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“Well, I showed him how to kiss. How to touch a girl. And I like to think I showed him how to love, too. As twisted as it sounds, considering the person he eventually became, I liked being with him. He was different from all the other boys who made me feel like I had to spread my legs in order for them to want to spend time with me. Nick was…grateful, I suppose. Gentle. Treated me with respect. It wasn’t just about the sex with him, although we certainly did enjoy having sex, especially once he got over the newness of it and started to experiment a little more. With him, it was more about showing me his appreciation. Like I said before, he saw me. For a teenage girl who thought the only way to not be invisible was to sleep with every guy who showed an interest, it was a welcome change.”
I glanced at Lachlan, his expression even as he listened to Lucy’s story.
“What did your parents think of this arrangement?” he asked.
Her smile fell. “They didn’t know about it right away. They weren’t exactly involved all that much in my life. So when I requested to continue my tutoring sessions during the school year, too, they didn’t bat an eye, especially when they saw an improvement in my grades.”
He arched a brow. “But they did find out eventually?”
She nodded. “My parents threw a lavish party for my high school graduation. And it wasn’t a typical high school graduation where you grilled some burgers and hot dogs. This was just another excuse for them to play host to powerful people. Billionaires. Politicians. Religious leaders. It was the who’s who of the world’s power players. And considering it was thrown for me, I was expected to be there, especially since my mother was also using it as a sort of an engaged to be engaged party.”
“Engaged to be engaged?” Imogene asked.
“My mother wanted me to marry Alton Shea. And since he was going to Brown, it just made sense. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t attracted to him, and vice versa.”
“But you’re married now,” Imogene argued.
“In my world, sweetie, marriage isn’t about love. It’s about bringing two powerful families together to make them even stronger. To further concentrate this country’s wealth so fewer people have the most, while even more people have little.”
“That’s fucked up,” Imogene stated, then cringed, looking my way.
I gave her a reassuring smile. After everything she’d been through, she was due a few swears. We all were.
“Yes, it is quite ‘fucked up’,” Lucy chuckled. “Alton and I never agreed with it. Which was probably why we didn’t object to being forced to marry. We genuinely like each other as people, even if there will never be romantic notions between us. We’ve done a great deal of good in the world because of our mutual respect for one another.”
“What happened at this party?” Lachlan asked in an effort to steer the conversation back on topic.
She returned her attention to us. “I wasn’t feeling well. Thought it was just some stomach bug.”
“But it wasn’t a stomach bug, was it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“No,” she replied gravely. “I excused myself for a moment to lay down. Less than an hour later, I was holding a baby boy in my arms while my graduation party continued downstairs without me.”
Imogene’s brows furrowed. “You didn’t know you were pregnant?”
“I know it sounds crazy. My cycle had never been all that regular, or even that heavy.” She cringed slightly as she looked Lachlan’s way. “Sorry.”
He waved her off.
“I did have some spotting, like is sometimes typical in pregnancy. I simply mistook it for my time of the month. While I’d gained a few pounds, it wasn’t enough for me to think I was pregnant. I just thought it was stress eating due to finals and waiting on college acceptance letters. And I blamed all the contractions I’d experienced on eating something that didn’t agree with me.”
“What happened to the baby?” I asked.
“When I’d been gone from the party a little longer than my mother would have liked, she came looking for me. To say she was absolutely horrified when she walked in on me holding a baby, the umbilical cord still attached, would have been an understatement.
“I was so scared. Here I was, eighteen, about to go away to college, and I’d just given birth to a baby when I didn’t even realize I was pregnant. So I told her everything. How I’d fallen in love with Nick. With his mind, his compassion. But she didn’t want to hear it, especially since he’d only recently turned sixteen, which was the age of consent. It didn’t take a genius to do the math. To realize I’d slept with him when he was underage, at least in the eyes of the law, regardless of the fact that he already held two degrees. It would cause a huge scandal. A black mark on our family we’d never recover from. So she did damage control.”
She swallowed hard, her voice beginning to tremble. “Before I knew what was happening, a woman claiming to be from some adoption agency walked through the door, pulling the baby off my breast as I tried to nurse him.”
“And this baby wasn’t Dax?” I asked, even though I already knew it wasn’t. The math didn’t add up.
She slowly shook her head. “No. In the short time I was able to hold him in my arms, I called him Domenic, after his father. But after he was adopted, I learned he was renamed.”
“To what?” Lachlan asked, the tension in the room growing.
“Ethan.” She smiled sadly. “Ethan Shore.”
