Mother Trucker (Crownville Truckers Book 1)

by Moxie Darling

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh … God.”

  Hand on her stomach, she moved away from the door as a sleepy-eyed trucker approached. Mae practically stumbled around the side of the building where she leaned on the brick in relative privacy.

  Pregnant.

  The word took hold inside her like poison roots. How had she not felt it before? How had she not realized that she hadn’t bled in well over a month? Now that the idea crawled over her like hungry beetles, other thoughts occurred to her. Her breasts had been tender the last few days, and she’d cried twice in the past week over something cute Ken had done. She’d been craving her ma’s southern-fried catfish since Monday.

  She’d never liked her ma’s catfish.

  “No,” Mae whispered.

  She was so … stunned she didn’t know how to feel. Shocked tears welled in her eyes, and her heart thumped like a lame horse struggling to make it to the finish line. Clyde’s words throbbed in her mind.

  “Bridge was burned a long time ago. There won’t ever be any crossing it.”

  “Life isn’t that black and white.”

  “It is for me.”

  He would leave her. He loved her, but he would leave her. Children were the end of the road for him, and his resolve was stone. And what about her? How did she feel about it? Kids were a far-off possibility. Something she may or may not want some day. She was in no position to be a mother. She lived in a rig with her cat and her trucker, daydreaming about the future, mile to mile. Where would a baby fit into that? How could a baby fit into that? Her thoughts swam, and she was dangerously close to hyperventilating.

  As if bidden, her ma’s words came to her. Get your shit together, Maybelline. Just because it feels like the end of the world, don’t mean it is. Like when Rox thought she had gonorrhea and it was just a yeast infection.

  Mae drew in a shaky breath, holding the shopping bag in a white-knuckled fist. Maybe the puking was a coincidence. Maybe it really was the lasagna. Maybe the cashier had just planted the idea in her head and Mae had convinced herself. After all, there had only been that one time they’d neglected to use a condom.

  That one time.

  With those three words echoing in her skull, she pushed off the building and went back inside. Feeling like she was having an out-of-body experience, she located the shelving that contained the pregnancy tests and grabbed one without looking at the brand or price.

  When she approached the counter for the second time, the cashier raised her eyebrows. “Forget something?”

  “Yeah,” Mae said quietly and put the box on the counter.

  The cashier glanced at the pregnancy test, and her expression turned understanding. “Sometimes it sneaks up on us,” she said, discreetly scanning and bagging the test.

  Mae managed a smile, forever grateful that it was a woman behind the counter. “Yeah.”

  “Good luck, honey,” the cashier said, smiling encouragingly.

  “Thanks,” Mae murmured and hurried to the restroom again.

  It was the longest three minutes of her life.

  By the time she was able to bring herself to look at the stick, she was ready to crawl out of her skin. Heart pounding, she held her breath and opened her eyes, looking down at the test waiting on her knees.

  And the world ground to a screeching, gritty halt.

  Positive.

  It was positive.

  “No,” she whispered, her brain turning to mush. She couldn’t wrap her head around what pregnant meant for herself, let alone Clyde. God, she wished her ma was here. She would know what to do. Or, at least, know what to say. If nothing else, she would distract Mae from the emotional well she was falling into.

  Mae had nobody to blame but herself. She might have been a virgin that day at the creek, but she knew about the birds and the bees. She knew how babies were made. And still, she’d done what she’d done. At the time, getting pregnant had been the last thing on her mind. She’d been a tangle of grief and anger, and Clyde had been the perfect seam ripper. Being with him had felt as vital as breathing. It had been foolish and reckless and stupid, and now she was paying the price.

  Or, rather, the baby inside her was paying the price.

  Because what kind of parents could they be? Clyde a furious absentee father, and her a single mother with a few hundred dollars to her name and nowhere to call home.

  The tears came hard and fast, and she dissolved, gripping the test as if it was a lifeline. She cried because it was the beginning of the end for her and Clyde. Cried for the loss of her naivete. Cried because her ma would never see her grandchild. Never hold it.

  Never hold Mae.

  She didn’t know how long she sat in the stall. She only knew she ran out of tears at some point. Her face was hot and wet, and a railroad spike had been pounded into her skull. Trembling all over, she stared at the graffiti-scarred door with red-rimmed eyes as a cold, alien thought whispered in the back of her mind.

  Abortion.

  She could get an abortion. It would be the best thing. Clyde would never have to know. And, while she might hate herself for the rest of her days, she would be saving their baby from what would undoubtedly be a devastatingly dysfunctional childhood.

  Their baby.

  Her heart howled.

  She thought of her own childhood. As devastatingly dysfunctional as they came. It had been one train wreck after another, bordering on child endangerment at times. But it had also been happy. She’d been loved. Desiree would never have won any parenting awards, but she’d been everything to Mae. Could Mae be everything to her baby? Did she want to be? Did what she wanted even matter? She didn’t know, but she knew she couldn’t hide in a Love’s Travel Stop stall forever.

  In a daze, she left. The cashier waved and said something to her as she walked by, but Mae didn’t hear it. She didn’t hear anything except the roaring in her ears and the desperate beating of her heart. Outside, she sucked in a deep breath and waited for the panic to subside. Across the lot, Clyde’s rig glinted in the morning sun. He was in there, sleeping, at peace.

  And she was about to drop a bomb on him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Love’s Travel Stop

  Newton, Iowa

  The walk across the parking lot took forever.

  And it didn’t take long enough.

  When she reached the Freight Shaker, she hesitated. Maybe she should just leave. Take Ken and go. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how Clyde would react. Why make the situation worse than it had to be? Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave? To spare them both the pain of a tragic ending? It would be. It would be so much easier. But easy didn’t always mean right. If her life had taught her nothing else, it was that. And she knew if she left with no explanation Clyde would chase her to the ends of the earth. That wouldn’t be fair to him. Despite how he felt about kids, he had a right to know.

  And down, down in the murky bottom of her barrel of hope was the chance that she was wrong.

  That he might feel differently now.

  A lot had happened in the past weeks, and his heart wasn’t as hard as it once was. He’d gone from stubbornly resisting his feelings for her to loving her with an intensity that was intoxicating and terrifying at the same time. He was like a man burning, and she was his igniter. When he looked at her, she felt as though she was all he saw. The only woman in the world. As though he would do anything to protect her. To care for her. To keep her. It was in the way he watched her. Touched her. Needed her. As if she’d reminded him that he was alive and, because of that, she’d become his world. They orbited each other like lovers’ moons, and their gravitational pull was bigger than either of them.

  Being with him had been both an exploration of the countryside and also herself. She knew him in ways she’d never known anyone. His heart had been a mystery that she’d been desperate to solve, and when she did, it had become hers. She’d fallen into his dark eyes, and they were a well she never wanted to climb out of. With her, h
e wasn’t surviving life. He was living it. He was simply Clyde. Unguarded. Unchained. Unleashed.

  Free.

  And she was about to shackle him.

  She opened the passenger’s door and climbed inside.

  He was awake, lying on his side in bed and trailing his finger through the sheet for Ken to paw at.

  “Hey,” she said, taking off her satchel and dropping the bag of Saltines and cat food on the seat.

  “Hey,” he murmured, grinning at Ken before looking up. “Where did you go this early …”

  His voice trailed off as he took in her red, blotchy face, and he sat up, the sheet exposing an indecent amount of his lower half. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  She was so far from fine it was laughable, but dissolving would only make things worse.

  He frowned, his jaw a day or two past needing a shave. “Then what?”

  She couldn’t keep the tremor from her voice. “I …” She looked down at her hands. “I need to talk to you.”

  Where had the air gone? She swallowed, her throat dry, as she sought the right words.

  “Mae,” he said, throwing off the sheet so he could come to the edge of the bed. He grabbed her hand. “Shit, what is it? You’re scaring the fuck out of me right now.”

  “I’m sorry,” she began, though just what she was apologizing for, she didn’t know. Tears threatened, and she forced them down. There was no easy way to say it so, in the end, she just said it. “I’m pregnant.”

  Silence grew between them like a poison vine. He stared at her. It was several moments before he spoke, and his voice came out in a croak. “What?”

  This time, she was unable to hold back the tears. There was no reluctant joy in his eyes. No against-all-odds happiness. Not even we’ll-get-through-this-together determination. There was only shock and horror. Her words came out in a rush. “I was walking, and I smelled pancakes, and I got sick.” She started crying in earnest. “I thought it was food poisoning or something, but then the cashier asked how far along I was. I realized I hadn’t gotten my period, so I took a test, and it was positive.”

  He dropped her hand as if it had scalded him, and her heart broke. “No,” he said. “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You can’t be.” He shook his head. “We used …”

  “But I am,” she said. “Maybe it was meant—”

  “Do not say it was meant to be,” he barked. “What was meant to be was you and me. Nothing else. Not a baby.”

  She swallowed the anger rising in her like a burgeoning sandstorm. “Be that as it may, I’m still pregnant.”

  He raked his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair, his eyes half wild. “No,” he said again. “This is Lila Jane all over again, and I won’t have it.”

  Mae gasped, stung. “You won’t have it?” she demanded. “What about me? It ain’t that easy for me to say. And how dare you compare me to her.”

  To the woman who had inflicted so much pain on him. The woman who had manipulated him and cheated on him. It was the worst possible thing he could have said.

  “I told you,” he went on. “I told you this couldn’t happen.”

  “Like I meant for it to?” she cried, her cheeks hot. “Like you didn’t play a part?”

  “I know,” he growled. “Goddammit, I know. But it doesn’t change the fact.”

  She was torn between heartbreak and fury. This wasn’t just her fault. They were both adults, and they’d both made their bed. “No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still pregnant.”

  He turned and scrubbed his hand down his jaw, the muscles in his chest flexing. “We can fix this. There’s time. We can fix this.”

  Though she herself had been on the fence, his reaction to the news had somehow solidified her decision. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of this baby being unwanted by both its parents. That would be the real tragedy here. “No,” she said. “I won’t.”

  He blinked as if stunned by her refusal. “Mae, I can’t. You know I can’t.”

  “Then don’t,” she said. “I will.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “I didn’t do this,” she said, her jaw clenched. “We did.”

  He cursed and hung his head, hands on his hips.

  “You’ve got a choice,” she told him tremulously. “You can accept this and reconsider your decision, or you can walk away. I won’t blame you.”

  She would, of course. It would be impossible not to.

  He was quiet for a long time and then, stubbornly, “I don’t want that baby.”

  The words sliced her like razors. Her chest felt hollow. “Then I guess we have nowhere to go from here.”

  “Damn it, Mae,” he growled. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.”

  Gripping his chin, he stood stiffly. “You won’t get rid of it?”

  As if it were that easy. As if it were a bowl of moldy leftovers she’d meant to throw out. “No.”

  He stared at his bare feet for an eternity, then he found his rumpled T-shirt on the floor, grabbed it, and pulled it on. Shoving his feet into his untied boots, he moved past her to the driver’s seat.

  She stared at him in desperate anger. She didn’t want to lose him. Not like this. “Clyde,” she said. “If you just—”

  Without waiting for her to finish, he opened the door and got out, slamming it behind him.

  Stunned, her heart pounding and tears streaming down her cheeks, she watched him stride across the parking lot, his back ramrod straight.

  “It doesn’t have to end this way,” she repeated in a whisper.

  Then again, maybe it was always supposed to end this way. Wouldn’t it have happened eventually anyway? Sure, she wasn’t ready for a baby right now, but someday that would have changed. The yearning to be a mother would have grown too strong and it would have torn them apart. Maybe it was better that it happened now. Before they’d spent decades loving each other. Surely the wounds would have been bloodier. The cost higher.

  She waited. For how long, she didn’t know. She watched the trucks come and go in a trance, wondering if it was Clyde’s change of heart she waited for or her own. But when he didn’t come back, she finally dug Ken’s leash out of her bag and turned to him. “Come on, boy,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”

  The cat hesitated, his ears laid back ever so slightly as if he was unsure about the entire situation. She could relate. “It’s okay,” she assured him. “Come to Mommy.”

  He did, and she pulled him onto her lap, hugging him and kissing the top of his head. Tears welled in her eyes as he purred. “It’ll be okay,” she told him. Told herself. “We’ll be okay.”

  When she was able to rein in her emotions, she secured his harness, and considered her next move. She would leave, of course. She’d done her part. She’d told Clyde, and he reacted as expected. Staying until she figured out a plan would only hurt them both. She knew she could find a ride. The only decision was whether to go back to Crownville or keep moving on.

  A cold numbness settled over her.

  Just an hour ago, she’d been dreaming of roaming the countryside with Clyde, and now she was leaving him. A piece of plastic and two blue lines had changed everything.

  With all she owned in the world, she climbed out and started walking, ignoring the ebb and flow of nausea. Maybe she was dreaming. Maybe she wasn’t pregnant and leaving the man she loved. Maybe she wasn’t about to head off to God knew where as a single mother. But the crunch of gravel and stench of diesel were all too real.

  Her heart stumbled, and she squeezed Ken to her, unwilling to put him down yet. The need to get away ate at her. Away from the truck stop. From Clyde. Away from what might have been.

  She spotted an older trucker with a kind face heading toward his rig with a to-go box from the diner. She started for him. With any luck, he
’d be rolling out soon and would be willing to take her on. Before she could reach him, however, a commotion to her right caught her attention. A towering female driver had a skinny, wide-eyed man pinned against the side of a green Chevy S-10. The woman’s face was a mask of fury, her cheeks red. “—pedaling that filth?” she was saying. “I’ll jack your jaw, son.”

  Going by the looks of her, she could and would follow through on the threat.

  The man gripped her wrist, his voice coming out in a rasp. “Wasn’t … like I took the damn … pictures.”

  The woman snarled and snatched the cell phone he was holding, slinging it aside. It skidded to a stop a foot from Mae’s boots.

  “I don’t give two shits,” the woman told him, squeezing his throat. “I ought to relieve you of your jugular just for trying to sell them.”

  Mae glanced down at the phone. Though its screen was dusty, she could make out pale limbs and dark hair. Frowning, she crouched and picked it up.

  And her heart stopped.

  It was a photo of a young girl. No more than eight or nine years old. She was visibly frightened, and her staged pose was … lewd. Bile rose in Mae’s throat, and she flipped through to the next photo. Another of the girl. The third, however, was of a boy. Similar in age and equally terrified. But it wasn’t the disturbing content that made her rub the dust off the screen and zoom in on the boy’s face. Heart hammering, she flipped back to the photo of the girl.

  “My … God,” Mae whispered.

  Though it had been dark the one and only time she’d seen the children, she recognized them. They were the two she’d seen the night she’d left Crownville. The two she’d seen with Shifty.

  The realization sank in, and she dropped the phone. It clattered at her feet.

  She had known Shifty was a louse, but she’d had no idea he was capable of this. Was he capable of this? Striding over to the arguing man and woman, she demanded, “Where did you get these photos?”

  The two looked over at her, and the man gasped, “Call the cops. This crazy bitch is going to kill me.”

  Mae’s voice shook. “Where did you get them?”