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“This is delicious,” Hadley says after taking a sip of her juice. “Just under seven more months and we could do this again but with champagne.”
Warmth spreads through me at the mention of a future between us. It makes me happy to know that I’m not the only one thinking about what is going to come after the baby.
I want her for as long as she is willing to let me have her.
“Alright,” I say as I settle into the chair and cross one leg over the other. “Tell me about everything you want to achieve in your life.”
Hadley barks out a laugh before taking another sip of her drink. “Just like that, you want to know everything?”
“We’re going to have a child together. We’ve spent a lot of time talking but you never say much about where you’re going or where you’ve come from. I want to know everything there is to know about you, no matter how insignificant you may find it.”
She swirls her juice around in her glass. “It’s not that I think it’s insignificant. It’s more that I think it will scare people away. You already know I lived in my car and took care of myself in a house full of addicts. There’s not much more to my past than that.”
“I think there’s a lot more than that to your story.”
“I knew how to call the ambulance for an overdose before I went to kindergarten,” she says, a hint of bitterness in her voice. “My mother stopped cooking for me once I was big enough to stand on a chair and do it myself without setting the house on fire.”
“How old were you then?”
“Seven.”
My chest constricts as I think about a young Hadley fending for herself. All the adults in her life failed her. They should have been there, taking care of her. Someone should have seen what was going on and taken her out of that home.
“I don’t think my parents even really loved me. I think that I just happened to be born and they realized that there was someone to clean the house and make them food when they were too high to do it for themselves.”
“Did you ever get removed from the home?” I ask, getting up and motioning her forward on the chair.
Hadley moves forward slightly and I squeeze myself in behind her. My legs bracket hers on the wide lounger. She leans back against my chest with a sigh as my arms wrap around her.
“No. The teachers knew what was going on — how could you not when I showed up to school with matted hair and dirty clothes? When I begged for any food that I could get? They knew, but they didn’t do anything to help me.”
“And that’s why you want to be a teacher.”
She nods and tilts her head back on my shoulder to look up at me. “I told you that before but I think it’s more than that too. I want to give kids the love they might not be getting from home but I want to save them all too. I don’t know what’s going to happen when a day comes and I can’t.”
“I’ll be there to help. In whatever way you need it. You want to cry, we can cry. If you want me to pull every connection I have to intervene in something dangerous, I’ll do it.”
She studies me for a moment, her eyes widening in surprise. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” I kiss her temple. “I told you that I was going to do whatever I could to help you with your dreams. You say the word and I can make things happen. Anything, really.”
“It’s easy to forget how much power you have in this city.” Hadley glances back out over the water. “I don’t want our child to go through the same shit that I did. It’s why I don’t want them involved with the cartel. I want to give them the best shot at life possible.”
I sigh and tighten my embrace around her. “I know. I don’t want them to be as deep into the life as I am either. I want our child to benefit from the money and the power, but this isn’t the life that I would choose for anyone.”
“Then why are you in it?”
“I didn’t have anything else going for me. I was already in the Domingos cartel, but there was unrest. I was young at the time and I had a chip on my shoulder. Thought that I had something to prove so when the chance came to take power, I took it. I did a lot of things that I’m not proud of, and it got my family killed.”
Her breath hitches slightly and for a moment I think that I might have said too much. She knows that my family was murdered. I have no doubt that she knows the things I did to take power.
I’m not proud of it. What I did back then was horrible. I had nothing to lose and I made sure that everyone knew it.
“Do you ever wish that you could go back in time and change it all?”
I tilt my head back to look at the stars shining overhead. “Yes and no. I wish that so many innocent people didn’t die. I wish that my family was still alive. Both things would be true if I didn’t take control.”
“Then why wouldn’t you go back in time and change it, if that were possible?”
