by Malcom, Anne
One of my paintings was worth about the same as the apartment it was hanging in. And the fact I owned it, that painting that had all but saved me that day in Washington, it was worth more than a roof over my head.
Though my apartment was pretty kickass.
Everything was white, floor to ceiling windows flooding my living space with natural light as if I thought it would cancel out the years living in darkness and filth.
I sank down onto my sofa. It cost more than my first car.
It was totally worth it. It was like a fucking hug for your body.
But I didn’t feel comforted by it. The quiet after the bustling streets of Ankara was uncomfortable. The air, scented with my lavender diffuser was too clean, too simple compared to the polluted and chaotic combination the city I’d left behind.
I always had a hard time transitioning from the loud and busy locations I traveled to, to the quiet of my home. It was incredibly lonely.
Though I wasn’t technically alone. My hand rested on the tiny bump. It was strange to think I’d probably long for this quiet once the baby was born. That I’d curse myself for not appreciating it more, for making myself go all melancholy about it. A baby would not foster quiet or peace, I knew that.
I also knew that people glamourized motherhood, that the made it seem wonderful and easy for reasons unbeknownst to everyone. Like honesty about what a fucking misery it is to raise a human being was somehow taboo. Everyone was always pretending they had life figured out. Because they didn’t want to admit it to their friends. Or maybe to themselves.
My palms itched to hold my pill bottle. Pop the cap open so I wasn’t alone. The pills I’d been so against provided me with company in my loneliest of moments. I wasn’t addicted, per se. But I was uncomfortably dependent.
Going cold turkey probably wasn’t my best idea. But having unprotected sex with Wyatt when we were both drunk wasn’t the best idea either. I had to live with my decisions.
The doctors told me they could move me onto medication that was safer to take while pregnant. I wasn’t risking it.
My family took a lot of risks with my life, both before and after I was born. Before, my mum smoked and drank heavily. I knew this because she told me. Because she said that’s why I’d come out slow and cried all the time. That’s why she’d left me alone for hours because she “couldn’t stand my squawking.”
Every action in her motherhood was made for selfish reasons, nothing was sacrificed for me. So yeah, those little white pills made it easier for me to function, but no way in fuck was I going to jeopardize my kid’s life just so mine could be easier.
A knock at the door jerked me out of my morbid contemplation.
Good thing too. I wasn’t prone to moments of self-pity. They didn’t serve me. I also didn’t want to give my parents the satisfaction of ruining my future right along with my past. If anyone was going to ruin my future, it was going to be me.
And I was doing a mighty fine job of it.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Wyatt on the other side of the door when I opened it. Only a few people had the code to get into the building, but I hadn’t even let myself entertain the thought it was Wyatt. I’d guessed it was Noah or Lexie, both of whom I’d texted when I landed. I didn’t text Wyatt, though. I was still mad at him. Confused about him. He thought I was arriving tomorrow, but Duke likely snitched.
There was also the case of the handful of calls and text messages I’d ignored. I expected him to be spitting mad, spouting all sorts of shit he had no right to spout. I expected a fight. That’s what we did, after all.
But I got nothing. No shouting, curses, accusations.
“Em,” he said, breathing my name in that horrible and beautiful way he seemed to do now.
His eyes roved over every inch of me hungrily. Like I was wearing a skin-tight dress that showed off half my tits instead of black cashmere sweats and combat boots. Because I may have been able to be asshole enough to afford cashmere sweats—and they were like wearing fucking clouds—but I was always going to be that girl from the other side of the tracks, so it paid to keep my roots planted on my feet in the form of scuffed leather boots.
I contemplated Wyatt in much the same way he did me.
With hunger.
He had a long Henley on, the sleeves pushed up to reveal tattoos covering his muscled forearms. He had a beanie covering his head, silver strung around his neck. And his trademark black jeans and black Chucks.
I’d seen him in all this before, it was achingly familiar.
So why did it feel so different?
Wyatt froze the second his eyes touched the small but now noticeable swell in my stomach. Because I was naturally so small, it was more obvious than it might’ve been.
I was about to try and suck it in, out of sheer self-consciousness. But this wasn’t bloating after eating twelve tacos, this was a baby, I couldn’t suck it in. And then there was Wyatt’s gaze, the way it softened, the way it melted as it focused on that bump. Like it was something beautiful. Like I was something beautiful.
I knew I was hot. I wasn’t blind. I had a great rack, took care of my body. My eyes were just big enough to make me look innocent and sultry at the same time and my ‘blowjob lips’ were always accentuated with red lipstick.
But I didn’t have the trademark red lipstick on. Nor my trademark skin showing outfits.
And Wyatt wasn’t looking at me like he thought I was hot. There was a difference when a man leered at your assets and when a man looked at you like you were something more than tits and blowjob lips.
Like the way Wyatt was looking at me now.
Like he’d always looked at me, if I felt like being honest with myself.
“You’re showing,” he murmured, voice raspy.
I placed my palm on the small bump, feeling love toward the being underneath my hand that I didn’t even think I was capable of. “Yeah, it just kind of...popped when I was away. Luckily it’s still small enough to hide. Being an unmarried woman in Turkey is bad enough. Unwed and pregnant? That would’ve been tricky.” I paused. “Though not with my new shadow that made my buyer very nervous until I assured them Duke wasn’t FBI.”
Wyatt’s jaw hardened, but he still couldn’t tear his eyes upward. His hand, fisted at his side relaxed and twitched, as if he wanted to move.
His eyes met mine. “Can I?”
I blinked before I got his meaning.
“Hell no,” should’ve been my answer, to reinforce those boundaries needed to protect my heart.
Instead, I only nodded.
Immediately, his palm found my stomach and my reaction to the touch was strong and immediate. Violent. Violent because it wasn’t. I wasn’t used to the tender reverence in the way he touched me. No one had touched me like that. I made sure of it. Because when someone touched you with tenderness when all you knew was pain, it showed you just how horrible your life was before and how it would be after, with only the memory of that softness.
I stepped back, purposefully.
Wyatt’s hand stayed mid-air, cradling a moment that should never have happened.
“Emma,” he murmured, voice soft.
“No,” I said, the word a prayer. “We’re not turning this into something.”
His eyes met mine. “It already was something the second I took you to bed.”
I folded my arms. “It didn’t mean anything, we were both drunk,” I lied.
He narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit, you felt something. You’ve felt something since then.”
“Yeah, I have,” I shot. “Lonely. All my life I’ve been lonely. And the way I cure that is to have sex with random men.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized it. The first time I’d uttered that truth out loud. And I kept going. “Fuck oysters, loneliness is the best aphrodisiac. And it just so happened that night we were both feeling lonely. So we had sex. That’s it. Sex you don’t even remember, might I add.”
“I might not remember the fucki
ng, but I remember you,” he hissed, leaning forward. “I remember waking up feeling like death and then vanilla and coconut brought me back. I reached for you without even knowing there was a possibility of you there. I watched you walk away with a brave face and dead eyes and you carried something away with me. Something more than what’s growing inside you. Something I didn’t realize I’d given you until that morning.”
The words hit me bodily. It took me a long handful of moments to foster the appropriate response, to stop myself from crossing the distance between us. “You’re being fucking ridiculous,” I said.
Wyatt’s gaze went to my stomach once more before his eyes yanked themselves upward. “Did you fuck him?”
I jutted my chin up. “Who?”
He clenched his jaw. “You fucking know who.”
“The bodyguard that you hired without my permission?” I asked sweetly.
Wyatt only nodded once, as if he physically couldn’t form words anymore.
“It would’ve served you right if I did,” I said, my voice acid. Wyatt’s body went tight, wired. I should’ve kept him hanging for longer than a couple of moments, but I couldn’t handle the pain in his gaze. “No, I didn’t fuck him.” I narrowed my eyes. “But you try and pull that shit again, I will fuck him. Just out of spite.”
Then I slammed the door in his face.
Because I wasn’t doing a good enough job of ruining my own life, I had to ruin Wyatt’s too.
* * *
One Week Later
When I walked into the living room of the beach house, Wyatt and Sam were there. I shouldn’t have been surprised since the band was trying to prepare for a domestic tour and record an album at the same time. There were rarely times when they weren’t all together. And though I was happy as anything that it meant Lexie was back in L.A. and could help me through all the pregnancy bullshit and just life in general—I didn’t like that it meant whenever I went to hang out with my best friend, Wyatt was always there.
Or I did like it.
Which was the problem.
And Wyatt was also always here since I’d gotten back from Turkey, trying to prove something to me about how permanent he was going to be in my life. No, the baby’s life.
I was trying to continue to be mad at him and also continue not to give in to the need to let him back into my life. But I had to let him into my life, because this was his kid too, he had a right to be a father, now he’d decided to be one. I just had to figure out how to have him as just the father of my child, the famous rock star, not Wyatt the boy with the grin and the pain in his eyes.
What a clusterfuck.
I was entering the living room replying to an email about one of the biggest clients I’d ever landed. He was a billionaire with a passion for rare art. He also had a penchant for giving me very generous bonuses when I delivered. Which I always did. The piece he wanted was almost impossible to find, it had been lost in the Russian Revolution spirited away before people started pillaging the tsar’s palace. I didn’t even know if it still existed. Wars and revolutions took their toll. They took lives, stole away parents and children, and works of art in much the same way.
I was putting out feelers to everyone I knew in the business and every shady character I’d become connected to in my career. I seemed to attract shady characters, so my list was long—thankful for me. Most of the art hung in sophisticated upper-class households was sourced by people that they’d consider trash.
Life was funny.
I had just gotten an email from a smuggler friend who thought I might have luck in Serbia so I was looking at when I could go. The sooner, the better. I’d have to stop traveling soon, with the baby and everything. And though I’d argued with Duke about the lack of danger in Turkey, he wasn’t wrong—it was stupid to put myself at risk. I didn’t care about risking myself, but I wouldn’t risk my baby. But I also needed to ensure my baby would have a life that I never did. That I alone would provide it. The paycheck from this sale—if I could pull it off, would do it.
The sounds of Wyatt and Sam arguing wasn’t unfamiliar since all they did was argue. That’s what brothers did, and they were closer than blood. Noah and Lexie were the mediators. I was the audience.
I had no idea what they were fighting about this time. Something was said about the last bagel.
“You’re such an asshole since you’ve given up smoking,” Sam muttered after Wyatt let out a string of curses.
My head jerked up. “You’ve given up smoking?”
Sam grinned. “Awesome, was it meant to be a secret?”
Wyatt flipped the bird at Sam before looking to me. It still hit me physically how much his gaze softened as soon as it landed on me.
On my belly.
Not me.
His child.
And that filled me with warm and fuzzies of course.
But I was also a little jealous.
Of my unborn child.
I was so fucked up.
“It’s not a big deal.” He shrugged.
“Tell that to the roadie you punched in the face for dropping your bass,” Sam chimed in. “I’m all for rock star moves, but that was just a plain dick move.”
“Don’t you have a wife to annoy now?” Wyatt snapped.
“I do have a wife to annoy. And fuck, because the baby is sleeping, and when the baby sleeps, we fuck,” Sam said with a grin.
He all but skipped out the door.
Ugh. People in love were assholes.
No, people in love with people who loved them back were assholes.
Because I had been in love with Wyatt when he wasn’t in love with me and I was a different kind of asshole.
But I wasn’t in love with Wyatt.
Not anymore.
At least that’s what I told myself.
That love was something that you could shrug on and off like a sweater. In reality, it was a jagged scar that you wore for life.
“You punched someone in the face for dropping a base?” I repeated, shaking myself away from such thoughts. “Sam’s right, that is a dick move. You seem to be good at those these days.” I folded my arms.
Wyatt flinched. The blow was low and unfair, and it was lashing out from my own weak feelings more than anything else.
He didn’t attempt to call me on my shit because he believed he deserved it.
I guessed he kind of did.
But then again, I’d flung a pregnancy on him when he didn’t even know that we’d had sex. It was a lot. The reaction wasn’t good, like at all, but I could get it.
I would’ve lost myself at the bottom of a whisky bottle—or four—when I found out if I could’ve. I would’ve disappeared, ran away from such a responsibility. And if I had the chance, I wasn’t sure I would’ve come back like Wyatt had. But I was forced to stay and deal with the responsibility since it was growing inside me.
“It wasn’t just that,” Wyatt clipped. “Dude was a perve. I’ve been lookin’ for a reason to punch him for weeks. Happens to be the same day he looked at your ass he dropped the guitar.”
I’d stopped by the studio earlier today to pick up Ava and take her on an ‘adventure’ to the supermarket—something that was rare for her to do without paps following her everywhere. Wyatt had been glaring at some random guy, the guy I hadn’t noticed because I was too busy trying to pretend I didn’t notice Wyatt.
“You can’t punch every guy that looks at my ass,” I said. “I’ve got a great ass, which means your hand will get damaged, you won’t be able to play bass and then my ass will be responsible for Unquiet Mind breaking up. I can’t deal with the hate mail I’d get because of that, all my online shopping would get lost in the fray. Plus, it’s not your responsibility to be punching people who look at me, ass or otherwise.” I narrowed my eyes at him for good measure, impressed with myself that I didn’t let it sound like a tiny part of me liked that Wyatt was punching people for me.
Fuck flowers or chocolate, violence was my ultimate form of romance
.
“You’re right,” he said immediately.
I blinked, surprised he relented so quickly and didn’t go on some alpha rant about how I was hosting his baby therefore as the vessel I somehow belonged to him or some shit.
“You do have a great ass,” he continued.
Thought too soon.
I rolled my eyes. “Smoking?” I probed, deciding not to even go there. I needed to change the subject because the hunger in his eyes was not doing good things for my hormones.
No, it was doing great things for my hormones, which was the problem.
“It’s bad for the baby,” Wyatt answered my question.
Something warm bloomed in my stomach, it made me uncomfortable. “I agree, but the baby isn’t able to buy Lucky Strikes on account of the fact its still growing digits, so I think you’re good for like...fifteen years.”
“I started smoking at twelve,” Wyatt countered.
“Well, I’m gonna make sure my kid doesn’t take after his father in that respect,” I said dryly. “The kid hasn’t been born yet, so unless I swallow a packet of Luckys and a Zippo, we’re good.” I paused. “I’m not gonna tell you to stop doing something that you like.”
His eyes narrowed. “I like the idea of living long enough to see our kid graduate high school, get married, do whatever it is they want to live their dreams. I like the idea of not promoting an ugly and dirty fucking habit to a kid. I will not even entertain the idea of putting you or the baby at risk for that same dirty fucking habit.”
What did someone even say to that?
I swallowed, my stomach now completely fucking warm, his words working to circle me in something beautiful, comfortable.
