The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance (10 page)

I climbed in after her and let her settle between my legs, with her back to me and her head resting on my chest, where she seemed to be at her most comfortable. Steam rose slowly from the bath water as I sat, naked in the tub with my wife. This was likely the first time I had been naked with a woman and not tried to make a move. Not that I didn’t want to. All she had to do was say the word and I would be ready to go. She curled into my chest, pulling her legs into her body, making herself small.

Was this
intimacy
? Was this feeling what people referred to when they talked about that? I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close. She seemed to loosen up as I held her. No other woman I had been with had just wanted to sit in a tub with me. Many wanted me to fuck them in the tub, but this was new. It was new, and it was nice. I rested my chin on top of her head. I could smell her hair. Like jasmine and tropical fruit.

I wondered whether she would tell me. Something was bothering her, and she didn’t seem to want to tell me what it was. She had been acting strangely since dinner. Trying to interrogate her about it was definitely not the way to go. Especially not just then. It would just ruin the moment.

Sophia

If I told Marcelo that I was pregnant, would he stop making me hand wash the dishes?

I rolled the thought around my mind, absently as I lay in bed. Marcelo had left for the day, and I hadn’t gotten up yet. I was awake, but I felt fatigued to my bones. I didn’t want to move. He hadn’t even tried to get me out of bed, surprisingly. Daniella was coming, so she would be able to help him with breakfast, but he didn’t even try to wake me up so I could do it. I was readying myself to—at the very least—be scolded…but nothing. He had woken up and kissed me.

Kissed
me. On my forehead…he kissed me before he went to the bathroom.

I didn’t know what had gotten into him, but I hoped it lasted. Especially because of my
condition
.

The fatigue I was feeling was likely due to the pregnancy. It was strange, though, how I didn’t start feeling any pregnancy symptoms until I learned that I actually
was
pregnant. I couldn’t wait for the morning sickness.
That
should be starting any day now. And then I won’t have to tell Marcelo that I’m pregnant because he’ll hear me heaving into the toilet at six in the morning one day and connect the dots himself.

I rolled onto my stomach and buried my face in the soft, cotton sheets. How would Marcelo react? It wasn’t as if I could hide it from him. After a while, pregnancy was a secret that would just tell itself. We slept in the same bed. We lived in the same house. It wasn’t as if I could take up in a different room or move out because that was as dead a giveaway as anything was. I didn’t want to wait until he happened to stumble across my pre-natal vitamins or notice a pregnancy and childbirth website on my computer by accident. The longer I waited, the worse it would be. He would have questions about why I had waited so long, why I wouldn’t tell him as soon as I found out. It was his baby, after all. There was a level of assholery to keeping the news of a man’s first child from him.

God, was I even the first girl that he had
gotten
pregnant? Was I jumping the gun thinking I was giving him this great
gift
? We hadn’t said a single word about children, and we hadn’t—up to this point—really discussed our exes. Why would we? The only ex I knew that he had was Alana, and she got on my nerves, and none of my exes were in my life anymore. They were non-issues. With the way that Alana touched him and looked at him, it wouldn’t be surprising to think that maybe, just
maybe,
I was the mother of his second child and not his first. The thought was depressing, but at least it gave me a good reason as to why Alana and Marcelo needed to see each other so much.

I needed to stop stressing about that woman. Jealousy was pathetic.
I
had the ring.
Me
. I had the baby, too. The baby who wasn’t even here yet but was succeeding at driving me crazy. I was already such a disappointment to Marcelo at this point. This news would be the perfect catalyst for him to get rid of me. The sudden thought that he would ask me to get rid of the child made me sick to my stomach. He had all the money in the world, even if I said no and didn’t want to, he probably had ways to
make
me do it. I hadn’t been to Mass in years, but there was no way I wasn’t giving birth to the child. No way. It wasn’t even an
option
. I wasn’t going to pretend that I knew the exact point at which the baby started being alive. The point was, whether it was two weeks old or twenty weeks old, after nine months, it was going to be born as a human child. My human child—and that was enough. Marcelo wouldn’t ask that of me, would he? It shamed me a little to realize that I truly didn’t know.

How were we supposed to raise a child together when we didn’t even
know
each other? What the hell kind of parents would we be? We hadn’t even had the discussion of whether and when we wanted to have kids. Of course, that didn’t matter now because the decision was made for us, but Marcelo was still in the dark.

What if I had the child and he took the baby away from me? The whole mob thing was a family-style business. If it was an heir that he needed, he’d only need to wait about nine months and he would have one. If he didn’t want it, he could just give it up for adoption, on my behalf. He could make sure I delivered by caesarean, and while I was still under, he could ship the kid away to some couple who actually wanted a child and then bring me back home to resume our lives of misery.

If I continued like this, I would lose my mind. Marcelo would come home and find me in the attic eating my own hair and mumbling incoherently. I needed to get a grip.
It was not that bad.
It was serious, but it was not a fucking movie. We were dealing with real life, not fantasy. Quentin Tarantino didn’t write this. I wasn’t going to have my baby snatched from me, and I wasn’t going to be forced into terminating the pregnancy. At the very worst, Marcelo would be upset, but then we would have to work it out. Even if this spelled the end of my marriage, I wasn’t going to lose sleep over this. I couldn’t. I had to buck up and handle it. I would feel better after I told someone.

Looking through my phone, I felt cheated. Who the hell could I tell? Where was my big, happy pregnancy announcement? This was not the way I thought I would feel when I became pregnant with my first child. I didn’t really want kids, but in the event that I did become pregnant, I didn’t think I would feel this horrible about it. I should at least be happy about the cute parts of pregnancy. I wanted to post the pregnancy life event on Facebook. I wanted to pose for a cheesy maternity photoshoot. Instead, I was anticipating telling the father of the child that we were expecting like it was the end of the world.

I sighed thinking of the options I had. Mom was out. Dad was definitely out. Marcelo’s parents were more out than Marcelo himself. I tried Elena’s number, wondering whether she would ever get tired of these phone calls from me and just stop picking up.

“Elena?” I said when I heard the ringing stop.

“Hi, are you guys home yet? I’ve been waiting to hear from you.” I glanced at the clock. It was still morning, fairly early. I hadn’t caught her on the way to work, but there was a chance that I had gotten her when she was asleep, or going into the shower.

“Are you okay to talk right now? Sorry, I didn’t check the time before I called you.”

“Oh no, I wasn’t doing anything. Where are you calling from? Home?”

“We got home a couple days ago. I’m sorry for not calling earlier. How are you?”

“Better now that I know you’re okay. Is everything okay? What happened with the…
you
know
.”

I had ended up telling Elena the whole truth about why we were at the different hotels and not our home. She had not taken it well, but ultimately, there was nothing she could have done differently from what we had been doing, sitting and waiting for news. I wondered for a minute whether Marcelo would care that Elena basically had the scoop on every single thing that happened between us. I cringed a little hating the way that sounded, even to me. Maybe I did have to be careful not to overshare with her. We were best friends, but I was married. There had to be a limit. Fortunately or unfortunately for my husband, the limit was not
here
.

“Marcelo never told me about it, but we are back in the house, so I suppose whatever the problem was, it’s gone now.”

“Marcelo doesn’t seem to tell you much of
anything
, Sophia.”

“What do you mean?” I asked defensively.

“I mean the man leaves the house every day to go someplace you don’t know. Besides the general idea of what it is that he does, you don’t know much else. This whole thing that had you hopping from hotel to hotel around the city is still shrouded in mystery.”

“He’s trying to protect me,” I said.

“From
what
?”

Everything. Nothing. The truth. Himself. All the above.

“I don’t bother him about it. I don’t want to be part of that world; I just want this marriage to work.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Elena. She didn’t buy it. “Sounds like an equal exchange to me.”

“We
just
got hitched. And not only that. We just
met
. We’ve only been able to stand each other for the last few weeks. We’ll get there. Besides, it isn’t as if he knows
everything
about me. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

I took a deep breath. If I just blurted it out, I could give the impression that it wasn’t a big deal. She wouldn’t freak out, and she would calm me down about it. There. Perfect. I began.

“I have some news. Elena, I’m pregnant.”

The silence that came down the line made me think for a second that she had hung up.

“Hello? Elena?”

“Pregnant? With
what
?”

“Don’t be silly, Elena. I’m going to have a baby.”

“With your
husband
? Is it his?”

“Of course, it is his. Who the hell else could be the father?”

“Sophie. This is
terrible
. This is awful. Now you’re trapped.”

Funny. Those were my exact sentiments when I found out too, but it took a dramatic retelling from Elena for me to realize that, actually, I
didn’t
have to have a nervous breakdown. I could just relax and talk through it like a normal person. When did I become so irrational? I blamed the pregnancy hormones.

“Elena, would you please relax? It’s a baby we’re talking about. It’s not the end of the world.”

“Sophie—”

She cut herself off and went silent again. I could imagine her in her apartment, standing and pacing as she talked to me. Part of me felt wrong about telling my female best friend about the baby before the man whom I was having it with, but I couldn’t go to Marcelo. Not just yet. I wanted comfort. He wasn’t going to give me that. Elena was hardly a neutral third party, but she was the closest thing to one that I had. Who knew, it might even have to be her couch that I crashed on when Marcelo kicked me out finally. I wasn’t going to start going to therapy. The therapist would likely recommend that I take Marcelo with me. I wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t unpredictable.

“Sophia, what are you going to do?” she asked. “Have you thought about all your
options
?” she asked.

I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t roll them. Was this something I would have to brace myself to hear from everyone? Why was it that the first thing someone thought to ask a pregnant woman when she revealed that she was pregnant was whether she had considered getting an abortion? If anybody knew that I wasn’t planning on becoming a mother, it was Elena…but good
God
. She should have at least waited for me to
express
that I didn’t want to keep it before she started talking about termination.

“Elena, if that is your way of asking whether I am going to get rid of it, no. I haven’t considered my
options
.”

“What about adoption? There are agencies that can take the child when it’s born and place it with a family. You won’t even have to look at the child when it gets here.”

“Elena, do you
hear
yourself right now?”

“Sophie…what did you expect to hear when you called me to tell me that you were pregnant? Given the circumstances of your
relationship,
did you really think I was going to jump for joy at the news?”

“No, but I didn’t think the first thing out of your mouth would be to tell me to get rid of it.”

“So you’re keeping it?”

“Of
course
, I’m keeping it. The problem is not with the child. Sure, it’ll be a huge adjustment, but the only reason I’m even nervous about having the baby is because of Marcelo. I can’t have an
abortion
.” I whispered the last word like it was a slur.