Make A Wish (Dandelion #1) (19 page)

“Let’s get you inside and warmed up. We gotta keep our baby warm.” His eyes twinkled as he spoke, unlocking the door in the process.

Our baby... I love the sound of that.

Once inside, he pulled up a couple chairs in front of a brick fireplace and got a small fire going. He bent down, manning the logs before closing a little black fireplace screen.              

Beau left the room and came back a few minutes later with a couple cups of hot chocolate, little melting marshmallows floating on top. He gently handed me a mug before sitting down in the chair beside me.

“Why are you being so nice to me after I was such a jerk to you?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“I understand your reasoning for thinking what you do. I was pissed when you first suggested that I’d do something like that to you but I had some time to think it over. You were right when you said we don’t know each other.” His eyes took on a glassy look while the words continued to come. “You gave yourself wholly to me and I left you. I left you alone and pregnant. Me not knowing about our child doesn’t excuse how wrong my behavior was and I know that. I take full responsibility for what happened between us.”

“Don’t, Beau. Don’t you dare try to blame yourself for this. We are in this situation now because we
both
chose it. And you know what? If I could go back and change it, I wouldn’t change a damn thing. I’m getting fatter everyday and in a few short months, I’m gonna be a mother, but hell, we created this little miracle. In that moment, our affection for each other created something that I never thought I wanted or dreamed I could ever have.”

Beau sat watching me struggle with the emotions I was feeling. I felt desire for him but there was also fear and pain, even confusion. Confusion over whether what I was feeling was even real or if it was just something concocted by my pregnancy hormones. I could barely hold myself together long enough to get through my little rant. With a sigh, I twirled a light blue faded strand of hair around my pointer finger, staring into the fire as if it held all the answers to my questions.

“I would never take our child from you, Jules,” Beau promised. “If anything, I should be worried that you won’t want me to be in his life. You’re the mother. You’re carrying our baby that we made together. You’ve spent the past few months protecting our little one from the hands of those men. I saw that first hand. You deserve this. You deserve to finally have a family and to be happy. I would
never
think of tearing that away from you.”

His words took my breath away. Tears shed quietly from my eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered, not trusting myself to say anything more than that.

Beau leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees while he took my left hand into his large one. When he spoke, his voice washed over me like the sweetest breath of air. “I know you don’t trust me, but I will prove that I’m a trustworthy man. I will cherish our child and I will treat you with the utmost respect. Without you, our baby wouldn’t be possible, so it’s you that I thank. Thank you for being the mother of my child and for giving me the chance to know him. I won’t let you both down.”

The tears fell harder from my eyes and I had to squeeze them shut to keep from bawling like a newborn. Beau was so much more than I remembered him being.

“Why are you so sure our baby is a boy? You keep referring to it as a ‘him’.”

“Just a little prediction. Boys tend to be the dominant gender in my family.” He smiled at me and I couldn’t help but grin back at him with what I could only assume was an innocent version of the Cheshire cat smile. He’d be the death of me, that much was sure.

Beau pulled me to my feet and into a hug, rubbing my back with his hand. I buried my face into his shoulder as I let the last remaining tears fall. I was finally beginning to feel like myself again.

BEAU

I held her till all her tears had subsided. I was completely and unabashedly mesmerized by how strong of a woman she was—one who went through much more pain and heartbreak than was deserved.

“Ugh. Freaking hormones.” She smiled as she wiped the moisture from her face and sat back down in her chair. “All I do is cry or eat… Can’t catch a break.” Her giggle was infectious and before I knew it, we were both laughing, enjoying the rarity of the peaceful moment we were having together. “So… Friends?” she asked.

“Always.” I winked at her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure Beau. I’m an open book.”

“Did you know those men that took you?”

Obviously caught off guard by my question, she cringed before nodding her head. “I knew one but it wasn’t Miguel, the one you met.”

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about this if it’s too painful. You probably shouldn’t get too stressed out anyways.” Now that we were having a baby, I had make sure she stayed nice and calm. She’d had enough stress already to last a lifetime.

She laughed at my response. “I’m pregnant, not inept, B. Really, it’s okay. I’m safe, so I think I can handle talking about it with you.” As I looked her in the face, I had to take deep calming breaths—her bruises stared back at me as if they were a movie poster on the side of a Hollywood building. “What is it?” she asked, watching me intently.

“I just hate that they hurt you.”

I was angry and Juliette could see that.

“I’m fine. The baby is fine. All my bruises and cuts will heal. I got them defending us. They’re simply battle wounds and I’m quite proud of them, so don’t you dare feel sorry for me.” Her lips spread into a big smile as her eyes threatened to challenge me. She was the only one that could instantly calm my aggression.

I held my hands up in surrender and resumed the questions I knew needed to be asked. I needed to have all the info that she knew. The other man was still out there somewhere. Even though I’d had my second pack car trailing him, he must’ve noticed because we eventually lost him.

“Who is the other man?”

“He’s a man from my past. I’m not proud of what I allowed to happen…” I laced my fingers with hers, consoling her with my touch. “I was seven years old when I went to live with a foster family. They weren’t great people, but they weren’t the worst that I’d had either. They had a 17-year-old son name Maximilian; everyone just called him Max or Maxxy. He was severely overweight but also loud and obnoxious, though he’d always been nice to me. I thought it was cool that for the first time I had a brother—that’s what I had considered him.” She rolled her eyes in disgust before continuing. “Then one night, he came into my room. I was excited since I thought he was finally going to play Candy Land with me, but he didn’t. He had other things in mind. Sexual things. He pinned me to the bed and covered my mouth when I threatened to scream—”

“Stop.” I was furious but caged the rage and reached up to brush a stray hair hanging in her face away with my thumb. “You don’t need to explain that part. I really don’t want you to have to relive it.”

She nodded with a grateful smile before continuing. “I lived with them for a while longer—about five or six months—before I was placed in the group home. That’s where I met Saylor, and it’s been uphill ever since. Well, not really, but it could have been so much worse.”

“I don’t get it. What does that
despicable
man have to do with your kidnapping?” I hissed out the question, hating to even ask, hating to have her talk about a time that clearly brought her pain.

“I didn’t put two and two together at first either. Remember how I told you that Saylor had forced me to go to the ER?” Beau nodded. “Well the lab technician, Miles, who drew my blood noticed an inconsistency, or so he said when he came to my apartment to break the news to me. I thought it was weird that he was delivering the information in person, but I still answered the door. Stupid, I know.” She blamed herself and I didn’t like that. “He was the one that kidnapped me. It wasn’t until he was hitting me that I noticed the connection. The same eyes as the teenage boy from when I was a kid. The same quick, violent motions. It all added up. I called him Max and he laughed, telling me it took way too long to connect the dots. Maximilian… Miles. Same person. He somehow had lost weight and buffed up—even changed his name or chosen to go by another variant of his birth name, I don’t know exactly. I didn’t recognize him, but had I paid better attention—I might’ve.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“Funny. That was exactly Saylor’s words too.”

“Juliette,” I warned. I was behaving surprisingly calm, but the cage was opened and I was barely holding all the rage in. Now wasn’t the time for sarcastic comments.

“Sorry. It just isn’t worth dwelling in the past. I really need to let it go—”

“Stop downplaying the situation. It was horrendous the way you were treated as a child
and
the way you were treated these past months. The guy deserves to pay for his actions, but in the meantime, it isn’t safe for you to be at your apartment.”

“But…” She began to whine before she caught the look in my eyes, and her mouth snapped shut. “Okay... Oh wait! Do you still have that stuff I asked you to grab from the desk in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Bring it to me,” she demanded. I stood immediately and went to fetch the drives and papers, bringing back my Macbook Pro with it.

“What’s on there?” I asked while she plugged the first flash drive into the USB port.

“Well, up until last week or so, the only things they’d taken from me were blood, urine, and hair.”

“What do you mean up until the last week or so?”

“You catch everything, huh?” She rolled her eyes before continuing. “It was probably about a week ago, I think... But Max, Miles, whoever, poked a needle into my stomach. I fought him as hard as I could but he finished while I was knocked out.” She avoided my gaze, still pulling up the information from the thumb drive onto the computer.

“Let me see.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me see where he poked the needle into your stomach.” My voice was stern and demanding.

“Are you out of your ever lovin’ mind? You can’t just order me to pull up my shirt and show you my fat stomach. Gosh, Beau, I’m huge. I’m not in as good of shape as I was the last time,” She whined, sounding childish and vain but it was adorable.

“Look Jules, this isn’t about you or me, okay? It’s about our baby. Please.”

“Ugh… I’ve never been good with begging. Fine.” She glared at me while she stood from the chair.

“Thank you, and for the record, you aren’t remotely fat. You’re beautiful.”

“Liar.” She smiled and took a deep breath before lifting her shirt to just above her rounded belly. Her eyes stayed turned from me.

My thumb brushed over the small bruise. “It looks like it’s healing nicely, but I still think
we
need to schedule an appointment to have everything checked out, just in case.”

“You want to go?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said pulling her shirt back down.

***

“I don’t get it. What does this even mean?”

We sat on the floor in front of the computer, pining over the information of the tests that had been done on her.

“I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it
is
genetic. Our child’s DNA has the same inconsistencies.”

“Gahh… I’m so confused.” Juliette laid her head on the coffee table we’d been working on, moaning. “Hold up. If it’s genetic, does that mean I got it from my parents?”

“It kinda looks that way Jules.”

“Grrrrrreat!” She dragged out the word, sounding too much like the Frosted Flakes mascot. “Can’t I ever catch a break?” She yawned and climbed up onto the couch we’d been leaning on—laying her head to rest on a small pillow—talking to me while I kept browsing the files. Before I realized, hours had passed and Juliette had drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

I stood from my position, stretching, and walked to the hall cabinet to pull out a soft black blanket. Being careful not to wake her, I draped it over her body and, with one last brush over her stomach, I turned and stalked to my room to retire for the night.

***