“I made this mess?” I asked incredulously. “I’m sorry, but did I grow a penis and fuck myself in that bathroom? No, I didn’t. You were just as involved in this baby making as I was,” I snapped with tears blurring my vision.
“Oh, please,” he said, rolling his eyes, “you were begging for it the entire show. Opening your legs and pushing your tits out. What was I supposed to do? Ignore the girl who obviously wanted to get laid?”
I raised a brow. “No, but maybe, as a guy who obviously doesn’t want a child popping around, you should have put on a freaking condom.”
He rolled his eyes and refilled his drink. I looked at the amber liquid and decided I would gladly give a limb for a sip. I hated being pregnant almost as much as I was starting to hate this overreacting jerk.
“Or maybe you should be on freaking birth control before seducing a man twice your age.”
Once again, his words hurt me, and I hated that they did. I also hated myself for the childish infatuation I’d had for this man. I hated that it had made me stupid enough to lose my virginity in a public bathroom with a man who clearly didn’t care about me or the child we had created together.
Taking large, calming breaths, I watched as Kellan collapsed onto his couch and crossed his ankle over his knee. Tears welled in my eyes as I continued in a calmer tone, “You’re right, but so am I. We both should have taken precautions, but we didn’t, and now we need to figure out what to do, together.”
“Fuck that!” he spat back after another long sip of whiskey. “You’re the one carrying it; it’s your problem. If you want money for an abortion, I’ll give it to you. I’ll even drive you to the clinic myself. Aside from that, I want nothing to do with it.”
Being sucker punched in the gut, that was what his words felt like. I wanted to scream and punch him in the face and break all the expensive-looking things in his apartment, but instead I just cried. I wasn’t ready to be a single mother, but I also wasn’t willing to kill the little baby growing inside me.
Kellan just sat on his stupid couch, staring at the tears that ran down my cheeks with an expressionless mask on his face. Tired and sick of humiliating myself in front of this man, I wiped the tears away and grew a bit taller as I turned to walk away.
I was almost at the elevator when his voice sounded behind me again. “What are you going to tell your father?”
“Whatever the hell I want,” I replied as I pressed the call button. “But don’t worry, I won’t involve you. I’m not going to allow my child to grow up knowing that they were fathered by a selfish, pathetic, middle-aged man who’s too weak to own up to his actions.”
My words still hung in the air when the elevator arrived at Kellan’s floor. I stepped into the metal cage and looked back at the greatest disappointment of my life. He stared back at me with a mixture of emotions shining in his eyes, but I didn’t have the energy or the desire to decipher them.
I held the storm of tears that was building inside my chest until I was out of his building and in a cab, riding home. I folded my arms around my belly. Despite being sadder and lonelier than I had ever been before, I was glad that I at least had this little being growing inside me to keep me company. It was hard to explain, but somehow I knew that whatever the challenges ahead, I’d be all right as long as my baby was okay.
Chapter Six
Kellan
Three Months Later . . .
Uneasy wasn’t a word accurate enough, but as I parked my car under the reddening canopy of a tree, I decided it was the closest I would get to expressing how I felt. Months had passed since Amelia had walked out of my apartment, and, as it was to be expected, a lot had changed.
Despite still having an office just down the hall from mine, Amelia and I barely saw each other. Soon after that dreaded night, she asked to be transferred to the production department under the guise that it was her real passion. I knew as well as she did that she was merely running away from the pain and awkwardness between us. However, regardless of her reasons, she seemed to be happy and thriving in her new position.
As for me, well . . . I was miserable in every aspect of my life.
Try as I might, I was unable to flush her words out of my brain. I had tried everything, from drinking until I was practically comatose to fucking random models into oblivion to working even longer and harder than I normally did, but nothing helped. I still saw the disappointment in her eyes every time I walked in or out of my apartment and the selfish and pathetic middle-aged man who was too much of a coward to do the right thing by his child every time I looked in the mirror. Those things were constant reminders that I was becoming a deadbeat just like my father. That knowledge only served to fuel my self-loathing to the point where I hated myself almost as much as I hated him.