by Maxi MacNair
“Your boobs look bigger.”
“My boobs always get bigger if I gain weight.”
“Randi…are you pregnant?”
Randi laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“Just checking. ‘Cause it sounds like you are. Maybe get checked out for depression? I know this time of year is hard on us.”
They chatted about Kellyn’s three kids, but the word pregnant rattled in Randi’s brain. God, it hurt so bad to rope her breasts into her bra this morning, she almost didn’t wear one. On the way home from Starbucks—her latte thrown away—she stopped at CVS and bought a pregnancy test.
Couldn’t be pregnant. Not from one time.
But she knew it was bull. And the more she thought about it, the more she connected with her body instead of focusing everything on her job and not thinking about Devon…
She knew she was pregnant before she got the test home. She’d been peeing a lot more so she didn’t even have to wait long before she had to go again.
Two little pink lines. Pregnant.
Her knees buckled and she sat.
She’d been pregnant once before. When she and Devon got together the very first time, before his first deployment. He’d just joined the Army, she’d just gotten into NYU. They knew they wanted to get married, but it wasn’t the time. So they’d gone together, and he’d held her hand while she had an abortion. She was convinced it was the right thing to do until they started trying and she couldn’t get pregnant again. And then Devon died. She’d killed their only chance at a baby. She knew, no matter what, no matter who the father was, she’d have this baby. She wanted this baby, she needed to live life again for someone else.
Randi knew she shouldn’t but she tried to use James’ phone number to trace his address. She wanted to talk to him. She needed to tell him. It didn’t come up with anything, just an anonymous tracfone. So she had to call him.
His tone was cool when he answered. “Randi, hey. I’m about to run out the door. What’s up?”
“I need to see you.”
He laughed. “That’s kinda funny, coming from you, you know?”
“Not that funny. Can I come over?”
“To my house?”
“Yes.”
He groaned. “What’s going on?”
“I need to talk to you, dammit!”
“Fine.” He gave her the address, and she hopped in her car to drive across town.
She hadn’t expected the building to be quite so tall. Or there to be a doorman.
“Mr. Moore is expecting you,” he said, and showed her to the elevator. Another man in uniform pushed the button for the penthouse. What kind of guy was James Moore? What had she gotten herself mixed up into?
He looked nothing like he had when she saw him shopping or at the restaurant. At home he wore a tight white t-shirt which showed off a six pack, and muscular arms. The suit he’d worn both times she saw him covered all of it up, made him look generic, somehow. Tonight he wore soft grey sweat pants, and his feet were bare. He looked more like a person now. He looked delicious.
He was the father of her child. The reality made her head swoop.
“Well, come in.”
She did, holding her purse in front of her like a shield between them.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called.” It sounded lame even to her. “I’ve been really busy at work.”
“Have a seat. You look exhausted.”
She was. “Thanks.”
She’d rehearsed this a hundred times on the way over, but none of it sounded right. It was like a Band-Aid. Do it fast. Be honest.
“I’m pregnant.”
James gaped at her, and she noticed his perfect teeth.
“And you’re here because you think it’s mine?”
“I know it’s yours.”
“How?”
“You’re the only guy I’ve been with…”
“You want me to believe you haven’t slept with anyone else? You were all over me. You had me in that bathroom in minutes.”
“Hey it was your suggestion and whether you believe me or not, it’s yours.”
“So are you looking for money?”
Now it was Randi’s turn to gape. Though when she looked around at his posh penthouse, the bank of computers on one wall, she realized it made sense.
“No. I don’t want money.”
“You’re having an abortion?”
Common sense told her the answer should be yes, but she knew she wasn’t going to. Not again. She shook her head.
James stumbled backwards and sat down on a black leather chair in his expansive living room. “I can’t have a child. My life is not set up for it. I just…I mean I just can’t. You know I’m happy to take you to the appointment, I’m happy to pay for it.”
She sat there silently letting him go through all his shocked responses. She’d expected nothing less, nothing more.
“I respect you can’t be a father. I’ll have a lawyer draw up paperwork and—”
“No!” he blurted out, “I can’t do that either.”
Now anger started to kindle inside her. “I’m not having an abortion. I won’t.”
“And I can’t have a kid!” He stood up. She had sat down in the meantime and was now looking up at him. He was getting angry, but she wasn’t afraid. The opposite in fact. The energy he was exploding with was turning her on. Her own frustration was doubling back on her at the same time and bringing her back to what she was feeling walking down those stairs, turning around to see him lock the door right before she pounced on him.
They stared at one another for a few beats, and the frustration in his grey eyes ignited her. He drove her wild. All she could think about was the bar bathroom. What would he be like in a proper bed?
She noticed he wasn’t watching her face any more, instead he drank in her body.
“You’re beautiful when you get pissed off,” he said. “I think you get more beautiful when I get pissed off.
She flung herself at him, and their mouths came together like clashing warhorses.
All the time she’d spent trying not to think of him, pushing him from her mind, focusing instead on her work. He’d been there, under the surface, simmering.
She loved the feel of his hands on her back through her sweater.
He stopped kissing her long enough to say “I can’t stop thinking about you. Every day I wanted to call.”
“I’m sorry,” she panted back.
His hard body pressed against hers through his t-shirt, she could feel every ridge of his muscles, the tightness there. A man who didn’t know how to relax, always on edge.
Now his hands found their way underneath her sweater, running along her skin.
Before in the bathroom, the sex satisfied an animal part of her, only the physical. Today his caresses stroked her emotions, made her feel adored and beautiful.
He kissed her neck, her exposed collarbone. Ran his fingers up and down her spine.
Breathless, they pulled apart remembering the life changing argument they were just having, but then they crashed back into each other. In between fighting tongues and groping kisses they continued on with the argument breathing heavily through every word.
“You’re really going to have it?”
She nodded. “I have to. Not because I’m against abortion.” How much to tell him? He’d been in her body, but not her heart. In her mind, but not in deep, the special place for love.
But a part of him grew inside her.
She touched her stomach, and he followed her lead, placing a large, strong hand on the little bump of her sweater.
“I was married,” she said. It was hard to say. Hard to describe. Hard to say those words out loud. It shouldn’t have been in the past tense, dammit. He never should have left her alone. “I loved him more than anything. I’ll always love him. He was—we were highschool sweethearts.”
James stiffened a bit. He didn’t take his hand from her stomach, but she could see the tightness i
n his shoulders.
So she spat out the hard part. “He died.”
James was kissing her neck as she said these words and he slowed the workings of his lips.
A bit of her hated how he released a bit of the tension.
“He was in the war.”
Since Devon’s death, Randi worked very hard as an advocate for veterans, PTSD, and mental illness. She vowed never to sugarcoat what happened to him.
“He died at home.”
James kept kissing her listening to every word she was saying.
She expected James to ask where he’d been wounded, or stop the rushing momentum their bodies were moving at, but neither of them could stop. She knew he got it though, and she’d come this far. She had to finish the story.
James lifted her sweater over her head started moving his kisses down to her swollen breasts.
“I tried so hard when he came back from Afghanistan. I did everything they told me to do. Tried to keep things calm. I took leave from my job. But he came back to me broken. He left a piece of his heart over there. He tried. God knows he tried. And there were some good days. Ones where I felt like he was really back. But it was borrowed time.”
She could say all this without crying. She’d spoken first at support groups, then to groups of families of survivors. She’d shared her story a lot in the past three years, but there was something releasing inside of her in that moment. Saying these words were bringing the feelings she had calloused herself to long ago to be able to go on with day to day life, not really living, like Devon himself had done when he got back from Afghanistan. It wasn’t right that James kept kissing her like he was while she was unburdening herself, but neither of them wanted the other to stop doing what they were doing. Something had fired between them and this fire was purging both their souls as it consumed their bodies with desire.
“We always had guns in the house. My work. His being a soldier. In his note he told me it wasn’t my fault. He said he did it to let me go. So I could have a life. Like he was some kind of lead weight and I was chained to him.”
James suddenly stopped, took her hand and squeezed it. His other hand stayed a warm weight on her stomach.
“I can’t know how you feel, but I know how he felt. I’m a veteran.”
“I know. I can’t say how I knew but I feel like I could tell from the first time I met you.” She went on, telling him the part she didn’t always tell the groups. “He tried to be so considerate. Put plastic down before he did it. Less of a mess to clean up.” The doctor told her it was instant, but she’d seen a lot of gunshot wounds, and she didn’t believe him. Devon did it right after she left for work on a Friday morning, and who knew how long he lay there before she got home at nine.
She’d gone for a drink with girlfriends. She knew he’d been having a rough week and she went anyway. Every week was a rough week.
“It’s a cheap platitude,” James said, “but it’s not your fault. Nothing you could have done. He was so lucky to have you. I was lucky to have survived what he went through.”
It felt like cheating to sink into James’ arms. Not cheating in an adultery sense, but in the sense that the world was giving her her another shot. The deep intimate pleasure of a man’s company had not been allowed to her after Devon. He held her until she tipped her lips up to his and they kissed again. He caressed her face.
“What are we going to do?” he asked.
4
James’ head spun. Randi curled against him, feeling so small but strong in his arms. Randi and a baby. He couldn’t. He literally couldn’t bring a child into this world. But he’d seen it in her green eyes. She wasn’t going to give it up.
He also couldn’t sign off on paperwork and never see either of them again. He too was not to have been given another shot at living fully. The scar tissue that had formed over those parts of him that left him vulnerable to love and life were starting to soften and heal. He had relegated his life to be only about paying for his mistakes and living selfishly to not let any more wounds happen to him, now the possibility of love was in his arms and cupped in his hand inside the belly of Randi.
He breathed in the smell of her hair, a honeysuckle scent he hadn’t noticed in the bar bathroom. James let his fingers run through the silky blonde strands and she reacted like a pleased cat. He wanted her very, very badly. In his arms, her eyes dropped closed, and her head dropped to his chest. Her breathing evened out. Asleep on him. Like telling him all that stuff about her ex-husband had just released her from a huge weight.
He scanned his combined living/dining room. Before she came he’d thrown all the plans for the banks into his spare room. Shut down the big wall of computers, made sure they were password protected. She could never know what he did.
He thought of the family he was providing for. What would they do without his continued support? How would the family live free and happy if their benefactor melted away? He couldn’t live this life though and be present with his real family though, and even when he went clean, he knew he’d have to leave the city. Leave the continent more like it. Need to change his name again. It would be expensive, and now disappearing would be disappearing from his child’s life. And how could Randi come with him? Living in this city was living on borrowed time, and he only had only planned for enough time to set himself up and then disappear forever.
Her cell jangled, ringing and buzzing in her bag, jolting her awake. She blinked at him, shook her head to clear it, and answered.
James heard a man’s voice. Randi sat up, wiped carefully at her eyes so as not to dislodge her make up, and muttered an assent. “I’ll be right there.”
She stood up, and James reached for her hand. “Come back tonight?”
“I don’t know when I’ll be done.”
“I don’t care. I’ll let the doorman know you’ll be coming, and he can see you up. I’m a light sleeper.”
She chewed her lip, the wheels turning. “All right.” Then she turned, pulled her coat out of the hall closet, slid into her sensible boots, and left.
Once she was gone, James took a moment to breathe in the scent of her. His whole plan hinged on the next few days. A flurry of a final few scores before disappearing forever. He hated it when things didn’t go according to plan, and Randi had definitely thrown a wrench into his plans. He had another score tomorrow though, and there was no backing out of this one now.
He was headed into First Consolidated Bank with two other guys, right around lunchtime with the highest number of people there. Just like that day he ran into Randi, the shoppers would make it easy to slip away. James new every alley and hiding place for five blocks with props and changes of clothes hidden in more places than either of the other two guys knew. He had scoped out the guards and the tellers enough to know that none of them were likely to try and be heroes. So many months of planning went into all of this.
He had his prosthetics ready to disguise his face, a baggy costume to make himself appear bigger than he was when he went in and was on security cameras. He glanced at his watch. No way to back out, nothing to do but be prepared to do the job. Not being ready would get him caught. It was time for a quick Skype call with the other two to go over the rules.
He reminded them of the last heist he was on. A guy shot and a guy in jail. No drama. In, out, pass your note to your teller:
Be still and don’t be afraid. I have a gun.
All the money you have within reach of you in the bag.
I will hurt you, but I don’t need to.
Stay quiet and calm.
Once I leave the bank, count to 30 and then call the police.
Quickly let them see the gun if you need to, but never enough to tip off anyone else to what was going on. Once they left the bank, they’d disperse, then regroup at the warehouse. Easy as pie.
The two other members of his team, Skywalker and Calrissian (James took the name Solo for himself), were pros, and they got it. This was job that James could do himself, he had
done something like this many times before, the other two guys made it more possible to hit the teller with the most cash on hand though. It increased the risk including two others, James knew now better than ever, but the plan was for grab as many scores as possible to get him where he needed to and get out of this game as quick as possible. Before the banks trained their security guards and built systems into place to fight against James’ strategy. The increased risk was worth the reward when he constructed the plan. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He ended the call, checked a third time to be sure he’d prepped everything for the day. Then he put all of his paraphernalia in his safe, and locked the door. In the safe he had jewels and stacks upon stack of hundred dollar bills. He did another scan of the apartment to make sure he hadn’t left out anything a detective would notice. The idea of her hunting him and not knowing it made him sick inside, but what else could he do. It wasn’t planned. He didn’t choose to love her, but he knew that he did. He didn’t choose to be a father, but he knew he was going to be.
Damn, he needed to push the idea out of his head. There was a baby involved. Another life.
The doorman buzzed and James knew it would be Randi, coming back. He’d been afraid she wouldn’t.
When the elevator doors rolled open she stood before him, seeming so small. He was immediately right back where he was before she left. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he knew that he wanted her. He scooped her in his arms, and carried her to his bedroom.
She laughed. “My shoes! My coat!”
“Who cares.”
He pulled her boots off first, then helped her out of the coat as she lost herself in his king sized bed, enfolded in silk sheets. One whole wall of his bedroom was window, and it looked out over the snowy city.
He unwrapped her like a late Christmas present. Helped her out of her slacks, sliding them over her hips and down her legs. She might be short, but her proportions were exquisite. She hadn’t chosen her underwear intending to be undressed, and the simple white bikini cut panties made him crazier than the black thong she’d worn last time he’d seen her.
He undid her blouse one button at a time, letting his warm fingers gently touch the skin underneath. Her splendid breasts greeted him, barely contained in a plain white bra. He’d not noticed a dragon tattoo on her hip before.
