Page 26 of Hot Shot
“Iknowthat. Except holding her…” I scrunch my eyes closed, try to wipe away the memories of Laura, her small body warm against my bare chest where I cradled her in my arms in those final moments. “She was so tiny. I was supposed to protect her.”
“You weren’t Laura’s only protector. She had her mother.”
And that’s the sticking point. Celeste never wanted her. Never wanted to be a mom. “She didn’t come to me to be a father to her child.”
“But—”
“She wanted me to pay for an abortion.” Those words, just the thought of what Celeste had planned, make me want to vomit.
“Oh.”
“I paid her to have the baby, to marry me.Staymarried to me and have the baby.”
“Paid…”
“Yes. I paid for her to have the child.” I squeeze my eyes closed again. Can see the look of horror on Celeste’s face at my suggestion. “I paid her to marry me and have the baby. Then I paid her to put my name on the birth certificate. Once I’d paid for one thing, she had me over a barrel. It was going to cost me thirty million to get her to sign over parental rights. Another fifty to sign the divorce papers.”
“You were getting divorced?”
“Trying.” If only Celeste had waited longer than six weeks to step out. “She blew that up by hooking up with another player. Or attempting to, anyway.”
“I don’t understand why she would?—”
“She didn’t love me. I certainly didn’t love her. But the baby? The baby I loved with everything in me. I wanted her.”
“Of course you did. She was your child.”
“She was mine. In every way that counts.” I don’t want to go down that path. Not today. I want to explain why I married a woman I didn’t love when I hadn’t married the one I did. “She wouldn’t just take money to have the baby. She wanted marriage or she’d find a way to get the money to get rid of it, her words. It cost me. Everything cost me but that was what she wanted. A source of money she thought was unending.”
“That’s awful. But, Bran, you had no choice but to do what you did. For Laura.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, we went to the closest court house and got all the paperwork sorted, went back the next day and made it official. We moved into a house I bought and turned it into a battlefield. Celeste fought me on everything. From the color on the walls to the car she wanted me to buy her. Everything.” A bark of laughter burst from my chest. “Even the brand of fucking toilet paper was an argument.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. It could have been different. If she’d embraced being a mother but ultimately it wasn’t what she wanted and she blamed me for that too.”
“It takes two to make a baby. She had no right to blame you for getting pregnant.”
“No. She didn’t.” The urge to tell Blake why Celeste had no reason wells up, but I can’t go there yet. If I’m going to purge my guilt, free myself from the regret, I need to walk her through it from the beginning.
Fuck. Who am I kidding? I need to do it in stages or I’ll be reaching for the nearest bottle and not stopping until it’s empty and my hand is on the next.
“Her plan was to have the baby and leave after her six-week checkup. Except she never made that appointment. Instead, she snuck out of the house and met up with Carl Burgan, defense player for the Knights. I guess he thought it would be a quick hookup. They’d done it before, except Celeste’s body had changed. Carrying a baby is hard on a woman’s body. Carl wasn’t happy with the changes. Must have said some horrible things because she came home ranting and raving about us ruining her body, her life.”
“You married her, gave her a home, a daughter.”
“She’d take the house, not me, not the daughter.”
“What?”
“She wanted the house in the divorce, she didn’t want anything to do with Laura.”
I can feel Blake shake her head against my back where her forehead rested. “What mother doesn’t want?—”
“One who never wanted.” I have to take a deep breath to continue. “I paid her to have the baby, remember?”
“How much?”
