by Emma Scott
Copyright © 2017 Emma Scott
All rights reserved
Cover art by Melissa Panio-Petersen
Interior formatting by That Formatting Lady
No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious or have been used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Playlist
Dedication
ACT ONE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
ACT TWO
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Sneak Peek
More from Emma Scott
The writing of a book is a solitary endeavor, until the moment you send it to the first person to read the words. Then it suddenly becomes too unwieldy for the author to carry alone. I am forever grateful to the following people who helped me haul this book over the mountain and into the world. I could not have done it without them: Angela Shockley, Joy Kriebel-Sadowski, Kathleen Ripley, Jeannine Allison, Sarah Torpey, Suanne Laqueur, Jennifer Balogh-Ghosh, and William Hairston.
To Tom Ripley for his legal expertise, I thank you so very much. And while I stand by my research and his advice, I did take some liberties and exerted creative license over certain aspects of California custody law. Don’t kill me.
To the bloggers, readers, and amazing people of this community who make it possible for me to do this job. Thank you.
To Grey, who literally saved me from disaster. Thank you for your kindness, your time, for being there for me at one a.m., and especially for that last read-through. With love.
To Melissa Panio-Petersen, who keeps me sane while I write the words, then she wraps the words inside a beautiful cover. Thank you for sharing your time, talent, and artistry, and for being the winner of World’s Most Thoughtful and Hilarious Human, six years running.
To Robin Renee Hill for all the reasons, and a thousand more I can’t remember but I’m sure we talked about them in an email somewhere, and it probably ended with you sending me an eyeroll emoji. <3 you more than all the babka.
And to every single member of Emma’s Entourage. Words cannot express how much you mean to me, how I’m so grateful to all of you each and every day. Thank you for being there, my Blue Ribbon Stalkers. I cry more tears of joy than you know for what you do for me. Thank you. <3
Sex and Candy, Marcy Playground
Down, Marian Hill
One More Light, Linkin Park
Tightrope, LP
Open Your Heart, Madonna
You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Cheek to Cheek, Ella Fitzgerald
In the Mood, The Glenn Miller Band
To Wish Impossible Things, The Cure
Muddy Waters, LP
Cell Block Tango: Chicago the Musical, Kander and Ebb
Only Hope, Mandy Moore
To those fighting secret battles, don’t let your light go out. This one is for you.
Coincidence of Opposites (phil): a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different.
Prologue
Sawyer
August 15, 10 months ago
I barely heard the doorbell under the pounding music and the laughing conversations of a hundred of my closest friends. Jackson Smith jerked his head at me from across the room, a shit-eating grin on his face. He was dressed as Idris Elba’s Roland the Gunslinger, to my Man in Black. Across the crowd of costumed guests—each dressed as a villain from movies or comics—he mouthed the words, Your turn.
I widened my eyes and inclined my head at the beautiful redhead in the Poison Ivy costume beside me. She was a second year at Hastings, asking me for advice about which professors were the hardest in Year Three, my year, but I don’t think she was listening. Her gaze kept drifting down to my mouth.
Jackson shook his head and made eyes at the pretty Nurse Ratchet beside him, then held up his hands in an exaggerated shrug.
I sighed at my best friend, and scratched my eye with my middle finger.
“I gotta get that,” I told Poison Ivy. I think she said her name was Carly or Marly. Not that it mattered. Her name wasn’t what I wanted from her. I flashed her what my friends called my trademark panty-dropping smile. “Save my spot?”
Carly-or-Marly nodded and tilted her own approving smile back. “Not going anywhere.”
“Good,” I said, and the way our eyes met and held was like a pact being sealed.
I’m going to get laid tonight.
I shot Jackson a triumphant smile, which he answered with a two-finger-gun salute. I laughed and wound my way through our place.
Jackson, myself and two other guys lived in a rented Victorian in the Upper Haight neighborhood. There were no frats at UC Hastings College of the Law, so our three-story house had become the next best thing. Our parties were infamous, and I was happy to see this one was no exception. Guests swayed to “Sex and Candy” playing on Jackson’s state-of-the-art sound system. They smiled at me, thumped me on the back, or leaned in to shout drunkenly above the music that this Evil-Doer party was “The Best Party Ever.” I just smiled back and nodded.
Every party of ours was “The Best Party Ever.”
I opened the door; a charming smile and an excuse on my lips should it be one of my neighbors complaining about the noise. My smile dropped off my face like a mask and I stared.
A young woman with dark hair tied in a messy ponytail, strands falling loose to frame her narrow face, stared back at me. Her eyes were shadowed and bloodshot. She wore faded jeans, a stained shirt, and she struggled under the weight of an enormous bag on her shoulder. Old alcohol oozed out of her pores—the stench of someone who’d got plastered the night before.
The vision before me warred with a hazy memory of this same girl, wild and laughing next to me at a bar; tossing down drinks like they were water; kissing me in a cab. The taste of vodka and cranberry came to my lips, and then her name.
“Molly...Abbott?”
“Hi, Sawyer,” she said, and shifted a baby in her arms.
A baby.
My stomach tightened and my balls tried to crawl back into my guts. The hazy memory became stark and vibrant, with brutal clarity.
A little more than a year ago. A summer trip to Vegas. A kiss in the cab had led to a drunken night of lustful tumbling on Molly’s bed in her tiny apartment and a half-heard assurance that she was on the pill. And then I was inside her without a fucking care in the world.
The words fell out of my mouth. “Oh shit.”
Molly barked a nervous laugh and shifted the huge, overstuffed nylon bag on her other arm. “Yeah, well, here we are,” she said, and stood on tiptoe to peek over my shoulder. “Having
a party? Looks epic. Sorry to just show up like this but…”
I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me. The music and laughter cut in half, became distant. My eyes darted to the baby bundled in a faded blanket with yellow teddy bears on it, stained and grimy. My heart panged against my chest like a heavy drum.
“What…What are you doing here?”
“I was in the city,” Molly said, swallowing hard, her eyes not meeting mine. “I wanted to introduce you.”
“Introduce me…”
Molly swallowed again and looked up at me as if it took effort. “Can I come in? Can we…talk? Just for a minute. I don’t want to ruin your party.”
“Talk.”
Shock had turned me stupid. I’d been valedictorian of my class at UCSF, now a straight-A law student at Hastings, reduced to repeating the last thing I heard like a parrot. My glance darting to the baby whose face was bundled out of sight.
Introduce me. Holy fuck.
I blinked, shook my head. “Yeah, uh, sure. Come in.”
I took the bag off Molly’s shoulder and my own arm dropped at its weight. I hefted it over mine and hustled Molly through the evil-doers, into my bedroom off the kitchen. The room was dim, and I flipped on a light. Molly blinked, glanced around.
“This is a nice room,” she said. She had dirt on her jeans and one of her jacket pockets was inside out. Her costume wasn’t evil nurse or witch, but homeless girl with a baby.
“The house is great. Huge.” She sat on the edge of the bed, hefted the baby in her arms. “You look good too, Sawyer. And you’re going to law school, right? You’re going to be a lawyer?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“I read on your Facebook page you’re going to work for a federal judge when you graduate. That’s a big deal, right? That sounds like a really good job.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I don’t have the job yet. I still have to graduate. Pass the bar exam and then he has to choose me.”
I had a mountain of pressure already. My glance darted to the baby again and my throat went dry.
“That sounds good, Sawyer,” Molly said. “You seem like you’re really doing well.”
“I’m doing okay.” I heaved a breath. “Molly…?”
“Her name is Olivia,” she said, shifting the baby. “That’s a good name, right? I wanted one that sounded…smart. Like you.”
My stomach was tied in the tightest of knots and my legs were itching to run out the door and not look back… Instead, I sank down on the bed beside Molly, like a magnet, drawn to the bundle in her arms.
“Olivia,” I murmured.
“Yes. And she is smart. Advanced. She can already hold her head up and everything.”
Molly pulled the blanket from the baby’s face and my damn breath caught in my throat. I saw a rounded cheek, tiny, pouty little lips, and eyes squeezed shut. Molly’s breath was tinged with booze, same as mine from the ‘special punch’ one of my roommates had made. But Olivia smelled clean, like talcum powder and some unidentifiable sweet smell that was probably reserved for babies.
“She’s pretty, right?” Molly said, glancing at me nervously. “She looks just like you.”
“Just like me...”
Outside my door, the party was blaring but muted. Young people laughing and drinking and probably hooking up…just as I had thirteen months ago.
“Are you sure she’s…?” I couldn’t say the word.
Molly’s head jerked in a fast nod. “She’s yours. One hundred percent.” She bit her lip. “Do you want to hold her?”
Fuck no!
My arms fell open and Molly put the baby in them.
I stared down at Olivia, willing her little features to become recognizable. A clue or hereditary whisper that she really was mine. But she looked nothing like Molly or me. She was just a baby.
My baby?
Molly sniffed and I looked up to see her smiling at Olivia and me. “You’re a natural,” she said softly. “I knew you would be.”
I stared down at the baby and swallowed a jagged lump of every emotion known to man.
“H-how old is she?”
“Three months,” Molly said. She nudged my arm with her elbow. “Remember that night? Pretty wild, right?”
My head shot up. “You told me you were on the pill.”
She flinched and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I was. It didn’t work. That happens sometimes.”
I stared, incredulous, and then my gaze dropped back down to the baby in my arms. She stirred in her sleep, her little fist brushing her own chin. One half of the impenetrable confines of my heart battened down like a storm was coming, shoring up defenses, building walls because this can’t be happening. The other half marveled at this baby’s tiny movements like they were minor miracles. I felt like laughing, crying, or screaming all at once.
“I almost didn’t come here,” Molly was saying. “I just wanted you to meet her and so…here we are.”
“Are you in the city? Do you have a place…?”
I wondered if Molly needed to move in with me, and the reality of the situation was like a bucket of ice water. I still had another nine months of law school. I had the bar exam to take and pass—the first time—if I had any prayer of getting the clerkship with Judge Miller. The clerkship was my ticket to my dream career as a federal prosecutor.
“What the hell, Molly. I can’t…I can’t have a baby,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m twenty-three fucking years old.”
Molly sniffed. “Oh really?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You can have a baby, Sawyer. If you can fuck, you can have a baby. So that’s what we did and that’s what we have.”
I gritted my teeth and spat each word slowly. “You told me you were on the pill…”
She stared back and I knew it was useless. Saying those words over and over wasn’t going to make the baby in my arms magically evaporate. The pill may have failed or Molly may have been lying about taking them, but in the bleary, booze-soaked memories of that night, there had been one second where I told myself to put on a condom like I always did, and that time I didn’t.
“Fuck,” I whispered, and a terrible sadness gripped me as I stared into Olivia’s little face. Sadness for all of the fear and anxiety wrapped up with her in one tight bundle. I took a deep breath. “Okay, what happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Molly said, her fingers twitching in her lap. “I just…wanted to see you. To see how you were and let you know that she’s yours. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’m still making them.” She smiled wanly. “But you… You’re a good guy, Sawyer. I know you are.”
I frowned, shook my head. “I’m not. Jesus, Molly—”
“Can I use your restroom?” she asked. “It was a long drive up.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Down the hall, first door on your left.”
She sucked in a breath and bent to kiss the baby on her forehead, then quickly rose and went out.
I held Olivia and watched as she woke up. Her eyes fluttered open and met mine for the first time. They were blue like Molly’s, not brown like mine, but I felt something shift in me. One tiny tear in my fabric, the first of many that would eventually lead to a complete unraveling and remaking of me into someone I’d hardly recognize.
“Hi,” I whispered to my daughter.
My daughter. Oh Christ…
Sudden panic tore through the shock and fear. I jerked my head up and glanced frantically around my empty room, to the huge bag on the floor, to the empty space where Molly had been sitting. My breath caught in my chest at my brain’s slow realization of what had happened.
I tore off the bed with the baby in my arms, and hurried to the living area where the party was going on full blast. The noise frightened Olivia and her cries spread through the party like a fire hose, dousing everything until the music shut off. All talk and laughter dampened down to nothing. I glanced around the room, searching for Molly and found only slack-jawed stare
s and snickers. Jackson gaped with a million questions in his eyes. My other roommates stared. Carly-or-Marly’s sexy smile had turned into one of bemused pity. I barely registered any of it as my eyes found the front door, left slightly ajar.
Oh my God…
In between Olivia’s growing cries, someone snorted a small laugh. “This party is so over.”
Darlene
June 15, present day
The music began with a lone piano. A few haunting notes, then a young woman’s soft, clear voice.
I began on the floor, barefoot in leggings and a T-shirt. Nothing professional. No choreography. I hadn’t meant to come here, but I was passing by on the street. The space happened to be free and I’d rented it for thirty minutes before I could talk myself out of it. I’d paid with shaking hands.
I shut out thoughts; let my body listen to the music. I was rusty; out of practice. My muscles were shy, my limbs hesitant, until the beat dropped—a tinny high-hat and uncomplicated techno beat—and then I let go.
Are you down...?
Are you down...?
Are you down, down, down...?
My back arched into a back bend, then collapsed. I writhed in controlled movements—my body a series of flowing shapes and arches and undulating flesh and sinew, swaying to the rhythm that simmered back to the piano and the singer’s voice—haunting and lonely.
Are you down…?
The pulse increased again and I was up, crisscrossing the studio, leaping and dragging, spinning three turns, my head whipping, arms reaching up and then out, grasping at something to hold onto and finding only air.
Are you down…?
Muscles woke up to the dance, aching, complaining at the sudden demands. My breath was heavy in my chest like a stone, sweat streaking between my shoulder blades.
Are you…?
Are you…?
Are you…?
It dripped off my chin as I collapsed to my knees like a beggar.
…down?
I sucked in a breath, the faintest of smiles pulling my lips. “Maybe not.”