For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3)

by Samantha Westlake

  I sighed, tried to ignore the little twinge of resentment inside of me that still felt fresh, even after years. "I dropped out to come party with you, remember? You lured me off to the party lifestyle. I never graduated. And now..." I spread my arms out to take in the little apartment. "Now, this."

  "Oh, right. Yeah, sorry about that." He didn't sound particularly sorry, just distracted. He looked at the sagging sofa, cast about in vain for another chair, then gave up and dropped down onto the well-worn cushions.

  "Don't worry," I said, pulling a tattered armchair, the only other chair in the living room, a little closer so that I could take a seat. "I washed the cushions after you drooled all over them-"

  "Pregnant," Seb said, cutting me off. Those dark eyes of his locked onto me, and suddenly, all mirth vanished from inside them. "Tell me that this is some sort of sick fucking joke, Tori."

  He did that, sometimes. When he couldn't bear the small talk any longer, he'd jump straight to the point. That was how he asked me to go home with him, the first time that we'd met. We'd been chatting about something inane at the college party where we first met, making small talk back and forth, when he apparently decided that he had enough.

  Twenty minutes later, I'd been riding him in the back of a limousine, my little miniskirt pulled up around my waist and my panties MIA. Some people might consider that directness to be rude, but I had found it refreshing.

  By the time I realized that his immaturity was permanent, he'd already hooked me and I couldn't escape. I needed the excitement, the drinks, the rush of being with him. Without it, I was lost.

  "It's not," I answered him. "I took three tests, from different manufacturers and everything. I'm knocked up."

  A little part of me hoped that he'd laugh, maybe even just crack a smile, at the directness. He didn't. His eyes just kept on staring at me, fixing me in place like a hawk staring at the mouse that would become his next meal.

  "How?" he asked.

  I sighed. I'd been considering this question myself, turning it over in my head for most of my sleepless last night. "I think it's because of an antibiotic I took."

  His eyebrows rose, but he didn't say anything as he settled back a little further on the sofa.

  "I had a throat infection a couple of weeks ago," I went on. "The doctor said that it might have been TB, so he gave me an antibiotic that would work on that, if I had it."

  "TB?"

  "Tuberculosis." He nodded, letting me continue. "I kept on taking my pill, but I did some internet searches, and it says that the antibiotic might have reduced its effectiveness. And we slept together around that time."

  I saw his eyebrows furrow. Figures that he didn't remember it. "It was after we went to that art exhibition opening," I elaborated. "The one where the artist painted all those pictures of food, using paint made from the food. We almost got kicked out when you tried to lick the painting of a chocolate bar, but you agreed to buy it and they let us stay."

  "And we had sex after that?" he asked, clearly still not remembering the night.

  I nodded. "You invited me along and told me to dress classy, and then after you bought the painting, you came up to me and told me that you wanted to take me home and figure out if I tasted like chocolate, too. I'm pretty sure everyone at the party heard you ask."

  His eyebrows climbed higher. "Again, and we still had sex?"

  "What can I say?" I shrugged. "I guess I'm an easy lay."

  A weak joke, but a little bit of me still wanted to hear him laugh. Seb had a great laugh, deep and full and hearty. Sometimes, when he laughed, he didn't seem quite so much like a spoiled playboy, and I caught the briefest of glimpses of the man he might someday become.

  Right now, however, he didn't appear in a laughing mood. "Great. So..."

  I frowned, as he dragged out this last syllable, looking pained. Was he trying to hint at something that he didn't want to say? "Seb, look at me. I'm a blonde bimbo, not smart enough to figure out what you're trying to hint at."

  Finally, he cracked the briefest of smiles at that. "You might be blonde, Tori, but you're not a bimbo. Pretty sure you're smarter than I am."

  "The baby growing in my uterus would argue otherwise." Still, I appreciated his blocking my self-deprecating comment.

  "Yeah, about that. Have you considered, well..." He still seemed to be having trouble getting the words out, but finally managed. "...not having the baby?"

  I blinked at him as the meaning finally clicked. "You mean an abortion?"

  He shrugged, looking embarrassed at even bringing up the suggestion. "Yeah."

  To tell the truth, it had crossed my mind more than once during the last week, usually at night as I lay awake and stared up at the ceiling. The argument inside my head seemed to be voiced mostly by my sense of morality, which insisted that it was murder. Even though the baby hadn't been born yet, I couldn't kill it, couldn't go through getting an abortion. I hadn't been raped, didn't have anything wrong with me that could harm the baby. The only reason I wanted it gone was because it was inconvenient for me, because it would force me to give up my current lifestyle.

  So what? Maybe this was the universe's way of telling me that I needed to make a change. It was a horrible, shitty way for the universe to communicate this sentiment, to be sure, but I still couldn't bring myself to consider an abortion.

  "I can't," I confessed, looking down at my lap. "I'm sorry, Seb. I just can't do it."

  He looked slightly disappointed, but not surprised. "Yeah, I figured that it might be a long shot. I just wanted to ask, just in case."

  We both sat there in silence. After a minute, I got up from my seat in the ragged armchair, moving over to the sofa beside Seb. He didn't look over at me, kept staring straight ahead, but after a minute he put an arm lightly around my shoulders, gave me a squeeze. Neither of us wanted to think about what might come next.

  "I'm sorry," I said after another minute.

  "What, that you won't get an abortion?"

  I shook my head. I hadn't done my hair or makeup this morning, so my curls just fell limply around my ears instead of bouncing off my shoulders. "No, just for all of it. That we're in this shitty situation in the first place."

  "It is pretty shitty," he agreed, but he didn't sound especially frustrated. He just sounded... I searched for the right word. Defeated. He'd gone through denial and anger, perhaps on the way over to my apartment, and he now sat squarely in the middle of the depression stage.

  After another minute, I risked a sidelong glance at him. "To be honest, I was kind of hoping that you'd have some answers for me."

  "Me? I showed up hoping that you'd be the one with answers." He let out a short bark, less of a laugh than an exclamation of his frustration. "We're really the worst possible people for this to happen to, aren't we?"

  I nodded. "Better if it had been one of your older brothers."

  "Yeah. Hell, Richard probably wants a baby, and Teddy would be the perfect robotic parent." He lifted his hands up, rubbing his closed eyelids with his palms. "But me? I'm probably the worst person in the world to make a parent."

  "No argument from me."

  He lifted one palm from his eye to shoot me a sharp glance. "Watch it. Keep up comments like that, and you won't be getting any child support from me."

  "If you make me take you to court," I countered, "I'll go on record stating that your dick is tiny. It'll become a matter of public record, and you'll never be able to get that erased."

  "There are enough leaked pictures of me to prove that wrong." For just a second, his classic smirk reappeared. "And I'd have you charged for lying under oath. What's that called?"

  "Perjury." It was true, I admitted to myself. Sebastian had every reason to act confident and cocky in public, and he knew how to put his member to good use. There was, after all, a big reason why I kept on overlooking his asshole tendencies and climbing into bed with him – and it wasn't his bank account balance.

  He blinked at me. "How'd you know
that word?"

  Oh, right. I hadn't meant to act smart. I'd learned, early on in life, that I accomplished more as a simpering blonde bimbo than as an annoyingly smart girl with a bothersome habit of talking back. So instead of answering, I just shrugged, pouted my lips at him.

  "Must have just heard it somewhere," I said.

  He didn't press the issue. "Whatever. What do you want to do now?"

  I didn't have an answer. "Restart this birthday."

  His mouth dropped open as he stared at me. "It's your birthday? Oh, shit, I totally forgot!"

  I waved it off. Just what I'd expected from him, to be honest. Instead of replying, I just leaned my head against his shoulder. He felt reassuringly solid, and if I closed my eyes and turned off my brain, I could almost convince myself that he was a real boyfriend, not just a guy that I liked to invite to join me in bed when I felt especially randy. Not the kind of guy who forgot about my birthday.

  His present was a dose of fertile sperm, delivered straight to my uterus. What a great gift. No returns.

  I felt his jaw tense, but he didn't say anything. The weight of his own head pressed against mine a second later, and we just sat there, silent. For one moment, we pretended that we weren't trapped in this situation.

  Chapter Six

  TORI

  *

  Finally, after a few more minutes, Seb lifted his head from leaning against me. "Okay," he said.

  I blinked as I lifted my own head off his shoulder. "Okay?" I repeated. "Okay, what?"

  He turned slightly, looking over at me. "Okay. We're having a baby."

  I frowned in confusion. "Yes, that's the situation. So?"

  He took a deep breath, shuddering a little as he slowly let it out in a long whoosh. "So I'm in. This is a shitty, horrible situation, but I'm not going to be so much of an asshole that I run away from the woman who's carrying my child."

  He had been considering running away? I felt myself starting to get upset at him, pushed it back down with an effort. This wasn't the time to question him about that little reveal. "So what are you going to do, then?"

  "I don't know." He looked around, as if the answer was hidden somewhere in my shabby little single-bedroom apartment. "But I'm going to figure it out. Having a baby can't actually be that hard, right? People have been doing it forever. Broke people do it, for fuck's sake! It's got to be easy to handle once I put my mind to it."

  His assumptions seemed a little shaky, but I didn't want to derail him. "Go on," I said instead, not sure quite what response he expected of me.

  He jumped up from his seat on the sofa, turning around in a slow circle as he took in the apartment's interior. "I can do this," he said again, seemingly talking more to himself than to me. "I can be a dad. I can handle this, can crush it."

  "I'd feel a little more confident if you if you managed to repeat that without looking like you're about to puke," I said without thinking. Sure, he didn't need the smart-ass retort right now, but I couldn't help it! For a second, I'd forgotten about the tiny little fetus growing in my abdomen, reverted to the banter that we usually exchanged.

  Thankfully, it didn't even faze him. "I'll keep practicing it. Give me nine or ten months, and I'll probably have it down."

  This was the Sebastian that I knew, the guy with the smart, smirking, irrepressible sense of humor that never fully died, no matter how appropriate – or inappropriate – the situation might be. Incredibly, despite the whole shitty situation still hanging over our heads, I found another flirty response rolling off my tongue. "So you're a slow learner in fatherhood, as well as in bed."

  "In bed?" he retorted, faking outrage. "Please. I'm the best you've ever had, and you know it."

  The words sent a little shiver of warmth down my spine as I thought back to our last few encounters. Despite usually being incredibly drunk, high, or a combination of both, Seb still performed admirably when we fell into bed together. He'd never left me disappointed when he eventually rolled off me and collapsed down into the sheets next to me, sometimes already snoring by the time his face hit the pillows. He could be selfish at times, using me to his own satisfaction, but he never half-assed his efforts.

  Instead of telling him any of this, however, I screwed up my face, pretending to strain to remember. "See, I'm having a hard time recalling much of anything. Mostly, I just remember you snoring like a log beside me."

  "Are you trying to make me show you otherwise?"

  I didn't know what I was doing. Sleeping with him wasn't going to help me with anything, not now. He couldn't undo the damage he'd caused by throwing me another lay. Still, it's not like it would make things any worse, right?

  "I'm not sure that you can," I said. I might not be wearing a particularly sexy outfit, or have my makeup or hair done, but I put on my best sexy pout, pushing my shoulders back so that my breasts stood out beneath the thin fabric of my tee shirt. "Now that you're sober, you're probably all talk."

  Just as I knew would happen, Seb's eyes dropped down to take in the swell of my breasts inside my shirt. I saw him shift his stance, probably feeling uncomfortable as his dick stiffened inside those tight jeans he insisted on wearing. I did have to admit that, uncomfortable as they might be for him, they made his ass look absolutely fantastic, and I was certain that I wasn't the only lady who appreciated his sacrifice.

  But a second later, he shook his head, closing his eyes in a slow blink. "No, I can't. There's too much that I need to get done." Once again, his gaze lingered on my chest. "Maybe later, but not now."

  "Too much to get done?" I repeated. "What are you talking about?"

  This time, however, he refused to answer. He grinned at me, gave me a wink. "You'll find out soon enough."

  Before I could ask anything more, he turned and opened the front door of my apartment, stepping out and closing it behind him. "Oh, and your birthday gift is coming!" he called out, just before the door slammed after him.

  For another minute, I just looked after him, my mouth still slightly open in confusion. After the clatter of his descent down the apartment stairs had subsided, I finally got up from the sofa. Finding my phone, I pulled up Ellen's number.

  "I told him," I texted, sending this off and waiting off a response.

  I didn't have to wait more than a second before the little three dots appeared on the screen, telling me that she was typing out a response. "Really???" I received a moment later. "What did he do? Did he freak out???"

  "At first yes. But then, he got all inspired and went running off. He wouldn't tell me what he was doing, just that he had to do something."

  A slightly longer pause this time, perhaps as she processed this admittedly confusing turn of events. "Think he's going to come back?"

  "I think so." Seb didn't seem like he was going to run out on me now and leave me to handle this fully on my own. He might be self-centered, but he wasn't that much of an ass. I hoped.

  More dots, although the next comment from Ellen took even longer than the previous ones. "Maybe he's turning over a new leaf." Somehow, even just typing out these words, Ellen managed to convey doubt, skepticism. She'd known Seb for a while, although not as long as I had, and we both knew that the man wasn't going to change. Nothing, short of an honest-to-goodness miracle, would make that happen.

  "I wish," I sent back to her. "I guess I'll just have to wait and see."

  "Well, I'll help fix you."

  I frowned. "What?"

  A smiley emoji appeared. "Autocorrect," Ellen sent a second later. "I'll help if I can, I meant."

  For a second, I had a ridiculous image of Ellen trying to babysit a newborn while dressed up in her tiny black miniskirt and stiletto heels, as if she was taking the infant out to hit the clubs. I couldn't see her being anything but intensely uncomfortable around a baby.

  Although, to be honest, I couldn't even imagine myself holding a baby of my own, either. The idea just seemed so surreal; a new human, growing inside my belly, that would emerge in nine months and dom
inate my life for the next two decades.

  Putting my phone aside, I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. If Seb could act like he knew how to be a competent parent, the least that I could do was try as well. I grabbed my laptop, opened a web browser, and stared at the search prompt.

  "What to do when you find out you're pregnant," I typed, and hit enter.

  The top link called out to me right away. "I'm pregnant; what do I do now?" It came from someplace called Baby Center, which sounded like the kind of website I ought to be browsing these days.

  Almost immediately, however, I found myself overwhelmed with questions and concerns. Was I consuming enough folate in my diet? Had I read all the online reviews for the doctor, midwife, and birthing coach I'd picked out, to make sure that they had at least four stars on average? Had I visited the bank and opened an investment fund in the baby's name, or taken out some credit cards so that it could start gaining a credit history?

  I didn't have a name for the baby, so I couldn't open a credit card for him yet, I groaned. Would the bank let me open an account for "to-be-named-later"?

  The article ended with a discouragingly long list of books that it considered "vital reading for any new or potentially expectant mother." I scrolled through the list of titles, my stomach dropping lower in my abdomen. The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy. 10,001 Newborn Names. The Worst Hundred Mistakes of New Mothers. There were more than a hundred possible mistakes? Did this author have a sequel addressing the hundred second-worst mistakes, as well?

  I couldn't do it. I pushed the computer away, flopped down on the couch and buried my face in one of the cushions. This was a hundred times worse than when I'd been put in charge of my high school's Prom planning committee with just two weeks until the event, after the previous chair of the committee had a nervous breakdown and threw up while topless in the locker room, all over the second-string quarterback.

  I'd never felt this stressed in my life, ever.

  I grabbed my phone again, scrolling through my list of contacts. I just needed to talk to someone about this, I thought desperately. Someone who could help me, who had experience in this sort of thing.