Page 66 of Finding Fate
Heavy breathing sounds alongside the low country music playing on the radio. He groans when I suck the tip of his tongue, his hand immediately groping my breast. “I love you,” I tell him between kisses, my fist clenched around the back collar of his tee shirt. “It’s always been you.”
He pulls back enough to look me in the eyes, both of us breathing hard. “Why are you shutting me out the way you did when your Dad found out about us then?”
I look away, ashamed to even say it out loud. There are consequences in everything we feel, and once something is said you can’t take it back. He grips my chin and pulls me back to him, expecting an answer. We’re equally in love. We’re equally jealous. We’re equally controlling when it comes to something we want of the other. “I don’t want a baby.”
Our eyes are locked. “With me or at all?”
“Right now,” I answer honestly, and now that it’s out a tear rolls down my face, a blanket of anxiety weighing down on my chest. I shove away the guilt that’s trying to seep in my skin. “Having another baby this young is like giving Madden up in vain. I had to give him upbecauseI was young. I love Sayler and Presley to death, but I don’t want to be them. They’re so young. Maybe that’s why me and Paxtyn hit it off so well. Our mindsets are closer to the same level. I want to be a normal twenty-one-year-old. We’re in Miami; a place known for its nightlife. I want to party with my fiancé on the weekends when you’re off. I want to take trips together. I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck so long that I want to be selfish for a little while and buy myself things if something catches my eye. That’s why I don’t mind getting a job. I’ve had one since summer after graduation. I may not know one hundred percent what I want to do yet, but I’d like to go to school, even if it’s just cosmetology school. If I went to the university, we could do fun stuff like tailgating and watching football games together. I want to be able to show you off in public and introduce you to new friends I make. I want to be just a couple for a while—that thing we never really got to do before because we had to sneak around. I don’t want people to think we’re getting married because you got me pregnant. I want to do things in order for once.”
He wipes the fat tear off my cheek. “We can still do all those things, Gab; maybe just not all the time.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going to be that kind of mother. I’m all in or all out.” I break, covering my face with my hands, my emotions all over the place. “I’m not mentally prepared for this. I’m not ready. Just thinking about all of that is giving me anxiety. The getting fat. The feeling it move. The worry over the course of nine months that something bad could happen. The doctor visits. The memories. Childbirth. The stress of having it ripped out of my arms or it leaving the room and not coming back. The fear of not loving another child like I love our son. Losing you. All those things are in my head. So yeah, in ways, it’s sort of a nightmare.”
“Baby,” he pleads. “Stop worrying about it getting taken. I won’t let that happen. We both knew this was the ending we wanted. I want you at all stages of life. Does this put a kink in all the things you want? Yes. Does it destroy the possibility of getting it? No. I have fears too. Every pregnancy you have from here on out will remind me that I missed the first one. Every time I hold my kid I’m going to know there is another one out there I’ve never met, but if you know I’m ‘it’ for you, then we can make this work. The pregnancy itself may have been an accident, Gab, but I’ve always known you were gonna be the girl I had kids with.”
I look at him with fresh tears falling. “You’ve been ‘it’ for me since the night we met. If I couldn’t stop loving you after I watched you drive away, or when I found out you’d been back and didn’t tell me, or when you told me you fucked those two bimbos twenty-four hours after you fucked me, marrying you and having your baby sure as hell isn’t going to make me stop.” My shoulders fall in defeat. “I don’t care what my life looks like as long as I get to live it with you.”
He kisses my wet cheeks. “One day, Gabby, five or ten years from now, we’re going to be living the best damn life someone could ask for while we flip off the world for doubting us. We’re going to prove that sometimes love is enough.”
I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him tight, knowing he’s right. This is what I have fought so hard for—us. Now I have him. The rest doesn’t matter. I wondered so many times during my pregnancy with Madden what it would be like if Maddox knew I was pregnant with his baby. Now I have my answer, and it’s devastatingly beautiful, but I think I knew it would be from the beginning. We love each other. It wasn’t a one-night stand, which is why it hurt so much worse to keep that secret from him and let our baby go. “So we’re going to do this? We’re going to have a baby?”
“We’re going to have a baby,” he answers. “And this time when you give birth both of you will have my last name.”
The one thing I couldn’t give Madden.
I pull back and grab the door handle, forcing my emotions away. Riggan and Sayler have been standing at the front of her car waiting on us since we got here. “Let’s do this and go home, because the second we get there I’m jumping your bones.”
He chuckles just before opening his door. He knows my crazy ass isn’t playing. When my emotions are high I want sex. It never fails. It’s a balancing act for me, and right now they’re at an all-time high, which means he’s getting laid and it’s going to be the kind of animalistic sex he is ashamed he likes, which is my favorite side of him. I want the saint to love me while the sinner fucks me. He may know how to make me cream, but I know how to make the angel on his shoulder disappear for a little while. No girl wants her man to bring purity to the pussy party.
Thirty-Nine
Maddox
Ipace back and forth in Sayler’s dad’s study as he removes the ‘birth control’ from her arm. I’m anxious, which is most likely because we had to wait for a while for him to get here. He got held up at the hospital in a trauma case. Car wreck victim that came in with extensive injuries; one being the hundreds of shards of glass to the face like shrapnel from the windshield, the other a punctured breast implant, among other things. At least her mom is out of town, which made things a little less awkward.
During the wait I had time to think, which is never a good thing. The thought that’s currently looping on repeat is the fact that if she got pregnant on birth control, could it cause birth defects? What if it’s missing organs or something? Then there is the drinking. Gabby has had many occasions of alcohol binging since she arrived here. So have I. I wonder if it can alter my sperm. Surely not, because she’s fucking pregnant. My guess is they could swim straight enough to knock her up! How many times has she been drunk since she got pregnant? I vaguely remember talking about fetal alcohol syndrome in one of my classes in high school—health maybe. Argh! My mind is turning so fast I can’t keep up.
I grab one of the shelves in the built-in bookcase, my other hand fisting in the front of my hair, tugging at the section of dark blond strands. Sayler’s dad’s back is to me, blocking my view of what he’s doing to her, so I couldn’t really see anything unless I was right beside them. Then I’d just be in the way, hovering and probably stressing out more. I don’t want to piss off a doctor. He’s doing us a favor.
Blondie comes up beside me and touches my arm. “Maddox, are you okay?”
I glance down at her. Her long, blonde hair is silky and straight and she’s dressed to the nines like she always is. Rarely does she dress in what most would consider casual clothes. Her makeup is done and her top is fitted enough to show she’s pregnant but not tight. “I’m fine.”
Her brows dip. “Why would you lie to me?”
I sigh. “Just a lot on my mind, I guess. Don’t take it personal.”
“My dad is the best. Nothing will happen.”
“That’s not what I was referring to.”
“I know,” she says. “I just wanted to reassure you.”
She stares at me, clearly wanting to ask me something. She’s a stark contrast from Gabby. Gabby would come right out and say whatever is on her mind. I never had to guess with her. Blondie will skate around it like she’s scared to pry. I smile at her. “What’s on your mind?”
“Riggan filled me in on the way here.”
I glance up at him over her head. He’s sitting on the couch leaned forward with a golf magazine in his hands, flipping through it. I almost laugh out. Riggan playing golf would be a sight—as out of place as a girl playing football with boys. “He did, did he?”