His Perfect BabyA Miracle Baby Romance

by B. B. Hamel

  “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I never knew her. But I did know a string of nannies.”

  I laugh softly. “You were rich?”

  “My father is. When I ran away from home, I left all that.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  She frowns and lies back down in my arms. I wrap them around her and pull her tight against me.

  “You’d understand if you knew my father. He’s a hard man to be around.”

  “I know something about hard men.”

  She glances up at me. “Was that a penis joke?”

  “Not at all,” I say, laughing. “I have more tact and better timing than that.”

  “Sure you do.” She looks skeptical and we laugh together. She lays her head back down on my chest. “Dad meant well I think, but he pushed really hard. He’s a little famous in the city, actually. I’d rather not say who he is, but that fame was part of it.”

  “Part of what?” I ask softly.

  “The pressure. To be perfect. He wanted me to take over his business one day, but I had no interest in it. And then when I ran away and got into drugs, that basically killed him. He disowned me, not exactly, but more or less. I don’t see or speak with him anymore. And I don’t want to.”

  I grunt, understanding. I can see how having a father like that would be very, very difficult. I can also see why maybe she turned to drugs. It was a rebellious thing at first, but also a way to feel good. When you’re rich, it’s hard to really feel things, because everything is taken care of for you. Maybe she was trying to find a little bit of that, but went way too far.

  “Do you ever want to see him again?” I ask.

  “Not at all. He was... abusive,” she says.

  “Abusive?”

  She looks at me again. “I don’t want to be that cliché hooker with daddy issues, okay? It’s just, he didn’t hit me, but he tortured me. He was merciless and cutting, and I had to get out of there. So no, I don’t want to see him ever again.”

  I kiss her softly on the forehead. “Thanks for telling me that,” I say.

  “It’s weird. I haven’t talked about him in a while.”

  I smile and kiss her again. “I’m happy you feel comfortable talking about it with me.”

  “You’re supposed to be a client...” She trails off, shaking her head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you this stuff. The Syndicate, they gave us some, I don’t know, training. I’m supposed to be mysterious and alluring for you.” She laughs lightly. “How am I doing?”

  “Perfect,” I say. “You’re perfect.”

  “My last name is Taylor,” she says. “I don’t know why I wanted you to know that. I just did, I guess.”

  I grin ear to ear, and have no clue why that makes me so happy. I kiss her again, not sure what else to do, and hold her tight.

  I want to know her, and having her open up to me makes me happier than I would have guessed. It’s strange, sharing this sort of intimacy with someone that I supposedly own, but I don’t feel like I own her. Not right now, at least.

  Her guard is down and I believe everything she’s saying. I believe that she feels something, maybe something like what I feel, although I’m not exactly sure what that is yet. I believe she’s a good person and wants to do right.

  And I know I’ve seduced her. All of that, it was real. She wanted it as much as I did, if not more. She wanted me to fuck her and to make her come and she would have done it, money or no money.

  I should feel good that I won my game, but I don’t.

  I just feel like there’s another game coming, and this one might be even better.

  18

  Aria

  ”Play it again.”

  In my dream, he stands over me like a phantom. His eyes are a furious red like I always imagined them to be, though I know they’re really just brown. His brows knit as I raise the violin to my chin again and prepare to play it all over.

  In my dream, I know that I’ve been standing there and playing for hours. My fingers are bloody and torn to shreds, but daddy doesn’t care. I’m nine years old and I should be a prodigy by now, but I’m not. According to daddy, if I’m not the best at what I do, I’m not worth anything.

  And so I play it again. I go through the notes, playing as best as I possibly can considering blood runs down the strings, but that doesn’t matter to him. He simply sits there, smoking a cigar and watching me. I don’t look at his face, because I know what I’ll see if I do.

  When I finish, he stands and walks over to me. He slaps the violin from my hands and growls.

  “Pathetic,” he says. “What the fuck am I paying these teachers for if you can’t play right?”

  I cower away from him, waiting for him to hit me, but the blow never comes. It never does. He hit me once, out of anger, but not since then. Still, he threatens it all the time, and I believe he’ll do it if I give him a real reason to.

  “I’m sorry, daddy,” I whimper.

  “Sorry isn’t going to make you better, girl,” he says. “How the fuck are you going to take over everything I’m building if you can’t even master one instrument? It’s not even a fucking hard one, for fuck’s sake.” He stalks away and I collapse onto the floor, sobbing.

  He stands by the bar with a glass in his hand. He always has a glass in his hand. He’s a drunk, a mean stupid drunk, and I hate him. In the dream, which is also a memory, I know that he’s a piece of shit but I can’t do anything about it.

  I’m just a little girl and I still love him. I barely see him anymore, and when I do, it’s always painful, but he’s still a towering figure in my life. I want to live up to him. I believe everything he tells me. I believe every bit of pressure he puts on me. I feel it weighing on me every night, and every night I cry myself to sleep because I’m such a disappointment.

  “Maybe I’ll leave you too,” he sneers at me. “Just like your mother left you. She knew you were pathetic garbage. Do you want me to leave you?”

  “No!” I cry out, terrified.

  “Good,” he says. “Play it again.”

  I stand up and retrieve the violin. One of the strings is broken but I know I can’t say anything about it. I retrieve my bow and stand before him, ready to play. He nods and I raise my instrument.

  He loves it. I can see through him in my dream, into his mind, and I know he loves this. He loves pushing me, prodding me, seeing how far he can go. Threatening to leave is his favorite little game, especially when he gets to tell me how my mother thought I wasn’t worth being around. It’s impossible to imagine what that does to a little girl, the sort of incredible heartbreaking sadness it instills inside of her. It’s the sort of madness that she’ll turn to drugs to numb when she turns into a woman.

  But for now, all I know how to do is play. I strike the first note as my father advances on me, grinning his evil grin, stinking of gin and looking to humiliate me some more.

  I wake up sweating and he’s there in my bed. I swat at him, trying to get away, terrified of him. He’s coming and he’s going to keep making me play.

  “Aria!” His hands gently catch my wrists and I’m breathing so fast, but that’s not his voice, and I’m not a little girl.

  I’m an adult woman. I’m in Ethan’s home, in his bed, and I’m safe. I’m far away from my father.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Shh, it’s okay.”

  Ethan takes me in his arms and pulls me against him.

  “Ethan,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s very okay.” He holds me and rocks me until my trembling slowly subsides.

  “I heard you screaming,” he says once I’m calmer. “I came in to check on you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m fine though.”

  I pull back from him and wipe the hair from my face, trying to smile. He doesn’t need this sort of thing in his life, not with the kind of stress h
e’s under. He doesn’t need some pathetic girl with horrible scars screaming in the middle of the night and waking him up.

  The dream lingers and part of me thinks I’m still that pathetic little girl destined to fail. But I know that I’m not. I ran away and tried to destroy my demons with heroin, but that only made the demons so much worse. In the end, I’m destroying my demons through hard work, but they’re not all gone. Not yet at least.

  “Do you have nightmares often?” he asks

  I shake my head. “Not for years. I... I used to.” I laugh softly. “I’m sorry. I’m really embarrassed.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Really. For a second there, I thought you were being murdered.”

  “I’m safe and sound,” I say more for myself.

  He nods and studies me for a second, putting his hand on my face. It’s warm and feels good. I lean into it, smiling.

  “Can I ask you what the dream was about?” I look at him, a little surprised. He quickly goes on. “That’s helped me, in the past. Talking about the horrible dreams.”

  “You have nightmares?”

  “I used to. Back when my company started growing faster than I was ready for. I was under a lot of pressure back then.” He laughs a little bit. “I used to dream about drowning every night. My peers and employees would be standing outside of a giant fish tank, laughing as I drowned. It was pretty bad.”

  “Sounds awful,” I say.

  “If you want to tell me about it, I’ll listen. I understand if you don’t.”

  I pause, thinking. I’ve never told anyone about the dreams before. I’ve woken others up with my screaming, but I always just make some excuse and pretend like it’s no big deal. I thought I was past this, but apparently not.

  “I shouldn’t have asked,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “No,” I say. “I want to tell you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod and take a deep breath. “I played violin when I was a little girl. My father, sometimes he’d get drunk and watch me practice. Once he made me practice for hours, the same song over and over until my fingers bled. He would tell me that I’m a disappointment and that’s why my mother died. I dream about that afternoon sometimes, and in my dream I know that my father wants to humiliate me and destroy me, but I can’t help it. I’m a little girl again.”

  He shakes his head, frowning. “Is that true?”

  I nod. “It’s true. It happened. It’s... part of why I ran away. Why I turned to drugs.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he says softly. “That’s horrible.”

  “I think he meant well at first. But as the years passed, he became bitter, and started taking it out on me. I was just a little girl so I didn’t understand. My father was a towering figure in my life. He was everything to me. When he said I was a failure, I believed him.” I look away from Ethan, trying not to cry. “I stopped playing violin after that afternoon. I refused. He never hit me, but he yelled a lot. The yelling was worse.”

  “I can relate to that.”

  I look at him, surprised. He pulls away and lies down next to me, hands behind his head, looking up at the top of the canopy.

  “My father thought computers were for sissies and pussies,” he says. “His biggest dream in life was for me to join him working at the police department.” He glances at me and grins. “My father is a cop, by the way.”

  “I had no clue.”

  “I don’t talk about it. My dad was a grade-A asshole and still is. We don’t really talk much. My mother is okay, but she didn’t really do much to stop my father from being a dick. He was constantly talking down to me, constantly telling me that I was a pussy and a piece of shit for sitting in front of my computer all the time.” He sighs, trailing off.

  “That’s hard. When your parents don’t believe in you.”

  “There was other stuff, too,” he says softly. “He tried to toughen me up.”

  “How?” I ask, lying next to him. I put my hand on his chest.

  “Beat the shit out of me,” he says. “He’d be hitting me, saying it’s for my own good, although I’m pretty sure he just liked doing it. But all that abuse just made me more driven to get the fuck out of there.”

  “I can understand that,” I say.

  “I got lucky. My company worked and shit took off for me. But if I stayed in that house much longer, my father would have killed me, or I would have killed him. There was no happy ending for me there.”

  “But you got out.”

  He nods and looks at me. “You did too.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  He takes my hand and squeezes. “Hey. We both got out.”

  “You’re right.” I curl up next to him, my head on his chest. “We did.”

  I close my eyes as we lapse into silence. I don’t want to push him for more of his story, but I can imagine it. I lived some of it, I bet. It’s amazing that he ended up here and I ended up here too, but we took such different paths. Similar beginnings, but such different choices and events.

  I can feel sleep tugging me down, and I want to resist it since he’s still here, but I can’t. All I hear is his breath and his heartbeat thumping slowly in my ear. It’s comforting, and when I finally go back under, I don’t dream anymore.

  It’s just peaceful and calm. There’s nothing else.

  19

  Ethan

  I glance at my agenda and sigh. The day is nearly over and yet I feel like I haven’t gotten a damn thing done. I’ve been feeling like this ever since Aria came into my life, but I know it’s not her fault. I’m just distracted by her.

  Last night, I fell asleep in her bed. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that, but it happened. When I heard her screaming, I thought something horrible was happening.

  Instead, I ended up opening up about my life. I never talk about my father, not with anyone. It’s not that I’m ashamed, or not exactly, but I just can’t stand people feeling any sort of pity for me. I survived it and got the fuck out of there, and that’s all I care about.

  I still speak with my mother maybe once a month. I paid off their house, despite my father asking me not to, and bought them a new car. But that’s the extent of it. I’d give them more, take care of them for life only because they’re my parents, but my father made it clear that he doesn’t want my help.

  Too proud or too stupid, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m moving on past all of this.

  But I understand what Aria is going through. I used to dream of my father and the beatings he’d give me, all for my own good, all because he wanted me to toughen up. Of course, he was beating on a fourteen-year-old boy, but that didn’t matter to him. I was a sissy because I was good with computers and I was smart, and no son of his was going to be a sissy.

  As soon as I turned sixteen and hit a growth spurt, the beatings stopped. Mostly because I got big enough to fight back and defend myself. He didn’t want to risk getting hurt. But the emotional abuse never stopped, not until the day I left that house and never looked back.

  I’m not a weak man. I don’t let that shit define me or hold me back. I’m not some fucking victim. But I can’t pretend like it didn’t happen. I was just a kid and I didn’t know any better. I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

  And I’m not, not exactly at least. I mostly just don’t want people defining me by my past. Everything I’ve accomplished since then is so much more important to me, and I don’t want to become the abused kid that made it big.

  Maybe it was dangerous to tell Aria that story. She could easily turn around and sell it to some tabloid. The Syndicate would probably have something to say about that, but that wouldn’t really stop her, not if she was really determined. She could make a nice chunk of money and disappear.

  But I know she wouldn’t do that. What she told me last night was real, very real. She couldn’t fake the screaming or the emotion that I saw plainly on her face. She understands what I went through, just like I under
stand what she went through, and I know she’d never betray my trust. Just like I’d never betray hers.

  The unspoken bond between us sends strange shivers down my spine. I never imagined feeling... whatever this is. It’s an attachment, that’s for sure, a very powerful bond that I don’t entirely understand yet. There’s so much between us already, and we have so much in common, that I can barely believe it.

  My secretary buzzes my phone suddenly, snapping me out of my haze. I hit a button. “Yes?” I ask, getting myself back into the moment.

  “Richard Taylor on line two,” she says.

  I pause. “Thanks,” I say, before picking up the phone and hitting a button. “Richard,” I say. “Hello.”

  “How are you doing, Ethan?”

  I pause, wondering how to proceed. Do I pretend like the blackmail never happened?

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Have you thought about our last conversation?”

  There it is. I was waiting for that. I wonder how direct he’ll be over the phone.

  “I have,” I say.

  “And?”

  “And it doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice in this situation, does it?”

  “No,” he says, and I can hear the joy in his voice. “That’s the point though, of course.”

  “Send over your next round of contracts.”

  “I will. I’ll be reasonable, Ethan. I’ll go easy on you.”

  “For both our sakes, Richard. Remember, you need this deal as much as I do.”

  “That’s true,” he says, laughing. “That’s very true. Well, I’m glad you came to your senses. We’re both going to be rich and happy men soon.”

  “I suspect you’ll be richer and happier,” I say.

  “Of course. That’s the game, isn’t it?” He laughs and then hangs up the phone.

  I stare at my receiver before hanging it back up. I feel fucking sick to my stomach all of a sudden, and although I have more work to do, I know I’m done for the day. It’s around five anyway, and there’s no shame in leaving at a normal time for once. I’ll go home, check on Aria, eat something, and then work from my home office for a few more hours.