Page 108 of Dash

“You already ruined my life.”

Her lips pull into a line, before shifting into a sneer and then back into a line, as if she can’t decide whether she wants to erupt into anger or retreat into disappointment. “I really don’t understand where all this hate comes from, Dayna. I’m not the one who ruined anything. Your father did, and yet he gets a free pass?—”

I roll my eyes. I have zero love for my father either, and she knows that. “I am not doing this with you right now. I don’t have time for the therapy I’ll need after this conversation and I only have an hour before I have to be back at my desk.”

I make it through the doors and into the fresh air before my mother wraps her fingers around my bicep.

I stumble, regaining my balance at the last second before I whirl around to face her.

“What did I say about you putting hands on me?” I snarl in her face, making her recoil like I’m some kind of rabid dog.

Maybe I should snap my teeth at her.

Piss in her fucking expensive shoes.

I get in her face. “You don’t get to drag me around so that I’ll listen to whatever rotten shit comes out your mouth.”

“I only came to give you this.” She lets go of me and pulls a card out of her purse. It’s the business details for a doctor in London. “She’s very discreet,” Evelyn says. “It won’t even go on your records that you’ve had an abort?—”

The card is plucked out of my hand, and I snap my head around to see Dash standing behind me. His hand gently slides onto my hip, just a reminder that he’s got me.

But the look on his face is a storm rolling in. My mother’s wise enough to straighten and back away.

“You came here to convince my woman to terminate our kid?”

No, not a storm.

A fucking hurricane.

Evelyn lifts her chin, as if she is looking down on scum, and that pisses me off. Dash has loved me harder in the short time I’ve known him than she has in my entire fucking life.

“She’s young. You’ve taken advantage of that fact and corrupted my daughter. You’ve impregnated her and taken away the choices that she should have had, the paths that were open to her as a Harrington.”

His jaw flexes with every word. Mine too. She has no right to talk to him like that.

“Do you hear yourself?” I snap. “I’m not a child, and I’m not your pawn.”

“You’re nineteen years old. You might as well be.”

People are looking, and I hate that. I don’t want to be a spectacle under a microscope of judgment.

Dash’s hand squeezes my side gently, once again letting me know he’s in my corner without saying it.

So, I take the card off Dash, handing it back to her.

“I’m not getting rid of my baby.” I place a hand on my stomach, even though there’s nothing beneath it, no obvious sign of my condition. “And you’llneverbe a part of this child’s life. I won’t have your poison infect them the same way it infected me.”

Her mask slips, and it’s ugly.

“You’ve always been an ungrateful child. The things I sacrificed for you. And you couldn’t do even the simplest of things for me when I needed you most? I’m not surprised you got knocked-up by some low-life degenerate with no prospects. When you spread your legs like a whore, no one is ever going to make you a respectable wife?—”

“That’s enough.” Dash’s voice cracks like thunder. “You can say whatever the fuck you want about me. I don’t care. I’ll take that shit all day long, but you don’t get to stand there and call your daughter such foul fucking things.” He takes my hand in his, as if he didn’t just shield me again from bullets, only these ones were not physical. “You’ll never see Dayna again. You’ll never meet our kid. That’s your fucking legacy, Evelyn.”

He guides me away from her, past some idiots with their phone out, no doubt already uploading it to social media.

I want to cry. I want to scream.

I do neither.

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