“Very bad. There were offers of money for an abortion that made Brittany cry harder and harder with each new dollar amount my parents offered. The way they called her trash, and how any child she had would be trash, and nothing would ever change. At first, I hoped Brittany would take the money and it could all go away. Then, as their words became more venomous, I felt sick at the lengths they were willing to go. How they were sure I would turn my back on Brittany and my kid. It didn’t matter how or why, but if Brittany was going to continue with the pregnancy then that would be my kid, my blood. I couldn’t walk away from either of them.
“When they left the hospital, they told me it was Brittany or them. I told them to fuck off. For a few weeks, we stayed with Brittany’s parents, but it was a constant stress-filled environment. There I was turning sixteen, without a job, a home of my own, and a baby on the way. Every day, her parents demanded to know when I would fix it. Brittany was freaking out because she finally figured out there wasn’t going to be a happily ever after in the big house with my parents. She was constantly asking me to talk to my parents. She went to my sister, talking about the baby. Didn’t my sister want to be an aunt? I was pissed, my sister was a fucking kid, but Brittany was desperate.
“I couldn’t take it anymore and I demanded we move out. Even though I had no idea what I was going to do, I knew I couldn’t do it under the stress I was living in. At first, a friend let us stay in his family’s pool house. I found a job working construction, it paid next to nothing. Still, it gave me hope I might be able to turn it all around. Then when the friend’s parents found out Brittany was pregnant, they sided with my parents and kicked us out. Finally, I fucked everything up and got what I wanted in the end. No more Brittany or the baby.”
“Ethan, no. You don’t believe that.”
With a bitter laugh I scoff at her words. “Of course I do. Fuck, Holly, how could I not? It was my fault. When we got kicked out, Brittany wanted to move in with her parents again but I refused. I was making money, we had saved almost enough to get our own apartment, we didn’t need anyone else. My pride wouldn’t allow us to depend on anyone. Brittany never saw a doctor once after her suicide attempt. Maybe if she had seen a doctor, whatever led to the miscarriage could have been caught. Hell, if we’d lived with her parents we wouldn’t have had to wait for over an hour for an ambulance. I didn’t want a baby or Brittany, I got what I wanted.”
“Oh, Ethan, you were a kid—you couldn’t have known the choices you were making would lead to what happened. Why didn’t you want to live with her parents?”
“Because I didn’t want my kid to know I couldn’t take care of him. I wanted my kid to know I was the one who could give him everything.”
“You cared about your baby. You didn’t want to get rid of him.”
“Holly, the minute I committed to being a father was the minute my ego should have gone out the window. My decisions should have been about what was best for the baby, not me.”
“Maybe as an adult you know that. For a teenager who hadn’t had a real responsibility beyond passing a test, to go to being responsible for another human being, there are going to be things you get wrong. When it comes to pregnancy and getting it right, there is no one answer. My best friend in high school, her mother had six kids and they were dirt poor. They couldn’t so much as afford birth control, so they couldn’t afford doctors. Her mother never saw a doctor until she was in the hospital delivering her kids. The woman’s sister was a rich man’s wife and saw a doctor to get pregnant, and the doctor every month trying to stay pregnant, but she could never carry a baby to term. She almost died the same way Brittany did with her fifth pregnancy. While she got to the hospital in time, in the end the doctor had to do a complete hysterectomy.
“There are no guarantees in life. If Brittany had managed to make it to the end of her pregnancy there is every chance she or the baby would have died. Life happens and we have no control, and sometimes that includes dying.” Her arms go around my neck as she kisses my cheek.
Fuck, I hate the way she’s making sense. Still, I can’t just let go of something I’ve believed for so long. “But I didn’t want them. I wanted it all to go away.”
“So, when you told Brittany you refused to move in with her parents, you wanted her to die? When you were thinking about how you wanted your kid to know you could give him everything he needed, deep down if Brittany still could and would get an abortion you would have wanted that? Were you wanting her to miscarry?”
“Fuck no!”
“Then, Ethan, you didn’t get what you wanted. Okay, yes, when Brittany first got pregnant, and it was just an idea of a baby, you were scared and didn’t want the responsibility. You wouldn’t have been a normal, logical person if you hadn’t. No person should think having a kid at fifteen is a good idea. But you changed your min
d. If you had known what was going to happen, would you do the same thing?”
“No.”
“So, you didn’t get what you wanted.” She hugs me tight, her soft words cutting me free from the guilt that had hung around me for years, weighing me down until sometimes I felt like I would suffocate beneath it.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Holding Ethan close, I fight against the tears that threaten to spill over. It’s hard not to give in to the tears, for the child he’d lost, for the young girl who had taken a crazy gamble and lost far more than she ever thought was possible. For the kid Ethan used to be: petulant, entitled, and proud, not believing anything could hurt or break him, and by extension, those he cared about. But most of all, for the man who still carried the guilt and remorse over a loss most people couldn’t comprehend, let alone carry for so long.
Now, he makes sense to me in every way, the manwhore unwilling to commit to more than a night of sex, afraid to allow a woman close enough to use him in any way. The asshole, refusing to be in any way vulnerable by not making room for caring, or to feeling pain again, because he was already carrying enough every day. The control he demands over his life, both public and personal is huge. How the hell he ever let me in I will never know, and I will never take it for granted, ever.
For a long time, neither of us moves. Gradually, the pounding of his heart slows and I know he’s fallen asleep. There are a half dozen things I should be doing, yet the idea of moving fades as quickly it appears. Slowly, I follow Ethan into sleep.
The trilling of Ethan’s phone wakes us both in a sudden jolt that makes me instantly cranky. With a kiss on my forehead, Ethan reaches for his phone. It’s a client with a personal problem. I roll off him knowing he’s going to his office. He squeezes my leg as he goes and I roll back over to see it’s a little after six. We slept longer than I thought we would. My stomach gurgles, telling me we slept too long.
As I make my way down the hall, I see the door to Ethan’s office is closed. Which is rare, so I’m wondering how long he will take. I’m starving and decide to do a quick dinner of grilled chicken and broccoli with cheese. It doesn’t take long to cook. When I’m done, there’s still no sign of Ethan, so I take my tablet with me to the dinner table to look over my options for school. I long ago outlawed electronics when we were eating, which had made Ethan laugh, then agree when he saw I was serious.
I’m almost done with dinner when Ethan opens the door to his office. Caught, I drop the tablet with a bang. He laughs when he sees me.
“Didn’t wait for me and I find you with your tablet at dinner?”
Crap, why am I blushing? “I’m doing what you ordered, trying to pick a school.”
“Ah, good girl.” Sitting down, he picks up my tablet. “Let me see. Sweetheart, what are you doing looking at this school? It’s a for-profit school. This place isn’t for you. Why aren’t looking at Penn State? They have a great accounting program firms would come to campus for job fairs every year. Look at the feedback on the online program.”
“Yes, maybe, but Penn State is twice a credit hour what the for-profit school is. The for-profit school isn’t that bad. I can still get a job with it. But Penn State is all my eggs in the one basket.”
Shaking his head as he looks at the tablet. “In that case, I’ll pay for it.”