Love So Dark: Billionaire Romance Duet

by Stasia Black

  David sits back in his chair and stares at me like I just knocked all the breath out of him. “You can’t take away my son.” His eyebrows drop like I’ve betrayed him.

  “Oh keep the kicked-puppy act for the naïve freshman and sophomore girls. That’s not me anymore.” I lean forward and stab a finger on the paper. “Sign it or get your ass dragged through the courts. Do some jail time and end up signing it in the end anyway.”

  My words are short and pointed. I have no patience for this overly-dramatic asshat and the show he’s trying to put on here. “No judge in a fair courtroom is going to give a child to a criminal like you—”

  David opens his mouth to object and I slice a hand through the air and continue, deadly calm and controlled, “—It turns out I learned a thing or two from you and guess what? From the tail I’ve had on your ass for the last two months, I figured out that you barely spend any time at home with this son you claim to care so much about.”

  I pull out a piece of paper from the folder and glare at the useless piece of shit in front of me. This pissed me off so bad when Alberto showed it to me, I had to go to the gym for an emergency heavy bag session or I was gonna put a hole through the wall.

  “In fact, you haven’t been spending many nights at home at all. Only two a week. What?” My words are cutting. “Trouble in paradise. Again?” I look between him and Regina. “You know what?”

  I breathe out to calm myself down. He’s not worth the energy. “That’s not my problem. What I do care about is the fact that you left my son alone with a woman I don’t know, who I don’t trust, and who isn’t kin to him.”

  David mumbles something I don’t hear. I always hated it when he did that. I’d be making a point and he’d grumble something under his breath in disagreement. When we were together, I never pushed him on it. Screw that.

  “What was that? You have something to say?”

  He looks up at me, finally making eye contact. “Our son,” he says passionately. “I said he’s our son, not your son. And who’s this guy?” He gestures at Jackson. “I don’t know who he is and what if I don’t want him around our son? Huh? Did you ever think of that?”

  His outburst only makes me cooler and calmer.

  “He is the man I love.” I stare David down, seeing him for exactly the small creature that he is. “He is going to be the father you could never fucking dream of being because he knows what it means to be an actual fucking man.” There really is something powerful about cursing when you’re speaking in quiet, neutral tones. It has almost double the punch, though I’ve never noticed it before this moment. I slide the parental termination form an inch closer to David.

  “Now sign this paper,” I continue, my voice as calm as a glassy lake on a windless morning, “or I swear I will make it my life’s fucking mission to pin every one of these charges at your door. And you think I’ll do it discreetly?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Oh no. I’ll make sure to email every student journalist at Stanford. Just imagine the headline: Deadbeat Philosophy Professor Extorts Lawyer of His Ex-Student (Ex-Lover, Current Baby-Mama).” I shake my head, “That reads more juicy than an episode of Jerry Springer. I bet it will go over so swell. You know what my crack team here also informed me of?”

  I lean even further across the table into David’s space and if possible, my voice gets icier. “I learned that tenure doesn’t mean your ass can’t get fired. You can still be dismissed for violation of policy or law. And guess what? That lovely little list that Alberto here just read off a moment ago? That means you’ve violated both, multiple times over.”

  I lean back and stare David down. “The Dean is just a phone call away.” I lift my cell phone out of my purse to make the point.

  If there’s one thing David values above all else, it’s his profession. He’s nothing without it, at least in his own eyes. He admitted as much to me one night when he got drunk and maudlin and spent the next week avoiding me because he was embarrassed about opening up.

  Well, he says he loves his son. Let him prove it. I’m only asking him to give up everything for him. I grab the pen in front of me and slam it down on the papers of paternity termination. He can say no, tell me to fuck off, face the consequences of his actions, and fight for a relationship with his son.

  After all, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do or give up for Charlie.

  David takes four whole seconds fidgeting uncomfortably in his chair before he grabs the pen and signs his name.

  I wasn’t expecting the stab of disappointment.

  It’s not disappointment for myself. Fuck knows I have no shred of affection left for the man in front of me. But for Charlie. That his father was willing to give him up with so little hesitation. Yes, the ultimatum I gave him asked for everything and I knew what choice he would make.

  “We did the best we could.” I glance up in surprise to see Regina finally looking at me. These are the first words she’s spoken the whole time.

  “I did the best I could.” Her hands are white-knuckled as she grips the edge of the table, tear-tracks visible on the thick makeup caked on her cheeks. “Maybe I can see him sometimes. I mean—” she chokes out. “I know you have no reason to— I have no rights, I know.”

  She swipes at her eyes and her nose drips. “But I love him. I love him.” Her eyes beg me. They’re a mother’s eyes.

  I grab the paper David signed and hand it to Alberto. I frown as I look at Regina, the woman who’s been mother to my son for the past four months. I quickly do the calculation. He’s so young, the months she’s spent with him are almost a seventh of his life. I think of how emotional he was last time I saw him. Can I really just cut another mother figure out of his life?

  At the same time, she was also an evil bitch to me. I cock my head to the side, taking in the huge diamond earrings that are weighing down her earlobes. “How much?”

  She swipes at her eyes, eyebrows dropping. “What?”

  I cock my head to the side. “You’re very rich and I’m tired of being poor. How much is seeing Charlie worth to you?”

  “You can’t—” their lawyer starts to say but Regina cuts him off.

  “Anything. Everything.” There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation to her words and her eyes are wide with hope. She scoots her chair back and stands. “We’ll go right now and add your name to my bank account. Whatever I have is yours.”

  And just like that, she passes the test that David failed. From everything I know of this woman, her wealth is her life. I push my own chair back. “Keep your money. We’ll see about visitation, with me there, on a trial basis.” I make sure to emphasize the last two words. She’s still been part of some super shady shit. “Maybe we can all meet and play together in the park. Someday.”

  She nods over and over like a bobble-head, hands clasped.

  “And I’ll call you, not the other way around. Got it? You pull anything, any stalkerish shit, and it’s done. No second chances. And I don’t want to see him.” I point in David’s direction without looking at him. I don’t need that man fucking with my little boy’s heart. He starts to make some objection but Regina talks over him.

  “I won’t, I promise. I won’t let him near.” More tears pour down her cheeks as she shakes her head. “I won’t do anything to screw it up. I just want to see him.”

  “Fine.”

  Without one last glance at David or Regina, I look to Jackson.

  He holds out his hand to me. “Let’s go get our son.”

  We clasp hands and the world is righted.

  Epilogue

  CALLIE

  “Mom, check out our sand castle!”

  I grin as I get up off the shaded umbrella chair where I’ve been lounging and reading. I walk the few paces to where Jackson and Charlie sit by a sandcastle that I have to admit, kicks all the other sandcastles’ asses.

  We’ve set up camp in a small area on Capitola Beach about twenty feet away from the surf. Well, we used to be twenty feet away. More like t
en now. A wave crashes and the surf washes up far closer than it was when we first lay out our beach blankets and chairs a few hours ago.

  I take a moment and soak it in—the sun warming my skin, the perfect cloudless sky, the crash of waves to my right. I didn’t think perfect days were a thing people actually, like… got to have. I mean, maybe celebrities and really rich people and… okay, Jackson and I are pretty rich, but the happiness that settles all over me doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s in our bank account. We’re on a public beach—there’s noise and people all around us. My boys staked out a little piece of beach for their own to build on after we all swam and picnicked earlier. It’s just… perfect.

  My boys. My family. My life. I grin so wide I’m sure it’s about to split my face.

  Fucking happiness. Who knew?

  “Mom, come on. Why are you just standing there? Take a picture. I wanna put it on my Instagram account!”

  My eight-year-old has more Instagram followers than me. I am officially old. Yeah. I don’t fucking care.

  I laugh as I pull out my phone. “Say cheese.”

  Charlie rolls his eyes but then smiles anyway before I snap the pic. I stare at it for a moment. Jackson sits beside my son, laughing and still as chiseled and fucking gorgeous as ever at almost forty. That thing we always complain about where dudes manage to look hotter the older they get? Yeah. Not really minding it over here.

  “Take another. Well, wait a sec till I fix this and then take it,” Charlie’s eyebrows furrow as he maneuvers a popsicle stick to perfect one of the turrets. Jackson just shakes his head and grins at me.

  Watching them build the thing was freaking adorable. Jackson was trying to teach Charlie about engineering principles. Charlie was half-listening and half more interested in playing with seaweed along the surf. But toward the end, as it really took shape, Charlie got seriously into it. They’ve bonded so much over the past five years. Charlie was Jackson’s mini-best man at our wedding two years ago. Talk about adorable Instagram pictures.

  Charlie pulls the popsicle stick away. “Okay, ready Mom.”

  “No,” Jackson says. “I think it’s missing something.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrow in concern, searching over the castle. “What?”

  Jackson pops to his feet and in one bound, he has me lassoed around my waist. “We’re missing the most beautiful woman on the beach.”

  Charlie rolls his eyes and makes a gagging noise like he always does when we’re PDA-ing.

  I laugh and screech a little when Jackson sweeps me off my feet, literally, and swings me in a circle before depositing me behind the sand castle. His long arm easily holds the camera out to get all three of us and the sand castle in the picture. I can see on the little screen that Charlie’s making goofy faces instead of smiling so I tickle him.

  Jackson snaps the shot right when Charlie’s caught in an open-mouthed laugh, showing off his biggest gap-toothed grin. Jackson and I frame him on either side, me laughing with Charlie, and Jackson looking at the both of us, his eyes so full of love.

  We pull into the beach house around sunset.

  “How was the beach today?” calls Regina as we tumble into the house.

  “I swam in the ocean!” Charlie calls. “Like really out in the ocean. We went past the crashing waves part and then Dad held me up and we’d jump when the ocean would go like this.” Jackson looks over Charlie’s head at me. He told me once that it still gets him every time Charlie calls him Dad.

  Charlie rolls his hand to mimic the swoop and swelling motion of the ocean water coming toward us before a wave crested. “One time it almost got over my head, but Dad lifted me up and we jumped—” Charlie jumps to demonstrate, “—and we just barely missed getting smashed by the giant wave. And there was seaweed everywhere and it was yuck, we were always pushing it out of the way and—”

  “I made stir-fry,” Regina breaks through Charlie’s stream of chatter. Good thing too, because we both know Charlie could keep going without taking a breath for a half-hour straight. “Oh, but you two are headed out tonight, right?”

  I nod at her. “You still good with keeping him the next couple days?”

  She smiles at me, happy lines around her eyes. She wears less makeup these days but still looks wicked stylish. She’s taken to beach-chic for this trip, lots of linens in muted pastels. Ever the lady.

  Then I look around. “Where are Shannon and Sunil?”

  Regina laughs. “They haven’t gotten back from their meditation retreat session yet. Your sister was telling me all about it before they left. I’ve never seen anyone so excited about nine hours of sitting around with a bunch of people not saying anything and just…” she tosses her hands up, “…sitting there.”

  I shake my head. I’m with Regina. My anal-retentive sister has become the most chill, hippie, and happy version of herself over the past few years, it’s crazy.

  I give Regina a hug and then head with Jackson to our bedroom to get cleaned up.

  It’s taken a long time for us to get to this point with Regina. It was baby steps at first, but it turned out to be the right choice not to cut her off from Charlie completely. He had a rough transition coming back home initially, but that was more because he was just having a rough time of it all around.

  I ended up having Regina come stay with us a few days each week so Charlie wouldn’t feel like it was a normal thing for people he loved to keep suddenly disappearing from his life. His behavior and disposition immediately improved.

  And David? Yeah. Just like I’d suspected, Charlie’d barely seen enough of him to miss him.

  That whole period in our life was capped off with Gentry going to jail for multiple life sentences. Jackson and I looked through the blackmail files we found on Gentry’s computer and figured the only way to completely strip Gentry of power was to release it all to the press. There were high-ranking judges in there as well as any number of other powerful people he might have leveraged to influence the trial in his favor.

  So we contacted the LA Times and the scandals that followed the release of the Gentry Files became so infamous, it was almost impossible to find a jury that wasn’t biased against him. Not only was he blackmailing corrupt judges, city council members, and the district attorney’s office, but mine wasn’t the only sexual assault he’d videoed. Apparently it was a pastime of his, and in some of the other videos, his face was on-screen.

  At his trial, the public wanted Gentry’s blood and they got it. He was sentenced to four back-to-back life sentences and there would be no cozy white-collar prison wards for Bryce Gentry. No, he was thrown into Gen Pop at San Quentin. I’ve heard rapists aren’t very popular in prison. I don’t know what happened to him after that but occasionally I like to think of him there, getting his just desserts.

  Eventually everything quieted down. Charlie settled and now we have one happy, healthy boy on our hands. I started going to therapy to continue working through everything that happened to me. More than that, though, I had Jackson. Every day he helps make me new.

  I grin and hug Jackson once we get in our room.

  “What’s that for?” he asks, squeezing back.

  “You,” I say into his chest. “Our life.” I lay my cheek against where his heart beats. “Everything.”

  He gives a soft laugh, squeezes me one more time, then lets me go. “Come on. We have to get going if we want to make our dinner reservation.”

  I follow him though, getting in his face and nipping at his bottom lip. “How about we skip the reservation and go straight to the other beach house we rented for the weekend.” I run my hand up his inner thigh slowly and then grab his crotch in a tight clench.

  He jolts and hisses between his teeth before grabbing me by my ass and grinding me into him.

  “That depends. Who’s going to be in charge tonight?”

  As he looks down into my eyes, his take on a dark intensity.

  I grin wickedly up at him and lick my top lip. “I don’t eve
n know which you like better anymore.”

  He only arches an eyebrow and produces a quarter from his pocket.

  I laugh a low, throaty laugh. “How long have you been carrying that just waiting for this moment?”

  “I’ll never tell.” He raises both eyebrows a couple times and looks so fucking adorable I want to devour him on the spot.

  “Heads,” I call.

  “Tails it is,” he says and pulls back slightly to flip the coin. He flips it expertly and catches it in his other hand. He’s gotten some practice at this over the years, after all. Sometimes we go with whatever we’re in the mood for, but then there are nights like tonight when there’s no particular stress, need, or desire to work out and it’s all fun and games.

  He lifts his hand and reveals the results of the coin toss.

  Heads.

  I clap my hands and do a little jump up and down.

  Don’t judge me. I don’t have to put on the Domme persona until we’re in the scene.

  Jackson rolls his eyes but then bows his head. “Mistress.”

  I bite my lip and grab his hands. “Okay, I was going to wait till the restaurant to do the whole big movie moment boom-box-on-a-shoulder kind of thing, but I seriously can’t wait another fucking minute.”

  “Shh.” He covers my mouth with his hand. “You owe a dollar in the swear jar.”

  I giggle and pull away from his hand. “Shut up. Charlie’s not even in the room.” Attempts to curb my swearing in front of the child have mostly succeeded. I can usually turn it off between the hours of seven a.m. to eight p.m.

  “Besides, I have news. Big news.” I grab Jackson’s hands again and he suddenly sobers, eyes riveted to mine.

  “Shut up.”

  I grin. “I took the test this morning. Three tests.”

  “Shut up.”

  “And then I took three more just to be sure.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Cals.” His face is getting paler by the second and his grip on my hands white-knuckled.