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“Thing is… My story…” I sighed and crossed my legs, rolling my shoulders in, wondering how far in my timeline I had to go back. “You see, when I was sixteen, I was told there was no way I would ever have a baby. I’ll spare you the details on the why, and we’ll just leave it at that. Flash forward a few years…”
A flood of adrenaline leaked into my system, setting off all sorts of bells and whistles. Lightheaded, I looked around the room to keep myself in the moment; over to the windows along the carpet’s edge, over to the closed door which was going to contain my past to the two souls in the shared space, and over to the man I’d come to adore. I needed to remind myself that David had earned my trust, and I could share this with him. I needed to.
A violent shudder rippled through me as the past flashed in memories.
“Quinn was quite well off, from a long line of wealth and entitlement. He’d met my brother Adam, but I can’t remember how they became friends or why.” Just picturing that poster boy made my stomach sour. What had I found so intoxicating about him? Looking back now, it must’ve been the rose-coloured glasses I wore. The hairs lifted on my arms as a cool breeze floated in the air. “Anyway, that part isn’t important.” My gaze stayed trained on the envelope neither of us had moved yet. “Over a few dates, I felt Quinn and I had a connection. I was wrong. So god-damned wrong.” My eyes squeezed shut, not that it removed the images. “One night at a party, I was more than a little drunk and Quinn was more than a little handsy…”
The desk between us shook, and his breath came in rasps.
I lowered my voice and fought to remember how to breathe as I shook my head and rolled tighter into a ball. “Long story short, that night, well, he took… he…” I couldn’t even say the words. Ortheword as it was. The lump in my throat plummeted into my stomach with a sour splash. “The kicker of it all was learning a few weeks later, I wasn’t experiencing some sort of early onset menopause. I was pregnant.”
More adrenaline pumped at a breakneck speed, and I wanted a hole to open up in the floor and swallow me whole. The ground had vibrated a touch, and as I finally opened my eyes, I saw why – David had quietly moved from behind his desk to sit on the edge beside me. He was close enough that I caught a whiff of his cologne.
I focused on his hands resting on his lap. “A total shock, one that completely blindsided me, especially when I was told I would never – could never – carry a baby. Imagine all the emotions surrounding that.”
To learn I was carrying a child I’d never thought I’d have, while also wrapping my head around the way conception occurred… it was mind boggling. I had so many feelings, and I was confused and hurt and surprised. Giving the baby up wasn’t an option, and neither was the other possibility. I only had one choice; one I never regretted a day in my life.
My focus stayed trained on the wood grain edging of his desk.
His hand twitched and his breath was laboured, but he made no further movement. He was close enough to touch, if I felt I needed his strength. Just sharing the space with me gave me a comforting push to carry on.
“My family just assumed I was knocked up and that the jerk had abandoned me, until I accidentally ran into him at Adam’s bookstore by fluke. I confronted him. I showed him the twenty-two-week ultrasound I carried around in my purse. He said there was no proof it was his, but I knew because he’d been the only person I’d… well, at that time…” I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth to muffle a cry. “Anyway, Adam overheard the whole conversation and closed his shop immediately. There were a lot of tears, a lot of hugs, and a whole whack of angriness, but he always swore me to secrecy. Although I was carrying proof of what happened.” I swallowed, the noise ear-shattering in the deadly silence. “I didn’t want to go ahead with pressing charges and being run through the mud.”
Like a whisper in the wind, he spoke. “That would never happen.”
A soft snort blew out, and lightning bolts of anger flashed out. “It happens all the time. The woman has to shoulder all of it; it’s her who gets questioned on how much she drank, what she was wearing, and the focus falls to her, not to the guy who, you know… shouldn’t have…”
A trembling began in my hands and feet, and I pumped my crossed leg to ward off the feeling. It didn’t help.
“Anyway.” I inhaled a desperately needed breath of air through my quivering lips. “Adam dealt with him somehow, I never got the full details, and forced him to submit to a DNA test. Guess what?”
“It was his.”
“Without a doubt.”
“So you pressed charges then?”
I shook my head as heat singed my cheeks. “I wasn’t that brave, but I did email him several times to let him know he was the father. I sent copies of the test, but it was radio silence. I didn’t expect a free ride, or for him to pony up any money, so I worked double shifts. Joke was on me though. Since I was paid under the table, when I couldn’t come into work because I was sick in the hospital and they canned me, I had no recourse for income. I was broke. I lost my apartment on top of it all and moved back in with my parents for a short spell. Sadly, because it was something tangible, you, well not you, but your business, took the brunt of my anger. The baby’s father had disappeared, and the restaurant I’d gotten sick at wasn’t going to pay my lost wages and therefore help me keep on treading water, I was screwed. Stupidly, I poured my energy into the one thing I could grab onto.”
David inhaled sharply. “My restaurant became your metaphorical punching bag.”
I slowly scanned up his body, over his rising and falling chest, over his beard, and up into his dark eyes. “Yes.”
The air crackled between us, and I wasn’t sure if I should continue, wait, or what.
“Keep going, I need to hear the rest,” David urged as he rose and swung his chair to roll beside mine. Sitting down, he took my hand into his. “Then what?”
“A few months later, I received a letter, through Adam’s bookshop, from a lawyer’s office. In exchange for my silence on the baby’s paternity, because it would ruin him and his entitled future…” I rolled my eyes. “He agreed to drop all paternity rights. I had no money to hire a lawyer to contest, but Adam stood by my side, and without my parents knowing, because the details are embarrassing, we filed some sort of counter. Quinn wasn’t going to get off that easy.”
“And?”
“Long story short, his family transferred a small amount of money to me, which I in turn used a few years later on Vera’s house. It helped with a down payment. However, in accepting the bribe I had to agree to leave his name off the birth certificate, and never mention him or his family by name ever again. For that, he had to sign away any rights to Vera, which he did with gusto.”
“Oh wow.” David leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “That’s quite a story. No one knows who the father is?”
I shook my head. “Just Adam.”
“Your parents don’t even know?”
