Was that approval? What did parental approval sound like? I hadn’t had much experience. And the girl had two more parents on top of Reggie. Growing up in a two-parent household must be exhausting… so many fucking people.
“Don’t do anything stupid. You can’t protect her from prison,” he added.
“When she told me what he did to her, I wanted to kill him. I still want to kill him.”
“You love her. I get it.”
Shit, was it that obvious? Had she told him? There was no use lying. Dana was in trouble. I’d stroke my own ego later. This was serious.
“I do love her. I want to find some way to put Henry behind bars. For a long time.”
“Stalking charges aren’t that heavy.”
“He doesn’t need to get charged with stalking; he just needs to get charged with something. There are much heavier sentences out there. He just needs to get caught for one.”
“Don’t get my daughter involved in criminal activity, Adam.”
“I won’t. I’m not trying to get locked up again.”
“Then what do you have in mind?”
I looked at him. Shit. Anything for his daughter, huh? I didn’t know whether that was crazy or admirable.
“I might know some guys who can help.”
22
Dana
Of all the rotten weekends to start stalking me again, Henry had chosen the one directly following the grand opening of my new place of work. Shit. Who was I kidding? That was probably on purpose. Closer to the end he had started bemoaning my career. He didn’t like thinking that I was working to support myself while the pair of us lived together. He thought it was his job. While that worried him, I found myself hard-pressed to find out where in downtown Los Angeles we could possibly be able to stay if the rent wasn’t being supported by two incomes.
I loved TOME. There was no way I would have allowed myself to be scared into not opening that week. Did Henry know about the shop? The answer to that was probably yes but how much did he know? Had he followed me here before? Seen me with Mimi? Seen me with Adam? My skin prickled imagining him watching us the night we had come, and I had sucked his dick, right there on the floor of non-fiction. I felt violated.
There was no way I was going to let Adam stop me from working. Not unless something truly fucked up happened. He would be the absolute quintessential domineering boyfriend if he didn’t respect my wishes so much. That was where he and Henry differed. I could listen to him tell me why it was that he even wanted me to stop working, without me wanting to claw my eyes out. He was interested in my safety, not his own ego. That didn’t mean however that he didn’t make a few ridiculous claims of his own and expect me to follow them.
The first was that he would drop me off and pick me up from work every day. In the event that he couldn’t do it, I would hitch a ride with Mimi. He didn’t want me in any sort of taxi or bus alone. I could swing that. The seat on the back of his bike wasn’t uncomfortable. It was more than a little bit sexy seeing him waiting outside the shop for me on his bike, one leg on the ground to steady it. Leather jacket on. I loved it.
The other had been a little harder; telling my dad. He had gone with me—which was great—but Dad had still flipped out. I could just imagine the shouting match he had had with Mom because he most likely called her afterward. He was all for the assisted transport. He was also oddly, though thankfully, not opposed to me staying with Adam, and I suppose all the other things we would do together as well.
The week faded into the weekend without incident. At least, no Henry-related incident. It was a good thing that Adam made me feel the way that he did. It was a great thing. I loved it. I loved him. His condition to let me out of the house alone on Saturday was that he or Mimi come with me, and he had to be at the auto shop that afternoon. All I wanted was to go to the drugstore. Mimi and I went together which meant that she learned I was pregnant at the same time as I did. She actually learned I was pregnant before I did because I made her read the test out to me before looking at it myself. How stupid was it that I turned out to be pregnant when Dad had joked about it just the weekend prior?
I don’t want to brag or anything, but I totally knew that it would be positive. I just knew. I didn’t think my reaction to the ‘positive’ result was going to be so… tranquil. After the drugstore, we had gone back to the bookstore and used the bathroom there.
“Mimi, please throw that away,” I asked her as I washed my hands in the sink. She was still holding the stick.
“Why the hell are you so calm about this?” she demanded. She had been dragging her hand through her hair and pacing so much it was making me dizzy.
“Freaking out about it isn’t going to do anything, Mimi. We have to leave.”
“You have to take another test. It says right here on the box that you get your most accurate results when you do the test first thing in the morning. When your urine is at its most concentrated.”
I pulled a face, drying my hands.
“Can you stop talking about my urine, please? Throw that away.”
“Dana, you don’t have to try and be strong about this. You are allowed to freak out. This is a disaster.”
I turned to look at her.
“Disaster? Why is it a disaster?”
“I mean, it’s Adam’s. Right? You want to have a baby with him? You want to have a baby, at all?”
“Would you stop saying that like it’s the most unlikely scenario you’ve ever heard.”
She was quiet, but her gaze was so concentrated and focused I could feel it.
“Do we really need to have this conversation again?”
I walked out the door, and she followed me.
“Which one? About Adam? Are we still treating him like years haven’t passed since he’s been in trouble with the law? Are we still going on hearsay over his actual actions?”
“Just because he has proven himself someone who cares about you and you can date doesn’t mean he can be a father, Dana. Can you imagine him changing diapers? Will he even want to co-parent with you? Are you even keeping it anyway?”
I spun around and looked at her, horrified.
“Did you think that I wouldn’t?”
“I would think that you would consider all your options before making a decision.”
I pressed my finger to my head and tapped it a little, giving Mimi my best contemplative face.
“Thought about it. I’m keeping it.”
I turned and was out the door, heading for her car before she could reply. She walked up to the vehicle after she had locked the store up, silent but obviously pissed. She opened the car, and we sat in silence for a solid minute and a half, the tension thick like molasses.
“Dana, I’m going to support whatever you decide to do but you know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t warn you about Adam first.”
“What’s there to warn me about? I can worry about Adam, Mimi. You need to worry about your own man.”
“Jeez, you too? What are these discussions you have about Anthony behind my back with Adam?” she demanded. “Is it about the money he supposedly gave to bail his brother out of debt? Are you afraid he hangs out with criminals too?”
I ignored the jab at Adam’s character.
“I can’t talk about this with you. You have to ask Anthony.”
“No. I always let you hear exactly what I feel about Adam. Tell me. Why do you and now apparently Adam too, hate Anthony so much?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to tell her, but I wasn’t going to lie to her when she asked me directly to my face.
“That money? The money that he gave his brother to pay off the guys he owed… well, Adam is the one who asked him whether he could lend the money to Lawson, since Lawson would be much better off owing his brother than owing those guys. He told me that when he was on the phone with Anthony, he heard a woman in the background. He said that her name was Mandy.”
Given that Mimi was behind the wheel, this was likely not the bes
t time to be telling her that her perfect boyfriend was a cheater and a liar. It was close to sundown, and the mood was already tense, but it was about time she knew. I never liked Anthony. Not for a second, and I had been right to. I had minded my own business for months, but I wasn’t going to tell her what she wanted to hear just because the truth was much uglier.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” she said, clearly in denial.
“That was what I told him. But he said that one night, when he and Lawson were talking, he mentioned Anthony’s girlfriend, and he said her name was Mandy. When Adam corrected him, he acted like he had never heard your name in his life.”
“When were you planning on telling me this?”
“I wasn’t,” I said truthfully. “You and Anthony are not any of my business. Adam was the one who knew, and he was asking me what the best way to tell you would be. You know that I’ve hated him from day one, and I know how this sounds, but I would never steer you away from him because of what I felt.”
“If this is true, what am I supposed to do? He’s perfect, Dana. He has a great job. He’s attractive. He’s ambitious.”
“He’s lying to you. Playing you for a fool. Taking advantage of your love and trust. Are you just going to let him keep doing that to you? Are long money and an otherwise spotless record worth it?”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t like he’s killed anyone or anything… no offense.”
“None taken.”
“He’s a good man, Dana….”
“Why does it sound like you are trying to convince yourself and not me?”
“I can’t believe you are giving me dating advice when your boyfriend has a record,” Mimi pouted.
“Maybe you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” I said loftily. She rolled her eyes.
“Know any more convicts with hearts of gold?” she joked. Heart of gold? Did Adam have that? He wasn’t a fucking monster, but I also knew he was no angel.
“Besides Adam’s friend, Lawson, I can’t say I’m really about that life.”
Mimi dropped me off at Adam’s before she made her way to Anthony’s. Our car conversation had wandered away from Adam’s seed that was currently growing in my belly. My mother was twenty-one when she got pregnant with me, just a few years younger than I was. Your mid-twenties were sort of early, but I was one implanted embryo too late to think about that right then; I was already pregnant.
Maybe this was something of a delayed response. Maybe I would cry or feel deliriously happy later. I was in shock. That was it. Either that or I just didn’t believe that I was pregnant in the first place and had filed it away as a fantasy already. Any life in which Adam and I raised a child together would have to be a fucking fantasy. He wasn’t a ‘kids’ kinda guy—or at least I didn’t have him pegged as one.
I didn’t think I was a ‘kids’ kinda girl either, until of course; I became pregnant with one. Obviously my body didn’t seem to care whether I wanted kids or not. It was giving me one. Maybe I wasn’t having a reaction because I had seen it coming. We hadn’t used protection. Never. He didn’t finish inside of me every single time, but it didn’t matter trying to identify exactly when it had happened. I had been meaning to get on the pill. Meaning to but between the store, and the trip to LA, and the whole thing with Henry… I just hadn’t.
We shared a bed every night. I couldn’t sleep, for obvious reasons but Adam was out like a light. There were better times to reveal the news, but why wait? I ran a hand over his chest.
“Adam?” I whispered. Nothing.
“Adam?” I said again, slightly louder.
“Hm?” he grunted drowsily.
“Are you asleep?”
“Not anymore,” he said. He scrubbed a hand over his face and peered down at me. “What do you need?”
“I’m sorry I woke you. I couldn’t sleep.”
“And you wanted help counting sheep?”
“No… I have something to tell you.” I propped myself up on my elbows and looked down at him.
“You don’t have to be scared here, Doll. He’s not getting near you.”
“I know, it’s not about that,” I said. “After work with Mimi, I went to the drugstore.”
“Did you see him?” he asked quickly.
“No. It’s something else… Adam… I went to buy a pregnancy test.” I watched his face as his brow creased.
“And it was negative, right?”
“It was positive. I’m pregnant.”
He sat up and looked at me.
“How far along are you?”
“I don’t know. It can’t have happened that long ago. I haven’t really had many symptoms yet but I was late, and we never used condoms so it can’t be more than a few weeks.”
He ran his hands ran through his hair.
“Babe… are you sure?”
“I have to go to the hospital to find out how far along, but the test was positive. Are you mad?”
He sighed deeply.
“I’m not mad, I’m… going to be a dad,” he said like he couldn’t believe it. He looked at me, and his face looked pained like he wanted to say something to me, but he didn’t want to at the same time. “Get dressed.” He threw the covers off and got up. He headed for his closet, pulling his clothes on.
“Why? Where are we going?”
“We need to leave. I need to leave, and I can’t leave you here alone.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Where are we going?”
“If you don’t want to come, I’ll ask Mimi and Anthony to come here and stay with you.”
“You’re running away from me,” I told him, sitting up on the bed and swinging my legs to the floor. “I don’t want you to leave. We can talk about this in the morning. I’m sorry for waking you to tell you this. Please stay.”
He pulled a shirt over his head and walked up to me, kneeling so he could look at me face-to-face.
“I’ll call Mimi and Anthony; they should be here with you soon. Wait for them… wait for me.”
“Don’t do this Adam; I want you to stay.”
He looked down, cursing like he was conflicted. The answer should have been obvious. I wanted it to be obvious. Why didn’t he want to stay with me? He held my face and kissed me, hard.
“I love you. Wait for me.”
He was out the door without another word.
My face was soaked in seconds. Why was I crying so much lately? I wasn’t wrong. I knew that I wasn’t. He loved me. I felt it when he said it to me. Why couldn’t he tell me where the hell he was going? I curled into a ball and collapsed onto the bed. I couldn’t tell how long I waited, but I heard the sound of footsteps entering the room. I didn’t bother looking because I knew it wasn’t him. I felt a hand stroke my hair. I straightened out and let Mimi hug me to her chest in that way she had.
I hadn’t expected him to be happy about the news, but I hadn’t expected him to run away either.
What was I going to do?
What was I going to do?
23
Adam
She wasn’t downstairs when I got back to the house. I had checked the time. It was past seven so she should have been home by then. I called her name, checking the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. Nothing. I called her name again, going up the stairs. I tried calling for Mimi and heard nothing then as well. Had she left? She wasn’t supposed to leave until I came back. I walked into my room and found Dana sitting on the bed. She had her computer in her lap and her glasses on. She didn’t look up when I walked in, and she wasn’t listening to anything. She just didn’t want to answer when I had called to her earlier.
Fair, I guess. I did leave without a word. She didn’t owe me anything. How many times would I be able to pull that shit before she left for good?
“Mimi left. She had to pick up a couple of things she left at Anthony’s house,” she said shortly. Fuck. She wasn’t happy. She wasn’t even going to tell me off.
“I asked her to stay
with you until I came back,” I said.
“I don’t know Adam. She had things to do. You can’t keep asking people to wait for you. Maybe they can’t. Maybe they don’t want to.” Her shots were on target tonight. She was using me for target practice. I walked up to the bed, stripping my jacket off.
“She shouldn’t have left you here alone,” I said.
“I asked her to. You can’t keep leaving like this Adam.”
“I know,” I said. I leaned down and kissed her forehead. She took her glasses off and shut her computer.
“Where did you go?”
“I had to talk to some people,” I said vaguely. I couldn’t tell her. I could see in her face that it made her mad, but I couldn’t tell her. She told me that I could, but I didn’t want to test it.
“Adam… you don’t have to tell me who, or why. I just don’t want you doing anything that will get you into trouble.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Doll. That’s my job.”
I held her face and kissed her lips. She kissed back. Halfheartedly but at least it wasn’t a dead fish. I sat on the bed and reached for her. I just wanted to get my arms around her. I wanted her to know that I was back. That I wasn’t leaving her, and I wasn’t mad, even if she was. I was surprised she hadn’t brought it up already. I didn’t know a lot of guys with kids. If they did have them, they lived with their mothers, and they had the luxury of being a parent only when they felt like it. Like my dad did—only he never practiced parenting at all. At least not with me.
“Please don’t ask me to get rid of it Adam,” she whispered. She sounded like she was crying. I looked down at her.
“Get rid of it? Get rid of what?”
“The baby. I know we didn’t plan it, and I know a child is a huge responsibility but I can’t… you can’t ask me to do it. We can talk about it, but that is completely off the table.”
I didn’t know if I was mad or just stunned. I deserved every blow she had delivered since I got back but that one hurt. That one cut deep. I didn’t know if I should just walk away because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t want to just sit and listen to her talk about aborting our baby. I squeezed her, tight. It might have hurt a little, but she didn’t say if it did. That scared me. It scared me to death. The baby, it wasn’t even a baby yet. It was probably a tiny little ET looking thing with nothing but a heartbeat since it was so soon but shit… it was mine. It was ours. It… he or she was going to be the literal manifestation of our… our what? Our love? Passion? Our unsafe sex?
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 17
