by Malcom, Anne
I wanted to react to the obvious pain on his face. In his soul. I wanted to soften for him. A part of me did. A big fucking part. But there was the bigger piece of me that was hard, calcified by my past, unfeeling toward his white male privilege.
“My parents starved me because they got better drugs from the doctor the sicker I got,” I hissed at him, not letting him continue. “They hit me when they got frustrated with each other, with themselves, with the world—which was often. They routinely told me what a waste of space I was. How I’d ruined their lives just by being born. They made sure that there was never a day, a minute, a fucking second in my childhood where I felt safe or happy in my home. They cut deep enough to ensure that I’d be scarred from their ugliness for life.” I narrowed my eyes at Wyatt if only to obscure the look on his face.
“But you don’t see me fucking misplacing that shit onto someone else,” I continued, my voice a blade, cutting through all the softness and beauty between us. “Using it as an excuse for shitty actions. Everyone has trauma, Wyatt. It’s not carte fucking blanche to go around hurting people. And no matter what yours is, it’s certainly not an explanation for leaving me pregnant and alone. And it sure as shit isn’t a free pass to get back into my life. Especially not back into my fucking pants.”
I’d thrown the words out of frustration, out of hurt, out of need to expel them to fucking someone after holding them in all these years. Yeah, Noah knew some, vague details. But not this.
Lexie knew none of it. Because she was Lexie, she had been pure, had looked at the world and saw beauty. I never wanted to be the reason she saw ugliness instead. And even when she was better versed on what a shitty place the world could be, I didn’t want to pile my own problems on top of her.
I told myself I didn’t need to talk about the past. That it was done and there was nothing yapping about it to some therapist could do. And then when it got too much, I still didn’t talk, I got those little white pills that numbed the edges of the blade that was my memories.
Whether it was the lack of those pills, my unstable hormonal balance, the reality of having to be a mother soon, or the feelings I’d been battling with Wyatt—it all came tumbling out. I didn’t have an intention to hurt him. Or maybe I did. Because I did want him to hurt. It was human not to want to be alone in pain, which was why we always hurt the ones we loved, we wanted to be closer to them. There is nothing more intimate than shared pain. We wanted to hurt them like the world hurt us.
Or that’s what I thought. When I focused on Wyatt’s face at the end of my tirade, I regretted opening myself up to him. It was like splitting a melon that looks okay on the outside and revealing it was actually rotted on the inside.
That had been my goal all my life, to make sure I looked okay on the outside to everyone, especially the people I cared about. Especially Wyatt. I didn’t want him to know how rotten I really was.
He’d winced like I’d hit him as I flung my memories like bullets, his face softening immediately from his previous expression. It wasn’t pity.
It was something else.
I’d hurt him with the knowledge of my own pain.
Just like I’d wanted.
But I regretted it so much I wanted to reach into the air and shove those ugly words back down my throat.
“Fuck,” he said finally, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “Emma, I didn’t know—”
“It’s not important,” I snapped.
“Like fuck it isn’t,” he growled. “The fact that you weren’t treated like you should’ve been, like the most precious treasure in this world...that’s the most important thing in the fucking world.”
“I didn’t give you my sob story for you to try to decorate it with pretty words,” I said, hating the words did something to him. Hating that I’d hurt him, but also hating that I’d let him farther in when it was already going to be hard enough to purge him from my system.
“I said it because it doesn’t matter. That’s the point. Our pasts don’t dictate our future, Wyatt,” I continued, trying to push back at him, trying to misplace my anger on him. “Whatever your childhood trauma is, I’m sorry. But I’ve got my own that I’m determined not to imprint on this kid.” I put my hand to my stomach. “I refuse to project any pain onto it. Pain from my past. From yours. From our fucked-up present. And you know that’s what we are, fucked up pain. We made something beautiful. I know that and she’s not even born yet. I’m not letting either of our ugliness jeopardize her.”
Wyatt stared at me for a long time. Long enough to make me want to crawl out of my skin just to escape his gaze. There was anger in it. Pain.
Pain so deep I wanted to fucking swim in it, despite what I just said. I itched to ask him what his parents had done. I wanted to be the person he could tell that to. I wanted to be his comfort. But I was barely my own. And he didn’t deserve me to fuck him up even worse.
He stepped forward so our bodies brushed, so my bump pressed against his flat and muscled torso. His hand cupped my cheek. “We’re fucked up. We’re pain. But it doesn’t mean we’re not gonna happen. I’m gonna save our daughter from all the pain I can. But not from us.” He didn’t give me a chance to argue this, because he kissed me.
Kissed me after all the ugly words I’d flung at him.
Kissed me with a gentleness that had never existed within me or between us.
And I kissed him back with a gentleness that I didn’t even know I had.
“Kisses!” Ava screamed, jerking us out of the moment.
I damn near jumped across the room as Wyatt’s lips left mine.
He scowled at me as I did so, but Ava bounded through the room, attaching herself to his legs. “I need kisses too, Uncle It,” she demanded.
He picked her up and laid his lips all over her face immediately, but his eyes darted from me to her with meaning.
That this wasn’t done.
That we weren’t.
I was struggling to get my breathing and thundering heart under control. Trying to put on a façade that a kiss hadn’t just rocked my world.
Lexie regarded me as she followed her daughter, Killian followed her, checking out her ass.
“Did my daughter just cock block you?” she whispered in my ear.
“No, she just saved me,” I whispered back.
But you couldn’t save anyone who was already damned.
Chapter Eleven
One Week Later
Wyatt and I hadn’t spoken since the...incident at the beach house. I’d tried to push it out of my mind. So that meant it was the only thing I thought about. And I’d swing between being furious at Wyatt for trying to push me into something starting with that song and then myself for being so harsh on him when he’d tried to give me an explanation. After he’d played that beautiful song.
And we’d shared that fucking beautiful kiss.
But that’s what I was.
Hard.
I didn’t know how to be soft in the face of people’s trauma.
I didn’t even know how to be soft in the face of my own.
Who the heck knew how I was going to be soft with a baby. It scared the ever-loving shit out of me. That I wouldn’t be able to give it the right kind of love, the soft gentle kind. My greatest fear was becoming a version of my parents. I’d never neglect or abuse my kid like they did—the very thought of it turned my stomach—but who knew if I’d abuse it in a different way, just because of my lack of emotional intelligence.
I’d forced myself to push past that and dove headfirst into setting my apartment up for a child. Lexie’s suggestion that I move to Amber was still rattling around in my mind. It didn’t help that Mia called me every day with different benefits of moving out of L.A.
“You don’t have to spend eight hours of your day in traffic. Driving from one side of Amber to the other takes like eight minutes.”
“There’s less pollution.”
“There’s no asshole vegan restaurants judging you for eating meat.”
“You don’t have to pretend you find improv comedy funny.”
“You can actually park your car without paying your kid’s first year of college tuition.”
“You won’t be around people who go on hikes for fun.”
And it went on.
Her final reason in the phone call was always “you’ll be closer to your family.”
And it hit me every time.
My family.
As much as my selfish and damaged soul needed the city for self-preservation, I was finding it hard to deprive my kid the experience of being surrounded by family.
But one thing was stopping me.
One person.
I couldn’t move to the idyllic seaside town with no smog or traffic and be the one tragic single mother while everyone else was in love with hot badasses. I’d much rather be single and pathetic in L.A.
Because the secret that I hadn’t told anyone was that I wanted the white picket fence. That stupid simple life. But I didn’t want it without Wyatt.
I didn’t think he’d ever want it. He thrived here, not because of his fame. Because he liked the lifestyle, for the same reason I did. I didn’t let him lay his demons out for me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t see them. He needed the ugliness of the city too. I didn’t know what his parents had done to him, but I knew they were still in Amber and if they’d fucked him up as bad as it seemed, I doubted he’d want them eight minutes away. And I didn’t want that life with anyone but Wyatt. I certainly didn’t want it alone.
So I shoved away the thoughts of starting something like a family in Amber. I’d fuck that up at some point, anyway. There was more comfort in the what if than the actuality of doing something.
I got all of the furniture in the guest room out, painted it a soft gray and went on a Pinterest spree like a maniac. I couldn’t help losing myself in a fucking rabbit hole of broken-hearted quotes, tearing up as I read how other people explained my heartbreak in ways they could.
Yes, I was the girl crying over quotes in front of her computer, just the person I’d told Lexie and Gina I’d never be.
But I was a liar.
And with work trips piling up and my belly becoming much harder to hide under floaty blouses and oversized tees, it was becoming apparent I couldn’t lie to Marshall about the baby anymore. I’d told him earlier today.
To say he’d been surprised would be a gross understatement.
“You’re kidding?” he asked after I’d walked in and announced I was knocked up.
I shook my head.
“That’s why you’ve stopped wearing that shit that Addy keeps complaining to HR about? I should’ve known better than thinking you were actually deciding to listen to organized forms of authority,” he muttered. “But pregnant?” He stared at me, then the stomach. “Didn’t even think you had a boyfriend.”
“I don’t.”
He raised his brow. “He in the picture, the father?”
“Unfortunately.”
He twisted his gold signet ring that was always on his pinky. “I need to get some of my Russian friends to have a conversation with him?” he asked, voice hard.
I laughed. “No. And if he needed it, I’ve got my own friends who know how to have those conversations.”
He chuckled. “That you do.”
“I want to work as much as I can until I pop this sucker out,” I said. “I can’t do the risky trips until after, of course. But I’ll do what I can. I know you’re not the person to hold jobs for people, but you’re not gonna get better than me.”
He chuckled again. “True. And I don’t hold jobs for people because most people are replaceable. You aren’t. And you won’t be doing any trips that put your health at risk. Then again, that cuts out most of your trips since you only do the risky ones.”
“That’s where all the best pieces are,” I countered. “You’ve gotta risk a lot for the best art.”
He stared at me, twinkling eyes. “Very true. But you’ve made enough to give yourself a break from the riskier stuff. You want paid maternity leave, we’ll sort something out, but I’m thinking you’re not the kind of mother that’s going to need months of nesting or whatever that shit is.”
I laughed, thinking about my overflowing Pinterest board but still empty guest room. “No, I’m not exactly the nesting type.”
He nodded. “Job’s always yours.” He paused, grimacing. “You don’t want a baby shower, do you?”
I raised my brow. “You give anyone the idea that I want a baby shower, I’ll slit your throat while you sleep,” I said sweetly.
“Thought about as much.”
I turned to walk away.
“Emma.”
I stopped.
“You’ll make a good mother, I think. An unconventional one for sure. But a good one. In case you were doubting that.”
The old, money hungry, vaguely chauvinistic bastard saw a lot more than I gave him credit for.
I was too deep in my own thoughts to notice the stranger lurking at the entrance to my building until he rushed at me.
Even then, my hands were too full of snacks to defend myself.
I instinctively did what I could to cover the small swell in my stomach. It wasn’t myself I wanted to protect—that I needed to protect. It was the poor defenseless being that I had just been cursing for making me crave ice cream and corn chips at two in the morning.
I’d never been one prone to fear. My life desensitized me from the pointless emotion pretty early. Fear didn’t serve me, being afraid of something terrible didn’t stop it from happening. My parents still hit me, starved me, and locked me in my room for hours at a time whether I was afraid of it or not.
People would remark about how I was ‘so brave’ to sneak myself into countries embroiled in civil war in order to retrieve priceless pieces of art. Of course, Wyatt had called it “stupid and fucking reckless” potato, patoto. I knew I wasn’t stupid. And I also knew I wasn’t brave. You had to overcome fear in order to be brave. I was never afraid in the first place.
When I first moved to L.A., I lived in some of the roughest neighborhoods there were. That’s where the rent was cheap enough for me to not require a roommate. I couldn’t stand the thought of having someone in my space. And I was willing to move into ramshackle apartments that served as front row seats to gang wars and drug busts in order to find a small, stained and shitty space of my own.
But I’d never been scared to walk to my car, to fall asleep amongst the gunshots. And I was never bothered. Whether that was just dumb luck or some sort of sense that I wasn’t easy prey, it didn’t matter.
So walking home in the dark and having a figure rush at me in my plush new neighborhood, miles away from my first one, normally wouldn’t fill me with terror. If it was just me. But it was no longer just me. And whatever this dark stranger was going to do to me was going to put my baby in danger.
Since I’d never experienced such an emotion, I was paralyzed with it, rooted to the spot.
Fear gave way to relief as Wyatt’s face came into view about the same time he hissed, “What the fuck, Em?”
My relief gave way to annoyance as he snatched my bags from me, face like thunder.
“Hey! Don’t take snacks away from a pregnant woman,” I hissed.
His fury was etched into his face. “Well considering that pregnant woman is walkin’ alone at two in the morning carrying my fucking baby, you’re lucky the only thing getting taken from you is your snacks and that it’s me doing the taking.” He glared at me. “Get in the building.”
I folded my arms. “Give me my snacks, stop speaking to me like you have some sort of control over me and then I’ll get in the building.”
Wyatt’s face was granite and his anger was a physical thing. “Get in the motherfucking building, Emma.”
“Eat a motherfucking dick, Wyatt,” I replied.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t seem physically able, the way his body was taut, his knuckles whitening with t
he grip he had on the bags he took from me. It was a stare off. Ones I usually won.
But I hadn’t had one with Wyatt being this angry. With this between us. And with a baby pressing on my bladder.
“For the record, I’m going inside because I have to pee, not because you told me to,” I snapped, turning on my heel, not glancing back at him.
I would’ve shut the door right in his face, but he had the food. Though I wanted to shut him and everything he represented out, I needed those snacks. My usual ironclad willpower was disappearing with every day I got more pregnant. And I wasn’t even halfway. I was going to be a fucking whale by the time I popped this thing out.
Wyatt and I didn’t speak on the elevator ride. Me because I was pissed at him and also concentrating on not wetting myself. Another thing quickly disappearing with the pregnancy—my bladder control.
I guessed Wyatt was silent because he was all pissed off if the air in the elevator and his expression was anything to go by.
He had nothing to be pissed off for, and I planned on telling him this after I emptied my bladder and right before I kicked him out of my apartment, since he made it clear he was coming in when he snatched the keys from my hands and strode forward and unlocked the door. I had enough time to give him a scowl before running inside to pee.
Once I got out of the bathroom all of the food I’d bought was laid out on the counter, Wyatt staring at it with an intensity that was not deserving of Ben and Jerry’s and Doritos. Wait, did I just become jealous of fucking junk food?
I was meant to be mad at him.
Hormones were crazy.
“It’s not a fucking Rubix Cube, Wyatt,” I said, snatching the ice cream and chips. It’s just food.”
He looked up slowly. “Just food that you risked your and my child’s life for.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s a bit melodramatic. I walked two blocks in a neighborhood that has one of the lowest crime rates in L.A. I wasn’t running through the fucking Gaza strip.”
He folded his arms.
I waited for him to say more, to yell, it seemed that’s what he was intending on. I was willing to meet him in that argument, and win it—but first, food.
