Before She Was Mine

by Amelia Wilde

  Her body stiffens, her tear-brightened eyes rising to meet mine. She’s repulsed. No wonder. I’m half a man who fucked her and left her behind like a piece of garbage. I reach for the doorknob again. “That was a one-time thing. Don’t worry about it. I won’t let it happen again.”

  Tears. Tears welling up in her eyes like rain, and a dull pain races from one side of my chest to the other. The emptiness of my palms is like the moment after you’ve dropped something precious and fragile and it shatters on the concrete.

  “Sunny—”

  “I also—” Her voice is strained. She tries again. “I came by to let you know that I’m pregnant.”

  What? Whoa.

  “You don’t have to do anything, but I’m keeping it.” Her face flushes crimson. “At least this way I can have a part of you for myself.” Her hand flies to her mouth. She didn’t mean to say that last bit out loud. But she straightens up and quickly turns away, her back retreating down the hall.

  I’m falling.

  I catch myself on the sight of her disappearing around the corner.

  “Summer!” I shout it so loudly that a muffled conversation from the next apartment over comes to an abrupt halt. “Come back!”

  I don’t have my fucking prosthetic on, but I’m not going back for it now. I swing my body into motion, the ice pack falling and hitting the filthy floor with a wet thud, and punch one hand against the wall. I look like an idiot. Please, let her turn around—

  Summer takes one step back into view as I reach the end of the hallway, and I wrap one arm around her, half for balance, half because I’m never letting her go again.

  “Day—”

  I brusquely gather her to me and breathe in the scent of her hair.

  She could have been mine.

  She could have been mine all along. I feel it in the way she relaxes in my arms, lets me hold her, even though we’re technically fighting.

  Summer makes a sound against my chest.

  She’s crying. Sobbing.

  I pull her in closer to me.

  I’ll block out all the world if I have to.

  I might be broken, but she needs me to be a man. There are no other options.

  “I’m here,” I murmur into her hair. “We’re in this together. Sunny, it’s all right.”

  17

  Summer

  The hallway is disgusting.

  It’s dirty, and the smellscape is more like decrepit mall food court than apartment building, but in Dayton’s arms, all I can smell is the fresh, spicy scent of his skin. My gut rocks in a mortifying hiccup, and there’s a sound like the slow leak of a faucet.

  It’s my own tears, hitting the front of my puffy jacket.

  One side of Dayton seems heavier than the other, his weight resting more heavily on my right shoulder than my left. There’s the tiniest quake at the core of him, underneath my arms. God, he works for his balance. It’s not like that day in front of the Applebee’s. He’s not standing up tall.

  That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s out here with me.

  I wrap my arms tighter around the solid wall of his abs and breathe him in. I don’t know if I’m crying from panic or relief. I’ve always wanted this. Maybe not this way. Maybe not in this hallway. But every heartbeat that goes by is a dream come true in miniature.

  “You’re a stupid bitch.”

  The voice comes from an apartment directly above us and scares the hell out of me. Dayton’s arms relax. He pulls back an inch. I don’t want him to. Honestly, I’d stand here forever if it meant staying in his arms.

  “I’m the stupid bitch? You fucker. You’re the one ruining everyone’s life, and all you can think about is your own prick.”

  The man’s voice fires back. It’s too quiet to hear what he’s saying, but the tone of it is pure threat.

  Okay. Maybe not forever.

  The sound of the fight gets louder, then it softens. I focus my attention where it matters: on Dayton. On the feeling of his body pressed against mine.

  He uncurls one arm from my shoulders and brushes his palm over my belly, the slightest inhale, and my heart breaks. I didn’t expect him to touch me like that—like I’m something worthy of awe beneath this hideous puffy coat and a scarf that probably has snot on it now.

  Day stares down at my belly, his face running through emotion after emotion. I hold my breath.

  He meets my eyes, his dark eyes filled with a hard determination. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I bet Wes saw it a lot, when they were in Afghanistan.

  “How—” He rests his hand on my belly and clears his throat. “How soon can I find out more about that job you were talking about?”

  I laugh out loud, sucking in a big breath of the glorious, Day-scented air. “As soon as you come in to fill out the paperwork. Like I said in my emails, if you’d bothered to read them.”

  “Is now good?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He lets go of me, braces one hand against the wall, and swings himself into motion. He is hopping toward the stairs of his walk-up on one leg.

  “Day. Stop.”

  He stops and raises his eyebrows.

  “Get your leg first. And your coat. It’s freezing out there.”

  His jaw works. “Fine.”

  We make our way together back to the doorway of his apartment. This time, he holds it open for me.

  It’s not as bad as he made it out to be.

  There’s a smell hovering over everything, and the paint is as beat-up as it was in the hall. It’s not a place where I’d take my shoes off, and yes…when I hear his roommate whistling in another room, a shiver runs down my spine. I have the sense I’ve caught this place in one of its better moments.

  Day hops for the couch and tosses himself down. I’m not going to stand by the doorway, alone, so I follow him inside.

  He looks at me, his expression unreadable, and my heart beats faster.

  This is a thousand times more intimate than fucking.

  A million.

  He takes the hem of his jeans in his hands and rolls them up.

  We both look.

  His knee is normal.

  The three inches of leg below his knee are normal.

  Then the leg narrows into a knobby stub and stops.

  The roommate whistles in the next room. It’s an oddly similar pitch to the ringing in my ears. The noise fades into the background.

  It could have been worse than this.

  Whatever happened to him—whatever really happened to him over there—could have ended him. The line between a leg that ends too early and a casket in the cargo hold of a plane is so thin it makes me breathless.

  I could have lost him.

  Dayton’s prosthetic leans up against the front of the couch. He pulls it close and takes a threadbare liner from inside, rolling it over what’s left of his leg. Then he eases the leg into the prosthetic, pulling it this way and that, not looking at me.

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  His dark gaze flickers up to mine. He knows what I’m asking. I want to touch his skin, to reassure myself that this was all the damage that was done, but it’s already covered by the prosthetic.

  He tugs at it again, then braces his knuckles against the fabric of the couch and stands. He meets my eyes.

  “I fucked up.” Dayton takes a breath. “But I’m not going to fuck up again.”

  18

  Dayton

  “You sure you want to get in a wreck over this?”

  “I’m not going to die.” Summer’s voice comes across tired over the speakerphone. She’s been kept awake for a month, agonizing over this. I’ve answered every single one of her calls regardless of the time. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop her from renting a car this morning.

  “Maybe not from the snow.”

  She ignores this comment. “I think we can both agree that the weather is not good.”

  “The weather is terrible.”

  Summer speaks in a fast and fran
tic voice. “What do you want me to do? Turn around? If you want me to turn around, I’ll turn around.”

  I laugh. “You’re not a good liar.”

  “I can turn around. If it’s that hazardous, then I should do the right thing and—”

  “No. You’re almost there.”

  There’s a pause, and my pulse skyrockets. I grip the phone tighter. “Summer?”

  “I have to do this, Day. I couldn’t just—”

  “I know.”

  I shift my position from where I’m reclining on the bed in my third-floor walk-up. The whole place smells stale this morning. Summer’s roommate went out of town last night, so I stayed with her. Being back in this place, after that, makes my skin crawl.

  “I can’t tell them in a phone call. It wouldn’t be right.”

  A nervous energy prickles over my knuckles. I’m nervous for her. I know how they feel about me. I know how they’ve always felt about me.

  “I get it.” Summer’s always been about doing the right thing. “But you don’t have to tell them the whole story.”

  “What do you mean?” That day at her apartment flashes into my mind. The weight of her willing body in my hands. The drawn-out guttural sound she made, deep in her throat, when I took her. I don’t know why I tried to leave her again after that. I’m addicted to the slick, tight feeling of my dick buried inside her.

  “Maybe you don’t have to tell them that I’m the father.” I’m addicted to her. That doesn’t mean it’s right for Summer. In fact, with Alexei back in the city and breathing down my fucking neck, it is all wrong for Summer.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “So you think I should walk in there and tell them I’m pregnant from a one-night stand and I don’t know who the father is?”

  I lay back on the bed. The pillow is too thin, worn through, and this conversation is making my amputated foot hurt. The tension wraps through the arch like a cramp. I can’t get it to release.

  “It would be better than telling them it was me.”

  “You really think that?” She sounds wounded, even though I’m the one who’s the piece of shit.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I don’t. And—” I can practically see her lifting her chin. “I’m not ashamed that we slept together.”

  “We did way more than sleep together,” I joke, and she laughs.

  “Stop. I’m trying to concentrate on the road.”

  “I’m going for accuracy.”

  “If you get any more accurate, I’m going to turn this car around.” The desire lacing her voice, even if it’s dampened by worry, sparks a matching desire at the base of my spine. I wish she’d turn around. I wish she’d leave her family out of this, but Summer’s never going to do that. And I’d never ask her to.

  “Last night…”

  “What about it?”

  I want to draw her out, erase the dark circles from under her eyes, make her laugh again.

  “I’ve never heard you make sounds like those.”

  “Day,” she scolds, and I know she’s blushing, I know her cheeks are that deep red that makes me want to caress her face in my hands. She clears her throat. “I thought we were in this together.”

  “We are.”

  “Now you’re trying to get me to turn around.”

  “I’m mostly kidding.”

  “Do you really want me to keep you—to keep us—a secret?”

  A bright blaze of hope seers through my chest at the sound of her voice. “No. What I want is for you to tell your family that we’re going to do this, we’re going to make it, and I want them to be happy for you.”

  We’re both silent a long time.

  “I don’t know if that’s going to happen,” she admits carefully.

  “They love you,” I tell her. “They might not be thrilled at first, but they’re still going to love you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they’re your family. They’ll love you no matter what.”

  “You don’t have to pretend that everything will be okay just because I’m pregnant with your baby.”

  Pregnant with your baby makes me hard as a rock. The thought of her belly getting round with my baby is so fucking sexy.

  It’s sexy and terrible, because being with me is a risk for her on every level. She could lose her family over this. I take a breath and try to calm the fuck down.

  “Fine. I won’t. It could blow up in your face.”

  “I know,” she says softly.

  “It won’t,” I tell her.

  “I’m getting off the highway,” she says abruptly. “I’ll call you when I’m done.”

  19

  Summer

  “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  Wes leans lazily against the doorway between the living room and the front entry, his hand wrapped around a cold beer. He’s here for the weekend, too. My heart squeezes thinking of the nights Day used to spend here, back when things were simple.

  “I’m not in trouble.” I raise my chin defiantly and my mom sighs.

  Wes smiles at me. “It’s written all over your face, Sunny.”

  I bite back the urge to call him an asshole. We’ve been drifting apart ever since the dance, but that day at Applebee’s made it ten times worse. It’s not like I can completely cut him off, though. He’s completed too many deployments. If something happened to him and we weren’t speaking—

  My parents sit close together on the loveseat across from my chair, holding hands. My mom bites her lip, worry written in the lines creasing across her forehead. But this doesn’t have to be a disaster. They might not like it, but it doesn’t have to be a disaster. There’s a warmth deep down in my belly. I can’t feel the baby moving yet, but he or she is there.

  “This is all wrong.” I stand up from the chair and Wes laughs at me. “Can you guys just—” I motion for my parents to stand. “I feel like we’re at some weird business meeting. Or a jury trial.”

  My dad laughs, and unlike when Wes spoke up, his voice is warm. “Sunny, you’re giving us all a heart attack. Say what you need to say.”

  “Are you moving out of the state?” Mom’s voice is anxious. “If you are, I can understand that, but—”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Mom—”

  “She’s pregnant,” Wes says from his spot at the door.

  There’s a stunned silence, and then Wes bursts out laughing.

  “I’m just kidding.” He forces the words out through his laughter and slaps his knee. “Wanted to break the tension. Did I do it?”

  I glare at him, then turn my attention back to my parents. They chuckle half-heartedly, my mom’s hand raised to her chest.

  I take a deep breath.

  Get it over with.

  “Wes is right.”

  Dead air.

  Maybe they didn’t hear me.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  My mom’s mouth drops open. My dad freezes, head cocked to the side, as if I’ve just spoken in another language.

  “I’m due in October, and—”

  “Oh, my God!” My mom’s shriek is ear-splitting, and I jump, my body startling at the sound. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.” I take a step cautiously back toward the chair. “Are you—?”

  “Sunny!” She leaps forward, crossing the room in two single bounds, and folds me in her arms. “Sunny, oh, my God. Pregnant!” She kisses me on the cheek and pulls me in for another hug. “Robert, I’m going to be a grandmother!” Mom backs up and takes my hands in hers, eyes shining with the start of tears. “I can’t believe it. Oh, I can’t believe it.” Her expression flies into one of deep thought. “I want to be called Nana. No, Mimi. Or maybe just Linda.”

  “What—” The relief coursing through my veins is so strong that I feel like I’m about to pass out. She’s excited. I scan the room—Dad looks confused, and Wes is stone-faced. After a second, Wes nods, s
traightens up, and walks assuredly over to me. He pats me awkwardly on the shoulder.

  “We’ll be here for you, Sunny,” he says gruffly. “Whatever you need. You can call anytime.”

  “You can,” insists my mom. “Oh, please let me babysit for you. I would love that. I’m sure you’re going to need a lot of help. Robert, do you think we could pitch in for some daycare? I can’t take the baby every day while you’re at work, but we could help out with the cost.” She squeezes my hands. “You’ll want a great place. It’s so important. But don’t worry, honey. We’ll be there for you every step of the way. Do you need anyone to go to appointments with you?”

  I shake my head under the barrage of her words.

  They think I’m going to be a single mom.

  I guess I could. I guess things could turn out that way, but Day said he’d be there for me. He’s been there for me already. He sat in the room with me for the first ultrasound. He answers the phone every time I call, unless he’s on the floor at the factory. But I’m not going to give voice to that inkling of doubt at the back of my mind. Not a chance.

  “Uh—” I squeeze my mom’s hands back and take a deep breath. “I’m okay on the appointments, actually. The father—he’s involved.”

  There’s a shift in the room. Mom takes a step back. “He is? Why isn’t he here with you?”

  “He—he didn’t think he should come. This time.” I hate being this cryptic, but now that the time has come, I can hardly get the words out. “Because—”

  “Who’d you sleep with, Sunny?”

  My mom shoots Wes a look of pure poison. “You can be honest with us, okay? Even if you don’t know who the father is.”

  “Oh, my God.” I rub a hand across my forehead. “I know who the father is.” I don’t look at Wes. “It’s Dayton.”

  Mom’s hand goes to her mouth. “You met another Dayton?”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Wes thunders.

  “Son—” My dad’s tone is warning.

  Wes turns on his heel and stomps upstairs, his feet thudding on every step.