Stacked Up: Worth the Fight Series

by Sidney Halston

  He slammed his hat on a nearby chair and ran his hands through his hair.

  “And how could you kiss me in front of the camera?” Penny went on. “Expose me like that? I told you I didn’t want to be on camera.”

  “Who the hell cares about that right now?”

  “I do!” she hissed back.

  “How could you not tell me you had a kid? You used me for sex.”

  She snorted out. “I used you for sex? That’s ridiculous. When exactly would’ve been the right time to tell you—after we slept together or before? When you’ve made it clear you didn’t care to have kids anytime soon? When you said you wanted to have fun and travel the world?”

  “You had a goddamn year, Penny.”

  “Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain that way.” She glared at him.

  “Seriously? That’s what you’re preaching at me?” He paced up and down. The door to the small waiting room opened, and their group of friends walked in.

  “No way that’s JL’s kid,” Francesca murmured, nodding at Belle.

  “What is wrong with you people? Don’t you know the difference between a thirteen-month-old and a newborn?” Penny exclaimed.

  “Whose child is that, Penny?” Violet asked gently.

  “Her name is Sarabelle, and she’s mine.”

  “Whoa!” Tony said, glancing at Travis.

  “Has anyone checked on JL?” Cain inquired.

  “Enzo said he’d come by and let us know. Her water broke, but she’s not dilated much yet,” Penny disclosed.

  After they had all sat down, Violet gently reached her arms out toward Belle and asked gently, “Why didn’t you tell anyone you had a baby, Penny?”

  With a sigh, Penny handed the sleeping baby to Violet, who cooed over her.

  “Look, Cain. Isn’t she precious?” she asked, looking up at her fiancé.

  “She is,” the quiet man agreed.

  “So…?” Jessica, Slade’s girlfriend asked, looking first at Belle and then at Penny.

  “It’s a long story. I promise I’ll tell you—I’ll tell everyone,” she said with a glance at Travis, who was sitting on the far side of the room and seemed…betrayed? Mad? She wasn’t sure. “But after I talk to Travis.”

  “Let him cool down first, then go talk to him. He’s just reacting,” Violet advised. “Travis has always been that way. He’s impulsive—says and does the first thing that pops into his mind. He’s a great person, but sometimes he does stupid things. I’m not saying to forget the crappy thing he said. It was bad—you should punch him in the nose or something. But after everyone’s calmed down, you two should talk.”

  —

  Travis had to get out of the small waiting area, so he stormed out and paced the hall outside. He was overwhelmed with emotions. He was scared shitless for his sister, he felt utterly horrified by the things he’d said to Penny, and he was absolutely seething with anger at the fact that she hadn’t told him about the baby. Even the long hall felt too small for his temper.

  Just then he saw Iggy walking down the hall.

  “Hey, man, I heard about JL,” Iggy called. Then he got closer and saw the expression on Travis’s face. “What the hell’s eating you?”

  In the last month or so, Travis had begun hanging out with Iggy when Iggy was in town, and they’d gotten fairly close. Part of it was that ever since Travis’s best friend had knocked up his sister, they’d been holed up honeymooning, and Travis and Iggy were the only two single guys left in their group.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” Travis growled.

  “So it’s pussy,” Iggy decided. “She’s either not giving you enough or giving it to someone else. Which is it?”

  “Shut the fuck up, man.”

  “I’m messing with you.” Iggy peered into the waiting room through the window in the door. “Whose kid is Penny holding?”

  “Hers.”

  “I didn’t know she had a kid, man.”

  Travis snorted. “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

  “Seriously?”

  Travis nodded. “I mean, I’ve known her for a goddamn year. I thought we were friends. And I just find out now, today? Bet if we weren’t thrown into this situation at the hospital she wouldn’t have told me.” He cocked his arm back and punched the vending machine. “Motherfucker,” he cursed, shaking his painful hand.

  “Nice. Screw up your hand. It’s not like you’ll need it to fight, right?” He took Travis’s hand and examined it. “Open and close it.” Travis did, a few times. “You should ice it.”

  Travis pulled his arm back. “Can you fucking believe it? I mean, a kid. A kid! This changes everything. We were having a good time.”

  “A good time?”

  He didn’t want to give yet another person an intimate account of his time with Penny. “I fucked up, man. Said some real nasty shit to her.”

  “But you don’t care, right? She lied about the kid and you’re pissed, so who cares.”

  “Point fucking made, Iggy. Doesn’t change a thing. I can’t have a kid. I mean, I already fucked things up with all the shit I said, and I feel like a complete dick. Imagine how much I’d screw up a kid. I don’t need that kind of shit in my life. I need fun. I need things to be easy.”

  “Really? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like that’s exactly the kind of shit you want. Since that chick came into town, not once have you hooked up, at least not that I’ve known about. We go out, you leave alone. You’re at the Pier every single fucking night. You went crazy when you found out she was going to work at Ruby’s. None of that shit screams easy or fun. It says fucking complicated and messy.”

  “I want her, Iggy, but I don’t want the kid that comes with her,” Travis admitted. Saying it out loud made him feel like the biggest kind of asshole.

  “Let me tell you a little story,” Iggy said.

  “Not the time.”

  “Shut up and listen. Gonna drop some knowledge on you, brother.”

  Travis rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Once upon a time, there was a kid who grew up in foster care. Let’s call the kid Marco. Hard life.”

  Travis knew all about hard lives—he didn’t want to hear about someone else’s. He knew better than anyone what it meant to have a shitty family and no money.

  “The kid was hungry, angry, and desperate to get himself a home,” Iggy went on. “So one day he hustles himself some money and gets some fake papers and at the ripe ol’ age of seventeen enlists in the Army. Made some good friends, learned what it is to have family. Learned that sometimes family is not blood. In fact, the family you pick for yourself can be better than blood. And the kid ends up meeting his brother, Dante, in the hot-as-fuck sands of Iraq. All Dante does for three years is talk about his girl and his son at home. Dante couldn’t wait to see her. That was his only dream. Dante talked about it so much that Marco began to believe that maybe being alone sucked ass. Maybe he needed to get the fuck out of the Army and go find himself a family. A girl. A son. Three years in the trenches with Dante, planning barbeques with an imaginary family and Dante’s real family. Then one day—boom! A fucking IED out of no-fucking-where! Dante dies and leaves an orphan and a widow. Marco leaves his fucking leg in the fuckin’ desert and along with it the possibility of ever having children.”

  Travis had a lump in his throat. The truth was that Iggy was the most positive person he knew. The thought of all that darkness in Iggy’s life was astounding. “Damn, man. I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, I don’t tell a lot of people. But it’s cool,” Iggy said in a blasé tone. “What I’m trying to tell you, brother, is that you are a lucky son of a bitch. You don’t have to marry the girl, and there’s no need to have a family today. But don’t discard something that may lead to something big because you think you don’t want kids. I bet my leg—the real one—that you’ve never even thought about it. Really thought about it.”

  “But you have.”

&nbs
p; “Every fucking day,” Iggy said. He squeezed Travis’s shoulder before heading back into the waiting room.

  —

  The door to the waiting room opened and Iggy walked in. He said hello to everyone and then sat next to Penny. “Who’s this?”

  “Sarabelle, my daughter.”

  He wrapped one of the child’s curls around his finger. “Cute.”

  “Hey, Iggy, do you happen to have a phone I can borrow?” Penny asked.

  Iggy laughed. “Do I have a phone?” He rolled his eyes in amusement. “Got two.” He reached into his pocket and pulled one out.

  “Does it have Internet access? I need to check my email. Is that okay?”

  “You don’t have a phone?”

  “I do.” She pulled her flip phone out of her pocket. “One of those prepaid ones, and I can’t check my email on it.”

  Iggy took the phone out of her hands and looked at it as if it was some sort of ancient artifact. “Seriously?” He shook his head and scoffed. “Here you go.” He handed her his sleek phone.

  She went into the Web browser—it wasn’t difficult to use his phone, since it was similar to the one she’d had before leaving Oklahoma—and searched her email. She had a ton of messages, mostly from her old friends. Ignoring them all, she scrolled until she found what she was looking for. It was something she did almost every day from the public library. She scrolled through her Google Alerts; for the last year, all the alerts had been mostly about her missing, and there was nothing new. Relieved, she exited her emails and then did a search on Travis. Her heart pumped fast against her chest when she saw all the photos of herself with Travis, which were mostly from local papers and sites. The articles said mostly that Travis, the star of Fight Night, was smitten with a local bartender at Ruby’s; sources said her name was Penny.

  With trembling hands she read it again. “You okay?” Iggy asked. She exited the screen and handed him the phone without a word. How long before her stepfather found her?

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  She looked down at Sarabelle in her arms and squeezed her harder.

  “Penny?”

  “Um…yeah, fine.” She stood, her eyes unfocused and her thoughts jumbled. She didn’t want to go back to her apartment. What if her stepfather was there? She knew she was overreacting. It was too soon; the stories had just appeared in the last hour. And really, what could her stepfather do? He couldn’t physically make her do anything. She sighed. She knew what he’d do—he’d use his money to back her into a corner and force her hand.

  “Okay, I think it’s time you tell us what’s going on. You’re kind of scaring us with that look,” Violet said, taking Belle from Penny’s arms.

  She looked around and saw Travis standing close by, his arms crossed over his chest. “I should talk to him alone first.”

  “Go. We’ll watch her,” Violet offered.

  Penny led Travis to the other side of the room. This was it. Time to come clean.

  Chapter 6

  “My stepdaddy’s Kip Owens.”

  “Who?”

  She reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and pulled up the Web browser. “Here.” She hit play on a video.

  A familiar-looking man stood on a large stage. When Travis saw the large cross, he realized it was a church. “Oh, the preacher guy?”

  “Yes.”

  He continued to give her a blank stare until it hit him. “Oh, fuck! Your stepdad’s Kip Owens, the rich preacher from television?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you have a baby. And you aren’t married.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. No wonder you always seemed out of place.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that you didn’t look like you should have a shitty phone, a small apartment, and no car. You’re mannered, classy, well spoken.”

  “Yes. Stuck-up bitch.”

  Hearing her repeat the words he’d flung at her just an hour ago made him flinch.

  He took her hands. She tried to pull them back, but he held them tighter. “Before you say one more word, I need to apologize. You know my mom was a drug addict who did nothing but put me and JL down. She was horrible, and everything I’ve done most of my life has been to prove her wrong.”

  “But she passed away, Travis. You don’t have to—”

  “I know all of that. But it’s something no one knows. Something I don’t talk about. To anyone. But you deserve to know where that hurtful comment came from. It came from a bad place. She used to tell me how I wasn’t worth anything. How I would never amount to anything. When I heard you say that, it just brought back old wounds.”

  “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I would never do that. I was trying to explain about Kip and the reason I couldn’t be photographed. He wouldn’t think you’re good enough because he doesn’t think anyone is. Well, anyone who’s different from him. Your career, your tattoos, the cursing, the drinking…I’m not trying to judge you. I like you the way you are. I’m just telling you why he wouldn’t like you. He doesn’t like me either since I got pregnant. But I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  “I know that now, and I’m sorry—I just jumped to conclusions. What I said…it was wrong. I don’t think those things about you. But most of all, I’m sorry I said those things in front of people. Our private moments. I feel…” He shook his head and looked up as if trying to gather composure. “I—I don’t know what to say except I am so sorry. God, sorry seems like an inadequate word. I feel like exactly the kind of person I said I’d never be.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Travis. None of it. You and I are too different. You are at a different point in your life. One I might even envy. I have a child and responsibilities. You have a burgeoning career that you need to take care of. An image—the single playboy—that you need to uphold. And you need to get out and have fun. I do understand all of that, Travis. I really do. I don’t begrudge you that.”

  She sat down on the nearest bench. “I grew up very wealthy. I had everything I needed. Nothing I really wanted, though. My dad died when I was seven, and my mother married Kip almost immediately. On television they had to portray the perfect family. When I was sixteen my mother died of breast cancer. Kip had legally adopted me by then, so he was stuck with me when Mom died. And then I got pregnant. A pregnant eighteen-year-old kid was not good for the preacher’s image. Plus, he’s not just a preacher—he’s the guy you see on syndicated television talking about living a pure life free of immorality and saying that God only loves those who save themselves for marriage.”

  “I get it. He’s famous. A couple of thousand people listen to him. But that’s not going to—”

  “Six million, Travis. Six million people tune in every single week to watch his sermons. Sermons about living a pure life dedicated to God’s mission. Six million believe that his word is law.”

  “Damn,” Travis said. “Okay, well, so who’s the father?”

  “His name’s Lawrence. He works with Kip.”

  “A preacher too?”

  “More like a jerk. He’s in his late thirties. I shouldn’t have slept with him, but I did—I was stupid. And it turned out he was married. I didn’t know at the time, I swear. Please believe that I didn’t know he had a family.”

  “Calm down. I’m not judging you. I know you well enough to know you’d never do that.”

  “I thought he loved me. I really did. I was so stupid. Anyway, he gave me five thousand dollars to keep quiet. He told me that I had seduced him and that had been the reason he’d succumbed to temptation. And if I said anything, I’d ruin his marriage.”

  “Motherfucker!” Travis cursed, his fists clenching at his side.

  “I might be young, but I’m not stupid. I knew it wasn’t my fault. I also quickly realized this was not a man I wanted in my life or in my child’s life. So I took the money and got him out of my life. I know it looks terrible that I took the money. But I took it for Sarabelle. He was going to
be a terrible father anyway, and I preferred having him out of the picture completely. I never thought that the money was going to be my lifeline. But after Lawrence was out of the picture, Kip sent me away to Fresh Start, a home for pregnant girls.”

  “Those actually exist?”

  She laughed, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah, they exist. It wasn’t so bad, actually. Most of the girls were a lot younger than I was; some were victims of sex crimes. I knew I didn’t want to give the baby up for adoption, but Kip didn’t really give me much of a choice. And neither did the attorneys from the television station that produces the show—I’d been appearing on the show when I was a minor, and when I turned eighteen my stepfather talked me into signing a contract to continue appearing on the show. But the attorneys said that my actions infringed on the morality clause in my contract. So they packed up my things and moved me, and I was supposed to just accept that, I suppose.”

  “How’d you end up here?”

  “I couldn’t accept that. I never did. I never even once thought of giving up the baby. And once I had her and the doctor put her in my arms, my fate was sealed. She’s part of me. A limb, an extension of me. So a couple of days after I had the baby, I left.”

  “And you think they’ll finally find you?”

  She let out a big breath. “You don’t get it. They aren’t looking for me. I did them a favor by leaving. I think, for appearances’ sake, Kip made a public effort to find me for a few months; he probably played the grieving father, but really, he couldn’t care less. Now, however, I’m likely to be all over the news. I can’t just go back into hiding, and they can’t pretend I don’t exist. I mean, how would that look for the perfect preacher if his daughter is not only alive but has a baby and is partying it up with an MMA reality television star in Florida? They can’t ignore it, Travis, and they will come to look for me. It may all be for appearances, but they’ll want me back.”

  “So tell them to fuck off and stay here.”

  “Obviously. But I didn’t want to have to deal with it. Who knows what Kip will do? You think you have a lot of media attention now? You have no idea. He’ll come into town with a media circus. He’s persistent, Travis. And what if that television station sues me for breach of the morality clause? I’m barely surviving financially, and if I have to deal with the cost of defending or losing a lawsuit, I won’t survive that. I just won’t. I don’t want Belle raised the way I was raised. I know you grew up poor and that your life was bad and that you probably think because we had money life was good. It wasn’t. Not at all. We had strict rules. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t know what was going on outside of my small town. I wasn’t allowed to think for myself. Everything that wasn’t prescribed by them was wrong. And I really don’t want to be known as the preacher’s slutty daughter, because that is exactly what they will say about me. Once the press hears, that’s all they will say.