Hold On to Me
Shaking his head in disgust, John said, “So you just spread your legs for anyone to get revenge? Is that it? Do you always stoop that low?” There went his self-control.
“Stop,” she said quietly, looking at the floor.
“No. Don’t tell me to stop. You fucked another guy while you were with me! Do you love him?”
“We weren’t together, Johnny. We were just friends, remember?”
John reared back. “That’s how you saw us? Just friends? I can’t believe this … You know we were a helluva lot more than that.” He stood up and pointed his finger at her. “You know it was more. Don’t deny it.”
Rubbing her tummy, Alyssa stared at it as she said, “Yeah, well, you never made it official. What was I supposed to think?”
“Did I have to stand on top of a table and scream out my love for you to make it official? No one needed to know our business. It was for me and you, no one else.”
John shook his head. He couldn’t believe how everything was going. “Refresh my memory because it’s a little hazy after the hell I’ve been through over the last few months, but how many nights a week were we together?”
“Johnny—” He was making her feel like crap.
“How many, Alyssa?”
Alyssa thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know … three … four nights a week?”
He nodded. “And sometimes more because I needed to be with you.”
“We were on and off though … it wasn’t exclusive.”
“There was no on and off with us, Alyssa. We were always on.”
“Well, I didn’t know that.”
“I just don’t understand how you couldn’t know that?” John was perplexed. “Like I said, you never asked me to be your girlfriend …”
“If I take your hand, hug and kiss you in public, and behind closed doors make love to you, that’s not enough? Sorry to break it to you, babe, but I’m not some pansy ass sissy who is going to yell it out on top of the roof tops. It’s pretty much common sense.”
“This is why I said from the beginning friends with benefits was a stupid idea. Look where it got us.”
John huffed, closing his eyes. “Yeah, it was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted you and fell for you hard. I still want you despite everything …”
Alyssa’s heart broke at his admission. How could he still want her?
Then it hit him. “Whoa. How many other guys did you screw while we were ‘unofficial’?” he asked. Unofficial my ass, he thought. Alyssa had always been his. Everyone in their small town knew it. “And why didn’t you use protection?”
Alyssa was hurt that he could think she would sleep around. “There was no one else other than Ben. I swear. And as for protection, I’d been drinking a lot so I thought we did? Finding out I was pregnant was a shock since you were the only one I allowed to never use protection. I just … I just can’t remember … It’s all a blank,” she whispered that last sentence. Not remembering was the worst. She thought back to the times she had been with Ben and could swear he used protection.
He squinted at her, confused by her answer. She had gotten that intoxicated that she blacked out? “I just can’t believe you would sleep with him. Why, Alyssa. Why?” John said more than asked. He shook his head and then dropped it into his palms staring at the floor.
“I don’t know, Johnny, I don’t.”
“So you’re still with him I take it?”
She nodded sadly. “You left out of nowhere …”
“I know I did. I should’ve said something, but I was so fucked up after Jace died that I had to get out. But what are you going to do if the kid is mine? Stay with him?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
A storm was brewing inside of John. He was trying in vain to keep his emotions at bay, but it was a struggle. He stood up, an air of peril surrounding him. Quietly, he said, “You don’t know? You don’t know? That baby comes out mine, and you don’t know what you’re going to do? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, you’re going to leave his piece of shit ass and come back to me.”
“As if it’s that easy. You’ll be training, won’t you? Off to some remote country probably with my luck and you expect me to raise a baby on my own? I don’t think so.”