“I thought somethin’ happened to you,” I said, slowing my rhythm so I could watch my dick disappear inside her. “Came home and you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”
“I’m sorry,” she moaned as she tried to move her hips against me.
She was almost crying in frustration, little sounds of pleasure falling from her lips every time I bottomed out inside her, but I wasn’t giving her enough sensation to come. “I love you,” she finally gasped, making my chest feel so tight that for a moment, I thought I was having a damn heart attack. “I love you.”
Then my panic from earlier came flooding back with a vengeance, and the thought of something happening to her almost brought me to my knees.
Without thought, my hand raised up and landed on her ass with a loud crack.
I didn’t put much force behind it. I’d never hit Trix hard, even on her ass, but the sound was loud.
Trix went completely still beneath me.
I paused for a moment, only for a moment, to see if she’d frozen in surprise.
But that wasn’t surprise.
She was like a fucking statue. I wasn’t even sure she was breathing, she was so still.
“Sweetbea?” I said, pulling out of her gently.
She didn’t acknowledge me or move from the position I’d put her in. I kept a hand on her back as I stepped around the bed to see her face, and my stomach dropped as I took in her expression.
I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.
“Baby?”
Her eyes were squeezed tight and her jaw was clenched as if she was waiting for another blow.
“Hey, hey,” I crooned, “Come here to me, Bea.” I crouched by the side of the bed so I could put my face next to hers.
Her eyes opened and almost immediately filled with tears.
“I didn’t like that,” she whispered, the words shaming me in a way that I would never forget.
“I won’t ever do it again,” I promised, my voice strangled from the fucking knot in my throat. I slid my hand gently up her back so I could sweep her sweaty hair from her face.
She jerked toward me then, wrapping her arms around my shoulders as she pressed her face into my neck. Her fingers dug into my skin as she shuddered, and I swallowed hard as I picked her up and carried her into our room, shutting the spare room door tightly behind me.
All the anger and frustration I’d carried with me that night had vanished the moment I’d noticed something wrong. There wasn’t any room for it alongside the panic that coursed through me as she trembled.
“Did I hurt you?” I asked as I climbed into the sheets, still holding her against my chest.
“No.”
“What was that, Bea?”
“I don’t know,” she answered shakily.
Chapter 10
Trix
I didn’t move as Cam crawled out of bed early in the morning. I needed to get up soon, but as he left the bedroom without kissing me, I realized we both needed a little space.
Cam didn’t understand what had happened to us the night before, but I couldn’t ease his mind because I didn’t understand it, either.
One minute I’d been close to orgasm, begging wordlessly for Cam to give me that last push into oblivion, and the next it had been like my entire body shut down. I was there, I could hear him talking to me and felt him pull away, but I couldn’t move.
It was that sound. That godawful sound of flesh meeting flesh.
Our bodies slapped together on a regular basis, making noises that turned me on and strangely comforted me, but that fast, sharp sound? It had been disgusting. Horrifying. Nauseating. I’d barely felt it when his palm hit my ass, it got lost in the way the rest of my body had been practically singing, but I hadn’t been able to escape that noise.
Hearing it, everything inside me, every single part of me, had instinctively curled into itself. Quiet. Still. Small.
I rolled to my back and pulled my quilt up to my chin as I stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t had that reaction when Will and Cam had been fighting in the forecourt at the club. I’d hated it, but I’d stood there with my pop just fine.
I couldn’t understand why I’d reacted that way with Cam. There was something I wasn’t seeing, right in my periphery, but it was as if the moment I tried to look at it full-on, it vanished.
“Hey,” Cam said tentatively as he came in, soaking wet from his shower.
“Morning,” I mumbled back, watching him as he dried off a little and started getting dressed.
“Was gonna wake you after I started coffee.”
“It’s okay, I was up.”
Our conversation was so stilted that it made a lump form in my throat. We’d never had a hard time talking before. Even when I’d avoided him, even when I’d had to see him at the club with other women, we’d still been able to bitch and bicker back and forth.
“You got—”
“I’m—”
We both stopped speaking and Cam sighed, walking over in bare feet to sit at the edge of the bed.
“Last test today, huh?” he asked, leaning over to brace his hand on the opposite side of me.
“Yep. Then I’m officially done.”
An awkward silence fell and I looked back up at the ceiling.
“Sweetbea,” he said softly, his voice pulling my eyes back to his face. “I’m sorry, baby.”
My eyes filled with tears and I sat up in bed, reaching out to take his face between my palms.
“Don’t be sorry.”
“I scared you—”
His eyes had dark circles underneath and for once, he hadn’t shaved before he showered. He looked like hell.
“We just won’t do it again.”
“Why didn’t you warn me?” he asked raggedly, his bristly jaw moving against my hands.
“I didn’t know. No one’s ever—”
“Oh,” he said, cutting me off before I could give any type of detail. “Was it because I was pissed? Because, swear to God Trix, I wouldn’t fuckin’—”
“No.” I scooted a little closer and pulled his face to mine, fitting my bottom lip between his as I gently kissed him. “I’m not afraid of you. You could break every single thing in this apartment and I’d stand in the middle watching you do it, knowing nothing would touch me.”
“That wouldn’t happen—”
“I know.”
“—don’t have the money to replace that much shit.”
I laughed and he smiled back, his eyes still bleak.
“We good?” he asked, reaching up to cup the side of my neck.
“Yeah.” I nodded, underscoring my answer. “I wish I didn’t have to go to class today. Thursdays have been my day off for so long, I swear my body knows I’m supposed to be sleeping in.”
“You can sleep in tomorrow and Sunday,” he promised, his thumb tracing along my bare collarbone.
“Why not Saturday?”
“I gotta help my parents at the house.”
“Oh, right. Gram’s birthday dinner.”
“Yep.”
He leaned in and kissed me and I reveled in the novelty of his scruff rubbing against my chin and cheeks. I inhaled deeply as his tongue slid against mine, taking in the scent of his soap and the toothpaste he’d used before coming into the room. Cam pulled me into his lap sideways and I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms banded around me.
“I gotta go now, or I’m not goin’ and neither are you,” he said gruffly, pulling away from my mouth. “What time will you be done today?”
“By eleven, maybe sooner,” I answered as he stood up and laid me back in the bed, pulling the covers around my body. “I’ll text you when I’m leaving school.”
“Okay.” He pushed some buttons on the alarm on the nightstand and leaned down to kiss me again. “You need some more sleep, so I set the alarm for an hour from now—I’ll call and make sure it wakes you up.”
“Thanks, baby.” I gripped the back of his head to steal another kiss as he gr
oaned.
“You’re all naked and soft and sleepy and not acting like a bitch, and I hafta fuckin’ leave.”
“Quickie?”
“Nothin’s ever quick with you.” He stood up, pulling my hands away from his head. “Sleep.”
“Okay.”
“Good luck on your test.”
“Thanks. I love you,” I relaxed into the blankets and closed my eyes.
“Love you, too, Sweetbea.”
I listened to him leaving the house as I drifted off to sleep, the knot in my stomach completely gone. We were okay.
* * *
“Hey, Bellatrix!” I heard called out behind me as I left the building after my last class. I’d made that test my bitch.
“What’s up, Steve?” I asked as I slowed down so he could catch up with me.
“How’d you do?” he asked as he fell in beside me.
“Nailed it, you?”
“Same.”
“Nice.”
“So, a group of us are going to barbeque to celebrate the end of finals on Saturday, you wanna come?”
My brows raised in surprise. I’d never been invited to anything. I had a few friends that I hung out with once in a while, but they were all girls and mostly kept to themselves like I did. Basically, a bunch of introverts who got together to watch movies or whatever when we were feeling exceptionally bored.
“I can’t,” I finally answered with an apologetic smile. “I’ve got a family barbeque this weekend.”
“Well, come afterward?”
“It’s actually at my boyfriend’s parents’ house, and there’ll be a ton of us. I doubt I’ll be done in time to go anywhere else, sorry.”
“Oh, okay,” he said amiably. “So, you and the boyfriend—pretty serious?”
I stopped abruptly at the intrusive question and turned to look at him, a weird feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know him well enough for him to ask me something like that. My instincts were telling me to get as far away from him as possible, but I couldn’t just turn and run like a lunatic. We were surrounded by people, it wasn’t like I was in any danger.
“I’m late,” I blurted, a small part of me sure that I should tell him someone was waiting on me. “But have fun at your barbeque.”
“Thanks, Bella,” he said softly.
“That’s not my name,” I replied, taking a step back.
“It fits, though.” He gave a little wave and turned away, walking toward the other end of the school. My stomach turned as he threw his arms high above himself in a nonchalant stretch.
Thank God, I never had to see that guy again.
I turned toward the parking lot where I’d parked my car that morning and pulled out my phone, letting Cam know that I was done with my test. We texted back and forth for a few minutes while he tried to convince me to come to the shop for a “nooner.” I didn’t say anything about Steve. By the time I sat down heavily in the driver’s seat, I’d completely forgotten how uncomfortable he’d made me. I was too giddy about the way Cameron couldn’t seem to get enough of me, even after my complete freak out the night before.
A few hours later, all that giddiness left me.
* * *
“Nan!” I yelled, pushing her front door open without knocking. My voice was panicked and thin, and I wasn’t even sure how I’d driven to her house, my hands were shaking so badly.
“In here—what the heck is going on?” my nan asked as she rounded the corner into the entryway. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I’m pregnant,” I blurted, my hand flying up to my mouth as if I could catch the words before they reached her.
“Oh, Christ,” another voice rasped as my auntie, Vera, walked out behind her.
“Vera,” Nan hissed.
“Come sit down before you fall over,” Vera snapped, spinning back toward the kitchen.
With my eyes miserably pointed toward the floor, I followed them numbly. They were whispering back and forth, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying and didn’t really care, anyway.
Vera was married to the Aces’ president, Slider, and she’d been a constant in my life growing up. She’d practically raised my mom. She and Slider had known my gramps and nan since they were my age, and when Nan had gotten back together with my gramps, she and Vera had picked up their old friendship as if they hadn’t been apart for thirty years. I should have known Vera would be there.
Where Vera was hard, Nan was soft. Vera spoke without thinking and Nan calculated every word. They were opposites in every way, yet they complimented each other.
“Come on, baby,” Nan murmured, sitting me at a kitchen chair. “What’s going on?”
“I thought I was due this week,” I answered desperately, looking up to meet her eyes. “I thought I was due, so I stopped at the store to get some tampons. But then, as I was driving home, I realized I should’ve started last week, not this week.”
“Hell, you know how many times I’ve been late?” Vera said.
“I’m not,” I argued. “I have thirty days between periods. Always. Not twenty-eight, not thirty-one. Thirty.”
“You haven’t taken a test?” Nan asked kindly.
“No.” That’s when I started to cry.
Vera made a noise in her throat. “Why are you cryin,’ Bellatrix? You’re a grown woman with a good man. This is excitin’ news.”
I dropped my head into my hands and cried harder.
“Well,” Nan said reasonably, “you need to take a test before you know for sure.”
“I’ll go get one,” Vera offered, grabbing her ratty, fringed purse from the counter.
After she’d gone, I sat in silence, my mind spinning. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to get set in my career. I wanted to be married. I wanted to be five years older before I had a baby. I didn’t want a baby now, when Cam and I had just found one another again. I wanted to hop on the bike whenever we wanted and spend the day riding around. I wanted to go to club parties and concerts and vacations, just me and Cam.
Shit. I pulled out my phone and sent him a message, letting him know I was at my nan’s so he wouldn’t worry.
Nan rubbed my back as I tried to calm my breathing.
Then, before I was ready, Vera was back.
“Here,” she said, shoving the pink and white box at me. “Go pee on it and we’ll wait for you out here.”
My heart thumped hard in my chest as I walked toward the bathroom. I could barely pee on the little stick, my hands were shaking so badly, but eventually I finished and sat the test on a little square of toilet paper as I washed my hands.
I hadn’t even had time to dry them before the positive result formed. As I staggered backward, a loud, “Well?” came through the door and I caught myself.
I’m sure I looked shell-shocked as I opened the bathroom door, but Nan just gave me a small smile and pulled me into her arms.
“It’ll all be okay, sweetheart.”
“I’m getting an abortion,” I said flatly, all my tears completely dried up. “I don’t want this.”
Nan’s body stiffened, but she didn’t say a word, just continued to hold me tight as my arms hung limply at my sides. It was as if my whole body had gone hollow, and I couldn’t feel anything.
“It’s not a ‘this’,” Vera snapped, yanking me out of Nan’s arms. “It’s a baby. Cam’s baby.”
“It’s just a cluster of cells.”
Nan made a noise of protest and looked away from me. When she spoke, her voice was the hardest I’d ever heard it. “Go sit down. We’re going to talk.”
I raised my chin and followed her to the kitchen, but feelings were already starting to flood in again. My small reprieve where I’d felt nothing was already ebbing away, and the room suddenly seemed colder.
“When I was younger than you are, I got pregnant with your Uncle Nix,” Nan began, her voice strained but steady. “I didn’t want him, either.”
My head shot up in surprise at her words. I knew my gramps wa
sn’t Uncle Nix’s dad, just like my mom didn’t belong to Nan, but I’d never heard the story of why that was. It had always just been truth, and I’d never had reason to question it.
“I’m only telling you this. . . Well, I just want you to have the facts, alright?”
“I’m gonna go,” Vera said suddenly. “Can’t take no more trips down memory lane.”
She walked over and cupped my cheeks like she’d done when I was little, then kissed my forehead tenderly. “I love you, kiddo.”
“Love you, too.”
Nan was silent for a few moments after Vera left, then took a deep breath and began to speak.
“I was raped. It was brutal and demoralizing and completely shattered everything I’d thought I knew about the world and my place in it,” she said flatly, her eyes steady on mine. “My rapist is the one who messed up my hand—well, he didn’t cut off the fingers, that happened when I was a kid.”
She raised her hand, gnarled and twisted with arthritis, the pinky and ring finger missing from the second knuckle.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered in horror.
“That was how Nix was conceived.”
I felt my eyes grow wide as I inhaled sharply, but I couldn’t stop my reaction. I’d never known. No one had ever said a word to me.
My eyes slammed shut as I grimaced, thinking about my handsome uncle, who looked nothing like my nan and towered over her by a foot. I’d always thought his dad must have been huge, and the implications of that were not lost on me as Nan sat across the table, wringing her hands.
“Bellatrix, I’m not telling you this so that you feel sorry for me, or feel some misplaced sense of guilt about your feelings. Okay, baby?”
I nodded, my throat so tight I didn’t think I could get any words out.
“I’m telling you because I know how it feels to have a baby inside you that you don’t want. I know how scared you are. But I want you to know,” she reached out and gripped my hand hard, “you can do this. You can be a parent, even if you weren’t prepared. Even if the thought scares you shitless. Even if this wasn’t in your plans. Even if you think that having the baby might possibly break you into so many pieces that you’ll never find them all again.” Her voice had gone raspy, and I knew the last sentence didn’t apply to me, but to her. “You will never understand the type of love you’ll have for your child until you’re a parent. It’s all encompassing. It’s the most important thing you’ll ever do. It’s your decision whether you’re ready for that or not.”