His Forbidden Baby: An Accidental Pregnancy Romance Collection (His Secret Baby Romance Collection Book 2)
Page 5
It was a normal weekday and I didn’t have to go to work. It was my day off from waitressing. I just wanted to mull things over and make a decision regarding my immediate future.
Part of me was hoping that Steve would eventually stop calling and that we could forget about each other. If he really was a player, I was sure that I was not going to hear from him after a while.
Even he would get bored of sitting around waiting for me and he would eventually find somebody else to satisfy his needs. Unless he felt it was some kind of sick game where he chased me just to eventually dump me – that would not be fun and was something I wanted to avoid completely.
What he had already done for me was spectacular; he had saved me in a big way, but I guess that our relationship had to come to an end at some point. I didn’t see how he would remain cool with me snubbing him over a period of time.
But another part of me was tempted to text him back. I wanted to see where this relationship could go, but I was afraid of getting hurt. I had Kelly to think about, too. I hadn’t introduced her to him - I never would, unless I knew it was serious - but I didn’t want to be in a bad mood around her because of him.
Despite my best efforts, though, I was feeling really grumpy and sad. I simply was not in a good mood and even my daughter had noticed. She had timidly asked me what was wrong, but I dismissed her fears and told her everything was okay. This allowed her to go back to playing her video games, but I worried that she would soon ask again.
The possibility of breaking up with Steve was not pleasing me in any way, but neither were the thoughts of being played. I had missed a man’s company, but I realized that I had bigger problems to be worrying about at this stage of my life.
I was trying to focus on watching the video game that Kelly was playing, and half-heartedly rooting her on although she didn’t seem to notice my presence due to being immersed in the game. I was surprised that I was burning up and feeling a little feverish. It was almost as though I was hungover, but it had been a while since I had a drink or went out, so that was impossible.
It was possible that my irrational anger for Steve was making me feel sick inside. But that was quite strange because I was actually sick to the extent that I had to quickly excuse myself. I made for the bathroom, put up the toilet seat and vomited right there.
As I gasped for air, it occurred to me that this was a feeling I was already familiar with. During my pregnancy with Kelly, this was exactly how I felt, and I never knew how I was going to deal with it. Now that I had some experience, it surprised me that the same feeling had returned.
Holy shit, I thought to myself, is it possible that I’m pregnant?
I hurried Kelly into the car - while she was complaining about having to pause her video game - and immediately rushed to the drugstore that was down the street. My heart was pumping and all sorts of thoughts were starting to invade my mind. I could not imagine what I would do if I was genuinely pregnant.
It would change everything - things certainly would be much more complicated than I had imagined. I was really hoping that it was normal nausea, that I ate something bad and all I would have to do later on is go lay down and eventually feel better after some sleep.
I got a pregnancy test and returned home immediately to try it. Kelly happily returned to her video games and luckily didn’t seem suspicious of anything weird going on. She thought I had just needed some last minute things at the store.
Damn.
There was a smiley face that showed up on the stick I had just peed on.
Even though this was very far from being something to smile about.
I did it more than once, but the outcome was the same each time. I was most definitely pregnant.
I remained in the bathroom for a long time, but I could still hear Kelly going on with her games. I was unable to think clearly because I was trying to make sense of the positive pregnancy test that I was holding in my hand, after throwing away all the ones that had come before it as I had tried my best to reproduce the experiment with different results.
How could this have happened?
There was no way that I was supposed to be pregnant, at least not now. This was the worst possible scenario that could happen to me – being unexpectedly pregnant again – and it caught me completely off guard.
I had always told myself that it would take a miracle before I had a second child. My reasoning was that my second child would have to be my husband’s if I got married. But here I was, single and living with my daughter in a cramped apartment with my best friend, and now pregnant with a second child.
Steve and I had taken numerous precautions and so I was truly baffled with what was going on. There was no way I was supposed to be pregnant at this stage because it was simply something that should not happen.
My only guess was that a condom had failed.
I couldn’t even remember any time that that would have happened so I supposed it might have been a defective one.
My heart was beating very fast and I realized that my thoughts were already cloudy.
What was I going to do about my strange situation?
I decided to get out of the bathroom finally, because I had to talk to somebody. I couldn’t just sit here all day, stunned in surprise.
Kate was due home from work, so I hurried to make us some tea.
I usually didn’t let Kelly play video games for this long, but she didn’t even seem to notice my distress, so this time I decided to make an exception.
I was so glad when Kate finally walked in, even though it was way later than I had expected her to.
“Oh, my God,” I told her, handing her some now tepid tea. “I thought you’d never get here.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking at me with curiosity. “I had to stay late to crunch some numbers for a demanding client. But hooray for overtime pay, right? Wait a minute. What’s with this gross tea? You only serve me tea when something’s wrong. What is it?”
“Sorry, I made it a while ago.”
“Okay yea, but what’s up?” she asked. “Must be something big.”
“Uh, you could say that,” I told her, thinking it strange how something so little in size – at least for right now – could be such a huge deal. “Come on, let’s go into my room.”
We walked past Kelly, who gave a quick wave in between using the controller, after Kate said, “Well hello to you too, Kelly,” and into my bedroom where I shut the door.
Usually I would tell her to use her manners and say hello to Auntie Kate but I didn’t have the time or energy to teach my child manners at the moment.
“I’m pregnant,” I told Kate, deciding to cut right to the chase because I didn’t have long before Kelly would be hungry and it would be time for me to make dinner for us.
Kate’s jaw swung open.
She was as equally in disbelief as I was.
“To Steve?” she asked.
“Um, yeah,” I told her, wondering who else she thought I might be sleeping with.
“How in the world did this happen?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I sure wish I knew. Your guess is honestly as good as mine.”
That was the only thing I could say.
I was just as surprised as she was, but she kept asking me for details, such as if we ever skipped a condom or if one broke.
“Noooo,” I told her, over and over, finally making a shushing sound and saying, “Can we please stop talking about this part before Kelly overhears us? I solemnly swear that we only ever had s-a-f-e s-e-x and that I have no recollection of anything being off and no idea how this could have happened.”
“Well, okay, the past is the past and however it happened, it happened. So, let’s deal with the present. You have to tell him,” she said, “at least you’ll know if he really cares. This is a great, but unplanned, way to find that out, right?”
I gave her a “what the fuck?” expression and she added, “I mean, I’m trying to think
silver lining here.”
I appreciated that someone was. However, I disagreed. I told her my suspicions about Steve and what I heard his co-workers saying about and to him.
“He could be completely out for himself here, Kate,” I told her. “Being a single mom, I don’t need somebody interrupting my life just to try to play me. That’s why I haven’t been talking to him.”
“If he’s only in it for fun, he’ll not be happy you’re pregnant,” Kate said.
“I know! That’s my whole fear,” I told her.
“Well, at that point you’ll know what he’s about and you can choose what to do. You can have the baby and have him not be part of your life. Or maybe he’ll want to be. Wait a minute. Why am I giving him more credit than you are? You’re the one who was obsessed with him for weeks.”
She laughed, although I didn’t think it was very funny.
“Yeah, and then I haven’t even seen him for weeks, because I was trying to get un-obsessed.”
“Well, this really isn’t going to help that cause,” she joked.
“Sure isn’t,” I agreed.
“Listen, I understand your fears, but I think you and Steve had something good going on,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.”
“Easy for you to say,” I joked.
She nodded and then gave me a hug.
“I know it is,” she said. “And I’m here for you no matter what you decide.”
“Thanks, Kate. I appreciate your support, as usual.”
“Hey, you were there for me that time I thought it was a good idea to bum around Europe with the guy who told me he was a musician,” she said.
“Oh yeah. And it turned out that he meant he played his guitar at train stations with a Styrofoam cup for people to drop money into.”
We both laughed at her lack of foresight about that one. But at least she’d had a fun travel adventure, whereas my escapades seemed to result in lifetime responsibilities.
I decided to start getting dinner ready and think it through some more. I knew Kate thought I should tell Steve, and I appreciated her advice, but I just wasn’t sure that I would be able to follow it.
Chapter 9
Steve
Three months had passed now, and I’d been unable to see Molly again.
I simply could not understand what had changed, because everything had appeared to be going well between us. Our relationship had just started becoming serious and I already had deep feelings for her.
However, everything seemed to be at an end and there was nothing I could fucking do about it.
It was quite frustrating to not be seeing her because I had become used to her company and her funny stories about her daughter or her job or life in general. It didn’t hurt that our chemistry was off the charts hot and that she was so good in bed.
Now I didn’t have the ability to even look at another woman the way I looked at Molly, despite the fact that she was refusing to talk to me. I was convinced that I was not going to have another woman in my life, ever.
After three months, if I couldn’t lay a finger on another woman, I didn’t see how whatever spell Molly had obviously put on me was going to wear off. I had respect for Molly, and I was looking forward to building the thing that we had between us, but she had suddenly disappeared, leaving me baffled.
Was there something I had said to her that had scared her off?
Or was something going on in her life that I didn’t know about?
Had she perhaps found somebody else?
I didn’t have the answers to the most important questions about our relationship, but I knew I was even more helpless because I had never learned where Molly lived. She always made visits to my house, but I had never once been to her apartment.
I really was a sitting duck, and I didn’t know what to do. My work colleagues had noticed the change in my demeanor, but they had also noticed that I had stopped going out with several girls at once now for quite some time. Or even just the one.
I simply didn’t have the heart to find somebody else, as long as there was a chance that something could still happen between Molly and me - even though the chances of that happening were looking pretty fucking slim.
Frank had actually come into my office one afternoon to discuss the drastic change in my attitude. Most of my colleagues were now happy that I appeared to be focused at work, although I was in a very irritable mood.
Nobody had seen me in the company of a woman, and Frank came over to my office to congratulate me for the sudden change in behavior. He said that I was finally setting a good example for the new associates who worked at the office and that the company was much more comfortable with me.
I told him I had turned over a new leaf. However, what I didn’t share with him were the circumstances in which I had done so. I was much more upset, and I spent large amounts of time thinking about Molly. I simply could not get her out of my head.
Also, I didn’t share the status of my “here and then gone” relationship with Frank because I knew he was just going to be sarcastic about it and also partly because he would never truly believe that I finally wanted to settle down with just one woman.
But silently, I was dead serious about wanting and missing Molly, and it was starting to drive me crazy. I was desperate to see her again, but it hurt me that she wouldn’t even return my phone calls or even send a message telling me what was going on.
As the days passed, I was getting more and more convinced that I had done something wrong. Otherwise, why would Molly disappear from me all of a sudden?
There was the possibility that she had never really liked me in the first place. My generosity certainly pulled her to me, but now it was becoming obvious that she probably didn’t have the same feelings for me that I had had for her.
The very thought of it caused me to feel more distressed. It was unfair that she should leave me at a time when I thought everything was well. I was confident about my ability to set up a meaningful connection with her.
Or was it her daughter? Did she feel that I was never going to be responsible for Kelly’s wellbeing and she decided to move on? I wanted to tell her how much I loved her and that I was willing to do anything, but she was nowhere to be found.
Loved.
Yep, I guessed I fucking loved her.
But now I couldn’t tell her.
There was no need for me to stalk Molly, I told myself; if she truly didn’t want to be with me, then it was just as well. There was also no need for me to behave desperately about the entire situation because it would only make things worse.
I had been spending countless nights trying to stay up and wait for my phone to ring. I knew that it would be a matter of time before Molly got in touch with me, but after the first month passed, then the second and then the third, I was starting to feel pretty depressed, which was a new feeling for me.
This was the first time in my life that a woman had gotten to me and made me think continuously about her. Typically, I always moved on to the next one, but I simply could not do that with Molly.
There was something immensely special about her that I simply could not resist. Also, she was very good in bed, something that made me appreciate her even more.
I knew that fate was on my side; there was no way I could have met Molly only for everything to disintegrate at the last moment. Maybe the best thing for me to do was find her immediately, because I was losing my sanity being without her.
I wasn’t sure how to go about that. My friend who had helped get her a job at his chain of restaurants said she had left to go work for one that paid more. I was glad she had gotten a better job but now I had no way to get in touch with her, since she was ignoring my calls.
The following morning, I had an idea. I got up and made a conscious decision to go to her favorite restaurant that she once took me to. I would simply wait for as long as possible because she was bound to show up, and it would give me a chance to clear up everything.
I suddenly wavered, feeling like too much of a stalker. She was seated with Kate but they were getting up. I stood outside where I could see them but they couldn’t see me.
As they got up and left through the front door, I watched as they got into her old, beat up car. There was something strange I noticed about Molly as she walked outside. It looked as if her stomach had gotten bigger.
Was it possible that she was pregnant?
Was this why she’d been ignoring me?
I suddenly wanted to kick myself for coming all this way but not saying anything to her. I started running over to them but, likely not noticing me, they zoomed off in the car.
This woman had really thrown me for a loop. I wasn’t acting like my normal, confident self at all. I had no idea what had gotten into me but I knew it wasn’t something that could be cured without finding out what was going on.
And hanging out at her favorite places, waiting to talk to her, wasn’t the way to do it. There had to be a more direct way that didn’t have me looking like some kind of pathetic, deranged stalker.
For all I knew, she could react badly and call the cops, telling them I wouldn’t stop calling her and was now chasing her down the street. I didn’t think the Molly I knew would do that, but apparently I didn’t much about what was keeping her away from me or why. I had to go about finding out in a different way.
I stood there on the sidewalk staring until the small, white car had completely disappeared down the street. I had really been hoping that there was something I was going to be able to do to at least get a chance to speak to her.
There were no two ways about it; I had to come up with a different plan to make sure I could see Molly again and let her know how I felt.