The Surprise (Secret Baby Bad Boy Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  None, I hope. It’s just a false alarm. A couple weeks late isn’t anything to really freak out over. I’ll be right as rain, in a little bit. No problem.

  It’s not until I’m sitting on the toilet waiting for my strips to dry off, and the test results to come in, that it really starts to hit me how serious this all is. I had been nervous before, but…

  Damn. What am I doing here? How did I get myself into this mess?

  I know better than to get involved with the kind of men my father gets himself in trouble with. I know better than to let Dad talk over me, to let him make decisions, because his decisions are always terrible.

  It was my decision, though, that was going to have real, lasting consequences this time. It was my fault that I was in this mess.

  I could blame whoever I wanted. That was the easy way out. That was what my Dad would have done. He’d blame every single person but himself.

  But if there’s one ounce of strength of character left in me, I’m at least not going to let myself sit around and cry over spilled milk when I could have stopped any time.

  But I didn’t. I liked it. I wanted it. And some part of me still wants it, even now that I’m starting to really understand the consequences, and that’s the most terrifying part of it all. The fact that no matter how bad things get, I’m never going to want to be done with it.

  Because I’m addicted to him, and I might be able to walk away, but I’m never going to kick the habit, not ever again. And with a baby, maybe even the option to walk away is disappearing.

  The electronic test on the counter beeps and I jump. I’m not going to look at it. Because the minute that I do, the minute that I read the results, it’s either all real, or I’ve been an idiot for the past hour, worrying over nothing.

  I don’t know which is worse.

  Eleven

  Luke

  It’s another long day. Every day seems to be longer now that Kate’s around than it had been before. Maybe there’s something I’m getting out of this. After all, it’s not as if I don’t really enjoy her company. And of course, there are the other benefits, as well. Those are ‘company’ too, I suppose, in their own way.

  The real problem has been, and continues to be, that I’m perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  At some point, I’m going to come home, and my entire house is going to be entirely devoid of anything of value. It’s not my favorite place in the world; I don’t keep much at the house, because I don’t need much. I’ve never had a reason to spend any great deal of time there, after all.

  But now, I’ve got someone there, waiting for me, and I don’t know what the hell for except that I know that eventually, she’s going to want some sort of explanation of what our relationship’s going to be long term.

  That is, of course, if she doesn’t, as I already suggested, run off with all of my stuff because this has all been an elaborate con. Still, if that’s what this is, then I’m not going to be all that sour about it.

  So she gets a few kitchen knives and a television. That’s hardly a big deal. I got to do whatever the fuck I wanted to a woman, and while I won’t claim she couldn’t do anything to argue, she certainly didn’t make any effort to do so.

  Then, at the end of the day, I head home like any other day. Once, I had imagined that I would come home to a clean house, with all the chores that needed to get done finished up. Which was a nice fantasy, but that’s all it was, I guess. A fantasy.

  Today, something feels different. Something feels off. I don’t know what it is, the whole time driving home. Just a strange feeling in my gut that things might not go the way I wanted. It ought to be a feeling that I’m used to. It isn’t.

  “What the hell,” I say to the empty car. “Worst case, the house is burning down.”

  But it isn’t. I can tell that by the time I get within three miles of the place. A house fire, you can see from a long, long way off. It billows thick, black smoke in a massive chimney, and then it spreads out like those photos of tornadoes you see on television.

  So as much as it might have been interesting, and might have fit my prophetic mood, I didn’t come home to anything burning down. That was the first one down. I started painting pictures of what could have happened to set me on edge, but I couldn’t check any of those until I got home.

  No, the place hadn’t been smashed into. At least, the front door is closed, the light in Kate’s room is on like it always was, and there’s no sign that anyone’s been in or out of the place all day.

  There’s no way of knowing that until I get inside. The cops aren’t here to arrest me. There’s no indication that anyone takes any notice at all of my car pulling into the garage.

  I step out of the car. Nothing in the garage has been moved. I don’t know why they would move something from the garage, but I have to figure out what’s going on at some point, or I have to accept that I’m just going nuts and that I should give up and call it a day.

  My predictive abilities are hardly incredible, but I can’t ignore them. Too many of my genuinely good ideas have been the result of what, at first, seemed like nothing more than a gut reaction. Now I trust them even when they look like they’re probably wrong, and I generally prefer it that way.

  Step through the door. Nothing missing in the living room. A sixty-inch screen still hangs on the wall. The wiring still comes out through the drywall a little below knee-high and plugs into my home theater system. I still have two couches and an easy chair. I still have all my windows intact. If anything, they’re even cleaner than I remember them.

  “Kate?”

  The thought had occurred to me that there was something wrong with her. That whatever it was that might have been setting me off was a feeling that she’d been hurt somehow, or that things were going poorly for her. But I don’t know if I’m ready to gamble on that, just yet. At least, I don’t know yet whether or not it’s worth the gamble.

  I take a deep breath. It’s probably nothing. I’m letting my nerves get to me. The fact that she isn’t answering isn’t brand new, either. She’s a brat half the time, and the other half, I have no idea what’s going through her mind. The closest thing she’s ever gotten to affectionate was trying to tell me to go fuck myself with all the passion she could muster, and I think that was a struggle for her. But I appreciated it all the same, because I’m pretty sure that she means it sweetly, or at least not cruelly.

  “Kate?”

  I start up the steps without waiting for an answer. She’s always in the same place. There are always hints that she’s been around when I’m not here. Less milk in the jug than when I left it, for example, or the note that she left me a few weeks ago. She likes to leave ‘love notes’ like that, when she’s feeling frisky.

  Oh, she’d never call it that, of course. Kate would die before she was forced to admit that she was feeling anything other than the firmest contempt for me. But I know the truth, even if she wants to hide it.

  “Kate?” My voice is lower this time. I touch the door to her room, and it swings open. She’s laying in bed staring at the ceiling. For a moment, I’m afraid that she’s dead. Then she blinks, takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a sigh.

  My blood continues to pump at a thousand miles a minute in my ears, even once I know that she’s okay. The feeling of panic doesn’t just go away, not right after anyways.

  “Kate?”

  “What?”

  She doesn’t look at me. Just answers simply.

  I don’t want to ask what’s wrong, because if I did, then I’d be admitting that I care what’s wrong with her. Admitting it to her means admitting it to myself, and admitting it to myself means that I have to actually put a good deal of thought and concern into what I’m going to do about her being here.

  And maybe I do care. But I’m not ready to admit it to either of us, because eventually she’s going to be gone, and we both had better accept that now before it starts to really hurt down the line. She doesn’t look at me whe
n I step inside, even though I know she must have seen it out of the corner of her eye.

  “You feeling sick?”

  It’s a good compromise between asking her what’s wrong and ignoring it, right? She looks a little green, and her hands clasped over her stomach do help the look a little bit. Maybe she was throwing up earlier, and now she’s trying to cool off before she starts spitting up again. It paints a good picture in my mind.

  “No,” she says. No elaboration. He’d hoped that it was a sufficiently open-ended question that she might tell him what the answer actually is, if the answer wasn’t ‘yes I feel sick.’ Apparently he’d hoped for too much.

  “Are you going to be alright?”

  Instead of answering, either way, she just shrugs. I wait for more. “Probably,” she says finally. “I just have stuff on my mind.”

  I want to know what it is. “Okay. Well, I’ll be downstairs. I think we’re going out tonight. Nothing fancy, you can wear what you’ve got on now.”

  “I wore these yesterday,” she says absently. “I need to change.”

  “Whatever you say,” I halfway agree.

  I don’t know what’s happened, but she looks like her dog just died, and the truth is that even if I were willing to admit that I was worried about her, admit that I cared about her as more than a lukewarm roommate, I don’t know if I can fix that kind of upset.

  I also don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the fact that it worries me as much as it does that I have to leave her like this. Which is why I’m not going to get into it any deeper than I already have. I’m not going to make that mistake again.

  Twelve

  Kate

  I can’t be pregnant. I really just can’t. So it doesn’t matter what the tests said. ‘Positive’ is just a word. The reality is, I’m not. Right? That’s how it works? I just keep wishing until it changes?

  No, it isn’t. And I know it isn’t. Because I know that it won’t change, and I know that if I keep wishing it weren’t true, by the time that I know that all “hope” of a change is lost, I’m not going to turn that kind of hate around.

  Mom felt that way. I know she did. It’s not like I don’t understand it, the way that Dad is. It was just a little fling. Nothing serious. Less serious than whatever Luke and I have, and that’s nothing serious.

  She never managed to have one warm thing to say to me. I’m not going to subject any child of mine, or even any future child, to the kind of contempt that my mother had for me. I’m going to accept what I have to accept, and in this case, that means that I have to accept that I’m pregnant, like it or not.

  I push myself up from the bed. I’ve still got to change. I should shower. I feel nasty. But I can’t make myself get undressed. It’s not that I wouldn’t be able to stand, or that I couldn’t stand imagining myself undressed, or something silly like that. No, I just can’t make myself feel like there’s any reason to get undressed.

  I can just keep on feeling gross. I’m a gross person. A thousand ways out of this situation, and I refused to take any of them. There’s more to it than that, of course. But I could have avoided it easily. If only I’d been smart enough to try.

  So instead I shrug my shirt off and start going through the drawer. The half-hearted folding job just reminds me that I tried to get out of here yesterday.

  I tried, and I failed, and now I was always going to fail. Even if I succeeded, what would the point be? Was I going to be a single mother? I’ve heard the horror stories, and I know how that works out.

  It works out with me working 80 hours a week, and even still I can’t keep my kids fed. Meanwhile they grow up without any parents at all. One is away, working and making money and doing stuff that, frankly, the child doesn’t care about one bit.

  The other never existed in her life in the first place. Just walked away before they even knew what the difference was. Before the child could know how much it would screw them up in the years to come.

  All they’d know, their entire life, was that nobody cared about them. That was an experience that I have more experience with than I’d like to think about, and I don’t want to ever, in my entire life, put a child in that situation. I’m not a perfect person, but I can at least make sure that I don’t raise a kid as fucked up as I am.

  There’s a noise in the door. I jump suddenly, my new shirt hanging between my hands where I left it when I started to let myself get distracted. Luke strides in and pulls me into a kiss without a word. I melt into it.

  “You’re not doing so good, huh?”

  I pull him tight against me. It’s not a real relationship. We’re never going to be in love, not really. Because he’s always going to look at me as a burden. But I can at least feel like he cares about me for a minute, and that’s going to have to be good enough for a while. It’s not like I have another option.

  He pulls away after a moment and pulls me into another kiss. Steps into me and forces me to take a step back. He forces another step out of me, and then my legs are pressed against the mattress. I let him push me down onto the bed. There’s no camera this time. No masks. I look up into his eyes and they’re burning.

  His hand moves in a blur and he claps his hand against my breast with a loud ‘slap.’ The pain shoots straight to my brain and sends a shiver of pain back down as an automatic response.

  “You don’t feel good? I don’t know what’s wrong,” he says softly. “But I know how to help with it.”

  I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about that response. I don’t know if he’s making up an excuse for doing whatever he wanted to do, or making it sound less personal that he’s trying to help. I don’t know that it much matters which it is, as long as I get what I need from it. He looks like he’s ready to give me what I want.

  Another slap. This one is back-handed, but gentler. Across my face. The reaction is instant this time, a sense of pleasure. Of certainty about our relationship.

  “Is this a problem, slut?”

  I shiver at the word.

  “No, sir,” I say. I know I shouldn’t do anything. I should let him do whatever he wants. That’s the game. But I can’t help letting my hand drift up and rub across my cheek. It burns where he struck it.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” he says. It’s not a question, but I know that there’s an implied question at the end. He’s asking me if I’m going to tell him not to, and I’m not. I’ve never told him not to do anything, and I’m not going to start now. It’s not my place, and I don’t want it to be.

  He reaches onto my dresser… his dresser, I correct myself. I’ve just got clothing in his dresser. In his room. We’re in his bed. There’s a bottle on there, nondescript and clear. The liquid inside is clear, too, and he pours a little on my mound, above my entrance, making a pool of oily liquid.

  He rubs some of it and then moves down into my pussy, working two fingers in at once. It’s tight, after two days without making love, but with the lube, they slip in easily in spite of the stretching that my body has to do. I start to feel it immediately, my head clearing as thoughts make way for open pleasure.

  I accept it happily. He was right. This was exactly what I needed, because I’m not ready to tell him yet. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it. Never mind what he’s going to feel about a child. He’s got a life, and I’m just a burden to him. I pay for my time here with my body, but that’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough, as far as I’m concerned.

  He adds a third finger; my walls squeeze them so much that it forces them into the tightest space possible. It’s already stretching so much that it hurts, and yet, I know that it’s not nearly as thick as his cock is going to be.

  He moves roughly, deliberately. His thumb circles my clit, but he’s not doing it for my pleasure. None of this is. He’s just getting me ready. The thought makes me feel like a slut, like he keeps calling me. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have liked it. But now I don’t know how I made it this far without that feeling.
This is what I was made for. What my body was built to do.

  When he enters me, he fits inside me like a lock and key. I wasn’t completed until he started to fuck me, no matter how much I thought that I would hate it. Now matter how much he thought so.

  He doesn’t waste time moving slowly inside me. My thighs move up to mesh with his hips and he grabs my shoulders to pull himself in forcefully, every thrust hard enough to make me wince.

  My voice starts to come, but I’m not worried about anything. There’s nothing for me to be worried about, not any more. His cock is the only thing I have to think about, and I can barely even make it that far before my mind starts to go blank with pleasure.

  I hear his voice, grunting as he thrusts. I feel his fingers tightening on my body as he starts to get closer and closer to the impending orgasm. The way that he takes me drives me wild. Builds up the tension in my stomach to a fever pitch.

  His thrusts become ragged as he starts to approach his end. His breaths come hard and rough and sounding more and more like moans to harmonize my own with every moment, until his fingers dig into my skin so hard that it starts to hurt bad. It’s going to leave a bruise in my shoulder, but he thrusts into me as deep as anything has ever been inside me, and then I feel his cock twitching inside me as he cums. Once, twice, three times.

  His breaths come hard and he presses a kiss onto my forehead.

  “God,” he growls. “That was good.”

  Thirteen

  Luke

  I don’t know precisely why I keep going back to the table. It’s not like I have a lot of history with those three guys. Hell, now that Bill is persona non grata, I only know two of them. There’s another third guy now, Clint. He’s got good instincts. Good enough that I don’t know if it’s a totally, 100% smart idea for me to keep playing around here.

  If I’m going to win some and lose some, then I don’t have any problem. But if some shark’s going to come around, then I’m not really interested in playing. I don’t just love eating big losses, after all.