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The baby kicked and my hand immediately went to my stomach, smiling as I rubbed the area. “I know, I know. You’re hungry too.” Another kick answered me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle as I opened the front door.
I stepped inside, not taking any notice on what was around me as I placed my keys in the bowl and shut the door behind me. I knew Dad would have hated seeing me smiling down at my bump, but I was fed up with hiding something that was so obvious.
“It’s so hot out there,” I commented, pushing some hair out of my face as I stepped forward and lifted my head. I wished I hadn’t. I wished I would have listened to my gut and driven away when it told me to. “Why are they here?” My tone had gone from conversational to downright angry in the matter of seconds.
“This isn’t going away, Navy,” Dad said, sitting forward on the sofa. “We need to get the details worked out.” He tilted his head at my stomach. “It’ll be here in a matter of weeks now.”
“A month,” I corrected him. “I still have a month to go.”
He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him.
“We just want to get the details down so we can add them into the paperwork,” the woman’s voice said.
I whipped my head around to face her, scowling. “There are no details, Miriam.” I spat her name, hating that she was in my home, the one place I should have felt safe from all of this.
“We understand it’s a difficult situation,” a new voice said.Claire, the woman who wanted to adopt my baby.I didn’t turn to look at her, instead, my attention was laser focused on Miriam.
“You’ve had a wasted trip.” I walked past the sofa and toward the stairs. “There’s the door, see yourself out.”
I wished I had the energy to run up the stairs and slam my bedroom door just to push my point home, but all I managed was a kind of wobble as I took each stair one at a time, still hearing them murmuring below.
“Maybe we should go,” I heard Miriam say.
“No.” Dad’s voice was firm. “I know what’s best for her, and having this baby will do nothing but ruin her life.”
He was wrong. So so wrong.
“Wait here,” he demanded, and a second later I heard his footsteps. I was at the top of the stairs now, mere feet away from my bedroom when he came running up toward me. “Navy.”
“Leave me alone!” I shouted, beyond frustrated. He wouldn’t let up. He just wouldn’t drop it.
“No.” I tried to close my bedroom door, but his hand stopped me. “Get your ass down there and sign the goddamn paperwork.”
“Not in this lifetime.” I backed away a couple of steps. “I told you that I’m not giving my baby away.”
He sneered. “Hisbaby. That no-good scum’s baby.” His nostrils flared, his anger taking over completely. “No grandchild of mine will be related to shit like him!”
“He’s not scum,” I volleyed back. “You have no idea who he is.”
His hands balled into fists. “No,youhave no idea who he is.” He moved toward me, so I backed up, feeling my legs hitting my bed, but I managed to stay upright. “They’re killers, Navy. Coldhearted killers. They run drugs, they ship weapons. They’re the evil in this world—evil I’ve worked my entire career to get rid of. And nowyouare literally in bed with them!”
“Dad,” I croaked out. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good!” he roared, so loud that it felt like it shook the room. “Be scared. You need to know the reality of the situation.” He shook his head, pushing his shoulders back, making him seem that much wider and taller than he already was. “What do you think will happen? That you’ll live happily ever after? Have the life of your dreams? You’re eighteen, Navy.Eighteen.You don’t know what you want.”
“That’s not true—”
“Yes, it is. You’re a child.” Spittle flew from his mouth, a vein in his head thumping to the beat of his heart. “You don’t get to make decisions like this.”
He wasn’t letting me talk, wasn’t letting me tell him that he was wrong. So I shouted, “Mom would let me!” My breaths sawed in and out of me. “Mom would let me keep the baby. Mom would love the baby just like I already do.”
His body stilled, his mouth pinching into a straight line. “Don’t you dare,” he warned. “Don’t you dare bring her into this.”
“Why?” I was feeling brave, standing up to him in the way I’d dreamed of for weeks. I wasn’t letting this go. I wasn’t going to allow him to walk all over me. “You know it’s true.” I paused and then… “Besides, she was only nineteen when she got pregnant with me.”
“Stop.” He lifted his hand, pointing at me. “Stop talking about her.”
I shook my head. “You can’t act like she didn’t exist, Dad. And you can’t act like she wouldn’t be doing the complete opposite to what you’re doing right now.” He opened his mouth, but I was on a roll, not willing to give up the tangent I was on. I needed to get through to him. I needed him to see that this wasn’t okay. “She’d hate that you were doing this to me.”
