Beautiful Mistakes

"Well, yeah," Aaron said as if that much was obvious. "She didn't have a hit man take you out as were walking in the door though, that's good. I figured she might go to extreme lengths if she thought there was a chance you weren't out of the way,” he said with a hint of a smile.

"I don't see why she would think I'm not out of the way," Julie said.

"You're pregnant, Julie. You have a Trump card, and you didn't allow her or Matt to bully you into getting rid of it. And seeing as he was just giving you a booty call last night, I somehow don't think you're completely out of the way," he added, not looking at her, but not sounding hostile either.

Hearing that made her feel strangely guilty, and she said, "I didn't answer them! I didn't even read them. That's totally not true—I'm out of the way. I'm not… I'm done with him."

"Well, good, I hope that's true, but as long as you have his kid… she isn't going to rest easy."

Frowning, Julie heard Emma offering to adopt her child run through her mind.

Was that what it was?

"For one thing, not only do you have a 'bond' with him," he said with air quotes, "but you also have a ticket for child support for the next 18 years—and that's a Prada handbag that she could have bought every single month. Think about it, Julie, you can fuck up their lives for years to come just because he slipped up once. I'm sure she assumed you wouldn't be so difficult—don't take this the wrong way, but you seem like a pretty malleable person. I'm sure she thought you would be easily bullied, and Emma is ruthless, so it there's one person in the world who could have figured out how to take that from you, my money would have been on Emma. She's brilliant in a maniacal kind of way—she would stop at nothing to get what she wants."

"Like what?" Julie asked, feeling newly cautious of Emma's world-on-a-platter offer.

"Anything," he said simply. "She would say anything, do anything… she's very manipulative, if you haven't noticed. In Emma's eyes, you fucked with her—now you either cooperate or she'll take you down."

"How do you know these things?" Julie asked him.

That seemed to be the magic question. Aaron simply shrugged and said, "I just do."

Then he mysteriously had something he needed to do, and he walked away from her.

Sighing, Julie wiped the counter down, thinking that Aaron surely hadn't helped ease her mind—instead it was even more apprehensive, and instead of the guilty thoughts of what she was depriving her child of, she thought about what she could offer her child without Emma.

Julie had no intention of just giving up her dreams because she got pregnant. She was a grown woman, for heaven's sake, and she could handle having a kid. Yes, technically she would be a single mother, but… that was okay. Once she made her way through school she would be able to get a better paying job, and if she absolutely had to she could probably move back home…

She really didn't want to do that. Not only were there no good jobs in that damn small town, but she didn't want to go back.

Chicago may not be her absolute favorite place in the world, but it still beat her small-town hell by a long shot, that much she knew. And if she could get a good job—maybe not at the Times, like Emma offered—then she would be able to afford housing for herself and her little poppy seed. They might struggle a little bit in the beginning, but if Julie could establish some sort of support system to help her through the rough patch, once the baby was old enough to go to school Julie was sure everything would be fine.

Even if she couldn't establish a trustworthy support system, she could rely on daycare like other single parents, and she would still manage to pull through—it would just be a little more of an uphill climb. If she got a good enough job, she could even get her own nanny. Considering her general lack of friends or family in Chicago, she should probably look into how much childcare would cost.

Emma's offer was certainly easier—hand over the baby and step into a new life.

But life wasn't about doing whatever was easy.

She needed to do what was right, and even if Emma was the dignified person she seemed to be, Aaron's warning still set off little red flags in the back of her mind.

Was Emma really to be trusted? And did it really matter? If all she wanted was to adopt Julie's baby, maybe that was why she was offering such a sweet deal in exchange.

It was all so confusing.

And yet… she couldn't imagine actually taking Emma's deal. Sure, it would virtually clear the way for Julie, free her from responsibility of any mistakes she had made and as Emma pointed out, it wasn't as if the baby would be doing without.

But what if she was meant to make that mistake? Sleeping with Matt could be categorized as a mistake, sure, but her baby had never once fallen into that category in her mind, not even when she first found out.

Was Emma really the better choice just because she had money?

Was Julie only even considering the idea anything less than a farce because somewhere deep down she wanted an easy out?

Julie had no idea—she had too many thoughts filling up her head, she couldn't even be sure which thoughts were hers, which were Aaron's, and which were Emma's.

And where were Matt's ideas? She hadn't realized that she hadn't talked to him since she ignored his texts the night before, so she made a mental note to give him a phone call at some point and see if he even knew what his wife was offering.

She didn't know why, but part of her thought maybe he didn't and he would be mad at Emma if he found out she was trying to take Julie's baby from her.