Use Me (Caldwell Brothers)

“No. No, dammit!” He removes his hands from my body and quickly walks into the bathroom and slams the door behind him.

I wipe away the tears and try to make sense of what just happened.

He’s here. He’s in New York with me, for me, yet he’s not acting like the man I left two months ago.

I pull my pants and underwear back on, fix my shirt, and pat down my hair. Then I walk to the door and look in the mirror beside it.

I have makeup running down my eyes from the tears. Of all days for him to show up, it’s a day that I actually left the house and wore makeup. I look like hell, yet I feel like heaven and hell at the same time.

He’s here. It’s Heaven sent. He’s angry, bitter, and determined to make me feel something. I’m not sure I’m supposed to like it, and that is hell.

After trying to wipe the makeup off, I realize there is no way without using makeup remover. Who the hell knows if I even have any? I have been holed up in this place for two months.

I feel a chill run down my spine when I look back as the bathroom door opens and he fills the doorway completely.

He sighs and looks away from me, eyes scanning the room. Only then do I realize how messy it is, and it embarrasses me. I am totally and utterly embarrassed at the mess.

“I’ve been busy with the book,” I say as I pull myself together and look around, trying to figure out how to draw his attention back to me and away from the mess.

He is expressionless as he slowly looks about the room.

“It’s not usually like this, I swear,” I say as I start to stack the pile of papers nearest me. “I’ve just been busy.” And I have been so exhausted that cleaning has been the last thing on my list of priorities.

My hands begin to shake, and my chest tightens as I take a deep breath and try to pile the next stack.

“What the hell is this?” he asks.

I look up to see he’s holding the white plastic stick—the test I took this morning. The one that told me I am pregnant. He looks absolutely furious.

Chapter Thirty - Two

“I asked you a question, Tatum. What is this?” I hold the fucking stick out; the one I have seen a dozen times in television commercials. I know damn well what it is.

“It’s a...” She pauses and shrugs.

I’m enraged. I asked her if she’s been with anyone else. She said no. If that’s the case, then why the fuck is this stick in her bathroom?

“I just found out this morning.” She grips her shirt and starts to wring it like a towel. “I’m going to call the doctors tomorrow. Maybe it’s wrong?”

“It better damn well be wrong!” I snap.

She looks hurt by this, but hurt is better than dead.

“Don’t you look at me like that. You want to die, Tatum?” I step closer, and she bursts into tears then lets out a pain-filled cry.

The door to her apartment flies open and that woman, Melanie, bursts in.

“You leave her alone, or I’m calling the cops. Do you hear me!”

Fuck you is on the tip of my tongue, but I clench my teeth together, stopping it.

“Get out.” The redhead points her phone at me. “Get out before I call the cops.”

“No, Melanie, no,” Tatum cries.

“He just threatened to kill you,” she says, looking at Tatum like she’s some abused fucking dog.

“No,” she says then sniffs loudly. “He thinks, because I’m pregnant—”

“Tatum,” I warn her not to divulge my reasoning.

“You’re what?” the redhead, Melanie, yells.

“Fuck.” I shake my head and look around her place.

“Yeah, well, that’s what causes pregnancy,” Melanie says, clearly trying to make me out as an idiot.

“No kidding,” I smart back, still looking around the apartment.

I see the bags that Tatum took to the airport the day I dropped her off—the last time I saw her—sitting in the corner and walk toward them. I pick up the large, black suitcase and unzip it.

“What are you doing?” Tatum asks, walking toward me as I dump it out.

“Two months, and you haven’t even unpacked?” I ask, picking up the smaller one and dumping it out, too.

She sniffs before saying, “I’ve been too busy.”

I don’t say a damn thing. I pick up the bags and head to what I assume is her bedroom and place them on her unmade bed. This room is a fucking mess, too, Starbucks cups littering the dresser, the nightstand, the bookshelves.

I turn and look at her. “You supposed to be living on coffee when you’re knocked up with my spawn?”

Her hands fall protectively over her belly as if to shield the thing growing inside her. “I just found out.”