What the Heart Desires (Contemporary Erotic Romance) (14 page)

Life was so busy that Kimberly barely noticed the time passing.  Then, one day, it hit her.

She was late.

Surely she was mistaken.  She grabbed the calendar that sat on her desk next to her laptop.  It was one of those quirky, nerdy ones with a silly quote of the day.  Felix had given it to her as a gift.  She quickly flipped through the pages, counting the days, hoping against hope that she’d somehow messed up her calculation.  She hadn’t.

She felt sick as the realization sunk in. 

She grabbed her phone and did the only thing she could think of.  She called Jane. 

“Is everything okay?” Jane asked immediately.  “You never call me during the day.”

“Sorry,” Kimberly replied, feeling like her brain was about to explode.  Her mind was racing a mile a minute, as was her pulse.  She could barely make sense of what was happening.

“I don’t mind,” Jane assured her.  “Work is so boring today.  Like, extra boring…and that
weird guy at the cubicle across from mine won’t stop staring at me.  I swear, every time I look up he’s just gazing at me with this freaky lovesick expression on his face.  Um,
hello
, in your dreams, creep!  But anyway, enough about my boring life…what’s up?  Do you have some more juicy soap opera updates for me?!”

“Um, I guess you could say that,” Kimberly said, her voice quiet and weak-sounding.  Suddenly she felt very, very tired.  She just wanted to crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head and stay there forever.

“What is it?”

“I…I think I’m pregnant.”  Saying the words aloud was devastating.  It was as though it made everything real.  Kimberly didn’t want it to be real.

“Holy shit,” Jane murmured, sounding as stunned as Kimberly felt.  “How…?”  Jane knew how much importance Kimberly placed on safe sex.  After all, Kimberly had lectured her promiscuous friend many times in the past back when she’d been hooking up with random guys from bars every weekend.

“We did use protection,” Kimberly said, “but I don’t know…
accidents happen.  Protection isn’t 100% foolproof.  All I know is I’m late.”

“How late are you?” Jane wanted to know.

“Five days.”

“That’s not so bad,” Jane tried to reassure her friend.  “It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re knocked up, you know.”

“Jane.  I’m
never
late.”

“Oh.”  Jane was quiet for a moment.  Then she asked the million dollar question.  “Who’s the father?”

Kimberly cringed.  “I don’t know,” she confessed, feeling sheepish. 

“
What
?” Jane sounded like she was in disbelief.  “You mean you banged both of them…”

“One day apart, yeah,” Kimberly admitted, her face burning.  “I didn’t mean to,” she added quickly.  “I didn’t plan it.  It just sort of…happened.  I thought I’d made up my mind to be with
Garrett and then I saw Felix and, well…” 

“Wow,” Jane breathed, apparently speechless for the first time ever.  “Just…wow.”  Once she regained her ability to speak, she added, “I’m not judging you, by the way.  God knows I’m the last one who’d do that given my…questionable past.  I’m just surprised, that’s all.  I didn’t think you…well, anyway, never mind.  What are you going to do?”

Kimberly swallowed hard.  “I don’t know.”

~~~

She thought about her options.  Kimberly had always been a firm believer in a woman’s right to choose, but when it came down to it, abortion just wasn’t right for her.  Neither was adoption; she knew she wouldn’t be able to carry a child for nine months only to give it to someone else. 

Maybe it would be different if Kimberly was a teenager or if her life circumstances were different.  She didn’t know.  All she knew was that if she really was pregnant, she’d keep the baby. 

She didn’t do anything for a week.  She was secretly hoping that her period would come and that her unplanned pregnancy nightmare would be just that: a nightmare and nothing more.  But unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.

Although it killed her to do it, she stopped by a pharmacy after work and bought a pregnancy test.  In fact, she bought three just to be certain.  She took them home and promptly…hid them in the medicine cabinet.  She just wasn’t ready to see that green plus sign yet.

Pregnancy was supposed to be a miraculous, wonderful thing.  This was supposed to be a happy time.  Deep down, Kimberly supposed she’d always wanted to be a mother.  That wasn’t the problem.  The problem was the circumstances.  She wanted to conceive after she was married to the love of her life.  She wanted to celebrate the news with him.  Instead, she didn’t even know who the father was and she had no idea how Felix or Garrett would react to the news.

Kimberly had enough of the sleepless nights and incessant worry.  It was 3:00 a.m. and she was awake again, restlessly tossing and turning.  She couldn’t keep the pregnancy to herself any longer.  She got up to use the bathroom and decided to take the plunge.  She took the pregnancy tests.

She sat there staring at them, waiting for the results to register.  Waiting for the minutes to pass was like slow, sadistic torture.  Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore.  In a sleep-deprived daze, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and called Garrett.

She didn’t know why she chose to call
Garrett for comfort instead of Felix.  Maybe it was because she needed a dose of his laid back, nothing-bothers-me attitude.  She certainly wouldn’t get that from Felix, whose personality was as “Type A” as her own. 

Whatever her reason for calling
Garrett, Kimberly felt some of the tension she’d been carrying in her shoulders lift when she heard his voice.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you again,” he said instead of saying hello.

“I know,” she said.  “I’m sorry.  Where are you?”

“I’m just leaving a club,” he said.  “Want me to have the cabbie swing by your place and pick you up on my way back to the hotel?”

It figured that Garrett automatically assumed she was calling him for sex.  He was arrogant like that, but also…what else was he to make of a middle of the night phone call from his former friend with benefits? 

“I don’t want to go to the hotel,” Kimberly said.  The hotel meant sex.  The hotel meant lust and passion.  It meant bare flesh and sweat and handcuffs and pleasure.  “I want you to come here.”

“Okay,” Garrett drunkenly slurred, sounding as jolly as ever thanks to all the alcohol in his system.  “I’ll see you soon.”

Garrett stumbled to Kimberly’s front door wearing his signature uniform: jeans, a white collared shirt that was slightly disheveled-looking, a loosened tie and a black leather jacket.  It was raining lightly when he got there and the water droplets clung to his lips and eyelashes. 

Kimberly felt a sudden urge to kiss them away.

She angrily pushed the longing aside, reminding herself that Garrett was an emotionally barren, self-serving asshole.  He was a good time and a good lay, but that was it.  He wasn’t a good partner.  She found herself wondering if he’d be a good father.  She couldn’t see him in that role…

Felix, on the other hand, would be an excellent father.  Maybe he wouldn’t be that fun dad who took the kids exciting places and did cool things with them.  But he’d be a good provider.  He’d be a good role model.  He was good father material.

“So what’s up?” Garrett asked as he came inside and sat down, resting his feet on the coffee table.  “Nice place, by the way,” he added, looking around.  “It seems weird I’ve never been here before.”

“It does,” she agreed
as she sat down in a chair across from him.  Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him about the pregnancy.  Maybe asking him over had been a bad idea.  Even so, she felt better just having him there.  She took a deep breath.  Maybe she just needed to bite the bullet. 

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted out before she lost her nerve.

“What?”  The smug smirk disappeared from Garrett’s face.  Her admission seemed to sober him up in a hurry.  He blinked, looking confused.  “Why are you – is it mine?” he asked as realization set in.

She tried to interpret the expression on his face.  Was it one of fear or one of subdued joy?  It was impossible to tell.  “It might be yours,” she said softly, staring at her hands which were tightly clasped in her lap.

“I see.”

“I – look, I don’t even know why I’m telling you.  I don’t expect anything from you,” she reassured him.  “I know commitment isn’t your thing and I don’t expect you to be involved if you don’t want to…I guess I just needed to talk.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Garrett looked genuinely, deeply offended.  “You think I wouldn’t want to be in the kid’s life?” he repeated, sounding both hurt and angry.  “I know I have a knack for being an insensitive jerk but…you honestly think I’d just abandon my kid without so much as a second thought?”

Kimberly was taken aback.  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she tried to explain.  “I just thought…”

“You thought I wouldn’t care,” Garrett accused.  “You thought I’d do the same thing my parents…”  He trailed off, realizing he’d said too much.  He looked away, a pained expression on his face.

“
Garrett?” she urged, her voice gentle.  “What were you about to say?”

He sighed, an exhausted, weary sigh that came from someplace deep inside him.  Someplace he kept buried beneath layers of vulgar jokes, kinky sex and strong drinks.  “My father took off when I was a kid and my mom cared about cocaine more than she cared about me.  Eventually social services intervened and I grew up in foster care,” he said. 

“I had no idea.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.  I don’t talk about it.  But when I told you I was from here, there and everywhere?  That was pretty much true. 
I was a tough kid to raise…anger issues and behavioral problems and every other cliché you’d expect.  No one wanted to deal with me.  I averaged two different foster homes per year until I aged out of the system.”

Kimberly didn’t know what to say.  That sounded horrible.  She’d always taken the stability of her own childhood for granted.  “That must have been difficult,” she observed, feeling her heart go out to him.

Garrett shrugged.  “It was basically all I knew,” he pointed out.  “But yeah, it was rough.”

He hesitated for a moment as though contemplating whether to divulge anything further.  Then he confided,
“I got into some trouble as a teenager – nothing serious but I was headed down the wrong path.  Then one night I snuck into a club.  I was fifteen.  The plan was to steal a bottle or two of vodka when the bartender wasn’t looking and find some chick to hook up with in the bathroom…but there was a band playing that night and…” 

Garrett
cleared his throat.  “This is going to sound cliché and stupid,” he said apologetically, “but music saved me.  I cleaned myself up and established a career I love…one that will allow me to provide for a family one day,” Garrett added, his voice choking up with emotion.

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” Kimberly asked
as he cleared his throat and tried to resume his tough guy exterior.  “I always tried to get to know you better.  You’d just change the subject when I asked questions.  I…I assumed you really were as shallow as you pretended to be.”

He chuckled.  “Thanks
.” 

She blushed.  “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, well…there’s no point in baring my soul to a friend, right?”

She refused to let his icy comment have its intended effect.  “We were more than friends,” she reminded him.  “I don’t know what we were but…there was something there.  Don’t try to deny it.”

“So we were friends who fucked,” he said flippantly, refusing to acknowledge what Kimberly was trying to get at.  “Big deal…it was pretty clear from Day One that you had Not-Husband on the brain.  So you were after a fling – fine, that’s cool.  Hanging out with you was fun.  But I’m not going to treat you like…like my
girlfriend
when you’re clearly not.”

Something in the tone of his voice tipped Kimberly off.  It was sadness; it was regret.  “Did you tell me you weren’t interested in a relationship because of Felix?” she demanded.  “Was it because you were afraid I’d choose him over you and you’d get hurt?”  It was all starting to make sense.  Why
would
a guy with abandonment issues put himself out there?

“What does it matter?”
Garrett said gruffly, his refusal to answer confirming Kimberly’s suspicions. 

She took a deep, shaky breath.  “I wouldn’t have chosen Felix had I known I could have a future with you,” she said, tears pricking at her eyes.  “I didn’t think you wanted me.  The way you cast me aside after we had sex…it hurt.  So I figured you didn’t care.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Garrett interjected.  “I just didn’t want to get hurt myself.  I’m sorry. I guess I went about it in the wrong way.”

“Yeah, you kind of did.”

Garrett’s jaw clenched.  “You’re not without blame, you know.  You think it didn’t hurt me when you went back to Felix?  And you broke the news over
text message
?  The night before you’d told me you were breaking it off with him for good…”