Baby Number Two(23)

I shook my head and tossed back the last of my drink. It must have been  the fifth one I'd allowed him to buy me. I could only imagine what his  tab looked like at this point. "No," I said, breaking his gaze. "You're  fine."



I watched as he swallowed back the last of his screwdriver, admiring the  way his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he did. Drunk or not, it  took everything in me not to lean forward and kiss away the leftover  moisture on his lips.



"Weddings," I blurted out.



Jack looked at me like I was crazy. "What?"



"You asked what I wanted to do after high school," I clarified. "I want to plan weddings."



"Really?" Jack furrowed his brows as he digested this.



"What?" I asked him. "Not what you were expecting?"



"Not exactly," Jack admitted. "A child of divorce bringing people  together through the sanctity of marriage. That's some Freudian shit if  I've ever heard it."



That got me laughing. Again, it was probably just because I was drunk,  but I was starting to come around to the idea that he wasn't half bad.  He was actually kind of charming. His hand grazed mine on top the bar,  marking the first time I ever understood what everyone meant when they  said they had butterflies.



It was in that moment that a group of scantly dressed women in what  appeared to be a bachelorette party approached the bar, but Jack's eyes  never once left mine. "Do you want to get out of here?" he asked, not  bothering to mask the obvious fog of desire in his tone. "I know a  place..."



He didn't wait for me to respond though. Instead he flagged down the  bartender to pay his tab and reached for my hand. We were halfway to the  door when someone barreled past us, but he caught hold of me by the  waist before I could fall.



Jack closed the distance between us once we were outside, bringing his  hand down against my cheek as he studied my face. It caught me somewhat  off guard, but there was no ignoring the electricity passed between us.  It sent a warmth straight down my spine despite the fact that it was  freezing out.



"Come on," he said, pulling me towards his car. "Let's get out of here."



The ride to wherever he wanted to take me was a quiet one, and I took  the opportunity to soak in the passing scenery. My thoughts began to  drift, however, when I felt his free hand snake its way up my inner  thigh. I knew I shouldn't have wanted him, but I did, and I began to  want him even more with every unsubtle glance he stole my way.



We pulled into an isolated spot on the beach a few minutes later. I took  a moment to stretch my limbs before following him out to the water,  where we took a seat in the damp sand.



"I love it here," Jack said after we'd been sitting in silence for a few  minutes. "It's easily one of my favorite spots on the island."



I looked over at him. "Yeah?"



"Yeah," Jack said, scooping a handful of sand into his palm. "I've been  coming here since I was a kid. This was my place when my mom first got  diagnosed. There's something therapeutic about it."



I couldn't help but admire the level of honesty in his words. I was  quiet as I digested them, but I didn't have a chance to before he jumped  up and began stripping of his clothing. It was an action that left me  void of any words, and it must have showed in my face, because he  laughed before running towards the water.



"What are you waiting for?" he called out to me. "Get in!"



Normally I would have said no without so much as a second thought, but  the way he was staring at me made it clear that he had no intention on  backing off. Throwing caution to the wind, I stood up and began to  strip, feeling his eyes graze my flesh all the while. I didn't appease  him by getting fully naked though. I left my undergarments on, making a  quick dash into the water before he could get too close of a look at any  one part of my body.                       
       
           



       



It took me a moment to adjust to the temperature. I looked around for  Jack as soon as I did, but it wasn't until I felt something brush up  against me from behind that I found him. We frolicked in the water for a  bit, but we ended up back on the shore when it became too cold for our  liking.



"What were you doing there?" I blurted out once we were both fully dressed, unable to keep the question unspoken any longer.



Jack turned to look at me and frowned.



"At the club," I clarified. "Did you follow me?"



Jack laughed. "Sorry, but no," he said, shaking the leftover moisture  from his hair. "I was supposed to be on a date, but she never showed."



Somehow I found that hard to believe. He didn't exactly strike me as the  kind of guy to get blown off, but then again, I was sort of happy that  he had. We wouldn't have ended up where we were now if he hadn't.



Jack seemed to share the same sentiment. "Not that I'm complaining," he  said, resting his hand on top mine in the sand. "I'm actually pretty  satisfied with the direction my night has taken."



I smiled at him before turning my attention back to the water. We sat in  a comfortable silence as we watched to the waves roll in against the  shore, and it was in that moment that it occurred to me just how nice it  was to enjoy the quiet with someone new. It was foreign, unnatural  even, but there was a certain beauty to be found in it.



It was a stark contrast to the way Jack treated me from there on out. In  the weeks that followed, blurring into months, he set about in making  my life a living hell. I caught him in various states of undress on more  than one occasion, always in places he knew I'd stumble in on, and  eventually it became clear that it was all just one big game to him.



I'd unknowingly offered up my participation that day I caught him in the  shower, signing away what small amount of virtue I had left to a guy I  was becoming increasingly more sure was the devil.



Jack got off on tormenting me.



One night about six months into mom and Robert's sham of a marriage, I  walked into my bedroom to find him clawing through my panty drawer. He  nonchalantly held up a pair of printed boy shorts when he caught me  gawking at him, twirling them around on his pointer finger before  tossing them at me. "You're never gonna get your cherry popped wearing  those," he said, giving me a devious smirk on his way out.



I still don't know how Jack figured out that I was a virgin. Underwear  aside, I didn't exactly carry myself like a prude. At least I didn't  think I did. I went to all the bonfires, I came pretty close to skinny  dipping with him that night on the beach, and I certainly wasn't a  stranger to the occasional moonlight make out session. Unfortunately,  none of that mattered. Somehow, someway, Jack saw right through it.



The first time we ever had sex, I was drunk, which was probably why it  happened to begin with. I'd just received my rejection letter from  Howard, aka my dream school and my ticket back to D.C., and my goal that  night was to drink away my feelings. On the flip side, Jack's only goal  was to get laid. So when he came bombarding into the bathroom while I  was trying to shower off my drunkenness, I didn't stop him when he tried  to get in with me.



I let him.



After that, I often found myself wondering if Jack enjoyed hurting me.  If some twisted part of his psyche liked knowing that my heart would  crack just that much more every time he'd come home with some new girl  on his arm.



Sometimes I'd catch them sneaking out of his bedroom in the early hours,  stumbling to get every piece of their clothing on just right, and I'd  wonder why I even gave a fuck at all.



Jack didn't care about me. He didn't care about anyone. He was just the arrogant jerk I'd allowed to rob me of my hymen.



Whoop-de-fucking-doo.



It was a stupid positive pregnancy test that changed everything. Four positive pregnancy tests to put it in more specific terms.



"Maybe it's just stress," Kiana rationalized, lifting her gaze from her  phone. She'd been researching the odds of getting pregnant in the  shower. Apparently they were slim, but that did little to ease my  worries. "My period always comes late when I'm sitting around waiting  for it."                       
       
           



       



I sighed and shook my head. I had my fingers crossed that she was right,  but I couldn't allow myself to be willfully naive. I'd gone up two cup  sizes in less than three months, my period was nowhere to be found, and I  could no longer fit into my favorite pair of jeans quite as comfortably  as I used to. If all that didn't spell out that I was pregnant, there  were always the pile of positive tests waiting for me at home in my  bathroom trashcan.