Page 6 of Don't Leave Me
Could I terminate it? Could I go through with making something that was a part of me and a part of Marc go away?
My hands dropped to my belly. Was there a slight bump already? I didn’t think it was my imagination. How soon before I would feel it move?
At least that answered my question. No, I couldn’t end this pregnancy. I didn’t have family. Just George and Marc. But this baby, this child, would be my future family. And I would love it so hard and so well, it would have to be enough.
For all of us.
* * *
Six weeks after the wedding
Manhattan
Ashleigh
This was a stupid idea. I knew it the minute I hit the button for the penthouse. Even as I’d convinced myself there could be alternatives, I already knew there weren’t. Marc was expecting my visit tomorrow. I had to know what I was going to say, to do by then. However, I couldn’t decide until I knew how Evan would react to the news.
There was this crazy thought, hope, I would tell Evan I was pregnant, and he would let me go. He wouldn’t want to raise another man’s child. The Sandersons were too proud of their familial lineage to consider the very idea.
So what if this was my out?
Evan knew Marc and I were married in Vegas. He had to assume my virginity was a thing of the past. If I told him I was pregnant, the only way out for him, really, was to let me go. As the cuckolded husband, wounded and disillusioned by his cheating heiress wife, there would be no societal or political pressure for him to marry for some time.
So if he wanted to run for office, voters wouldn’t wonder why he wasn’t married. In fact, his heartbreak could endear him to them.
That was my plan anyway. Appeal to reason. Appeal to his political aspirations. Appeal to his sense of rationalization.
I had no illusions he would let me go out of goodness, or fairness. This was simply a solution that could work for both of us. Any refusal from him would mean he expected me to abort.
I would agree and leave the penthouse. There would be no fighting or tears. He would know, with certainty, that I planned to fully obey him.
Then there would be another plan.
So lost in my pitch, in the planned words running through my head over and over, I hadn’t realized I’d already reached the floor and the elevator doors were open. I stepped into the hallway to the sound of giggling.
“Can you believe how much money this is?” I heard, before looking up and seeing the two teenage girls headed in my direction.
Both wore short, tight dresses. Both had long hair that seemed to be everywhere, and any lipstick they’d been wearing had been smudged off their lips.
“I know, just for that,” the one girl said, bouncing into her friend as if she was drunk. Or, perhaps she was having a hard time walking on the platform shoes. “Like, who pays that much for a blow job? I give it to guys in my class for free.”
The other girl, who was also swaying slightly, tipped her head back. “I’m so high right now. That was good shit.”
Clearly, they were, as they still hadn’t noticed me standing there. Watching their progress.
“Girls,” I said sharply. In a way that made me sound like a scolding librarian. When the reality was, I was only a couple of years older than they were. Then why did I feel decades older? “Tell me what apartment you came from.”
The one brushed her hair out of her face and gave me a sour look.
“Fuck you,” she said with pouty lips.
“How old are you?” I asked, feeling the ire in my body rise to out of control levels. I stepped closer to them, and the one girl had the sense to back off, but the other one, who had cursed me, stood her ground.
“Fuck. You.”
They couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. They couldn’t have been. Even with the dresses and the shoes and the makeup.
“You don’t have to do this. You shouldn’t do this,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say.
