Seven

Haisley

Two things to be thankful for this morning: it was seventy degrees with a breeze on my mile walk to the hotel, and one of my new roommates had given me her leftover fried rice from last night to eat this morning for breakfast. I was trying to make a habit of doing this every day on my walk—pick two things to be happy about. It would help me not think so much about the future. The stress wasn’t good for the baby. At least, that was what I’d heard on an episode of Friends.

I rummaged through my bag to make sure I had my name tag. I didn’t remember where I had put it yesterday. My memory had been sporadic lately. I wondered if that was a pregnancy thing. If I wrote down my questions, I would remember to ask them at my next appointment with whatever doctor I saw.

I’d been able to get Medicaid easily enough, but finding an OB-GYN willing to see me with Medicaid as a new patient had been a struggle. The clinic I had found wasn’t typical, and I felt like they were herding patients in and out as quickly as possible. I doubted they’d be real happy if I started asking a lot of questions.

A wave of nausea hit me, and I paused. Uh-oh. Rice was not going to be fun, coming back up. The thought of it didn’t help matters. I was close enough to the parking lot of the hotel to walk over to the fence and lean up against it.

Deep, slow breaths. I would not vomit. I would not vomit.

A cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

“What’s wrong?” an achingly familiar voice caused my head to snap up.

Looking into Saxon Houston’s brown eyes, I didn’t have time to decide if he was really here or not before I had to turn and puke in the small patch of grass beside me. I heard him curse, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. Another wave, and more fried rice reappeared. It was a shame. I loved fried rice, but there was no way I could ever eat it again.

When I was sure I was done, I grabbed my bag to get out a tissue to wipe my face. He was still there, watching me like I was a freak. I refused to look at him as I dug around, pulled one out, and stood up straight, wiping my mouth.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my eyes barely looking at him before I shifted to look toward the hotel.

He had probably had another wild night of sex. Just my luck, he had chosen the place I worked to be his sex pad.

“Doesn’t matter. I have to go, or I’ll be late for work,” I said and took a step when Saxon moved in front of me.

“You’re not going to work today,” he informed me.

I glared up at him. He was the reason I was vomiting, living on a sofa bed in an apartment with strangers since Milly had been determined I get out of her place, working at a hotel where he liked to have sexcapades. Him!

“Yes, I am.” I tried to step around him, and he moved with me, continuing to block me.

Starting to panic—because if I was late to clock in, then I could get fired—I shoved at his chest with both my hands, but he didn’t budge.

“MOVE!” I shouted at him.

“I spoke to your manager. You have the day off. Calm down.”

“I don’t want the day off! I need the money. Who do you think you are, speaking to my manager?”

Why was he so freaking beautiful? It wasn’t fair.

“The paternity test is more important. Wouldn’t you agree?”

His words shut down anything I had been about to say. He knew. Oh God. He knew.

“What paternity test?” My question came out as a whisper.

“The one I scheduled to see if the baby is mine.” He said it so matter-of-factly. As if he were speaking to a stranger about the weather.

“I don’t need a test,” I told him.

“I do.”

“I’m not pregnant,” I lied.

“I’m not here to listen to more of your lies, Haisley. I need to know if the baby is mine.”

My lies? I hadn’t lied to him. I had broken things off with him in a very brutal way, but my actions had been forced upon me by his friends. I wasn’t a liar though.

“Fine. But this is pointless. I’m not getting an abortion.” I held my shoulders back and stood as tall as I could as I looked up at him, determined not to let him see my fear.

He frowned. “I’m not asking you to. I am simply here to find out who the father is. I can’t trust the words that come out of your mouth. So, I need proof.”

God, he was infuriating. I’d slept with him not once, but three times. I’d been completely infatuated with him. And all along, he was in the Mafia. Never telling me. Making me believe he was this great guy. Not someone who killed and did God knew what else. I wasn’t very informed on Mafia business. Maybe I should be since I was having a kid whose father was a part of it. If there was a liar here, then it was him.

“Why? I didn’t ask for anything from you. I didn’t come tell you. I didn’t make any demands at all. Why do you need to know?”

He shrugged. He actually shrugged, as if he didn’t know. I was pregnant, and he was shrugging.

Asshole. GOD! How had I been so blind?

Oh, right … he was too damn pretty, and I was an idiot.

“My truck is this way,” he informed me. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t move. “I don’t have money for this. Medicaid isn’t going to cover a paternity test.”

He looked at me as if he were bored. That stung. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was painful. Being near him was painful.

“I’m the one who scheduled it. I am paying for it. Now, let’s go.”

“What are they going to do? Will it hurt the baby?” I asked, not moving in his direction.

He looked annoyed. I did not care. I wasn’t doing this if it was something that would hurt my baby.

“They take your blood, swab my cheek, and we have results back in about a week,” he replied.

That was it? They could tell that easily?

I stood there for a moment more, then finally gave in because it was clear Saxon wasn’t going to let it go. I knew the baby was his. He was the only guy I’d ever slept with. Of course, I hadn’t told him that because then I’d have had to tell him why there was no hymen to break through. My past wasn’t something I shared easily—or at all.

I hoped he had to pay a lot for this stupid test.

He didn’t open the truck door for me, but walked around and climbed inside the driver’s side. I’d been in this truck many times, and each time, he’d opened my door. The guy who had been interested in me was gone. In his place was this guy. The one who believed the worst in me. I was tired of being discarded by people in my life. My biological father, whoever he was; my brother, who hadn’t even tried to get in touch with me; my mom. And although I had shut Saxon out, having him treat me this way felt like being discarded.

Sitting inside the truck, I buckled up and stared out the window. The last time I’d been in here wasn’t pleasant either. Or at least, it hadn’t ended that way. It had been traumatic. Now it was just silent.

Saxon turned on the radio, and country music filled the silence. I rested my head on the seat, closing my eyes. The past week, I had started getting tired all the time. Yesterday, when I’d been making up a bed at the hotel, I had fought the urge to just crawl into it and close my eyes. Just for a minute. I didn’t, of course, but I’d wanted to so bad.

“You’ve lost weight.”

Saxon’s words stopped me from the pull of sleep. I opened my eyes back up and stared out the window.

“If you want to keep the baby, then you need to take care of it. Starving yourself isn’t taking care of it. You also have dark circles under your eyes.”

If I wasn’t afraid he’d pull some hidden gun out and shoot me between the eyes, I’d hit him across the face with my bag.

Breathe. In and out. In and out. Do not yell at him and punch him in the nose. Remain calm.

“I’m not starving myself. If I could afford to eat more, then I would.” My words were clipped, but at least I hadn’t shouted them.

He didn’t respond.

“What are you going to do when you find out this baby is yours?” I asked him, turning my head to look at him.

“IF it is mine, then I’ll take that step when it gets here.”

I laughed, although there was no humor in the sound. “You might think I’m a liar, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is your baby. So, maybe you could tell me what you’re thinking because I’m not asking for your help. I don’t intend to let you force me to abort it or allow you take it from me. I won’t give it up for adoption. If you try and make me, I’ll … I’ll … disappear.”

How I would disappear, I wasn’t sure, but if he pushed me, then I’d run away. Somewhere.

“You want a baby at twenty?” he asked me, his tone hard.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why? You can’t even afford to feed yourself. How the fuck are you gonna feed a kid?”

My stomach churned at the reminder that I had no clue how I was going to do this. He was rubbing it in my face that I hadn’t been born into a family of wealth and power. How had I thought this guy was something different? He was as nasty and cruel as the men who had walked in and out of my mom’s life. I didn’t want to ever trust another man for as long as I lived.

“I’ll worry about that.” Props to me for not sounding as scared as I felt.

“That’s a real mature response, Haisley. You’ll make a great mom.”

The sarcasm in his words twisted my gut.

I sat up straight and fisted my hands in my lap. He was not going to make me blow up and start yelling at him. I didn’t know if the baby could hear me yelling, but if it could, then that wasn’t good for it. At least it didn’t sound like it was good for it.

“Do not ever tell me what is mature and what isn’t while you have been given everything in life, live in a nice, big house, and have racehorses and a fancy stable and an expensive truck. You know nothing about maturity. I’ve been taking care of kids since I was five years old. I’ve been making them meals, helping them get dressed, feeding babies bottles in the middle of the night, bathing them, changing diapers. Since I was FIVE. I didn’t have a childhood, Saxon. I was treated like a grown-up before I started first grade. You have no right to judge what I can and cannot do. Because I have fed eight kids with only ten dollars more times than you can count. When I say I will handle it, then I will.”

I was shaking. These were things I’d never shared with him during the two weeks of our whirlwind fling. Sure, he had known that a lot was expected of me, but he’d had no clue just how deep it went. No idea what I’d lived through.

He didn’t apologize. He said nothing. Not one more word. I didn’t close my eyes again because the exhaustion was now being chased away by the fury inside my chest.

When the truck pulled into the parking deck of the private hospital, I wanted to laugh. We were getting a paternity test at a hospital that I’d never step foot in again. My baby wouldn’t be born here. There was no OB-GYN here that accepted Medicaid.

Once we were parked, I swung open my door and jumped down out of his truck. I would take a bus from here. I wasn’t getting back in there with him. Ever.