Billionaire Flawed 2(55)

It was hard to go out, though. It was one thing to go to posh restaurants, but even going from the car to the front door was a nightmare. There’d be a number of men with cameras, and they’d all push forward to get their shots. Even when Rae wasn’t with Casey, they began to show up.

Once Casey attempted to take her to the zoo, but they left after twenty minutes because the paparazzi was disturbing them and everyone around them. Rae had never experienced anything like it. She realized that Casey had lived that sort of life for years. Decades really, and it made her admire him even more. He never complained, he never raised his voice to the paparazzo’s. He never threatened to hit them. He just went about his day as best as he could, and sometimes when it became almost overbearing he would stop, and smile, and let them take his picture. Rae loved that about him. She knew he was annoyed, she knew he was angry, but he didn’t let them know. If anything, he knew that flying off the handle would make for better pictures, and his face would be red and angry and yelling silent screamed from the cover of every magazine in the country. So he didn’t do that. He would speak softly to them, and they would fall quiet to hear him.

“Go ahead,” he would say, and then he would smile. “Do your worst.”

And the men with cameras would love him for it. “Hey thanks, Casey,” they would say. “Love the suit.” And he would smile and nod his head in thanks, and go on his way until he ran into another group of the parasites further down the block.

Rae had read about Casey, and she worried it could end at any moment. It always seemed to do so with him. She was just one in a long line of young starlets. Their movie was close to wrapping post production, and it would be out in only weeks. They had been spotted together by the paparazzi, and her name was going around town, and the nation. She landed a new film herself, a science fiction action flick where she would be playing a woman in the galactic army, intent on taking down invading aliens. She began working out for the role, hoping to look a little tougher in her uniform, which of course would be ripped by an alien claw to show off her toned stomach. There were no more commercials for her. She even managed to get Gillian a small role in the film, and her friend was ecstatic.

And then it all came crashing down. Rae had missed a period, and she began feeling sick throughout the day. She worried she was pregnant, but she put off taking the test until she missed a second one. She went back home, huddled around the bathroom sink with Gillian after peeing on the little white plastic stick, and they watched as it revealed that she was going to have a baby.

Rae went to see Casey that night.

“I can’t have a kid,” he said, shaking his head and catching her off guard.

“What?” Rae asked.

“I can’t have a kid. I can’t. We aren’t married, and… I… the press, the public, they just… I can’t.”

“Well, I’m not going to get rid of it!’ Rae said, feeling hot tears stinging her eyes.

“I never said that!” Casey said, standing up. They were in his spacious living room, on the ground floor of his massive mansion. “And keep your voice down, the cook might hear you.”

“Oh, the cook? Of course the cook is here. Why wouldn’t he be? You’re too rich to take care of yourself, right? How long is it going to be until you find another me? One without your child growing in her belly?”

“What are you talking about? Casey asked, coming forward and trying to take her arms, but she stepped out of his reach.

“Forget it,” Rae said, and she didn’t know why she was so angry, or so hurt, but she turned around and hurried out of the man’s home. He had bought her a car, and she felt horrible driving in it, but she had no way to get back home, so she did so.

Days passed, and Casey tried to call her, and when she wouldn’t answer he showed up at her apartment, but Gillian told him to go away and he did so. Rae spent most of her time crying, and the days turned into weeks.

The day before the big premiere of Rae’s first movie, she and Gillian sat on her bed, talking. Already, Rae was showing, her stomach pushing against her shirt uncomfortably.

“I’m here for you, girl, but I don’t understand… why…” Gillian said, but she didn’t know how to finish her sentence.

“Why I’m keeping it?”

“I guess… I didn’t want to say it like that, but yes.”

“I don’t know. I would be a good mom, you know? I will be a good mom. Like my mom was. She came out here with me. But now we hardly talk. I haven’t even told her about this, but… I just want to do right. You know, I have this cousin, and she didn’t live where I lived. She didn’t have the same opportunities, and as hard as it is, as hard as it was, and has been, to get work here, as much as I was overlooked, she came from somewhere else. She was pregnant at fourteen, the dad was just some kid, she was just some kid, and she didn’t keep it. And she acted tough, you know? She had to, living where she lived. But it killed her. I could see it in her eyes. I don’t have to do that. I don’t have to act tough. If Casey doesn’t want to do it with me, to raise this kid, then fine. But I can’t give up on him. Or her.”