“That’s my girl,” I said.
“I’m not your girl,” she said above the sound of the music.
I held up my hands, clutching the beer bottle in one. It was just an expression. But then again, I was on the edge of being drunk already, and all my manners slipped away when I got like this.
But fuck that, I had just played my first game again. We had won, and I was here to celebrate. There was nothing saying I wasn’t allowed to do that, even if I was working so damn hard on my image. Brian was the goody two shoes of the team, and maybe even he would get fucked tonight.
I was going to cry tomorrow when I needed to work out with a hangover. As pro players, alcohol should have been off the table completely. I had a theory: to get the alcohol off the table, you had to drink it. All of it.
“Dance with me,” I said to Lacey.
She looked around as if she was uncomfortable. I put my hands around her and pulled her against me.
She looked surprised for a moment, but when I started moving, so did she. Her body was taut and muscular. I knew she worked out. I’d felt her body when we’d fucked, but this was something else. Having her move against me, her dress as short as it was, and the music and alcohol pumping through my veins, it took us to a whole new level.
A level where I needed her.
“Come with me,” I said, when I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
I took her hand and led her through a crowd that parted for us like water. When we were away from the music and headed toward the room, she asked it again.
“Where are you taking me?”
“A room,” I said.
She shook her head, pulling back.
“We’re not doing this,” she said.
“Come on, Lace,” I said. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it, too?”
She swallowed. “Fine, but I’m not going there to do the dirty. I want to talk to you.”
I shrugged and led her on again. I opened the door and closed it behind us. When I turned to her, she had her hands on her hips and her face was all business.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she said. “You’re all over me, and we’re in public. What do you think will happen when your bad image includes your PR Manager? I’m supposed to fix it for you.”
I shrugged. “Don’t be so uptight, baby,” I said. My head spun, and I couldn’t think much further than the erection in my pants.
“I’m not your baby,” she said to me. “And you’re not going to fuck this up for me.”
I grinned at her.
“You’re sexy when you swear,” I said. I lifted my hand and put it on her cheek. I pressed my body against hers so she could feel my lust.
“Hanson, don’t.”
She was protesting but her lips were parted, and her pupils dilated. She wanted this. She wanted me. I was a pro at reading women, and this woman was all about my body. I pressed my lips against hers.
She didn’t fight me. It was as if she’d wanted it all along. My tongue was in her mouth in no time at all, and I sparred with her for a short while. Her breathing was hard, erratic, mimicking my own. Her hands were in my hair. I fumbled for the zipper at the back of her dress and found it. I pulled it down, slowly.
She stopped kissing me, stepping back. Her fingers undid the buttons on my shirt one by one. She peeled the shirt from my shoulders and dropped it on the floor.
Her face was inches from mine when she undid my buckle and unzipped my pants, but she didn’t kiss me. Instead, when my pants were around my ankles, along with my boxers, she kneeled in front of me. She looked up at me with those piercing blue eyes before she opened her mouth and closed it around my cock.
Her mouth was hot and her tongue slippery as she slid it up and down my shaft. I nearly came right away. I groaned, closed my eyes, and tipped my head back. Not a lot of women liked giving a blow job. Lacey turned out to be very gifted.
She closed her lips around me and moved down as far as her throat would allow. With her hand wrapped around the base, she closed the gap. She started moving her head back and forth, sucking and pumping, copying what would happen during sex. She was going to make me lose my load if she kept going at it.
I stopped her, pulling back so I slipped out of her mouth with a pop. She glanced up at me.
“You’re going to drive me insane,” I said, taking her hand and pulling her up again.
I wanted to release in her mouth. It was every man’s fantasy, but I wanted to be inside her more.
The kissing became more urgent, and when she stepped out of the dress that had still been around her hips, I pulled her toward the bed. We fell onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs. She tugged at my shirt, trying to undo the buttons. I distracted her by pushing my hand into her panties and between her legs.
She was wet when I pushed my fingers into her, and she gasped. I pumped my fingers in and out of her a few times before finding her clitoris. She moaned when I did, her body curling against my hand.
The smell of our sex filled the room, and it riled me up. I wanted her. Her scent was designed to make men crazy, and it was working. I focused on her for a while longer. I wanted her to be slick and begging for me.
She was beautiful when she was lost in sexual bliss. She was exactly what I wanted. I pulled down her underwear and unclasped her bra. It was strapless and fell off without help. She rolled onto her back. Her eyes were on me. I moved to position myself between her legs when she sat up.
“God, what am I doing?” she asked, her face confused. It was like she’d suddenly realized where she was, and what we were about to do.
“With a little bit of patience, you’ll be doing me,” I said and grinned at my own joke.
Lacey pressed her hand against her forehead as if she was feeling for a fever. She shook her head, again and again. “I can’t do this. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
She moved toward the edge of the bed, away from me.
“Come on, babe. Don’t leave me hanging now.”
She shook her head again. “If they catch us together, the press is going to have a field day. We can’t leave the hotel room together.”
“Okay,” I said. “You can leave first, and I’ll wait. I’ll leave a bit later. But if we have sex first and then do that, it won’t be any different than doing it now. Come on, you know you want it. Look at me.” I put my throbbing erection on display. “This is what you do to me.”
She glanced down at me before she shook her head. “I can’t do this.”
She found her clothes on the floor and started putting them on, piece by piece. This was going in the wrong direction. The idea was to stay naked, not to put all the clothes back on.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “This can’t just be because of my reputation, can it?”
She sighed, zipping up her own dress in a way that suggested she didn’t need anyone’s help. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. I had helped so many women get dressed after the fact. I had no idea how women got dressed without us. I envisioned girl on girl action where they fumbled with each other’s zippers.
“If you consider who I am and what my role is in your life, that’s exactly what it’s about.”
I shook my head, trying to make sense of it all. She walked to the door.
“Stay out of trouble,” she said. “And for God’s sake, don’t bring another woman back here. I’m not going to be around to pick up the pieces forever. At some point, you’re going to have to learn how to do it yourself.”
She left, leaving me naked and aching in the room, alone, wondering what the hell had happened to my happy ending.
Chapter 29 – Lacey
Being on the birth control pill meant that I knew exactly what day my period was supposed to start. It wasn’t rocket science. The hormones were regulated, and my body knew what to do and when to do it.
Except, it wasn’t doing what it was meant to do. I had started stressing about it over the weekend. It
was supposed to have started on the Friday before I’d gone to the White Room to check up on him. It hadn’t. It was Monday now, and my time of the month was still MIA.
I couldn’t be pregnant. There was no way I could be pregnant. We used condoms. A lot of them. Sure, they weren’t foolproof; they sometimes broke. I had taken sex ed in high school so I knew these things. But, we hadn’t had any sign of any of them breaking— not that there was always a sign.
Plus, anyway, I took my pill religiously. There had only been that one time. Oh, God. When had I missed it? I couldn’t remember exactly when it had been, but I’d missed a pill because I’d been so busy. I had doubled up the next day. That was supposed to help, and I’d done it before without incident.
The Pill had never failed me and I’d been on it since I was sixteen. I hadn’t ever been super strict about taking it because I sometimes got forgetful or busy. But what if this time, doubling up after I forgot it that one time hadn’t helped? What if the Pill had failed me— or I had failed it— and a condom had failed, too? That would be just my doubly bad luck. What if I was pregnant?
My stomach turned to stone. I sat down on my bed, feeling like the world shifted beneath me. If I was pregnant, then what?
No. I wouldn’t think like that. I got up. I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Hanson on Saturday at the hotel, despite his advances, because I’d suddenly realized how very deeply I’d fallen for him. It couldn’t be just hook ups here or there when my heart had gotten attached. He obviously didn’t feel the same way so I finally listened to common sense and said no.
Plus, I was convinced I was going to get my period, since it was due, and I hadn’t wanted to be embarrassed if I had gotten it right then and there. I figured that my body was trying to tell me to listen to my head and run away from Hanson. But then my period hadn’t come, and now I might be pregnant.
I could be pregnant? With his baby? He was the only person I’d slept with since I met him, and I had certainly had my period before I met him so he would be the only candidate.
If there was one thing in life I was terrified of, it was getting pregnant. I couldn’t have a baby. I didn’t want one now. I didn’t want one ever. My dad had created the perfect form of birth control. His self-righteousness toward the world and his cowardice toward his own family had persuaded me to never take the same route.
If I was pregnant, I had no idea what to do.
I was suddenly nauseous. Morning sickness? It couldn’t be.
I was working myself up into a state because I was panicking. All I had to do was get a home pregnancy test and put my mind at ease. There was no way I was going to make it through a day at work feeling the way I did. I was so stressed, I could barely think straight. Having to deal with Hanson and his inappropriate sexual advances made me feel like throwing up.
I picked up the phone.
“Chuck,” I said. “I’m not going to be able to make it into the office. I feel extremely sick.”
It wasn’t a lie. I felt like I was going to faint.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“I think it’s a bug I caught over the weekend. With luck, I’ll be in again tomorrow.”
“You do what you need to do,” he said. I was relieved. “Let me know how it goes.”
I thanked him and hung up. Without work to worry about, I could relax. I could think it all through and calm myself down.
I got back into bed and breathed, trying to talk myself through it. One pill wasn’t going to make a difference. Not when I’d taken it perfectly on time, every day, all the other days since I’d started the pill at sixteen.
When I couldn’t calm myself down enough or talk sense into my own head, I got out of bed again and got dressed. A pregnancy test would answer all my questions, and I would be able to relax again. There was nothing to worry about. I just had to confirm that.
I went to the closest convenience store and stood in the aisle with the pregnancy tests. They were right next to the condoms and diapers. Were they trying to be ironic? I picked up a test and read the back of the box. I glanced at the shelf and pushed all of them in my basket. There were four of one make and three of another.
When I reached the register, the cashier looked at me. She was on the larger side, with curly hair and eye shadow that was too heavy for her light complexion.
“You and your husband trying for a baby?” she asked, ringing up the tests one by one.
“I’m not hoping for a positive result,” I said.
She glanced at all the tests she had scanned through.
“Honey, from experience, if you’re buying this many, you’re worried enough that it might be.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear that. I just wanted peace of mind, dammit. I paid and left the store with my treasure. When I returned home, I drank water. Lots of water. I drank until I felt sick all over again. I needed to pee as soon as possible. I needed to get these tests out of the way so I could carry on with my life.
Five glasses of water and half an hour later found me in the bathroom. I took all the tests. Overkill? Yeah. But I was stressing.
I had to wait a while for the results to show. It felt like forever. I tried to read while I was waiting. Or to watch TV. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. In the end, I watched the seconds tick by until my time was up.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I looked at the first test.
Two lines.
I read the leaflet again. That was a positive.
Shit.
I had more. I went through them one by one. Two lines, every time.
Two lines.
Two lines.
Two lines.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
None of them were negative. Not one of them could give me a little bit of hope that this might just be one mistake, that my body was betraying me. I was pregnant. I was pregnant with a baby I’d never wanted, with a man who would never want me.
What was I going to do?
I felt like I wanted to cry. My world was suddenly crumbling around me. I had been independent and strong all my life, but now, I felt like I was falling apart. How was I going to do this? I couldn’t be a mother. I couldn’t do to my child what my father had done to me.
Not to mention Hanson. There was no way I could tell him. If this came out at all, it would ruin his reputation. He had just managed to pull himself together, now. He didn’t need a pregnant woman, his PR Manager, no less, to fuck up what he’d built for himself.
And what would Chuck say? I could hardly boast about my record of representing people if I’d gotten pregnant by one of them. This was Hanson’s career, his life, my career, my life.
And there was nothing I could do about it. An abortion wasn’t an option for me. I had to play the hand I’d been dealt. I climbed into bed for the second time that day and pulled the covers over my head like a child, wishing it would all go away. I could schedule an appointment with a doctor, but I felt like it would be futile. I would only build false hope, and they would tell me the one thing I’d known all along. I was going to have a baby, whether I liked it or not.
I’d grown up knowing that I had to fend for myself, that I would always be alone, and the only way to survive it was to accept it. From a very young age, I hadn’t needed anyone. I was strong and independent, I could take care of my myself, and I didn’t need anyone to help me.
For the first time since I was a kid, I felt the loneliness acutely. I didn’t want to do this alone. I didn’t want to do this at all. What choice was I going to have? I had to do this, and the fewer people that knew about it, the better. For Hanson’s sake, at least, if not for my own.
For the first time in a long time, I wished I wasn’t alone. But shit happened, and this was the life I had chosen. I would have to face the music. There was no choice.
I looked at the pregnancy tests that I’d dumped in my sink again. Two lines.
How the hell had this happened to me?
Chapter 30 �
�� Hanson
“I can’t figure her out,” I said to Brian when we were training together at the facility.
I had learned my lesson about going to public gyms. I had just finished on the treadmill. I sat on the bench watching Brian lift weights.
“What is she doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know, man. One moment, she’s all over me, making me feel like I’m everything she ever wanted, and the next, she’s so cold it kills me.”
“And your professional relationship?” Brian asked. “Doesn’t that have something to do with it?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. I just don’t get it.”
We sat in silence, the clank of the weights the only sound ringing around us.
“Where do you stand now?” Brian asked after a while.
I shook my head, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “She’s barely talking to me. Since Saturday, I haven’t heard from her. She wasn’t at the office at all on Monday, and the last time I talked to her, she was short with me.”
Brian finished his weights and sat up.
“I don’t know how to help you,” he said. “You don’t usually care about women, and they’re usually too clingy. Now it’s the other way around. I don’t know this Hanson any more than you know what she’s doing.”
I chuckled. “I’m not that bad,” I said.
Brian looked at me hard enough that I conceded.
“Yeah, okay. I get what you’re saying. She’s just impossible to read. It drives me crazy because I usually know women. But it’s not a big deal. I’ll just have to get ass somewhere else.”
I winked at Brian who shook his head.
“You’re something else,” he said, walking to the treadmill to finish his workout.
“I’m done here,” I said. “I’m going to hit the showers. I’ll see you later.”
Brian waved at me before pushing his speed up to a steady pace. I left the gym and walked to my locker. I had told Brian I would get ass somewhere else like I didn’t care, but I did care. I didn’t understand it, but I cared. I didn’t know what was going on with Lacey, and I didn’t like it.
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