30 Days (Morgan Family Series Book 1)

by J. L. Leslie

  “He’s fine. The doctor said the bullet went straight through. Are you okay?” Cameron asks. For the fifth time.

  “Yes. Your dad is who you should be concerned about. He stepped in front of me. This is just stitches.” I inform him. “And I hit my head on the table when we fell. No stitches there. There was no need to have the doctor do blood work.”

  “It’s standard.” he tells me.

  “Please go check on your dad. Make sure you thank him.” I encourage him.

  “I’ve checked on him and thanked him. He’s fine. I’m not worried about him.

  I’m worried about you.”

  Cameron sits on the side of the bed and leans in for a kiss. His lips brush against mine, causing my heart to pound in my chest.

  “I want you to stay with me tonight.” he says and I nod. There’s no need in arguing with him.

  “If I ever get discharged.” I grumble. “I mean, I’m dressed. We could just leave, right? I’m not a fan of hospitals.”

  “Do what the doctor orders.” he scolds.

  I lean against his chest and breath him in. “I love you.”

  He strokes his hand over my back and then brings it around to tilt my face up.

  He captures my lips in a teasing kiss which makes me shift in the bed, trying to get closer to him. He breaks the kiss and smiles against my lips.

  “I love you.” he says back.

  I start to lean in again, but the nurse returns, this time with the doctor in tow. Relief floods me as I realize I’m finally getting discharged. I can’t get out of here soon enough. I want to thank Mr. Morgan too and then go home.

  “I know you’re anxious to get home, Ms. Stone. I’d like to see you back in two weeks to remove your stitches. There shouldn’t be any scarring. You should also make an appointment with your OB/GYN to have an ultrasound. Since you had a fall like you did, you should have the baby checked out. I’m sure everything is fine though since you haven’t experienced any bleeding.”

  “I’m so…sorry…wh…what did you say?” I stutter.

  “Your baby, Ms. Stone. You should see your OB/GYN. Like I said, I’m sure everything is fine since you’re not experiencing any bleeding, but we like to be on the safe side. Here is your discharge papers. I’ll see you soon.”

  When I don’t reach for the papers, Cameron takes them and the doctor walks out. Neither of us move. Neither of us say anything. Just ten minutes ago I was ready to run out of this hospital and get to the safety of Cameron’s apartment. Now I don’t know that it’s safe anymore.

  I’m pregnant. How is that possible? I’m on the pill. I haven’t missed any. I never forget to take it. I’m pregnant. I don’t even want kids. It’s not in my plan. I don’t know how to take care of a child. I’m pregnant.

  I somehow find the strength to stand from the hospital bed. I walk over to the chair against the wall and pick up my purse. I can see my hands shaking as I slip the strap onto my shoulder.

  When I turn back to Cameron he’s still sitting on the hospital bed, staring down at the discharge papers. I walk over to him and pull them out of his hands. He looks up at me and his dark, blue eyes are swimming with questions. Questions I can’t answer.

  “I think I should just go home tonight.” I tell him.

  He casts his gaze down and it drops to my now flat tummy. I drop a kiss on his forehead and walk away. Every part of me aches to have him hold me. To have him tell me everything will be okay. We’ll be okay. But I don’t want to hear empty promises.

  Cameron

  Pregnant. Memphis is pregnant. We’re pregnant. I keep repeating this in my head over and over. I fell asleep with this mantra repeating in my head and I woke up to it also. I sit on the side of my bed now, repeating this mantra. It’s four a.m. My brain still hasn’t had time to process exactly what this means for us.

  “I know how it happened!” Memphis exclaims, bursting into my bedroom.

  “You scared the shit outta me! Do you know what time it is?”

  She paces my room wearing her favorite ninja turtles pajamas, her leopard print beanie, and a pair of house slippers. Despite wearing pajamas, it doesn’t look like she’s slept at all.

  “It was the antibiotics! I looked it up. I’ve been researching online, trying to figure out how this could’ve happened. I mean, I never miss a pill. Never! It was the antibiotics though. They can mess with your birth control pills! They messed with mine! I know it! How could I have been so stupid? I never even read the pamphlet that came with my pills! I just took them. Religiously!”

  “Memphis.” I stand up from the bed and walk over to her. She doesn’t stop pacing. She’s on the verge of hysterics.

  “I can’t believe I let this happen! I told you I would fuck this up! I told you!” “Memphis.” I reach for her and she snatches away from me.

  “I can’t do this! I can’t be a mother, Cameron!”

  “Memphis.” I grab her and haul her into my arms. The softness from the leopard ears tickles my nose.

  “I fucked up. Not you! Me!” she cries. “I told you it would be me!”

  I hold her against me and let her cry. I don’t know what else to do. What to say. I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know what I want. What she wants.

  “We’ll figure it out, Memphis.” I assure her.

  “Figure it out? This is a baby we’re talking about, Cameron! It’s not like figuring out where we’re going for dinner or what movie we want to see!” she shoves me.

  “I know that. Look, we just found out last night. Let’s make an appointment to see a doctor and then make some decisions from there. We don’t have to make any decisions today.”

  “What do you want to do?” she asks and I feel like it’s a trick question. I feel like no answer is really the right answer. If I say I want to keep the baby, she’ll feel pressured. If I say I don’t want to, she’ll think I don’t support her. Right now, I don’t know what the hell I want to do.

  “Memphis, I love you. I want whatever you want.” I tell her, engulfing her in my arms. I close my lips over hers so that she can’t overthink my answer with a reply. She breaks the kiss after a few seconds.

  “What if I don’t want it?” she asks, studying my face.

  “Okay.”

  I hear her swallow and her bottom lip trembles. She tucks it into her mouth.

  Her gaze drops down to my lips and then focuses again on my eyes.

  “What if I do?”

  “Okay.” I answer again. Am I really okay with either decision? I have no idea at this point. I just want her to stop freaking out. If I freak out, it won’t help out the situation. I don’t know what will help.

  “Maybe you should talk to Anniston.” I suggest. Despite not having told her about Anniston and Rhys, I think Anniston might be the go-to person for this. She might be a little wild, but she’s Memphis’s sister. She’ll know what to tell her.

  “No! I don’t want to tell her about this yet. I don’t think I want to tell anyone yet.” she says, adamantly. “I’ll make an appointment. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you try to sleep some? I’ll go make some breakfast.” I suggest and she crawls into my bed.

  I kiss her forehead as I pull the covers over her body. As I walk out, I realize neither of us know what the fuck to do. Even though the decision doesn’t have to be made today, it has to be made soon. For Memphis’s sake, the sooner the better.

  Chapter 36

  Memphis

  I stare at my phone and press ignore. I don’t know how many times I’ll get away with it, but I can’t deal with Cameron right now. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks since I found out I was pregnant. Two weeks and I’m a wreck.

  He keeps asking if I’ve made a doctor’s appointment and I keep telling him I will. Then he gets mad that I keep putting it off. He asks me if I’ve made a decision and I change the subject. He tries to talk to me and I shut him out. He touches me and I flinch. I avoid talking to him the same way he avoids
talking to his father. The man who took a bullet for me. I push him to do that and he pushes back. I frustrate him and he frustrates me.

  I sit at the same bench I’ve been sitting at for the past week. The abortion clinic looms in front of me. The building is an off-white color with blue shutters. It’s a private clinic. It looks nice from the outside. The inside is clean and the staff is nice. I know because I’ve been inside to make my appointment. The one I scheduled for tomorrow. The appointment Cameron doesn’t know about.

  His face lights up my screen again and this time I answer. His first question is wanting to know where I am.

  “I took a cab home. I wasn’t feeling well.” I lie. “I knew you had that late meeting.”

  Guilt washes over me. I don’t want to lie to him, but I don’t want to tell him the truth either. He keeps telling me he’ll support whatever decision I make, but I don’t know that I believe him. I see him looking at my stomach sometimes when he doesn’t think I’m watching him. When we’re lying on the couch watching TV, his hand strokes my belly. I don’t think he even knows that he’s doing it.

  “Do you want me to bring you some of that sweet and sour chicken from that Chinese place you like so much?” he asks. “The meeting shouldn’t last that long.”

  “Yeah. That would be nice.” I murmur. “I gotta go.” I hear him saying ‘I love you’ as I disconnect.

  Disconnected. That’s exactly how I feel. I’m not really numb, but I’m not connected to Cameron like I was before. I’m not connected to anyone. Anniston doesn’t know. Leah and Stacy would flip out. Blake would be ecstatic about it. I think. No one would feel the way I feel. Like a failure.

  I have the cozy office job I have because I fucked my way into it. I have the perfect boyfriend I have because he bought me. I fucked my way into having him too. Now if I have this baby and a happy ending with him, how will I know it isn’t because I fucked my way into it? I fucked up and got pregnant and now he feels obligated. What if that happy ending doesn’t come? I’m twenty-two years old. Having a baby with Cameron doesn’t mean we’ll always be together. Then what?

  I could end up just like my mom. Having kids by different daddies and being desperate for one of them to stick around. Never holding down a good job because I don’t have a college education. I’ll have to go back to stripping to pay the bills. My body won’t hold out forever though. I don’t know what I’ll do for money then. I’ll

  have to hold down multiple jobs just to make ends meet. I’ll run myself in the ground to take care of kids that I never really wanted to have. Or it could be worse.

  Cameron could take the baby from me. If he leaves me, he wouldn’t want me to have custody. I’m uneducated and have no way of properly taking care of our child. He has money and the means to support our child. He’d eventually get married and him and his new wife would be the family to our kid. He’d forget about me and so would our baby. I wouldn’t be able to fight him on this. He’s a lawyer. He’d win.

  I never wanted to fall for him in the first place. He warned me he wasn’t a nice guy. He warned me it was about his pleasure. Not mine. But he lied. He became someone different. Someone who cared. Someone who put me first. Someone who loved me. Now I don’t want to be without him.

  I blink back tears at the thought of losing Cameron. And our child. I know I’m probably overreacting. My mind is just jumbling too many thoughts at one time and I shouldn’t think like this. If the baby weren’t in the picture, I wouldn’t even be having these thoughts. Why did this have to happen to us?

  Cameron

  “Where is she?” I yell, bursting into my father’s office.

  Patrick Quinley and Darren Sloan, the partners in the firm both turn and face me, startled at my intrusion. I don’t give a shit what they think of me. When I arrived at Memphis’s apartment last night she wasn’t there. She didn’t answer my calls and she never came home. I’ve been in court all day, but I know she was here at work. Now she’s not at her desk.

  She’s been shutting me out. She won’t talk to me about the baby. She won’t see a doctor. I don’t know what the fuck to do to make her happy anymore. I sure as hell don’t know what she wants to do with the baby. It’s not something we can just keep ignoring. We have to deal with it.

  “I assume you’re speaking of Ms. Stone. You just missed her. She’s headed out for an appointment.”

  “Fuck!”

  I rush out of his office and by the time I make it down to the parking lot, I see her getting into a cab. Either she doesn’t hear me or she ignores me when I call her name. When I call her phone and I get her voicemail, I know she’s ignoring me.

  I speed out of the parking lot, following the cab and ignoring the fact that I have meetings with clients lined up for the afternoon. I call Blake and frantically tell her to cover them. I don’t take the time to tell her why or even hear her answer on if she can. I don’t care. Memphis is all that matters. Where is she going? What appointment?

  I weave through traffic and for a moment, I lose them. I slam my hands on the steering wheel while I’m stopped at a traffic light. Then I see the cab. When the light changes, I floor it to try and catch up with the cab. She’s so far ahead of me now I fear I won’t. The cab makes a right turn and when I get to the street it turned on, I don’t see it anywhere. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  I drive around a few minutes and then finally turn and go back to the main street I turned off of. I make a u-turn and drive slowly, looking for any sign of

  Memphis or the cab. I look up and down every street. Nothing. I take a left when I glimpse an off-white building. It sort of looks like a doctor’s office. Maybe she finally made an appointment. I pull into the parking lot and get out. As I head up the walkway I start to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  I enter the building and look around. It’s clean. It’s quiet. I study the pictures on the wall. I read the captions. It’s an abortion clinic. The knowledge of where I am hits me like a ton of bricks. The knowledge that this is where Memphis could be hits me even harder. Would she do this without me?

  As this thought sinks in, I realize that I don’t want her to do this without me. I don’t want her to do this at all. I want this baby. I want this baby with her.

  I glance around the waiting room, but there’s no sign of her. I approach the receptionist and she greets me with a smile.

  “Can you tell me if Memphis Stone has an appointment today?” I ask.

  “No sir, I can’t release that information.” she says, sweetly. Her eyes never waiver toward her computer or off of me. Her expression never gives away anything.

  “I really need to know if she’s here. I need to talk to her.” I explain.

  “I apologize sir, I’m not allowed to release information about any clients.” she smiles.

  “Are you saying that she is a client here?”

  Her smile falters for just a moment, but she quickly recovers. “Are you the

  husband to Ms. Stone? Fiancé? Family?”

  “I’m the father to the child she’s carrying.” I answer, angrily.

  “Again, I apologize. I’m not allowed to release privileged client information.” she says, a little more sternly this time.

  I know I could yell and scream. Demand answers. Bang on doors. What good would that do though? I would get arrested and the outcome would be the same. So I don’t do any of the things I want to do. I don’t rage that it isn’t fair. She shouldn’t be able to do this without me. It’s my child too.

  Instead I walk out of the clinic and sit on an empty bench. I bury my face in my hands and wait on the woman I love to come out. Despite what she’s doing in that building, I still love her. I just wish she would’ve talked to me. I wish she would’ve told me what she was feeling. I wish I would’ve told her what I was feeling.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  I snap my head up and Memphis is standing in front of me. I rush to her and pull her in my arms. She feels so tiny in my arms. Fragile, but
still so strong.

  “I thought I could, but I want to have this baby with you, Cameron.”

  “I want it too.” I tell her. “You have no idea how much I love you.”

  “We’ll figure this out together, right? Because I have no idea what to do.”

  “Yes…together. Because I don’t know what the fuck to do either.” I laugh.

  “And if we ever break up, promise me you won’t take our child from me.

  Marry someone and start a whole new family and make my child forget about me. Promise you won’t do that to me. I’ll get a college education and I’ll learn how to be a good mother…”

  “Memphis…Memphis stop.” I interrupt her. “You don’t have anything to worry about. The only person I’ll be marrying is you.”

  Epilogue

  Memphis

  I push my ass against Cameron’s strokes. I moan as his cock effortlessly slides into me. I take him to the hilt again and again. His fingers twist into my hair and tug. I throw my leg over his and shudder as my orgasm scorches through me.

  “I think this is my new favorite position.” he murmurs into my ear.

  “Hmm.”

  “I can peak over your shoulder and see those perky tits.” he says, rolling my nipple between his fingers. “I can lower my hand and feel the soft curve of your belly, knowing my baby is growing in there. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  His hand drifts over my slightly swollen midsection and keeps going lower.

  “And then there’s this…I can’t get enough of this.” Cameron presses his thumb to my clit and makes a circular motion. “You like when I fuck you like this?”

  “Yes…”

  “You like when I talk dirty?” he asks and I giggle. “I know you do.”