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“Did he do something to you?” Teag asked.
Maria shook her head. “Not like that. Not what you’re thinking.”
He traced a finger down her cheek. “Okay, that’s good.”
Drawing in a shuddering breath, she turned her head, nearly tucking it under his arm. “I got pregnant. Just after my seventeenth birthday.”
“Oh, love,” Teag said, cradling the back of her head with one hand.
“I was terrified, of course, but I also had this romantic notion that Tom would be shocked but thrilled. That he’d want to marry me and pledge his undying love for me. Make a grand statement to my brothers about how he’d take care of me. That wasn’t what happened though. Instead, he called me a stupid slut and gave me a pile of cash for an abortion.”
“What a bloody fucking wanker. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
She was silent, and he could hear her breathing, feel her heart thudding rapidly against his chest.
“I didn’t have the abortion. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it,” Maria said, and Teag went still.
Since Maria wasn’t currently raising a child, whatever the outcome of her pregnancy, she must have been carrying serious pain around with her all these years. Teag could hear it in her voice and feel it in her body. She curled in on herself while he stroked her back and waited.
“My oldest brother, Paulo, was always particularly observant. He knew something was wrong. He caught me one morning puking in the toilet before school and straight up asked if I was pregnant. When I burst into tears, he locked the door, sat with me until I finished getting sick, cleaned me up, and then asked what I wanted to do.”
Maria’s voice hitched, and Teag gave her an encouraging squeeze.
“I love that his first reaction was to take care of me and see what I needed. My brother is a really good guy,” she said.
“Yeah, compared to that twat Tommy who tossed you some cash,” Teag said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.
“Yeah, I guess Tom did act like a twat,” Maria said, snort-laughing, apparently at Teag’s choice of wording.
“You think? You were seventeen. He was what, twenty?”
“Twenty-three,” she said.
“The fuck-nugget should have known better.”
“You have a colorful array of insults on hand, don’t you?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got an insult for every occasion.”
Maria sighed and traced a finger over Teag’s chest. He felt the small bit of lightness in her disappear again and dreaded hearing the rest.
“Paulo demanded I tell him who the father was. When I named Tommy, and when I shared Tom’s reaction, Paulo was furious. Not the loud kind of angry, but a quiet, simmering rage, which scared me more than if he’d started screaming at me.”
She drew in a shuddering breath, steeling herself, it seemed, to tell him the last part of the story.
“Paulo didn’t confront Tom right away. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but I’d decided by then to keep the baby regardless, and I knew I had to tell my mom and my grandma. I planned to wait until the next Sunday. Not sure why I thought Sunday dinner with the family was the opportune moment, but I figured I’d only have to say it once. My nerves were shot. I was so sick and so scared that I could barely keep anything down. Saturday night, I couldn’t sleep. I wandered downstairs to make tea and caught my brothers sneaking out of the house. I had a bad feeling, so I followed them.”
She paused, swallowed hard, and continued. “They met up with Tommy in the parking lot of the local pizza place. It was closed by then and the lot mostly empty, but it was a spot the guys in the neighborhood used at all hours for deals, and I don’t even want to know what else. I think Tom knew why my brothers were there because he’d brought another guy with him, to even out the fight, I guess. It got ugly quick. I stayed hidden, until Tom’s buddy pulled a knife on Paulo. I screamed a warning at my brothers, jumped on the guy’s back, and bit him.”
“Oh, love, you didn’t,” Teag said.
“Oh yeah, I did,” she said, her voice now trembling with rage and tinged with desperation. “I wasn’t thinking about me or the baby. I just knew that asshole wasn’t fighting fair, and one of my brothers was going to get hurt or killed.”
Maria unwittingly dug her fingernails into Teag’s chest. He grimaced but didn’t move.
“The guy flung me onto the ground, then hauled off and kicked me, right in the stomach.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Teag hissed.
