I nodded, understanding her completely. She was right; in the last month or so of living with Ellen and her mother, I felt much closer to Ellen as a person than I ever had in the years before that we'd known each other.
"And on that," Ellen continued, taking a deep breath. I waited, not sure what was coming next. "I never really heard all of your backstory, did I?"
I winced. It was true; I'd never shared all the details of my past life with Ellen. I never told her how I ended up here. "You really want to hear it?"
"If you're willing to share."
I took a deep breath. Even after a few years, it still wasn't my favorite topic, and I still didn't feel totally comfortable opening up about it to... well, anyone. But Ellen had proven herself in the last few months to be a true friend, and I owed it to her.
"Okay. I grew up as the 'good girl,' with very nice parents who loved me. Nothing wild in my past at all. I got accepted to Wharton School of Business, planned to work for some big company, make a comfortable salary." I sighed, thinking of it. "Have a comfortable life."
"I'm guessing that Seb derailed those plans," Ellen said.
I nodded. "Got it in one. I went to this party, just for a friend's birthday – and Seb was there. He..."
How could I describe it? He swept me off my feet, opened my eyes to a whole new world of having fun, of casting my reticence to the winds and losing myself in wild excess. He was everything I'd never had when growing up, and he intoxicated me. I couldn't resist his unique brand of drug. I never had a chance against him.
"And so I dropped out of school, never finished my degree," I finished. "Why worry about money, when Seb would pay for everything? Life was just about having fun, enjoying the moment. I never even looked back at business school, just became another busty bimbo in the clubs. Up until..." I looked down at my swollen belly. "Up until I got hit with a baby, reminding me of all that responsibility I'd tried to avoid."
Ellen looked back at me, probably considering whether she should pry more into my unexpected, good-girl past. Thankfully, she decided to not press it, and I was glad to move on.
"Speaking of the baby..." Ellen sat up, her eyes suddenly alight with interest. "You went to the doctor the other day, right?"
"Yes...?" Ellen had been the one to drive me; now that the baby was getting bigger, I felt a bit uncomfortable climbing behind the steering wheel of a car.
"And?"
"Everything's fine, he said."
She waved a hand dismissively. "No, not that. Did you ask about the sex?"
For an instant, my mind thought that she was talking about sex between the doctor and me, and threatened to short-circuit. Only after I opened my mouth in shock did I realize that she was talking about the sex of the baby, not about the physical act itself.
"No, I decided not to ask," I said, once I managed to recover. "I'd rather it be a surprise, once he – or she – is born."
"Really? But what about buying him – or her – adorable little jammies in the right color, and booties, and all sorts of lovely baby gifts?"
"Get them in purple," I said off the top of my head. "I don't think the baby will put up much protest about the color."
Ellen laughed, and I laughed along with her, but I still felt a brittle edge to my thoughts. I hoped that it didn't come out in my words. Maybe Ellen wouldn't notice. She was perceptive, a lot more perceptive than I'd ever suspected when we just knew each other through parties, but that didn't mean that she could read my thoughts.
"The café's going to be opening soon," I said after a minute, putting my hands on the table as I prepared to lever my ungainly, swollen body up to its feet. "Shouldn't you be getting ready?"
"Already done, sister. Napkins and utensils are all rolled up and ready to go, and I don't need to help with nearly as much prep now that you've shrunk our menu down from a billion items." Ellen watched me struggle to stand up, looking a little concerned. "Do you need help?"
"No." I still accepted her hand. "Stupid baby, throwing off my sense of balance and always getting in the way." I dropped my hand down to my stomach – and then froze as I felt something on the other side.
"Oh my god. Ellen, come here."
She blinked at me, still standing next to me. I shot my hand out and grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her fingers to my stomach. My other hand hastily pushed away the fabric of my maternity top, giving her fingers unhindered contact with my skin.
Ellen's mouth opened as her eyebrows came together in confusion – but they shot up to the top of her forehead a second later as she felt it as well. "Oh my god," she echoed me, her voice curiously hushed. "Is that him moving?"
"Yes," I nodded, feeling like I should be holding my breath. "The baby's kicking. I've only felt it a couple times before, and never when I could show anyone."
"Wow." Ellen pressed her warm fingers against my stomach, tenderly, as if afraid that I'd pop if she pushed any harder. "That's so crazy. I mean, I know that babies kick, but I never really thought about it actually happening."
"I know." Once again, that wave of disorienting realness washed over me. All of this was really happening. I had Sebastian Stone's baby inside of me, alive and kicking, and I could feel it as it grew larger, getting ready to be born. I was going to be a mother, a single mother, with just the baby to remind me of the man who left-
"Uh oh," Ellen exclaimed, as I suddenly sat back down heavily on the chair that I'd just risen from, my legs giving out beneath me. "What's happening. Are you sick? Is this something from the pregnancy?"
I shook my head, afraid to trust my voice for fear that it would crack and give me away. My eyes did that for me, however, suddenly welling up with tears that came pouring down my cheeks in two streams. Ellen's eyes widened again, but she still leapt into action, spinning around to grab a handful of wadded napkins.
"I'm sorry," I choked out, even as a sob ripped through me halfway through the sentence. "I'm just kind of crazy – the hormones..."
I should have guessed that Ellen wouldn't be fooled. "It's Seb, isn't it?" she guessed accurately, kneeling beside me as I tried to stem the flow of tears with the handful of torn paper napkins. "You're still missing him, aren't you?"
Another sob cut off my words, but it provided answer enough. Ellen rubbed her hand over my back, shaking her head and making the ends of her blonde hair brush against my cheeks, where the tears made them stick. "He's such an ass," she muttered.
"No, he's – I should have known from the beginning," I finally got out, taking a deep but unsteady breath. "But we were together and he was so nice, and I thought that maybe we could make it work..."
There were other words there, too, words that I hated and wanted to lock away forever. They were shameful, and I wished with all my heart that they could be untrue. I knew, however, that they weren't false. I'd just have to keep them locked away for as long as it took, until they faded away and the pain wasn't so intense that I feared to confront them.
Finally looking up, I saw Ellen's eyes resting on me. In that moment, I knew that, despite my never speaking these words out loud, she could still guess what they were, what lurked in my heart, my shameful little secret about Seb that I wished so fervently wasn't true.
She could see that, despite everything he'd done to me, despite everything that he was – and wasn't – I still loved him.
"Oh, Tori," she murmured, and her arms tightened around me once again.
I clung to her, feeling the bulk of my swollen belly between the two of us. This time, however, it was a comfort rather than a burden. I knew that the baby wasn't going to leave me, and even though my heart burned for Seb, a smaller but no less intense fire also burned for the small, as-of-now unformed life that slowly grew inside of me. I still felt scared to death that I'd be a bad mom in some way, that I hadn't thought of something, but I also knew with utter certainty that I'd love that little baby more than anything else in the world. Even if his – or her – father wasn't in the picture, I'd do my best to
give the baby everything that it needed, all the love it needed and more.
I would find a way to survive without Seb in my life. I had a new life on the way, one that needed my attention. I had Ellen to rely on, and I knew that she wouldn't let me down. Even her mom, Vicky, was a gruff but reassuring presence in my life. I could find a way to move on, to survive, and maybe even thrive.
"I'm okay," I finally managed to speak, patting Ellen on the back. "Really, you need to get moving so that you can open the café."
She released me, pausing for a second to look down at me. The love of a close friend danced in her eyes as she smiled softly. "Are you sure that you'll be okay?" she asked, her voice still gentle.
I nodded, telling myself that yes, I could get past this. "Yes, I will. Now, you get off to unlock the door and let in our customers, while I figure out how we can start bringing more people into here!"
For an instant longer, Ellen lingered, but then she moved over to do as I suggested. I once again lifted myself up from my seat, heading back upstairs to my laptop. I'd been reading up on marketing strategies, and had a few ideas that might help River's Edge Café. If nothing else, it gave me a distraction, something else to occupy my mind.
The baby kicked again, more gently, as I climbed up to the apartment on the upper level of the café. I patted my stomach with one hand, mentally promising the unborn child that, no matter how bad of a father it had, I'd love it as dearly as possible.
Chapter Twenty-One
SEBASTIAN
*
I've recaptured my old life, the kind of hedonist fantasy that most other men dream about someday obtaining. It's all here for the taking.
I've got a line of credit at every bar within a ten block radius; all I have to walk in, and they'll have a waitress bobbing eagerly at my shoulder, ready to help me with any order I might have for her. There are half a dozen nightclubs around here where the bulky bouncers now recognize me on sight and wave me in, right to my own VIP booth.
The apartment felt a bit bare, so I hit up every high-end furnishings store in the area, dropping thousands like it was nothing. I put custom paintings on each wall, added some heavy marble tables, ornately carved wooden chairs, even bought a few antique military sabers and hung them on the wall, just to drive home that this is a guy's bachelor pad.
Every night, I'm forcing myself out of the house, heading down to the clubs. Did I mention that one of these clubs is literally in the same building as my apartment? How convenient is that? I can literally just head upstairs with a girl from the club – no cab ride needed to get to a nearby bed.
I haven't done it yet, but I keep telling myself that it's so convenient, it will end up paying off for me. I'm just waiting for the right girl to get me over Tori. That's all.
I just haven't found her yet.
Not that I'm not looking. I've brought more than a dozen girls back to the apartment, listened as they ooh and aah over the view from my balcony, look at their figures on display in low-cut, tight little dresses or blouses that dip alarmingly to reveal miles of cleavage, long legs extending for miles out of their mini-skirts or wrapped in artfully ripped, very thin leggings that barely seem to cling to their bodies.
They'll be standing there, drunk and grinning and totally there for me to go ahead and do whatever I want to them. They might as well be wearing big, flashing neon signs saying "get me naked and fuck me until I can't even remember your net worth."
I'll look at them, and then down at my pants, hoping that finally, I'll get a rise out of my member.
Nothing. It just sits there, totally inert. The girls grind on it, sit on my lap, make out with me – and nothing happens. No reaction at all. I even had one especially enterprising young woman shove both her hands into my pants, tugging at it, as if it just needed some skin to skin contact to spring up.
I finally stopped her before she tried again with her mouth. "I guess I'm just not feeling up to it tonight," I lied to her. Embarrassed, I barely even had time to take in her disappointed pout before I shoved her out of the apartment and watched her toddle off to go find another liquored up guy at the bar downstairs.
So, my equipment doesn't seem to be working. I've thought a few times about going to talk to a doctor, but I can't bear that embarrassing conversation. And besides, I still get plenty of hard-ons at other times, when a girl doesn't happen to be around, so I know that it's not a physical problem.
In the back of my head, yeah, I know what's going on. See, I now tend to get pretty much all my erections in the morning, when I wake up from haunting dreams that continue to cling to me, not letting go as I fight my way up from unconsciousness.
And guess who's the headlining star in those dreams?
Three guesses, and the first two don't count.
Damn it, Tori. How'd you get your claws into my head like this? I can't shake the feeling that this is her final act of revenge, tormenting me for leaving her and not continuing to stay in that torturous suburban house with her.
I kept on trying for a month. Wake up with splitting headache, suffer through it until it goes down enough, get dressed, go to club, listen to loud music, throw around money on drinks that just taste like burning sand in my mouth, impress some ditzy hot girl, bring her back to my place upstairs, get angry when all her sexy pouting and flashing me fails to elicit any reaction, kick her out, pass out in bed.
For a month, that was my life.
And then, finally serving as at least a minor distraction, the next Stone monthly lunch arrived.
The group was smaller, this month. Teddy had, apparently, decided to whisk Callie away on a spur-of-the-moment trip to prove to her that he could be spontaneous. I snorted when I heard that. Yeah, right; he probably planned events for every single second of their vacation, and had printed out schedules for them to follow. My brother didn't have a single spontaneous bone in his entire body.
So this meant that the only people at lunch were Richard, his wife Linda, and myself. I told myself that I ought to skip it; I really didn't want to spend a meal being interrogated by a psychiatrist while Richard just laughed at my misfortune. Linda would probably manage to ferret out that I was having trouble getting Little Sebastian up, and Richard would never stop mocking me for it.
But I went nonetheless. I needed something to break my increasingly depressing pattern of activity. Maybe this lunch would do the trick.
The night before lunch, I got a call from Richard, suggesting that we make the lunch a supper instead, and hold it at their house, the mansion that came from our parents. Sure, why not. This way, at least Linda wouldn't be tugging out all my secrets in a public setting.
"Bring a salad," he told me. "See you tomorrow, little brother."
The next evening, I showed up at the Stone family mansion with a plastic container of premade salad that I'd picked up at the grocery store. Richard opened the door, and I thrust the container of store-bought salad out into his arms.
"Good to see you too, Sebastian," he said, raising an eyebrow as he took the dish of chopped vegetables from me. "Glad to see that you put a lot of effort in this."
"Don't give me any of that," I snapped at him, marching in past him and heading to the kitchen. I needed a drink already. "I'm not in the mood."
In the kitchen, Linda paused in her efforts at the stove as she watched me yank open the door to the refrigerator. "Well, I don't need to be a trained professional to tell that you're upset about something," she commented.
I wrenched the cap off a bottle of beer, raising my eyebrows at her as I took a long pull. "You think?"
"Wait a second," Richard said, coming into the kitchen after me to add the salad to the line of dishes on the counter. Linda, it seemed, had been at work for some time now, cooking up far more food than we'd be able to eat tonight. "Honey, can I try this?"
Linda smiled up at her husband as she slipped an arm around his waist, leaning in against his armpit as she gave him a one-armed hug. "Of course, honey. Give it a shot
."
Richard squeezed her back, giving her a little peck on the cheek before returning his attention to me. "Okay, let's see. Sebastian is surlier than usual, and he hasn't brought Tori along with him, despite the fact that she's carrying his child."
"We broke up," I snapped. "And I don't want to talk about her."
"He's also gone straight for the beer, even though he looks positively awful," Richard went on, ignoring my comment. "And he didn't bring anyone else to dinner, even though the sight of this huge house would probably get any woman excited about getting closer with him."
"Yeah, but hearing you two talk would ruin it," I said. "Hard to bang a girl when she's throwing up from how cutesy you two act."
"Perhaps little Sebastian is going through a dry spell," Linda suggested.
I shifted my glare from her husband over to her, hoping that the diminutive wasn't referring to my dick. "I don't have dry spells."
"Really? When was the last time you had sex, then?"
"I don't have to tell you that sort of stuff," I evaded. "You're not my doctor. And I'm sure that Richard doesn't want to hear it."
Richard, however, looked interested. "See, this is another aberrant behavior. Usually, Sebastian is thrilled to brag about how much he gets laid."
"Aberrant behavior?" I echoed. "God, even her vocabulary is wearing off on you."
Richard smirked, probably from knowing that he'd dug the barb further under my skin. "Three weeks," he guessed.
"I'm not saying anything."
Linda shook her head. Tugging away from Richard, she leaned forward, resting both elbows on the counter as she peered at me. The action made her blouse dip at the neckline, and I couldn't keep myself from sneaking a quick glance. Not that I saw anything; even now that she was married and didn't have to try any longer, she still stayed annoyingly thin and fit, maintaining her willowy figure.
"I saw that," she said with a tiny smile. "I'm guessing that it's been two months."
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 14
