"All right, then. How about some food?” Suzette patted her flat belly, already distracted by her audibly growling stomach. “I'm starving."
Tawny followed Suzette down the stairs and into the wide, marble kitchen where Suzette started rifling through cabinets and the fridge like she hadn't eaten in days.
"You in the mood for anything?" Suzette asked, and when she looked up Tawny shook her head before sitting on one of the barstools at the long marble peninsula.
"Well, I've been eating cereal, like, every day since school let out. I'm dying for some real food. Oh! I think there's leftover pizza,” Suzette chirped gleefully before rustling around again.
Tawny looked on, trying her best to seem normal. To stay in the moment instead of slipping into the complete and total devastation sinking deeper and deeper into her bones.
If she had this baby, she could kiss her prospective job at the school goodbye. Who would hire an unwed pregnant woman in a town this small for a job like this? By the time term started, she'd be well into her second trimester. It was useless. She could, maybe, try to find a job as a clerk at the University, and the snack cake factory on the edge of town was always hiring...
Dear god, what had she done?
She swallowed hard as Suzette finished asking her a question she hadn't heard. “Uh, sorry, what?"
"Nothing. I was just saying...well, now that it's not really anything to worry about." Suzette slapped the cold pizza onto a baking pan and shoved it in the oven. "You and Luke would have made a cute baby together. Can you imagine the springy little brown ringlets with his blue eyes?" She sighed and kicked the oven door closed. "Maybe you should try again,” she said with a wink. “It was fun trying, no?”
“Suzette—” Tawny started, but Suzette barked out a laugh.
"Relax, it was just a joke. I know the same as everyone that the Anderson boys are trouble. But damn if they aren't sinful to look at."
“Yeah," Tawny agreed, and she thought of Luke again.
Luke Anderson, the rolling stone of Alhouette.
"Definitely not father material," Tawny said, and Suzette nodded.
Still, she thought of what Suzette said and imagined the baby for the first time. Not the idea of the baby--not the price of the crib and stroller and diapers--but the baby itself. Maybe it would be a little girl with springy brown hair like her own and bright blue eyes like Luke. Maybe he'd be a rambunctious little boy with a penchant for trouble. It didn't matter.
It would be a tiny person who would smile up at her and love her almost as much as she would love it. Someone she could raise in a little town like this and give the upbringing she'd never had. They'd have Suzette, even if they didn't have Luke. And the baby would always have her.
Then, somehow, even though her heart was still racing harder and faster than it ever had before, even though she was sure she couldn't say the words "I'm pregnant" aloud, a little spark of hope had lighted somewhere deep inside her, and she'd be hard pressed to put it out.
"So what would you have done?" Suzette asked, and Tawny looked up at her, blinking herself back to reality.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, if you were pregnant. What would you do? Would you give the baby up for adoption or--?"
"I'd keep it,” Tawny said, the truth of her words settling over her like a blanket, warming the solid block of ice that had formed in her chest. "No doubt about it. I'd keep it."
Chapter 6
The twang of Rex's pop-country bullshit music filled the garage, but Luke ignored it as best he could, trying instead to focus on a particularly stubborn bolt that refused to come loose.
Grabbing a cloth from a nearby table, he scrubbed the grease from his fingers and then dragging the back of his hand over his forehead. Come hell or high water, he was going to finish working on this bike tonight and then...
Then he would have even more time to obsess over Tawny, he thought with an internal grunt.
He didn't know what it was, but ever since that night on the lake, he hadn't been able to get her out of his head. The first month had been bad enough. There had been the nagging hope that she’d call him back, or ask Suzette to talk to Rex about him. But as one month spilled into the next and summer was coming to a close, he was finally giving up hope.
A few times he'd considered whether he just felt guilty that she'd been a virgin or maybe if he was so fixated on her because she had looked so good in the moonlight, but even when he'd tried to distract himself with other girls, he couldn't get his mind off of her. Off the way she'd moved with him that night. Off the way her lips had felt, so warm and full against his own.
Swallowing past the gritty tightness in his throat, he pushed the thought from his mind for what felt like the millionth time and tried to focus on what Rex was blathering on about.