by Tia Siren
“That’s a good thing, Hanna, but don’t let your standards be set too high. Men, just like us, have their quirks. Had Kason been a girl, I would’ve wanted her to do the same: have children young and raise them with that same energy, and then enjoy the back half of life instead of being sixty and just watching them graduate high school!” my mother said.
“You can still do that as an older woman, Mom,” I said. “Women all over the world are waiting until their thirties to have their first child. It’s just what’s happening.”
“Look. It’s easier for men to do that kind of thing. Have children when their older. They go to the office and they get away from the tantrums and the late-night feedings and the afternoons spent running around in the backyard. But, all that energy then falls back on the woman. It’s not a bad thing, it’s simply how it is. And it’s harder to do that when you’re an older woman. I’m not blind to how differently I raised Hanna because of the age I was when I had her,” Lisa said.
“Plus, there really are some snobs around here,” my mother said. “The moment Hanna puts off a family to become a career woman, she’ll be looked down upon.”
“That sounds like a personal problem, honestly,” I said.
“I just want Hanna to have what she’s always wanted. I see the books she reads sometimes, and they aren’t study books. She’s been born into a society that expects women to have careers and lead their own independent lives. There’s no room anymore for women who want to be stay-at-home mothers without someone thinking she’s compromised something in her life,” Lisa said.
“It really is sad,” my mother said.
“That’s why I have no problems with her having children young. I know it’s what she wants, and it will keep her shielded from the prying eyes on both sides of the argument!”
Shit. No wonder Hanna had these crazy ideas in her head. The smile on her face bloomed from ear to ear, and I slowly felt the fun we were supposed to have for the next two weeks slip from my grasp.
I whipped my eyes over to Marcus, who didn’t look happy at all. Hanna’s smile just grew the more our mothers continued to talk. Tension developed in the room, and soon our fathers tried to interject, but the women were on a tangent about having kids young and Hanna was just eating it up.
“I think I’m full,” Marcus announced loudly.
“Oh, sweetheart, you haven’t even finished your plate,” his mother said.
“No need,” he mumbled. He shoved himself out of his chair and stormed out of the kitchen. For a split second, Hanna’s attention was ripped from our mothers as she turned toward her brother. I watched as something akin to guilt fluttered behind her eyes, and for a moment, I truly felt sorry for her. Here was this young, vibrant, sassy girl with a mother who was hammering children down her throat already and a brother—whom she looked up to dearly— advising her to stay away from men altogether. I couldn’t imagine the dichotomy she was trapped in.
But soon the guilt was ripped from her when my mother posed a question directly to her.
“So, Hanna, any plans for your last year of college? I’m sure there’ll be a fresh batch of post-graduate men coming into your program.”
I decided to get up from the table and follow Marcus if only to get away from an answer I probably didn’t want to hear fall from Hanna’s lips.
Chapter 21
Hanna
I got up soon after Kason did and followed him outside. I was worried about my brother because I knew this type of conversation got him riled up. I just didn’t really understand why. I was worried that the little time I was going to have with Kason tonight was now ruined by the table talk conversation, and I really wanted to make sure my brother was going to calm down. Sometimes, whenever he got heated, he tended to say things he didn’t mean, and I needed to make sure my secret with Kason stayed a secret. We both walked up to Marcus, who was pacing on the front lawn. I was the first to break the tension.
“You all right, Marc?” I asked.
“I just had to get out of there,” he murmured.
“Why?” Kason asked.
“Because I can’t fucking stand it when my mom spews that…that bullshit about having kids so young!”
“Why not?” I asked. “It’s not a terrible thing.”
I felt Kason’s eyes flutter over to me, and part of myself locked up. Sure, I’d agreed to have protected sex with Kason, but that didn’t mean I had abandoned my hope of having children altogether. I agreed with him that it sounded idiotic, but that didn’t mean my drive for a family had simply vanished.
“Because I know how impressionable you are, Hanna,” Marcus said, turning to me. “I know you’re listening to her and thinking it’s such a glamorous lifestyle, but it’s not.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “You don’t have kids.”
“Hanna, you don’t know the first thing about men, much less having children,” Marcus said.
“I could do great things with a child, Marc. I’d be an incredible mother,” I said.
“Probably not.”
“Again not something you would know. And, if I ever did have a child, it’s not like I’d be hurting for money. I want to be an anesthesiologist, for crying out loud.”
“And how the hell would you do all that extra education with a kid, Hanna?” Marcus yelled. “And why the hell are we even talking about this? What, are you pregnant or something?”
Kason’s eyes burned deep into the side of my face, and for the first time since all this shit kicked up, I wanted him gone. I didn’t want judgment from him like my brother was shooting my way, and I didn’t want him to begin thinking I was going back on what I’d promised him. If anything, my word was my bond. No matter what people thought of me.
But, I also wanted to defend myself. Stand up for dreams and make people understand that just because I was twenty didn’t mean I was a mindless idiot with no life aspirations.
Why was it so bad to aspire to be a mother?
“I just don’t want that for you, Hanna,” Marcus said.
“Well, it’s not your fucking decision to make, Marcus,” I spat.
I saw fire rise in his eyes before he turned his fury onto Kason.
“If you ever touch her, I swear to god, I will kill you.”
“I think you’re forgetting that you’re technically talking to your boss,” Kason said with authority.
“I’m not talking to my boss. I’m talking to the hotshot billionaire who was eyeing my sister all through dinner. You think I don’t catch the looks you’ve been giving her or the way her eyes stay on you a little longer than I’d like?”
“Why the hell do you think you can control everything?!” I shrieked. I’d lost my mind and I’d had enough. I was tired of people thinking they could rule my life, no matter what their intentions were for it. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, dude,” Kason said. “I made you a promise in that speakeasy that I wouldn’t touch your sister.”
“Wait, what?”
I whipped my head around to face Kason, who shot me a death glare, and Marcus caught the entire thing.
“What the fuck are you not telling me?” he growled.
“What I’m not telling you is that I have a crush on your best friend,” I said plainly. Kason’s jaw dropped open and Marcus’s hung to the ground. “Neither you nor Dad control the decisions I make. And neither does Mom. I’m an intelligent young woman who has is growing out from underneath the shade this entire family casts. It’s not your decision what I choose to do with my life, nor is it your place to instruct me on what you feel my potential is. I like Kason. I think he’s incredibly handsome and intelligent, and that’s why I keep my lingering eyes on him. Because I like him, and it’s nice to think that a man like him might like me as well.”
Marcus was speechless, and I realized I still needed to cover for Kason. I was family and Marcus would forgive me, but he didn’t have to forgive Kason.
“But I know Kason would never go for someone like me. To him, I’m still little Hanna Rendon, your geeky younger sister.”
Tears rose to my eyes and I chastised myself for being so weak. Here I was, trying to prove myself to be a strong woman, and I was crying over some dude in front of my brother.
“Kason would never want anything to do with me. Not really,” I said. “So just calm the fuck down and let me have my schoolgirl crush a little while longer.”
I watched Marcus calm down, and I could tell Kason was trying harder to focus on Marcus than I was. There was a way he wanted to react to this entire situation, but he was holding it back. I didn’t know what he wanted to do or say, but I hoped I’d gotten him out of hot water with his best friend.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m overreacting, but I just... Hanna, you’re so much better than the life mom put together for herself. Sure, it’s a good one, but you’re so smart and headstrong and bound for so much more than just motherhood.”
“See?” I said. “That’s the problem. It’s not just motherhood. When you have a child, you take the future generation in your hands and slowly mold it to be better than you. When you’re raising a daughter, you’re not just raising a girl. You’re raising someone else’s life partner. Someone else’s mother. Someone else’s role model. When you’re raising a son, you’re not just raising another boy. You’re raising another gentleman. Someone else’s life partner. Someone else’s father. You’re not just training some human being and simply getting by while drinking wine on a couch. You’re molding the future generation and changing the landscape of this entire planet for all eternity. When you give birth, you’re single-handedly altering the course of seven billion lives just by bringing another altering life force into it.”
Kason’s and Marcus’s eyes were both hooked on mine, and for the first time in my life, I felt I was being heard by the two men who mattered most to me.
“Well anyway,” Marcus said, brushing me off, “Kason’s too old for you.”
“Exactly.” Kason nodded. “No offense, Hanna.”
“Yeah,” I murmured as my body deflated in defeat. “No problem.”
The two of them slap-hugged it out and started their way back inside, but all I did was stare at them. I’d poured my soul out to them, told them my reason for wanting to be a mother, bared my emotions and split my heart open so they could get a glimpse at exactly who I was, how I was programmed, and how I thought.
And as the two of them walked off like they couldn’t care less, the only thing I could think about how much I really hadn’t been heard at all.
Chapter 22
Kason
I couldn’t believe how Marcus had freaked the fuck out on us the other night. I totally understood that our moms were pissing him off, but to freak out on Hanna and me like that without any fucking proof was just a bit too far. I knew he had some suspicions—and rightfully so—but really, was Hanna and I hooking up the worst thing in the world? Yes, there was an age gap. Yes, she was his sister. But seriously, she wanted to be a single mom and I had talked her off the fucking ledge!
Or so I had thought.
I couldn’t get my mind off Hanna. The way she had looked at dinner was exactly the way she’d always looked about the subject of having kids, but now she probably felt like she had some sort of adult support now. It was fucked up the way they were pushing this baby shit on her and she was eating it up. If you wanted to have kids early, go for it! But god, our mothers had had our fathers to help! She just wanted to pop out a kid without having to deal with the father. What the hell kind of fucked-up shit was that? She had been practically glowing at the table the other night, and coupled with that bullshit comment she’s made about her birth control failing after our greenhouse encounter, it made me wonder whether she’d actually abandoned the idea.
But man, she was blowing my mind. Until all that bullshit happened, she had looked so hot at dinner that night. Those tight little clothes had teased where my hands had needed to be, and how her delicate fingers had grazed the inside of my thighs under the table…it had driven me fucking wild. Marcus’s storm off had been a mood killer for sure, but damn, I loved being with his sister. And when she’d mentioned a crush? I had thought I was going to blow through the roof! I’d thought she was going to expose every single thing she and I were doing just to feel like an adult! But part of me actually liked the fact that she had a crush. Having a crush meant you wanted to be with someone for some other reason besides what they could provide for you. Yeah, we had awesome sex, but I’d been rolling around the idea of having feelings for Hanna ever since she’d made that comment.
I wonder if she still felt that way.
I went home that night and thought about how it would be if Hanna and I could openly date. Sure, the age gap was going to be a thing for people, but I hoped to God she knew it wasn’t a thing for me. It was just a comment I made to get Marcus off my back after she gave me an out in her argument…and I still had to thank her for that. She had single-handedly cleared us of all suspicion that night while talking her brother down off his crazy-talk ledge, and I needed to figure out how to pay her back and make that up to her.
A part of me knew exactly how to do that.
My phone rang and I saw it was Hanna. I picked it up with the broadest smile on my face, and the thought hit me to ask her to lunch.
But she beat me to the punch.
“Hey, Kason.”
“Hey there, beautiful.” I smiled.
“Up for some lunch?”
“Of course. Name the time and place and I’ll drive.”
“Good. I figured we could talk about the other night,” she said.
“I think that’s a good idea. When would you like to have lunch?”
“Now?” she asked.
“I’ll see you at the car.”
I met her outside, we hopped in, and I drove off down the street. I took her hand, but it seemed a bit limp in mine. I felt that this might not be as stimulating a conversation as I’d thought. I had figured I could take her somewhere nice, have a glass of wine, talk about a few things, and then head to a back road and break in the back seat of my car.
But with the way she was staring out the window and keeping quiet the entire drive, I knew the conversation wasn’t going in the direction I had thought it would.
“You all right, Hanna?” I asked.
“Mhhm. Just enjoying the passing scenery.”
“You sure you don’t want to start talking now?” I prodded.
“Oh, yeah. It can wait.”
We got to the restaurant, and she didn’t really start talking until after we got our drinks. The first phrase out of her mouth was not a good one.
“I don’t think this is a good idea anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“After the way Marcus freaked out the other night, I think we should probably stop what we’re doing.”
There was this far-off look in her eyes, and I knew that wasn’t the only reason. I tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled both of them into her lap. When she leaned back and sighed, I just decided to say it.
“That’s not all this is. You know we’ve got your internship papers we can pull out at any moment. I actually have a couple more things I need you to sign anyway.”
I pulled her employee paperwork from my inside jacket pocket along with a few other things I’d had to retrieve from her school—releases both of us needed to sign along with the official agreement for the pay she would receive.
“No, that’s not it. But I don’t want to talk about the other things. I just…wanted to end this with you in person.”
“Hanna, even if we aren’t screwing around, you still mean a lot to me. We aren’t leaving until you talk to me about this.”
“Kason, please. I want to thank you for the internship, but I don’t think I can take it,” she said with a biting edge in her voice.
She moved to stand up, but I stood too and g
rabbed her arm. I pulled her close to me and brought her in for a fiery kiss, and for a split second, I felt her falter. My tongue swiped along her lips and she let me enter. I knew she felt and tasted exactly what I did. She felt emotion and passion. She felt beautiful and wanted. I knew she tasted how sweetly our scents melted together with one another’s. You didn’t find that shit with any person. You just didn’t.
But then she abruptly pulled away.
“See? That’s the issue with you and Marcus. You think you can just control me and tell me what you think is good for me, but you don’t fucking listen. Neither of you did when I told you why Marcus’s comment about mothers bothered me so much. Marcus just barreled over me, and you—you went right along with him! And after the out I gave you so you wouldn’t be in hot water with your best friend!”
I released her arm and she stepped away from me, and that was when I realized what was actually bothering her. I thought back to the beautiful words she had said when she’d talked about motherhood, but what I couldn’t tell her was how they had made me feel. I couldn’t tell her that, in that very instance, she had actually convinced me to get her pregnant. I couldn't tell her that her beautiful words about motherhood had been unlike anything I’d ever heard and that any woman who could talk about having a child that way really did deserve to be a mother. I couldn’t tell her all of this and then turn around and tell her that I still wasn’t willing to give her a fucking child even if the outlook she had on motherhood was perfect.
I knew little Hanna Rendon would be an amazing mom someday.
Just not right this fucking second.
“I’m sorry,” I said earnestly. “I should’ve stood up for you the way you stood up for me in that conversation, and I didn’t.”
“You’re damn right you didn’t,” she said harshly.
“Please, take the internship. I wouldn’t create a personal secretarial position on my floor unless I felt I really trusted the person. You’ll be rubbing elbows with a lot of important people on a daily basis, and if your medical journey falls through, knowing these people could really help you. Think of it as Plan B.”