Chapter one
Rosanna
NOTE:Didyourreadingdevice skip straight to this chapter? If you’d like a content warning, please see the Introduction.
“I’mpregnant.”
Silence.
“Did you hear me?” Steeling myself for his response, I repeat myself to the back of his grease-covered mechanic coveralls as he shrugs off his jacket. “Silas. I’m pregnant.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have sprung it on him the minute he walked in the door, letting in a bite of cold air, but I’ve been fuming ever since I borrowed from the rainy-day fund to buy two pregnancy tests.
Slowly turning to face me, my boyfriend stares with a neutral expression. But I know what he’s thinking. The sudden tic in his jaw says everything for him in this long and awkward pause. “How?”
By friggin’ aliens. Does he not understand how sexual reproduction works? Let me rephrase—he understands the reproduction part just fine. It’s the pleasure aspect—specifically mine—that seems to throw him for a loop.
Six long years together and he still can’t find my clit except by accident.
I light into him, eyes afire. “You should remember exactlyhowit happened, but okay. I’ll help you out. Remember when you spent all night ‘letting off steam’ with the boys and drinking away the rent money? Then stumbling in at three in the goddamned morning and pawing at me?”
After leaving the front door wide open for our fine, upstanding neighbors to come in at will. What good is our simple security system of bells on a doorknob if the door isn’t even closed? It’s a miracle we weren’t mugged. Or worse.
Recognition sparks in his bleary gaze. Yeah, now it’s all coming back to him. How he shoved inside of me with no warning and no condom. God only knows how he didn’t have whiskey dick, but he managed to pump a few times like a horny dog before grunting out a release and then snoring in the next breath.
“When’s your appointment?” The refrigerator door hits the wall as he flings it open for a beer.
My shoulders relax the slightest bit. Though the refrigerator just bore the brunt of his frustration, he’s taking the news better than I thought. Maybe this won’t be as big of an ordeal as I envisioned. “Next Monday.”
Silas trudges past me to collapse onto the lumpy couch, stacking his heavy boots onto the cheap coffee table that threatens to splinter under the strain. “Wouldn’t a weekend be better?”
“For what?”
Taking a swig, he mumbles out, “The abortion.”
This jackass did notjust say that. “Forwhat?”
“The recovery.” His tone implies I’m a dolt for not catching his meaning. “After the abortion.”
Tightness wraps around my head as I fight to keep my temper and language under control. How dare he have the audacity to assume that’s my first course of action when he knows how I feel about it? “I amnotgetting an abortion, Silas.”
His beer sloshes onto the coffee table as he bolts upward, feet hitting the floor in agitation. “We talked about this, Rosanna. Said we weren’t gonna have kids while we were stuck here in this dump and me working part-time.”
My blood pressure is spiking. If I were a tea kettle, I’d be whistling right about now with all the steam threatening to explode from me.Sigh.I rub my forehead and ignore his “part-time”comment. “I’m not the one at fault here! What was I supposed to do? Clock you in the jaw or knee you in the balls to get you to stop? You’re a grown-ass man, Silas.” Or should be.
Stalking toward me, he squeezes my upper arms with his stained hands. “Cut me some slack,” he bellows. “I’m trying, okay?”
Trying what? I pointedly dip my chin down and grit my words out through clenched teeth. “Don’t raise your fucking voice at me. And let go of me. Now.”
Clouds gather in his eyes, darkening them to a deep hazel. Panic blooms the tiniest bit in my chest at the force of his grip, making my fingertips throb with every beat of my pulse. He’s not a tall man, but he is bigger than me. It’d be easy for him to hurt me, even if he’s never done it before. But showing weakness isn’t something this girl does, so I close the gap between us until our noses and chests touch. “Silas. Take your hands off of me.”
His stale breath flutters my hair, but then the pressure releases in a rush when his fingers drop, relief chasing some of the wariness.
But not all. That wouldn’t be smart.
Before I can offer up the suggestion for him to cool off, he beats me to it. “Look, I didn’t expect you to drop this bombshell on me. Boss and customers rode my ass all day at work and then I come home to this”—his chin jerks my way—“news. I’m gonna crash at Jackson’s.”
Crash.In other words, he and Jackson are going to go to the bar across the street and then make their rounds to more with the money neither of them has to spend.Just let it go, Rosanna.It’s not even worth the fight.
