by Katy Kaylee
Taking a deep breath, I got to my knees and crawled over to him. I leaned down and kissed him passionate, loving the taste of my juices on his mouth before climbing over his hips and kneeling with one leg on either side of Harrison’s magnificently taut body. I felt his cock teasing, probing at the entrance to my cunt and I shuddered before plunging down in a smooth, single motion. His perfect dick was buried deep inside of me and I felt almost too full to move.
Then, Harrison put his hands on my hips and began to rock me back and forth. I braced myself with a hand against his chest and rode him, bucking my hips and grinding against his body. My clit rubbed against his hard pubic bone with every thrust and I gasped and cried out, throwing my head back and arching my body.
He felt so good like this that I knew I wouldn’t last long. Giving Harrison a saucy grin, I took his hands in mine and brought them to my breasts. He played and pinched my nipples, rubbing them with the tips of his fingers and I moaned and shrieked loudly as a hot ecstatic sensation began filling my body, spreading from my pussy to all of my limbs. I held my breath, riding him faster and savoring the sensation of his cock sliding in and out of my tight cunt.
“You feel so fucking good, baby,” Harrison growled. He closed his eyes and clenched his muscles, taking his hands from my breasts and returning them to my hips where he dug his fingers in and moved my body faster than ever before.
“Harrison,” I moaned loudly, throwing my head back and tossing my wet hair down my back. Looking down at him, I flushed hotly and put my own hands to my boobs, cupping and massaging them just like he did. Touching my own body in front of Harrison felt incredibly taboo, but it only turned me on even more and in seconds, I felt my orgasm hit me forcefully. The waves of pleasure crested and fell over my body and I bucked and gasped and loudly cried his name as I came.
“Fuck, baby,” Harrison groaned. He thrust upward into me, deep than ever before, and I felt his body begin to tense and clench and shake with the force of his own orgasm. I collapsed against his chest and smothered his neck in kisses as he wrapped his arms around me, still gently thrusting into my sensitive pussy.
“You’re amazing,” I whispered, breathing hard. I expected Harrison to stroke my hair and pull the blanket over us, but he gently pushed me to the side, sliding out of me. Without looking at me, he got out of bed and walked into the bathroom, emerging fully dressed seconds later.
A weird feeling came over me. Being naked in front of Harrison while he was fully dressed was usually a turn-on, but right now it just made me feel exposed and I pulled the sheet up over my bare breasts.
“I don’t want Hollie to catch us like this,” Harrison explained.
I frowned. “Maybe we should just come clean to her and tell her everything,” I replied. “I mean, I hate keeping secrets from her. She’s my best friend.”
Harrison laughed.
I blinked at him. “Um, what’s so funny?” I asked. “I know it can’t be much fun for you, either. And between my ... um, job this summer and everything that happened and now this,” I added, gesturing between Harrison and myself. “I really think we owe it to her.”
Harrison’s laughter died in his throat and the room suddenly felt uncomfortably quiet. I could hear the sounds of kids playing outside, and I pulled the sheet higher around my body.
And that’s not the only secret, I thought as my mind turned to the baby growing in my belly. Not just any baby.
Harrison’s baby.
“I thought you were kidding,” Harrison said slowly. His words made my heart sink and my palms started to sweat.
“No,” I said as I shook my head. Wet strands of hair whipped my face and neck. “I ... I don’t think we should keep it from her.” Because I’m certainly not going to be able to hide this for much longer, I thought, glancing down at my stomach.
“Paris,” Harrison said. “Look – we’ve been having a good time. We’ve been exploring each other and having fun, right?”
I frowned. To me, it had been so much more than that. Hadn’t our talk the other day cleared that up for Harrison? Didn’t he realize how much I loved him, how much I wanted and needed him for more than just sex?
“And telling Hollie is going to crush her,” Harrison said.
The familiar sting of tears came to my eyes and I fought them back before Harrison could see. Of course, Harrison wasn’t serious about our relationship. I was an idiot for thinking otherwise – he’d just told his ex yesterday that he never intended to marry again.
“Of course,” I said quietly. “I understand.”
Harrison smiled at me. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.” He blew me a kiss, then left the room and closed the door behind him.
I sat there for a long time, until my skin felt cold and clammy and my wet hair made me shiver. I couldn’t believe it – how had the moment between us gone from intimate and perfect and sensual to cold and unfeeling. How could Harrison do this to me? He had to know that I wasn’t like other women, that I didn’t want anyone but him. He had to know how much I loved him.
I’d told him that he was my hero, for god’s sake! Didn’t that mean anything? Didn’t that mean that I wanted more than just a few fucks?
I swallowed hard and laid down in bed. The mattress was no longer warm from the scene Harrison and I had just shared, and the smell of sex was beginning to fade from the air.
I felt sick.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t live this way, constantly feeling on the verge of heartbreak because Harrison had decided he couldn’t be sure how he felt about me. And why would he? I was a dumb little kid, just the best friend of his kid. He probably saw me as a child.
He’d never see the woman inside.
His reaction hurt even more when I thought about our baby. Harrison would never accept that, not when he’d made it so perfectly clear that he didn’t care about anything more than sex. It was clear that he wasn’t looking for a serious relationship.
And a baby was about as serious as one could get.
I turned on my side and closed my eyes, letting my head sink into the pillow. My own childhood came rushing back to me before I could stop it. I’d always known, from the very beginning, that I hadn’t been wanted. The only family member of mine who had loved me was my grandmother, and sometimes I’d sensed that even her love came mostly from obligation. I’d grown up feeling so unloved and unwanted.
There was no way I could do that to a child, especially not my child. Having this baby would mean giving up on all of my dreams – and Hollie’s – but there wasn’t a choice in my mind. I was pregnant now, and I had to put my future child first.
I laid in bed for another minute, then got up and pulled on clean panties, jeans, and a flowy t-shirt. There was a lump in my throat as I started packing my things. I didn’t have much – only a couple of bags and my purse – and it took a surprisingly short time to clear the room of my presence. In such a short time, I’d started to think of Harrison’s house as my own, but that was never going to happen.
No.
I was never going to be the next Mrs. Hendricks because there wasn’t going to be another Mrs. Hendricks.
And Harrison would never know about the baby he had put in my belly during our summer of lust.
I spent the rest of the day in bed with the lights off. Hollie knocked once and asked if I wanted to join her for dinner, but I pretended to be asleep and held my breath until I heard her footsteps retreat down the stairs. My unhappiness swelled inside of me like a balloon, but this was the way it had to be. I had to put my child first, even if it meant giving up the man whom I’d always loved and my best friend.
When it was two in the morning, I grabbed my bags and snuck out of the house. I didn’t have much money, but it was all tucked inside a small bag inside my purse, and I knew exactly what I was going to use it for.
To start my life over, again.
All alone.
At least, until the baby came.
Harrison – Monday
On the third day after Paris had left without word or explanation, I was so impotent with rage that I could hardly breathe. I’d called out of work – something that I hadn’t done in years – and sat in the living room, staring at the TV with a stony expression on my face.
“Dad? Are you in here?”
Turning, I saw Hollie standing in the doorway. She frowned as she walked close and sat next to me on the couch.
“Are you okay?” Hollie asked. She reached out and put the back of her hand to my forehead. “You don’t feel too warm,” she said.
“My daughter, the doctor,” I replied.
Hollie pressed her lips together. “I haven’t seen you like this, like ever,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
How could I tell her? How could I even begin to explain how angry and betrayed I felt, that her best friend had up and left me?
I thought things had been going so well between us, too. We’d been having fun and sharing each other and growing steadily more intimate. I was falling in love with Paris, but I hadn’t realized just how deeply until she’d chosen to leave without a word to me.
Now, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever see her again. I had no idea where she’d gone, or why. She’d snuck out in the middle of the night with all of her things like a criminal. The bed had been stripped, the sheets neatly dumped on the floor. She’d even taken the pillowcases off and folded them on top of the dirty sheets. Her toiletries had vanished from the bathroom, and she’d wiped out the tub as if we’d never shared a deliciously erotic bath together.
I was so fucking confused and angry that I felt like punching something.
Why would she go? How could she go?
How could she do that to me, as if she meant nothing to me?
“I’m fine,” I lied. “How are you? That’s the important question.”
Hollie leaned against the back of the couch and shrugged. “Fine,” she said. “I mean, I’m kind of pissed, to be honest.”
“Your mom and Mitchell?”
Hollie shook her head. “I know that I should be,” she said. “But ... it’s really hard to think about that right now. I don’t know why Paris left. I feel guilty, like I’m responsible, or something.”
I stared at her. “Why would you be responsible?” For a moment, I felt a cold trickle of dread at the back of my neck. What if Paris had told Hollie the truth about everything that had transpired between us?
“Because I dated around this summer and didn’t spend much time at home,” Hollie said. “I don’t feel like I was a very good friend. And ... Paris is like, really pretty, right? But she’s really shy around guys, and maybe I should have tried to set her up with someone. I feel like I left her behind while I was going out all the time.”
“I don’t think that had anything to do with it,” I said.
Hollie frowned. “Why?” She asked. “I mean, no offense, Dad. I know you like Paris and everything, but you don’t know her the same way that I do.”
No, I thought. I certainly don’t ... but you don’t know her the same way that I do, either.
“Anyway, maybe I should just try to reach out and apologize,” Hollie said. She pulled out her phone and stared down at the screen. “That’s weird,” she added. “Paris just texted me. Her ears must have been burning.”
My heart jerked to the side and I clenched my jaw. “What did she say?” I asked.
Hollie gave me a weird look. “It’s kind of cryptic,” she said. “I’ll reach out and make sure that she’s okay.” Hollie got up from the couch and slipped her phone into her pocket. I was dying to know the exact words that Paris had said – what had made her leave without saying shit to me? But it wasn’t like I could chase Hollie down and force her to tell me, either.
Not without hinting at the secret I’d tried hard to conceal from my daughter.
“I should go into work,” I muttered, hoping that throwing myself into the case would enough to distract me. “I have a lot of shit to do.”
“Okay,” Hollie said. “See you,” she added in a distracted tone. She was looking down at her phone and I tried to peek over her shoulder as I left the room. Some kind of a game was pulled up on her screen, not a text exchange, and my heart sank.
At the precinct, I buried myself in paperwork. There was no one else in the office, and I sat alone in a dimly lit room, staring down at the details of the case. We had almost everything wrapped up, and under any other circumstance I would have been happy.
My anger kept bleeding through, though, no matter how I tried to distract myself. Every other word on the page was Paris’s name, and I saw her face each time I closed my eyes to take a deep breath. Why had she done this? She loved me, I knew that much. She’d practically told me that night we’d talked after sex.
Or maybe she didn’t love me. Maybe she’d come to her senses and realized the truth: that I was an old man, and that I wouldn’t be able to give her what she wanted. She’d decided that she’d wanted someone younger, and had been too cowardly to talk to me about it.
I didn’t blame her. How could I? She deserved someone her own age, someone who until recently hadn’t been anything but a total workaholic.
Fuck, I thought. I should have been relieved – I should have realized that this was all for the best, but I couldn’t. I was too angry. If she felt that way, why the hell hadn’t she just been able to tell me? Why had she been too cowardly to tell me that she didn’t want me, that she couldn’t be with me?
“Fuck,” I muttered, punching down on the stapler with my fist. Pain shot through my arm, but strangely I found myself liking it. I banged down again, punching the desk again and again until my knuckles were bloodied and raw.
“What the fuck, man?”
I turned around and saw Steve standing there, holding a cup of takeout coffee in one hand and a greasy paper bag in the other.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I work here, remember?” Steve said. He came closer. “Thought that you might be burning the midnight oil, and I got some coffee. Thought you might want some company.” He looked down at my hand, bruised and bloody, and raised an eyebrow. “But now I’m thinking I should’ve picked up a bottle of whiskey instead.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?”
I didn’t know how to reply to that – I didn’t want to reply to that. Steve and I had so rarely talked about personal matters that doing so now would have been awkward.
“Lemme guess,” Steve said. He leaned his hip against my desk and looked down at me. “You’re all broken up over ending things with that stripper. What was her name, Maxine?”
I knew he was trying to get me to laugh, but wasn’t going to work. I clenched my jaw, feeling tension and pain in the back of my neck.
“Your daughter told you that she’s abandoning the idea of med school and going off to join the circus?”
I glared at him. “You’re not funny, asshole.”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said. “Come with me. Forget this for the night,” he added, gesturing to the paperwork before me. “You’re obviously not getting shit done, not while you’re in that kind of a mood.”
I sighed. “I should just go home,” I said, even though I had no intention of doing so. No, it would be a better night to just drive around in aimless darkness, alone with my thoughts and my anger and my confusion. A woman had never done this to me before – I hadn’t even been this broken up when Krista announced that not only had she been cheating for the better part of a year, she was leaving me for an old man and his piles of Scrooge McDuck money.
“The fuck you will,” Steve practically growled. He narrowed his eyes at me. “You coming, or do I have to drag you?”
It was a line that we’d used on more than one suspect, but the joke didn’t make me chuckle. I got to my feet, figuring that it would be easier to just have one drink and then beg exhaustion. Shouldn’t take long.
I’ll just suck down a beer and then say I have to get home to my daughter, I thought as I followed Steve out of the precinct and down the street to a dive bar favored by firefighters and cops. It was dim and the bar top was sticky with spilled beer. The smell, a mixture of pungent urine, disinfectant, and whiskey, hung in the air. Steve lead me not to the bar itself but a small table in the back.
“You need a drink,” Steve said, leaning against the dark wooden booth. “Your head is in a pretty fucked up place, Hendricks.”
I glared at him.
“Come on. Out with it,” Steve said. “I’ve never seen you like this, man,” he added. “I’m your partner. I know you didn’t choose me, but you’re stuck with me, and if you want to get shit done you’d better come out with it already.”
“It’s none of your fucking business,” I finally snapped. “It’s personal.”
“Oh, well, that’s something,” Steve replied sarcastically. “Because I was starting to think it was just a teenage tantrum.”
God, I’d never wanted to punch Steve before, but right now I would have killed to land a solid hook on his jaw. I could tell that he saw it from the look in my eyes, too, because he held up his hands in mock surrender and shook his head.
“Or, you know, fine. You don’t have to tell me shit,” Steve said. “But seriously, you look like you could use a friend ... and you don’t have a surplus of those.”
I sighed.
“And being a dick to me isn’t going to help you much,” Steve said. “You know that. You’re letting whatever’s going on in your damned head get in the way of work. We can’t have that, Hendricks. You want me to request a reassignment?”
