by A. D. Roland
“Yeah, okay.” He gripped her hips and helped her satisfy every need. Just before she came, she realized he wasn’t fully awake. Under his breath, while he arched toward his own climax, he whispered, “Em—” Although it killed the fiery sensations rippling through her like wild-fire, it didn’t hurt. She was glad his eyes were clenched shut so he couldn’t see the tears running down her cheeks. She’d fought her doubts for so long, and as reserved as she was about the pregnancy,
It’s just sex, she reminded herself, clenching her internal muscles around his shaft and grinding down on him.
Just sex. And I’m just pregnant with his kid. And I’m just leaving him in less than a month.
Chapter Twenty-One
“I guess we should talk about this,” West said, leaning on the bathroom counter.
Mattie heaved into the toilet, but she’d spent most of the morning in there, so nothing but acidic bile came up. She spat and swabbed her sweaty, tear-soaked face with a wad of toilet paper. “Really,” she gasped before another wave of dry-heaves rolled through her gut.
Her body had apparently decided that since she knew she was pregnant, it was okay to be violently ill. She’d spent two hours curled up on a clean towel on the bathroom floor, moaning through overwhelming spirals of nausea and vomiting that had West wondering if it was normal.
West knelt next to her and touched a cool cloth to her forehead, her cheeks. “Is this how it was before?”
“Move!” She shoved him aside and hurled another mouthful of nothing into the toilet.
Twenty minutes later he helped her, weak and shaking, into the living room. She curled up on the couch. He turned the TV on. As luck would have it, it was one of those birth shows on Discovery Channel.
He watched an immensely fat woman squeeze out a kid she claimed she didn’t know she was pregnant with. The channel didn’t pixelate much, so he glanced at Mattie with a sense of dread.
“That’s how it happens,” she commented hoarsely.
“Damn. We really need to talk about this.”
“Fine. Talk.” West sat on the floor, leaning back against the couch. “Tell me about before.”
“Before what? Be specific. I just puked out all my brain cells.”
“The first time you were pregnant.” Curiosity ate at him. She’d never said a word in the entire time they’d been together about having a kid. He assumed the kid had been adopted, since she had told him she didn’t have any children. Although he’d seen the stretch marks on her belly the first time he saw her with her shirt off, he never put two and two completely together until last night.
Mattie groaned and buried her face in the cushions of the couch. “Damn. These things stink like sex.”
“You’re the one leaving the wet spot,” he replied. “So, tell me.”
She shrugged and hugged the wadded-up blanket to her chest. “Carmen shacked up with a guy who had a son a few years older than me. He raped me when I was thirteen. She didn’t believe me, and he kept doing it. Until I got pregnant.”
“Shit, Mattie. Shit. Damn it.” West felt like somebody had socked him in his gut. It took his breath away, knowing someone had hurt her so bad, when she was so young. He felt like crying. Mattie sat up, despite her obvious misery, and reached out for him. “Shit, Mattie,” he repeated, unable to process his thoughts and figure out something more intelligent to say.
Only Mattie flashed through his mind. Young, defenseless, hurting. To his surprise, he saw Mattie as Elaine, as he realized he’d been doing for a long time now. Mattie wasn’t a separate person anymore. Even though he knew without a doubt Elaine was dead, Mattie had taken her place.
“It’s my fault,” he said, searching her face, meeting her eyes. “It’s my fault.”
“What? No. How the heck can it be your fault?” West choked on the strangling sob that was forcing itself up his throat. He buried his face in her thighs, ashamed of his tears, hating himself. The agony of his heart snatched him back twenty years, to the night he would never forget, even if he did doubt it. Mattie forced him to look at her.
“Baby, how can it be your fault?” she asked softly.
“That night, I should have went outside. I should have stopped him. He had Elaine. I know he did, and I just let him take her away from me.”
He was babbling, and his thoughts didn’t make any sense, not even to him, but the floodgates were open, and over twenty years of buried pain bubbled out. After the torrent had dried up, he was embarrassed.
“You know I can’t be Elaine, right?” Mattie asked, wiping away his tears with her bare hand.
“You can’t be. I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but you’re not Elaine.” Mattie didn’t reply, only pulled him close. She smelled like their bed, of laundry detergent and fabric softener, and very faintly of the sex they shared most nights. The smell comforted him on a primitive level, because it was their scent.
He pulled away from her and touched her face, her shoulders, cupped her full breasts in his hands. The weight was familiar, and like their scent, made him feel better. Secure.
It suddenly clicked in his head. He didn’t care if she wasn’t Elaine. She was his. The breasts in his hand, they were his. The bruises on her hips, they were his. The way she laughed and cried and held him, they were all his.
“And I don’t care,” he finally said. Everything about her was his, and the baby growing in her womb was his. He almost started bawling like some little titty-baby. Again. “I don’t care ‘cuz you’re mine.” His hands roved her chest again, pinching , squeezing, then moved to her hips, her knees, skimmed her calves and her feet before returning to grip her knees. He leaned forward and tongued one perky nipple through her thin tank top. She sighed and arched her chest into his face. Leaving her breasts alone, he kissed a hot trail up one of her thighs, smugly satisfied at the way she parted her legs and scooted toward the edge of the couch. He wasn’t sure who was trained better, she for moving into an easier position, or he for yanking her panties off and hooking her knees over his shoulders and diving in, tongue first. This is mine, he thought as he lapped at her most sensitive spots. He breathed in, drowning in her strong scent, tasting her arousal in the back of his throat. She was so wet. For me. This is mine. I do this to her, and when I’m doing it, she’s only thinking of me.
He stroked the edges of her entrance, loving the way her body contracted. The soft little sounds she made fueled his arousal. Her fingers tightened in his hair. Her moisture slicked his hand. One thumb took the place of his tongue, and he kneaded her clit just the right way to keep her from coming, but that would keep her tension building and building.
Using his other hand, he entered her slowly. She shook from everything he was doing.
“You okay?” he asked, unable to resist licking her swollen clit. She cried out and bucked her hips into his face. She was so close to coming, it wouldn’t be much more before she couldn’t hold back. “Just hold on for a little longer.”
“Don’t know if I can,” she gasped. “Please let me come!”
“Not yet. Hold back. You’re doing good, babe.” With the two fingers inside her, he found her g-spot and stroked it. She moaned and her body clenched around his hand. He slid another finger into her pussy. “All right, love,” he assured her. “How do you feel?”
“Full, West.” Her body contracted around his hand, as if it was testing her statement. He curled his fingers into her g-spot again as he lowered his mouth to her clit and began to suck and lick in earnest.
And this is mine, he declared when her body flexed around him and her thighs tightened on his shoulders. He thrust with his hand, soaking his palm in the gush of hot fluid, tasting it, making her part of him.
When her climax began to wind down and her body started to relax, he realized she was sobbing.
Thinking he’d hurt her, he jumped up to hold her. When his hand slid out of her body, she sobbed harder.
“What is it, Mattie?” She held him close, stroking hi
s face, climbing into his lap.
“I don’t want to let you go.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I have to leave in a month.”
“No, you don’t. No. No. You can’t. I won’t let you.”
“You don’t understand. I have to.” West shook his head.
“I won’t let you, Matilyn West.”
“I have to make him go away.” She held his face in her hands and touched her forehead to his. “Do you understand? I have to make him go away for good.”
West shook his head. “You’re not leaving me.”
***
After they’d simmered down, Mattie made lunch. They sat at the table, silent, thinking. Mattie was so sleepy she couldn’t see straight, but they still hadn’t had the important conversation.
“Well?” she asked. “Hmm?”
“The baby?” West sighed and put his sandwich down on his plate. “I don’t know, Mattie. I’m still trying to sort everything out.”
“There’s not much to sort out, West. We’ve got to talk about this.”
He took a long drink out of his water bottle. “What happened to your first kid?”
“I gave her up for adoption. There was no way I could raise a kid, especially around--I had to make sure she was safe from him. Nobody kept me safe, but I could keep her safe.”
“The baby’s dad. Did he have anything to say about it?”
“He tried to—” She bit the words beat it out of me off short. “He didn’t care. He just didn’t want it around to remind him.”
West plucked a little wad of bread off the top piece of his sandwich. “Did he...hurt you anymore after that?” Mattie shook her head.
“Not like that. He was too scared of his family finding out. He found other uses for me.”
“Why did you stay? I don’t understand that. You’re kind of scary when somebody pisses you off. I don’t see you just putting up with somebody hurting you in any way.”
“I was a kid. I was around really horrible people who didn’t care enough to tell me I was worth more. Carmen got her money from Ruth Ellen every month, and as long as I was still alive, that was all that mattered. He found me at foster homes, group homes, it didn’t matter.” She took a tiny bite of her sandwich. Flavorless. She forced the bite down her throat. “He found out where the baby was and…he’s held her over my head ever since.”
“Ever since?” She watched his face change as the facts clicked into place. “It’s because of him that you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Actually, no. Ruth Ellen’s lawyer came to me and asked me to come. K heard about it and came up with the plot.”
“You’ve know who you are your entire life, haven’t you?”
Mattie shrugged. “Sort of. I didn’t know the extent of it.”
“Who are you, really?”
She looked down at her hands for a long time. War raged inside her head and her heart. Tell him, and she could lose him. Tell him, and she could gain an ally. “My legal name is Evelyn Claire Carruther.”
“Carruther.”
“I’m Karen McKendrick’s oldest daughter. I was born about a year or so before Elaine.”
“Who-who’s your father?”
Mattie shrugged and picked at a fingernail absently. “Nobody really knows.”
“It’s not McKendrick, is it?”
“I don’t know, West.”
He slid his plate with the forgotten sandwich out of the way and folded his arm on the table. “Why did you come here? Just for the money?”
Mattie smiled down at her fingers. West’s engagement ring caught the light and sparkled, throwing flashes of light against the grayish plastic-coated wall. “Family. I would have come if the McKendricks were dirt farmers. I wanted to be part of a real family for a little while.” She twisted the ring on her finger. “I told this girl that I thought was my friend, and K swooped in out of nowhere. I hadn’t seen him or heard from him in two years. Then, bam, he breaks into my apartment and trashes the place. He threatened to hurt Molly and her family if I didn’t cooperate.”
“Whoa. Wait. This guy is still in your life?”
“Did you just hear anything I said? I didn’t invite him in. He forced his way in. When I go back, I’m finishing it, one way or another.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m finishing it. I can’t live under his thumb, and I can’t bear the thought of that man even looking at Molly. He know where she’s lives. He knows what school she goes to. He even stopped and talked to her one day while he was on the phone with me.”
West got up and paced the short distance to the sink. “Nothing’s simple with you, is it?”
Mattie shrugged. “Actually, it’s really simple. In a few weeks, I’m going back to Atlanta and I’m going to find some way to…deal with K.”
“You’re a tough broad, Mattie, but I don’t see you killing anybody.”
“I will do what I have to do to protect my kid.”
“You gave her up. She’s not your kid. What are her parents doing to keep her safe?”
“Phil’s a cop. They know K is trying to use Molly to get to me. He’s insane, West. He doesn’t care about people with guns. All he sees is a payday.”
West leaned on the sink and peered out the window. He’d taped a piece of clear plastic over the broken pane. It flapped whenever the wind blew.
Mattie looked away from him. “We need to talk about the baby, West. Is it...something you want?”
“I don’t know yet. What about you?”
She wanted to jump up and down and scream, hell yeah! “I don’t know either.” West groaned suddenly and buried his head in his hands.
“You’re pregnant. Pregnant. We’ve used protection damn near every time.”
“All it takes is once,” she muttered.
“Mattie, I’m not sure if I’m ready for it all.”
“You don’t have to be. This can be my problem. I’m not asking you to do anything...I’m just asking if you want to.” Mattie twisted her glass of water, hunched over the edge of the table. She was too scared to look at West. He was so mercurial. An hour ago he’d been part of her. Now he was a world away from her, emotionally. She could do a count down to their next fight.
Ten, nine, eight... “Are you still leaving when the lawyers get done with their stuff?”
“That was the deal.” It made her sick to stomach to say it. It hurt even worse knowing everything he’s said during the heat of the moment was bullshit.
“Yeah. The deal.” Might have been her imagination, but he sounded as sick as she felt. “Damn it, Mattie. I just don’t know how to do this.”
She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “You don’t have to do anything, West. I can do it by myself.”
“You think I’d just let you disappear with my kid? There’s so much shit about you that I don’t know as it is.”
“What, you don’t trust me to take care of a baby?”
“Not right now. I don’t know shit about you. I do know you got some psycho trying to do something to you, and you’re involved in a lie so huge that when the truth comes out, you’re gonna be up shit creek without a paddle.”
“What lie? What the hell are you talking about? I just told you everything.”
“Quit yelling at me, Mattie.”
“Answer me then!”
“You’re a liar.” Stricken, Mattie shrank back in her rickety old chair.
“You’re getting all the money.”
“You’re full of it. Why would you put yourself through this hell to have nothing when it’s over?”
“I never wanted to hurt anybody. This makes up for all the crap I’ve done in my past.” West got up and dropped his plate into the sink with an awful crash. “It drives me absolutely insane, knowing nothing about you. How do I know, if you have this kid, that you’re able to take care of it?”
“You don’t. You’d just have to trust me.”
“I’d rather have it take
n care of now, than find out you’ve let some pervert hurt it.” Mattie grabbed a heavy wax apple out of the decorative basket in the center of the table and heaved it at him. It hit him right in the eye. She threw herself at him next, knocking him off balance. She landed a couple of good blows before he shoved her away.
“Bastard!” A huge knot clogged her throat. She fumbled around for more things to throw and came up with his shredded Sketchers and Scruffy’s bowl. The shoes bounced off his arm, but when she reared back with the heavy metal bowl, he pointed a finger at her.
“You throw that at me, and I’ll beat your ass!”
“Good! Make sure you do it hard enough to solve our little problem. Do it. Do it!” She heaved the bowl, but the throw went wide and crashed through the remaining pane in the window over the sink.
West crossed the kitchen in one step and pushed her against the fridge, his hand planted firmly against her chest. “What the hell is your problem?”
“You, West. You don’t want a kid—especially one with me—because it’ll screw up whatever you have with Emeline, or want to have with her. You honestly think she’d ever accept a kid you had with me?”
West raised his hands in confusion. “What does Em have to do with this?”
“When we were having sex last night, you said her name.” He clasped one hand to his eye. “Damn it, Mattie. I was more asleep than awake. My whole head hurts.”
“You deserve it. You actually think I would let somebody hurt my baby? I went through hell when I was a kid. I’d kill someone if they so much as looked at my child the wrong way.” Mattie swallowed against the huge lump in her throat. All the possible joy in the situation had been sucked right out. The weak fantasies of her happy little family faded, vanished. She shrugged and sat down in her chair once more.
“What do you want me to do, West? Stay here, have the kid, cramp your style a little more?”