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Sitting inside the truck, I buckled up and stared out the window. The last time I’d been in here wasn’t pleasant either. Or at least, it hadn’t ended that way. It had been traumatic. Now it was just silent.
Saxon turned on the radio, and country music filled the silence. I rested my head on the seat, closing my eyes. The past week, I had started getting tired all the time. Yesterday, when I’d been making up a bed at the hotel, I had fought the urge to just crawl into it and close my eyes. Just for a minute. I didn’t, of course, but I’d wanted to so bad.
“You’ve lost weight.”
Saxon’s words stopped me from the pull of sleep. I opened my eyes back up and stared out the window.
“If you want to keep the baby, then you need to take care of it. Starving yourself isn’t taking care of it. You also have dark circles under your eyes.”
If I wasn’t afraid he’d pull some hidden gun out and shoot me between the eyes, I’d hit him across the face with my bag.
Breathe. In and out. In and out. Do not yell at him and punch him in the nose. Remain calm.
“I’m not starving myself. If I could afford to eat more, then I would.” My words were clipped, but at least I hadn’t shouted them.
He didn’t respond.
“What are you going to do when you find out this baby is yours?” I asked him, turning my head to look at him.
“IF it is mine, then I’ll take that step when it gets here.”
I laughed, although there was no humor in the sound. “You might think I’m a liar, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is your baby. So, maybe you could tell me what you’re thinking because I’m not asking for your help. I don’t intend to let you force me to abort it or allow you take it from me. I won’t give it up for adoption. If you try and make me, I’ll … I’ll … disappear.”
How I would disappear, I wasn’t sure, but if he pushed me, then I’d run away. Somewhere.
“You want a baby at twenty?” he asked me, his tone hard.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why? You can’t even afford to feed yourself. How the fuck are you gonna feed a kid?”
My stomach churned at the reminder that I had no clue how I was going to do this. He was rubbing it in my face that I hadn’t been born into a family of wealth and power. How had I thought this guy was something different? He was as nasty and cruel as the men who had walked in and out of my mom’s life. I didn’t want to ever trust another man for as long as I lived.
“I’ll worry about that.” Props to me for not sounding as scared as I felt.
“That’s a real mature response, Haisley. You’ll make a great mom.”
The sarcasm in his words twisted my gut.
I sat up straight and fisted my hands in my lap. He was not going to make me blow up and start yelling at him. I didn’t know if the baby could hear me yelling, but if it could, then that wasn’t good for it. At least it didn’t sound like it was good for it.
“Do not ever tell me what is mature and what isn’t while you have been given everything in life, live in a nice, big house, and have racehorses and a fancy stable and an expensive truck. You know nothing about maturity. I’ve been taking care of kids since I was five years old. I’ve been making them meals, helping them get dressed, feeding babies bottles in the middle of the night, bathing them, changing diapers. Since I was FIVE. I didn’t have a childhood, Saxon. I was treated like a grown-up before I started first grade. You have no right to judge what I can and cannot do. Because I have fed eight kids with only ten dollars more times than you can count. When I say I will handle it, then I will.”
I was shaking. These were things I’d never shared with him during the two weeks of our whirlwind fling. Sure, he had known that a lot was expected of me, but he’d had no clue just how deep it went. No idea what I’d lived through.
He didn’t apologize. He said nothing. Not one more word. I didn’t close my eyes again because the exhaustion was now being chased away by the fury inside my chest.
When the truck pulled into the parking deck of the private hospital, I wanted to laugh. We were getting a paternity test at a hospital that I’d never step foot in again. My baby wouldn’t be born here. There was no OB-GYN here that accepted Medicaid.
