Baby, Come Back: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance Read online

  Charlotte and I meet for dinner a few times a week. I remind her to shower, and that people aren’t terrifying wild animals, and she should try to meet a few, and she tells me to pay my taxes and talks me off ledges with men and tries— without much luck—to get me to find a different job.

  But I don’t resent her anymore, and I hope she doesn’t resent me. Sometimes I catch her looking at me like I’m some kind of creature that wandered in off the street, but I don’t think she means it.

  I hope she doesn’t.

  The day after Jack’s kiss, though, I felt like a creature that had walked in off the street. I felt not myself, and what was worse—the worst—was I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell my sister about any of it.

  Not just because she would try to convince me to walk away from Jack—which, I could be honest, was sound advice.

  But because all of this would stress her out.

  And she was already stressed out by me.

  She’d made it her life’s work to be stressed out by me and I had—for years—made it my job to stress her out.

  But I was twenty-four years old. I couldn’t punish her for something that wasn’t her fault forever.

  I let myself into my sister’s condo with my key, wondering how I was going to manage not talking about Jack, when all I thought about about was Jack.

  “Char?” I yelled.

  “I’m in the office!” she cried. “Give me a second.”

  Right. Charlotte’s seconds could be another hour if she was in her office.

  “I know I said let’s go out, but can we just order in?” I asked, shrugging out of my coat and putting it down on the back of the purple velvet chaise lounge. And then I just collapsed on the chaise lounge. She’d painted flowers on her ceiling, bright red poppies, right above this spot.

  That, right there, was so Charlotte.

  “You okay?” Charlotte yelled.

  “Fine,” I said, and I heard the creak of her chair rolling across the floor upstairs.

  “Why are you lying?” she yelled.

  “Why do you think I’m lying?”

  “I know something is wrong when you don’t want to go out.”

  I smiled at the poppies. What incredible medicine to have someone know you so well.

  She came downstairs a few seconds later. My sister was a total one of a kind: crazy fashion sense, the same wild white blonde hair, but hers was super curly, where mine was straight as a pin.

  Today she wore bright blue leggings and an I Stand With Standing Rock tee shirt. She was scowling at me through her red glasses.

  “Uh oh,” she said.

  I figured I looked about how I felt, which was like shit.

  “I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Hard to say.”

  Char walked over and put her hand on my forehead. She’d been my mother growing up, far more than our own mother, and this, her hand on my forehead, was as familiar as breathing.

  “You don’t feel hot.”

  “I’m not sick,” I said, taking her hand in mine and giving it a squeeze before letting it go. “But let’s figure out dinner, I’m starved.”

  “Sure. We can get whatever you want.”

  See? I knew she would say that. Part of our childhood endlessly playing out.

  “Sushi from the place on the corner?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Can you order?” I asked even though we both had the number in our cells. I could play my part from our childhood too. I wasn’t proud of it, but the pattern was fucking seductive.

  “Abby!”

  “Please?”

  She made a show of grumbling, but all the same she walked into the kitchen where her phone was always on the counter. I lay back on her chaise lounge and toed off my boots.

  “Extra California rolls!” I shouted.

  “Am I not your twin?” she yelled. “Do I not know your sushi order?”

  I sighed and melted back against the lounge, thinking, despite my efforts not to, of Jack. His hand against my stomach, the press of his fingers through the dress, as vivid now as it was last night.

  She came back into the living room with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

  “None for me,” I said. “I have to work tonight.”

  She blinked, because I wasn’t averse to a couple drinks before work. Nothing crazy, but like the vial in Sun’s dress, it just went with the job.

  But I was so off tonight. From last night. And I didn’t know how this would end. I worried drinks would make me feel even more out of control.

  “Boo,” she said, which made me smile.

  She sat in the orange chair across from me, folding her legs up under her and opening the wine bottle. She flapped her shirt out around her belly because she was always worrying about her belly. “You want to tell me what’s going on? And let’s just skip the part when you say nothing and I say, I can tell it’s not nothing and you say—”

  “Do you ever want… more?”

  She blinked. “More what?”

  That wasn’t right. I sighed, wishing I could find words for these things in my head. I’d felt like this before, but never this bad. Never this sharp. Like I wanted to peel off my skin. Like I wanted to run away from my life. “Maybe not more, but…different?”

  She set down her wine glass and the fact that she was taking me so seriously made me love her with a sharp ache. “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Sex, mostly,” she said with a laugh even though I knew she wasn’t joking. “I’d like to be a little more like you—”

  I groaned shaking my head. “No, Char. No.”

  “Stop, Abby, don’t do that,” she said. “You’re always the first to try and knock yourself down. You are so confident in all the ways I’m not, and wanting some of that, wanting to live in my body like that… why isn’t that something I should want? You think it’s bad just because it’s yours.”

  I held my breath, feeling with sharp clarity how true that was. If I had it, if it was something of mine, something about me—it immediately had less value.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  I thought of my savings and that little dream of mine, and I almost told her. But saying the words out loud would make them real. And worse, she would jump on this dream. She’d start building it out of real things. Solid things.

  She’d make the dream happen.

  And I wasn’t ready for that.

  I want to change my life, I wanted to say. I want to be different than this person I’ve become.

  “California rolls,” I said with a sigh. “And a nap.”

  “Abby, what’s wrong?” she asked, not taking the joke.

  “Remember Dave?” I said.

  Her pale eyebrows lifted over the top edge of her red glasses. “Your shitbag boyfriend from high school?”

  I nodded, wishing I hadn’t turned down that wine. “Remember how I showed you the black eye and you locked me in our closet and called the cops on Dave?”

  “Of course I fucking remember,” she said, still flinty and pissed all these years later because Charlotte is, at heart, a badass.

  “And I pretended to fight you, remember? I like gave you all this shit, and screamed at you to let me out and for you to butt out of my life.”

  I’d pounded on the door of our closet, calling her every name in the book, while in my chest my heart was so relieved. My heart had been pudding with gratitude.

  “Why are you bringing this up?” she asked. “You’re freaking me out.”

  “Because I went to you so you could do the hard work for me. Make Dave leave me alone. Force my hand into breaking up with him. I went to you because you have always been so strong and I’ve always been so weak.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Oh my god, Char. We both know that’s exactly the truth. You have always saved me. I need to save myself.”

 
She got up and sat next to me on the blue couch. Her arm against mine. Her head against mine. “You’ve saved me too, Abby,” she whispered. “My life would be so small if it weren’t for you. I’d be a hermit and I’d be scared all the time, and I would never have a reason to be brave.”

  We sat there for a while, just next to each other.

  “I’ve met a guy,” I said.

  “Is that why you’re talking about Dave?” she asked, immediately stressed out like I knew she would be. “You’ve met some asshole and I’m going to have to lock you in the closet again?”

  “No.” I shook my head for extra emphasis because she didn’t believe me, but I’d learned my lesson. “He’s not at all like Dave. He’s not like any guy I’ve ever met.”

  Dave had been small and petty and mean from the minute I met him. Jack was trouble, but he wasn’t that kind of trouble. But I needed to be an adult. I needed to take care of myself instead of going, every time, to my sister. Instead of forcing her to take care of me for myself.

  “And I think I have to lock myself in the closet,” I said.

  “Is he married or something? Why are you saying this?”

  “No, he’s just… not for me. I want him to be for me. But he’s not.”

  “I’m sorry,” my sister sighed after a minute.

  “Me too,” I sighed right back.

  He was a dangerous man. A bad, bad man. And yeah, part of me was perverse and awful, and wanted him more for that reason.

  But this was better. Best, even.

  Smart.

  Which was probably why I didn’t like it. Why my whole body wanted to rebel against it. Have a proper tantrum like we were eight again and there was more yellow frosting than pink frosting on the cake—pure proof mom liked Charlotte more than me.

  “Sucks being an adult,” I said, and Charlotte laughed.

  She laughed so hard she snorted, which made me laugh, and in no time we were howling on that loveseat like the kids we’d been.

  “Stop,” Charlotte cried. “Stop, you’re going to make me pee.”

  “Okay. Stopping.” And I held my breath until it sputtered out of me on another laugh.

  Finally, we were saved by sushi delivery.

  We sat on the rug, our backs against the loveseat, and she told me about the book she was working on and I soaked up every word, so happy that she got to love what she did so much.

  And if I was jealous, I ignored it.

  If I wanted more, I ignored it.

  I’d already adulted enough for one day.

  Chapter Five

  ABBY

  BEFORE

  I decided when I got to the bar, I wouldn’t ignore Jack, but I wouldn’t talk to him either. If we made eye contact, I’d wave. If he stopped to talk, I’d be polite, but not friendly.

  I would treat him like a guy I didn’t want to have anything to do with the night after I fucked him.

  This was a very particular skill I had.

  And it was a formidable one, but it felt completely not up to the task of keeping myself away from Jack.

  My palms were sweaty as I yanked open the door to the club, but once my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting I realized I shouldn’t have worried.

  Jack wasn’t there. He wasn’t reading at the bar. Or standing at the foot of the stairs.

  I went into the dressing room to get ready and he wasn’t anywhere in that back hallway.

  My stomach, despite all my brave words, fell to my feet with disappointment.

  He didn’t arrive while the band set up and he didn’t come in when the doors opened.

  I had a sick feeling that he wasn’t here because of me. Because he was avoiding me—or worse, because he got in trouble for last night.

  Like Bates fired him?

  Guilt twisted hard behind my ribs.

  “Where’s Jack?” I asked Patty when I could no longer handle not knowing.

  “Fuck if I know,” Patty said, shaking her head, handing me two cold bottles of vodka to take back to the VIP section. “This place is nuts. Half the time there’s twenty guys in suits walking around, the other half there’s no one.”

  I glanced around and didn’t see many guys in suits. Just the usual bartenders and servers. A few extra because it was Saturday night.

  “Is Bates around?”

  She pointed upstairs and then turned around to keep up with the demand at the bar.

  Well, one thing I knew for sure, I wasn’t going up there. I went back to work and tried to convince myself I didn’t care about Jack being there or not.

  “Jesus!” Sun shouted over the noise of the crappy band. We were in the dressing rooms in the second half of the night, regrouping, and she still had to shout over the sound of the band. “This is awful!”

  I couldn’t argue. Full brass? In this completely cavernous room? Whose idea was that?

  There was a real ugly vibe about the place tonight. Like everything was a few wrong moves from blowing up in our faces.

  And it wasn’t just the band. The crowd—probably thanks to the band—was shit, too. Dismissive and rude. Demanding.

  And worst of all, cheap. We relied on tips and tonight we were seriously coming up short.

  “What do we do?” Maria asked. She was shaken, having been back in the VIP section for the last part of the night, and apparently guys back there were getting a little handsy. I was rubbing her back and Sun has handing her tissues and we were all struggling to keep it together.

  “Walk the fuck out, I say,” Sun said, putting another tissue in Maria’s hand.

  “Can we do that?” Maria asked.

  “I’ll talk to someone,” I said, because we could leave, but we’d probably lose our jobs. And Maria had a baby at home.

  “Who are you going to talk to?” Sun asked. “Scary blonde dude is running up and down those stairs like that shit is on fire. Patty behind the bar is slammed, and your fucking guy is nowhere to be found. I’m telling you, something is happening tonight and we should just get the fuck out.”

  “I can’t lose this job,” Maria said. “Not now.”

  “No one is losing their job,” I said. I scowled at Sun, who was pretty great at finding problems, not so great at solving them. “I’ll go see if I can’t talk to someone upstairs.”

  That made Sun look at me, her eyes wide.

  “What?” I said, even though butterflies had erupted in my stomach. “It’s no big deal.”

  “What do we do while you’re upstairs?” Maria asked.

  “Work the main room. Stay out of the VIP and stick together,” I told them.

  Sun saluted me, and feeling a little more confident with her faith in me I headed out of the dressing rooms to see what I could do about salvaging this night.

  The bar was stacked about six deep so I didn’t even bother trying to talk to Patty. Instead I went right to that staircase.

  Tonight there was no one standing there like Jack had been the first night, so there was no one there to stop me.

  And a little bit, I wished there was.

  Nervous, but more than a little pissed off that there was no management around to take care of staff, I started up.

  It was a fire escape kind of staircase. Narrow and made out of black metal, open all the way up so I could see the bar and dance floor.

  Sun and Maria glittered out there in the sea of people.

  I was halfway up when the door at the top opened and Bates came out, closing the door behind him.

  He didn’t see me and for a moment he just stood at the door, his hand squeezing the doorknob so hard his knuckles were white. He really was young. No older than thirty. His bowed head gave the impression of a man in prayer, or a battering ram—like it was all he could do not to bust the door down. Tear it off the hinges.

  I turned to run down the stairs, all my courage gone.

  But my dress glittered and at my movement he looked up, catching me in the icy clarity of his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” he asked
over the noise.

  “Looking for you!” I cried, angry and scared all at once.

  “You found me.” He shrugged like the weight on his back was breaking his shoulder.

  “We need some help down there!” I gave him the bare bones of what was happening.

  “If something doesn’t change down there, there’s gonna be a fight. Or worse,” I finished, proud my voice wasn’t cracking.

  “Indeed,” he said, scanning the crowd, looking weary. If he was any other guy I’d ask him if he even gave a shit. “What needs to happen?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “You’re the only one here.”

  “Well, you’ve got to pull the band. This crowd came here to dance, and there’s no dancing to this music.”

  He nodded. “What else?”

  “Patty needs about three more people behind that bar.”

  “There aren’t three more people.”

  “Well, you should find some and fast, otherwise she’ll quit. She’s swamped back there.”

  His gaze roved over the first floor and I saw him taking in the truth of what I said. On a roll now, I said, “And you need some muscle to handle the VIP section. It’s fucking gross back there. Someone is going to call the cops.”

  “The cops can not be called.” He looked, at that moment, very invested and I hated that I had all these suspicions about why the cops couldn’t be called.

  “Then you need muscle,” I said with a shrug.

  “The band and the dancing—can you handle that?”

  “Me?”

  “Again,” he sighed like I was such a trial. “You are the only one here.”

  “I’m not… I’m not a manager or anything. I’m a shots girl.”

  “You’re being promoted. Can you handle it or not?”

  You know what’s easy for me? Thinking I can do something. Watching and criticising and mentally redecorating and saving money for a dream I couldn’t even say out loud, but never putting myself at risk. Never really doing anything.

  I was really really good at that.

  “Fine,” Bates sighed, disappointed in my non-answer. “I’ll ask—”

  “I can do that,” I blurted. “I can.”

  “I’ll get you the muscle.” He pulled out his phone and started to text and I still stood there on suddenly shaking legs.