“Dana… I would never do that to you. To us,” I choked out. She wriggled out of my grasp and looked at me.
“You really want to be a dad?”
Want to? Did I have a choice? Fuck, she sounded so hopeful. She wouldn’t need me for this. Women raised kids alone all the time. My mom raised me on her own. And then she spent years getting beat on by her piece of shit boyfriend who then got her only child sent to juvenile hall. She had chosen him over her own flesh and blood. What the hell kind of guy did that? Why would you hit a woman? Why not hit someone whose punches were as hard as yours? That was more impressive.
The thought of Dana ending up like my mother felt like a vice around my throat. The thought of another man in my place made me want to break something. Another guy? Raising my kid? Being with Dana? If anger was something you felt in your body, it felt like the way a tattoo machine sounded. I couldn’t leave her. I wasn’t going to. This was where we were, and we were going to get through it. She didn’t need me, but I needed her.
“You’re already pregnant, Doll,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound defeatist.
“If you aren’t sure, we could give the baby up for adoption once they’ve been born,” she said quietly.
“You want to give my kid away?”
“I want to raise the baby, Adam. I love you, but I’m not going to ask you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Dana, stop it. I know I’m nobody’s Cliff Huxtable, but that’s our kid. I’m not going to make you do it alone.”
“Are you ready to be a dad?”
“Fuck no. I didn’t have one growing up. I don’t know the first thing about fatherhood. My pops left my mother before I was born and never came to visit.”
“Did he know you were alive?”
“Mom got a check in the mail every month. Not much. Usually one or two hundred dollars, but they were always from the same person; Gerard Holloway. That must have been his name. He knew. He just didn’t care.”
“I’m so sorry babe,” she said.
“Don’t apologize; it wasn’t your fault,” I told her.
“I’m sorry that this had to happen. I should have gotten on the pill or something.”
I sighed. It was too late to wish for that now. The damage was done. Well, not the damage but the fertilization was done. The baby was coming.
“I didn’t want to use rubbers. Not with you.”
Condoms were fine. They were a necessary evil, and it wasn’t like you couldn’t feel anything. I just wanted to feel everything. Maybe I should have used them after all. Maybe I should have asked her whether she was on the pill. She never said that she was, so it was probably wrong to assume it. All of that didn’t matter.
She… we were pregnant.
The first Holloway child would be born out of wedlock, just like his or her daddy. It would be what, eight, nine months till the kid was born? I rested my chin on Dana’s head. I could smell her hair. That was eight more months that I could have her all to myself.
I kissed her. I felt her wrap her arms around my neck. The feel of her skin, the scent of her hair, her mouth on mine, everything about her made me rock hard. I stretched out over her. She was in her sleeping shorts and a sweater that hung on her, making her look smaller than she was. Pulling the sweater off she revealed that she had nothing on underneath.
There were so many ways I wanted to have her. I wanted to bind her wrists so she couldn’t move as I pounded her. I wanted to spank her till she was dripping wet, all down the insides of her thighs. I wanted to know every inch of her. The thought of the baby scared me. Was it different with pregnant girls? Could I hurt her? Was there already milk in her tits?
“What’s the matter?” she asked, bringing me back. She was laying there. Her long, golden hair was fanned out on the bed. I wanted to suck and nip at her smooth, perfect skin till it blossomed red.
“Nothing…” I assured her. I pulled my shirt off and started on my pants. She watched me with a small, satisfied smile on her face. “Like what you see?”
“Mm-hmm.” I helped her pull her shorts off and kissed her roughly. I covered her body with mine and grabbed one of her tits. “Ow, careful,” she protested. I let go and sat up.
“Did I hurt you?”
“It’s okay; they’re just a little more sensitive than usual. Just be gentle,” she said. Gentle? I tried again, sucking her nipple into my mouth this time. She pushed her chest up towards my mouth.
“Harder than that,” she said breathily. I obliged, using my teeth to graze the nub as well. She let out a throaty moan. That was new. I took the other nipple between my fingers and gently ran the pad of one finger over its tip. “Adam...” she moaned. If this was what pregnancy did to her, we’d have to go bareback more often.
“I want you, Adam. Fuck me.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. She was already pregnant. I was giving her every last drop. Running my cock along her slit a couple of times, I slid on home. Her back lifted off the bed, and her hands grabbed at me. She was shameless; hands in my hair, all over my back, grabbing my ass. I braced my weight against the headboard on one arm and pounded in and out of her. Pulling her knees up, she cried out as I got in deeper, hitting her spot. She was so fucking tight.
“Look at me,” I told her. She opened her eyes. Her green eyes were bright like she was going to cry. I pressed down on her and kissed her hard. She was perfect, and I loved her. I didn’t care what was in the future as long as we were together. I wasn’t mad about the kid. I was going to show her. All the words in the world weren’t enough. Her walls closed tighter around me, and I felt her shudder. A couple more thrusts and I joined her, pumping every last bit of come deep inside her core. I eased out and rolled onto my back. She moved into her usual spot, resting on my chest.
This was all I wanted. Her. Mine to protect, to love, to fuck. The baby too. Her soft hand held my face, and she kissed me.
“Are you okay?”
“I love you,” I said. The look on her face when I said it was priceless. I smoothed her hair away from her face where it stuck to her skin.
“I love you,” she said, tearing up. I brushed a tear away with my thumb.
“Why are you crying—that’s a good thing,” I joked. She sniffed and smiled down at me. God. This was perfect. I never thought I’d be in a position like that, but she had gotten me. I was done. I could grow a beer gut and be happy. There was nothing else I needed.
Like it knew we were having a moment, the sound of the doorbell rang through the house. I put a hand over my face and groaned. Dana giggled and sat up.
“I’ll get it,” she said, reaching for the sweater she had been wearing.
“No. Stay here. I’ll get it,” I told her. I pulled my jeans on and walked to the door, opening it. Mimi was standing there as stunned to see me as I was surprised to see her.
“When did you get back?” she asked me.
“Thanks for staying with Dana for me,” I said sarcastically. She rested her weight on one hip and looked at me.
“Where the hell were you? You just left her after she told you that she was pregnant with your baby?”
“Whoa, who’s pregnant?”
Lawson was standing behind Mimi with a look on his face like he had just seen a ghost. Just what the fuck I needed. Lawson was like the embarrassing middle child you had who was a disappointment, so you never talked about them with company. Why the hell was he here anyway?
“Is she here?” Mimi pushed past me into the house.
“Adam… what’s she talking about? You got someone pregnant? Blondie?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Go home, Lawson. This isn’t a good time.”
“Not a good time for what?”
Dana came down the stairs in the sweater she had had on before and her pajama shorts. She looked from Mimi to Lawson, and then to me, clearly looking for an explanation.
“Congratulations on the baby, Blondie!” Lawson said to her. Her eyes wid
ened, and she looked at me.
“You told him?” she asked.
“No, he overheard Mimi and me talking. And he was just leaving. Lawson, get out.”
“Mimi, how did it go with Anthony?” Dana asked her.
“Mimi?” Lawson said. I could see the cogs turning in his head. I walked up to him and grabbed his arm, hauling him out the door.
“What the hell, man. That’s her. That’s the girl I was telling you about. What the hell is she doing at your house?”
“The girl who’s dating your brother? I need you to leave… why are you here anyway?”
“Gareth called me. He said he’s been trying to reach you, but you weren’t picking up.”
“It can’t wait?”
“Not if you wanted to know about Henry. He told me to tell you, and you weren’t picking your phone up so I—”
“Ah, shit,” I sighed. I had just gotten back. Just gotten to see Dana again and this had to happen. Why was Martin so efficient?
“Why are you talking to them again? Are you doing more fights?”
“Just… just go back in the house. I need to take care of something.”
I walked into the house and saw the women on the couch. They were talking, something about seeing whether Mimi could move back into the house to be away from Anthony. There was no time to listen in. I hurried up the stairs and found my phone. Missed calls, messages, all from Lawson and Gareth Martin. It looked like they had found Henry. Excellent.
I trudged back down the stairs. Lawson had fit himself between the girls and had his arms on the back of the sofa, a girl on each arm like a pimp. I leaned down and kissed Dana, cupping her face so she looked at me.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
I wasn’t hiding it from her. Not again.
“I told you I was going to keep you safe. There are some guys who are going to help me get rid of Henry.”
“Get rid of him? I don’t want you to. Don’t leave.”
“I have to, Doll.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“Yeah, well, he hasn’t met me yet. I’ll be back tomorrow. The next day at the latest. I’ll call you. Mimi can stay here with you while I’m gone.” I held her hand and kissed it. Her eyes became shiny again like she was going to cry.
“Hurry back,” she whispered.
All I had to do was not get caught. And not get killed. That was it. I had been shot before. He terrorized women for something to do. He was going down.
Henry Neal was about to be history.
24
Dana
Sometimes, when I was with Adam alone, I forgot that he was a felon.
Mimi would always remind me, accidentally or on purpose of his record from time to time. The presence of Lawson would remind me because he had the look and feel of someone who had spent, or would soon spend a lot of time behind bars. Once in a while, Adam himself would remind me. Not directly. He would never say ‘hey, babe, don’t forget I’m an ex-con’ or anything. Even the tattoos, the ones which felt raised when I touched them because they were done by an amateur tattooist in prison didn’t necessarily remind me. It was when he would offhandedly say things like, ‘I took care of it’ or ‘he won’t be bothering you anymore’ that the hair on the back of my neck rose.
The saga was really something he could have spun into a mystery novel. The interaction between the characters, the long con and the satisfying ending appealed to the literature geek in me. When Adam first asked for Henry’s full name, I had known that he was likely going to look for him, but I contented myself believing that he wouldn’t want to wake the bear when it was asleep.
But no. Not my Adam. He had looked for him. Not only had he looked, but he had found him. It was at this point that I had to have a word with myself. So Adam had found Henry. Big deal. What would he do? Beat him up? That was likely the best-case scenario. He could fight. Henry was a philosophy major. Adam would drop Henry like a sack of awful potatoes, and that would be that.
A slightly less palatable scenario was Henry disappearing suddenly, without a trace. The thought was comforting to me—I can’t lie. It was, however, nothing short of horrifying to think Adam would and could do something like that, even if it was for me. He had been behind bars in the past, and I could maybe stand being a prison wife, but not for twenty-five years. Besides, California had the death penalty.
The best scenario was the one that he had gone with. Get Henry into the trouble he deserved to be in. Apparently, prison was a good place to find criminals. Gareth Martin had been Adam’s friend in prison. Or at least they knew each other from there and had remained in contact.
I had originally thought to commend Adam on how fast he seemed to be able to think the plot up, but then it occurred to me that he had probably been hatching it for a long time. The basic complaint, the place from which he was coming, was that Henry deserved to be in prison. Underneath the prison—the worst sentence he could get. He needed to get there without involving me because that was what got Henry off, making me scared and miserable.
I didn’t know how the hell I was going to repeat the story to Mimi. I barely grasped all the details myself.
“Why didn’t we just call the cops when he showed up again?” I asked him the day he got back. I was sat in the kitchen with a bowl of saltines in front of me. Morning sickness.
“Because the case wouldn’t have been strong enough. Since he was out, he had technically already done his time. Depending on the jury, the box he sent you and the phone calls might just not be that serious.”
“So what? You waited for him to commit more crime?”
“More like put him in a position where he would have to engage in criminal activity.”
“Framed him?”
“God, no. Just set him up,” he said flippantly. “He wasn’t hard to get into the fight, apparently. I can’t speak on whatever methods Martin used to convince him, but he was there. It almost wasn’t fair. I’ve never met any of your other exes, but this one was a punk. Couldn’t swing for shit.”
I rolled my eyes.
“How did you set him up?”
“If he lost the fight, he had to pay back the money that Martin and his partner Hanley lost on him. Twist was, there was no money lost on him. They just gave him a bum sum that he had to make up, more than he would be able to pay back easily or quickly and forced him to go to work for them.”
“Work? What sort of work.”
“The kind that’ll get you three years or better behind bars.” He looked at me seriously. “I know it wasn’t right, but I’m not going to apologize for it. This was the one thing I could think of that wouldn’t completely scare you away from me.”
“I know. It’s just, so dark Adam.”
“I could have done worse. I wanted to. In the ring, we fight bare-knuckled. I could have broken him in half, Doll.”
I swallowed, knowing he meant every word.
“Promise me you won’t do anything that you know will get you in trouble with the law. I don’t want you to have to talk to me through reinforced glass.”
“As long as Henry never makes a reappearance. If I see the motherfucker again, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”
“You have to be, for the baby,” I said. I watched his face. I didn’t want him to feel like I was trying to guilt him or control him with the baby but if he was going to be a father, he couldn’t go running around doing whatever he wanted with no regard for the consequences. It wasn’t just his life he would be affecting anymore. He came up to me and put a hand on my still flat belly.
“How soon before we can go to the hospital?”
“When are you free? We need to go at around week twelve to learn our due date.” His hand rubbed my stomach, firmly.
“I feel like I should know some of this stuff,” he said, smiling. Late night online searches about breast pumping and what to expect when you’re expecting had kept me up all hours.
“I’ll handle t
he gross stuff. You just need to hold my hand in the delivery room.”
“No, Doll. If I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it for real. What should I do? Tell me.”
“It’s still cooking for now but you could, you know… take me out to eat when I get cravings,” I suggested.
“Done. Whenever you want. What else?”
“A lot of women say their libido was higher when they were pregnant… you could always help me out with that.”
He smirked.
“Always.”
Things were looking up. Things were great. The one downside was that Adam was still fighting. He had to, through fight wins, earn the guys $50,000 because that allegedly would have been the amount that they would have needed to bail him out of jail if he got caught. The weekly or fortnightly cold compresses and wound dressing became something of a routine. A weird, fucked up routine, but a routine all the same. The injuries were mainly superficial, but he had gotten a couple of scars on his face. They sat on his skin, raised and discolored, but he was still gorgeous. They made his already rough edges that much rougher but damn, what would it take? A sledgehammer to the face to make this guy unattractive?
The safest time to start revealing a pregnancy was after the third trimester was over. Rather than get the sonogram right then, we decided to wait a little longer so we would learn the baby’s sex at the same time.
If Dad was upset, his excitement over having a grandchild was greater than his anger. He and Mom had had kids so early. I was following in their footsteps though the circumstances were slightly different. I was not married to Adam, and our child was completely unplanned. Regardless, maybe I would understand what it felt like for your child to have a child when our kid grew up. He had tried very hard not to cry, but he had a little bit. Very manly tears. He had shaken Adam’s hand and hugged me.
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 18