held tight, ignoring the fist she made when I didn’t let her go.

  My eyes left her face and moved over the picture. It was crumpled, but not enough that I couldn’t make out what I was looking at. My breathing accelerated with each breath I took, and the longer I stared down at the small but distinguished peanut-shaped form, the harder that became. More questions formed, but I couldn’t look away long enough to actually ask them.

  At the top of the picture, Meela’s name was printed along with today’s date, how many weeks she was, and her due date. Sixteen weeks. February twenty-third. I’d already been doing the math in my head, and everything lined up to the day.

  “How long have you known?” I finally asked. The shock had worn off enough that it was time to start getting some answers.

  I heard her swallow, take a deep breath, and then release before she finally answered. “A few weeks.”

  “A few weeks? How long is a few weeks? Two?”

  “Four,” she corrected.

  I scoffed, anger finally taking over. My grip tightened on her wrist, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Four weeks? You’ve known for four fucking weeks, and you haven’t bothered to pick up your goddamn phone? Were you planning to tell me at all, Meela?”

  She tugged at her wrist, but I wasn’t about to make her escape easy on her. Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, I was going to tell you,” she hissed.

  “When? When were you going to tell me because four fucking weeks have gone by, and I haven’t heard a single fucking word from you.”

  “I was going to tell you, Reed,” she insisted. “I just needed a little bit of time to figure things out, to make a plan, and I hadn’t accomplished that until just recently. I was going to tell you,” she repeated.

  “You needed time to figure things out? To make a plan? Where the hell do I fit in with all that?” I was seeing red, and the hard set of my voice echoed off the walls.

  “Will
you keep your voice down?” she whispered, looking beyond me and behind her.

  “I don’t care who the fuck hears me, Meela. Just answer my damn question. Where do I fit in, Meela?”

  “I just wrapped my head around the situation, Reed. You weren’t a part of that.”

  I recoiled. “I see. So you just thought you’d figure this out on your own and then expect me to go along with whatever you decided?”

  “I don’t expect a damn thing from you.”

  I let go of her wrist, almost a little too roughly, but I was enraged and couldn’t seem to care. “So you’re planning to keep it?” I spat the words like venom.

  She blinked several times, her mind comprehending what I just asked her, and when she did, she was simmering at my choice of words. “I’m keeping the baby, yes.”

  “And if I don’t want you to?”

  It was her turn to recoil as if I’d just hit her. “I don’t give a damn whether you want me to or not. I’m keeping this baby.” She snatched the picture from my fingers, putting it safely away from me in her bag.

  “So then I have no say in the situation? You’ll have this baby whether I want you to or not?”

  She backed away from me. One step and then another. “Go to hell, Reed,” she seethed. “And to answer your question, you’re damn right I’m going to have this baby whether you want me to or not. I don’t want a single thing from you. You’re free. I absolve you from any and all responsibility in this situation. Have a nice life.”

  She sidestepped me, and I turned to catch her arm, but she pushed my hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

  She practically ran in the opposite direction as me. I watched her as she pushed open the door to the entrance of the building. Sunlight swallowed her figure as she stepped outside and out of my view. I stood there, feeling drained and angry and … I didn’t know what else I was feeling. But it was there, lodged in the center of my chest, making it impossible to breathe.

  Meela was pregnant.

  I was going to be a father.

  What the fuck was I supposed to do now?

  L U S T

  Forty-eight hours, fourteen minutes, and ten miserable fucking seconds had passed between my last destructive encounter with Meela.

  It was a rough estimate.

  I hadn’t been able to eat or sleep, but I had no problem finishing off two bottles of Jack Daniels all by myself. After filling David in with the fact I was going to be a fucking father, he had offered to oversee that I wouldn’t do anything stupid like blow up Meela’s phone because there was no way in hell she would answer my calls.

  After everything I had said to her, I was pretty fucking positive she was never going to speak to me again. And who the hell would blame her? Even if I’d only been reacting to the way Meela had discounted my role in this baby’s existence, the fact I had suggested she get rid of it had me hating myself.

  I thought about just showing up at her place, but the fucking truth of it was I was terrified. Not only of facing her again, but because I had to. I couldn’t leave it like I had. She deserved to know that what I said wasn’t what I wanted. But also because there was a choice to be made.

  She’d given me an out.

  Did I want one?

  I gave myself one more night. One more night to get my shit together, and then I would call her, and if she didn’t answer, I would show up, and if she refused to see me—well, drastic measures would be taken.

  L U S T

  My heart pounded as I listened to my phone ring, waiting to hear Meela’s voicemail greeting.

  “Hello,” she finally answered.

  I sat there frozen somewhere between relief and disbelief. I hadn’t expected her to pick up, and now, I was disoriented as I tried to form a simple response.

  “Reed?” she asked.

  “I’m here. A little, no, a lot surprised. I hadn’t expected you to answer.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “I can hang up, and you can call back again if you want. I won’t answer.”

  She was joking, and for the second time in thirty seconds, she’d managed to leave me in stunned silence.

  “You have this unbelievably maddening way of knocking me off my feet, Meela Davis. I’d probably find it annoying as hell if I didn’t already find it so damn addicting.”

  I knew she wouldn’t respond, and I didn’t need her to, so I went on.

  “Can we talk? We can meet somewhere.”

  She took a breath. “I don’t think there is anything left to say, Reed. I think enough was said already the other day.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I was angry and out of line, Meela.”

  “Reed.” She paused, and my grip tightened around my phone. “Maybe it’s better this way. A clean break. I know a lot of what was said was out of anger, but I meant it when I said I don’t expect anything from you. You don’t have to be involved with anything.”

  “I don’t want to discuss this over the phone. If you don’t want to meet out somewhere, I’ll come to you.”

  “No,” she said quickly. I waited, and she let out another deep breath. “Okay. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

  “Tonight. Eight at LeBlanc.”

  “Reed—” she started, but I interrupted her before she could say anything more.

  “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  The line was silent before she finally said. “No. I’ll be there.”

  “Eight o’clock,” I repeated. “I’ll see you then.”

  We hung up, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That had gone a hell of a lot better than I had expected after the train wreck two days before.

  The rest of the day seemed to drag ass as eight o’clock slowly approached. I was ready well before I needed to be, and I arrived at the restaurant with time to spare.

  To say I was nervous as fuck was an understatement. I wasn’t going to screw up this time. I had let my damn temper get the best of me, and I’d said some pretty fucked up things to Meela. Tonight would be different.

  After checking in with the maître d’, I waited in the front for Meela as the wait staff readied our table. When I finally spotted her out the window of the restaurant, I could relax and breathe again. Part of me expected her to ditch me and possibly leave town.

  I held the door open for her, and she offered a tight smile and a thank you as she stepped inside the restaurant.

  For a moment, I couldn’t do anything but stare at her. I saw her in a completely different light now. She wasn’t just the woman I had desperately wanted to fuck. She was now the woman carrying something of mine inside her.

  “Have you been waiting long?” she asked as she began to remove her jacket. My hands covered hers as I moved to help her. Her eyes lifted toward mine for a brief second before falling away. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome, and to answer your question, no. I just got here,” I lied. “Our table is ready.”

  The hostess spotted us, and her smile was big and bright as she grabbed two menus and told us to follow her. Touching the small of Meela’s back, I led her to follow the hostess. She stiffened at my touch, but I ignored it.

  After we were seated and our waiter took out drink orders, we were left with only a terse silence.

  “You—”

  “I’m—”

  We laughed.

  “Go ahead,” I told her.

  “No, it was nothing. You go.”

  “I was just going to say you looked beautiful.” And she did, but I also wanted to tell her how fucking sexy she looked too. She wore a black top and jeans so tight they hugged every curve in her legs and ass and made my cock twitch behind my zipper. Her hair was up, but short strands rested along the curves of her face.

  Heat colored her neck and cheeks, and she chewed on her lip nervously. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now you,” I told her.

  “I was just going to say I was sorry about the other day. I didn’t handle it very well.” She was fidgeting with her silver
ware, but her eyes lifted and found mine.

  “I was a dick. You handled it well.”

  “I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell you.”

  “Why did you wait so long?

  “I didn’t know how to tell you. I was scared,” she admitted quietly.

  “I scare you?”

  “No, I wasn’t scared of you. I was just … scared.”

  “Well, I guess you had reason to be. I acted like an asshole.”

  “You were in shock.”

  “I was, but the things I said. They’re unforgiveable.”

  “I forgive you,” she whispered.

  “I didn’t mean it, Meela. I was angry, and I wanted to … I don’t know what I wanted to do.”

  “Hurt me.” Our eyes connected. “Like I hurt you.”

  We didn’t say anything for the next few minutes. “I would never ask you to have an abortion.”

  She nodded. “Good because it’s not an option.”

  Relief flooded me. “What have you decided? Do you want to keep the baby or adoption?”

  “I’m going to keep it. I thought about adoption, but in the end … I want this baby. I never thought I’d ever hear myself say those words before now.”

  “You didn’t want kids?”

  She shook her head, surprising me with her answer. “No, I never did. I didn’t want any of it. The white fence, the husband, a family.”

  “And now you do?”

  “Well, I want this baby.”

  “So maybe someday?”

  “I honestly don’t know. What about you? Did you want kids?”

  “I guess I never thought about it too much. I enjoyed my life the way it’s been up until now.”

  She sat up straighter, her expression becoming emotionless. “I really did mean what I said about your involvement, Reed. I’m prepared to take care of this baby on my own. Once I move back to Summerville, I’ll have—”

  “Wait, what? You’re moving?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why? When? I don’t …”

  I hadn’t expected anymore bombs to be dropped tonight, but obviously, the joke was on me.