Page 63 of Ruined
CHAPTER 17
Haley
From the stories I’d overheard, when you lost your virginity, you were supposed to feel like a new woman. But in most ways, I was the same Haley I had always been. I still worked at the Dahlia District. I still had a sister to protect. I still wanted Lucas, needed him, in fact, with every fiber of my body. I had simply given him that one thing that I had cherished as a valued possession more than any physical object I owned.
Was my virginity an object to be lost, given, or taken? I had given it to Lucas; it had been my decision.
But the way he had fucked me, he had taken it.
Losing my virginity may have been the final part in a transformation, but it was everything that had happened before that had shifted my perspective. Made me see myself differently. I didn’t have to be ashamed of Mama or myself anymore. I may not have been your average twenty-three-year-old woman, but I was still me.
And yet I had engaged in unprotected sex. Lucas had come inside of me. Multiple times. And it had been really hot to feel him fill me up like that, but it also spawned my first time experiencing the ‘am I pregnant’ fears.
Mel didn’t live in the Greenhouse, so I went to the dressing room to see if she was there already. There were a few hours before we opened, but some servers liked to take their time getting ready, and the best spots in front of the vanities went quickly. In the far corner, Mel was brushing her thick, dark red hair, her blue eyes like a frozen pond, staring into the mirror with her mind somewhere else.
“Mel?” I called. She glanced up. “Can I talk to you for a bit?”
“Sure.” She looked at the pile of makeup, lingerie, and hairbrushes in front of her. “Can I finish up in your room?”
I nodded. She followed me. I sat on the bed while she took the ottoman in front of the vanity. After she plugged in a curling iron, she turned to me. “What’s up?”
“You can only get pregnant at certain times of the month, right?”
She bobbed her head. “Yes, that’s mostly true.”
“Can you help me figure out when that is?”
“You’d need to know when your last period was.”
I hadn’t written the exact date down, but it affected earnings in weird ways. There was always a big boost in the beginning, and then it slowly tapered off as the flow ended. I checked my earnings history and found the approximate date.
“Okay. Now when did you have sex?”
“Yesterday.”
“Oh,” she said, a teasing tone to her response. I held my breath as she looked at her phone’s monthly calendar. “I’d say it’s unlikely. Possible. Anything is possible. But highly unlikely.”
I let out a long breath. It’s not that I didn’t want kids; I definitely did, one day, when Nora was free and I wasn’t working at the Dahlia District anymore. Mama had gotten pregnant with me during high school, and when she got pregnant with Nora, it had exposed her, showing that she had broken the rules, which meant that she had to work a five-year penalty in maintenance work. I couldn’t risk taking a cut to my current pay as an entertainer.
And besides, who the hell knew what Lucas thought about kids. I may have had strong feelings for him, and I knew, deep down, he felt something for me too. But that didn’t mean he wanted to start a family.
“You should be on birth control,” Mel said.
“Yeah, but I’ve never had any reason to be. I only started doing sexual things with Lucas.”
She shrugged her shoulders, unfazed. “Doesn’t matter. You never know when something can happen.”
Mel made a good point, but that wasn’t something I was in a hurry to do. Mel was back to doing her hair in tightly wound curls that would loosen into flowing waves with enough prodding.
“How’s it going with Aldrich?” I asked. “I told you he likes the chase, right?”
“You did. And I gathered as much,” she smirked, making eye contact with me in the mirror. “I’m making him chase all right.”
“Does he still think you’re a virgin?”
“Yep. The dumb ass.” She had a full-blown smile now. “Sweet, lovable, rich dumb ass. Whatever.” She shrugged. “I’ve just got to get him to marry me.”
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my purse. A text from Nora read,Dance recital at 5.
