21. Maya
21
MAYA
The next morning at work I felt as though I was walking on air. Well, when I could walk at all, that was.
Last night had been…fuck, it had been everything I could have hoped for, and a million times more. I couldn’t stop replaying it in my head, thinking about how incredible it had been, to be with all three of them—to have these three gorgeous men focus all their attention and desire on me, and to soak up every drop of it and know that I was worthy of it, every little bit. I wanted to do it over and over again—even if it would mean sneaking the guys out first thing in the morning before Matty woke for school, as I’d had to do just a few hours ago.
“You alright?” Paula asked me, making me jump slightly. I quickly smiled at her, pushing a hand through my hair and nodding.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m good.”
“You seem a little…distracted,” she remarked, furrowing her brow and looking me up and down. “Busy night?”
“Yeah,” I replied, biting back a little smirk. “Busy night. That’s all. You know how it is.”
“Well, Taylor’s going to be here in a few minutes,” she replied. “So grab yourself a coffee and get ready to deal with that, okay?”
“Will do.”
She made her way from the makeup trailer, and I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that she wasn’t going to be here when Taylor and I saw each other again. I was sure that the tension in the air would be palpable to anyone even remotely paying attention, and after I had turned up on set in Lee’s jeans just a couple months ago, I didn’t want any more gossip circulating about me and what I’d been up to with these guys.
I had noticed, if I was being honest, that Taylor had seemed a little distracted this morning, before the guys left. He had tried to pull me aside to talk to me, but I was in such a rush to get them out of there before Matty caught on to anything that I hadn’t really given him the chance to explain what might have been on his mind.
Perhaps we could get it out in the open now. I moved the mirror for him, remembering that he didn’t like to look at himself while he was being worked on, and pulled out everything I was going to need for this job, preparing myself for his eventual arrival.
And he was dead on time, just like he always was. I flashed him a smile when he stepped into the trailer, and he returned it. I could tell just from the way he was looking at me that he was thinking about last night too, and my cheeks flushed at the memory of him stroking his cock while watching me getting fucked by Lee and Devon.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I replied, gesturing to the seat in front of me. “Come on, I need to get to work on you.”
“I think you did plenty of that last night,” he joked, and I had to bite back a laugh.
“Hey, you can’t be talking about that here,” I protested playfully. “Someone might hear us. And if they know what I’ve been doing?—”
“Don’t worry, I’m discreet,” he promised me as he moved toward the seat and sank down into it. He seemed to carry himself with so much more confidence now, as though he was utterly certain of what he wanted and how he was going to get it. As if he wasn’t hot enough already…
I picked up my brush and palette, and leaned back, looking him up and down as I tried to work out what I needed to do. It was hard not to find myself a little distracted—he was so damn hot, and he was mine. At least, for now. I didn’t know where the night before left us, exactly, but I didn’t think it mattered. I could feel the tension thick in the air between us, and I wanted nothing more than to indulge in it for a little while longer.
“So, how are you feeling?” he asked me as I began to apply some concealer along his jawline, and I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“How do you mean? After last night?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I mean…”
I paused for a moment, trailing off, as all the memories flooded through me once more. They were so vivid it was almost as though I was right back in the moment, hands all over me, bodies moving against me.
“Pretty fucking great,” I giggled. “I’ve never done anything like that before, not in my whole life, so it was…yeah. It was pretty awesome.”
“Me neither,” he replied, grinning at me. But I could tell there was still something he was holding back. I leaned back for a moment, brush in hand, and peered at him.
“Something else on your mind?”
He hesitated before he said anything. Whatever was bothering him, it wasn’t so easy for him to just come out and say it.
“You can tell me,” I assured him. “Trust me, I’m keeping plenty of secrets for you as it is. Imagine what the press would do if they found out about what we got up to last night…”
He chuckled, nodding, conceding the point.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “I just…I don’t know how to say it without being an asshole.”
“You can be an asshole to me,” I replied. “Within reason, of course.”
He flicked his tongue over his lips. And then, at last, he said it.
“Look, I know how this is going to sound, but I don’t mean it like that,” he began. “But I…when we were all together last night, when you were naked. I noticed something different about you.”
My heart fluttered in my chest. I had a bad feeling I knew where this was going, and it was the very last thing I needed right now…
“Oh, yeah?” I remarked, keeping my voice light. “I guess that pasta really did a number on me, huh?”
“That’s what I thought, at first,” he agreed. “But…but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. And I know I’m not going to be able to get it out of my head until I just ask you, so…”
He inhaled deeply, and turned to look up at me properly.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck! This was the last thing I needed. My mind reeled. I hadn’t prepared for any of them to notice that there was anything different about me, let alone come right out and ask me if I was pregnant. I had just gotten my head around all three of them wanting me, but this…this was a far cry from what I could handle.
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice as light as I could. He frowned at me.
“Just what I said.”
“I don’t know—I mean, I didn’t think I looked that different,” I replied, forcing a laugh. It sounded fake, even to my own ears. Oh, shit. I was fucking this up. I couldn’t just deny it to his face, I felt like he would see right through me. And the way he was looking at me right now, I could tell that he wasn’t going to let this go. He was waiting for me to tell him that he was wrong, get all offended that he thought my body could belong to a pregnant woman, and I wanted to, fuck, I wanted to…
But at the same time, this secret was weighing so heavy on me, maybe it would be better for everyone if I just came clean and told him the truth. I stared at him for a long moment, and he raised his eyebrows slightly, nudging me along to a response.
“Taylor, I…”
“Fuck,” he growled, tearing his gaze away from mine. “You are, aren’t you? You’re pregnant?”
I dropped my chin to my chest, and managed to nod.
“Yeah. Yes. Yes, I’m pregnant.”
He sprang to his feet and began to pace, his earlier quiet curiosity replaced with something more forceful, almost frightening.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? Do either of the other guys know?—”
“No, I haven’t told anyone,” I replied, feeling a lump spring to my throat. “I would never. I just didn’t know what to do, I wasn’t sure where I stood with all of you when I found out last month, and?—”
“Last month?” he exclaimed. “You’ve known for that long, and you didn’t tell me? Tell any of us?”
He sounded genuinely hurt. My heart twisted in my chest, and I wished, more than anything, that I could go back in time and just come clean with him as soon as I’d found out. It wouldn’t have been easy, of course, but it would have been better than this—better than seeing him in such distress, knowing I’d kept this from him.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I had no idea what was happening between us!” I protested, lifting a hand to quiet him. “I—I knew that I would have to come clean eventually, but?—”
“Come clean?” he exclaimed. “That’s how you think about this, coming clean, like it’s some sort of crime?”
“I had no idea how any of you would react!” I confessed angrily. “And it wasn’t as though I knew who the father was, either!”
“Do you know now?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” I replied, the words bubbling out of me in a painful sob. “I—I was with all of you, and I was stupid, and I didn’t use protection, and now I know that any one of you could be the dad. And I know that makes me an idiot, and you can call me one if you want, but I want to have this baby and I’m not going to let anything change that!”
He tore his gaze away from me, his jaw set tight, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You kept Matty from Devon all this time,” he muttered. “Would you have done the same to Lee? To me?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “I—I would have handled it differently now. I’m not the same person I was back then, and it’s?—”
“But you didn’t tell us,” he replied, cutting me off, his voice hollow. “You hid it. Would you—would you have just waited till the end of the shoot? Moved on with your life, never told any of us, like you did with Matty and Devon?”
“That was different?—”
“How was it different?”
I fell silent. Much as I wanted to have some argument to counter him, I knew he had a point. I had lied before, and there was no reason for him to think that I wouldn’t lie again.
“I told Devon the truth,” I offered him, hoping that would go some way to making him believe me. “I told him that he’s Matty’s father?—”
“Yeah, only after you had no choice,” he shot back bluntly. “Only because you were backed into a corner. If you hadn’t seen him here again, if you hadn’t had to work with him, would you ever have told him about Matty?”
I couldn’t even look at him when he asked me that. He already knew the answer.
“You don’t understand what it’s like,” I protested. “To do all of this alone, you don’t?—”
“I don’t understand?” he exclaimed. “I have raised my daughter as a single father for years, Maya, and you know that! I know what it’s like, I know better than anyone, and I know that no matter what you feel toward the people who helped bring your kid into the world, they deserve to at least know about them.”
I tore my gaze away from him. I couldn’t stand how he was looking at me, like I was some kind of monster. I should have just told him that I wasn’t pregnant, that he was seeing things, and we could have laughed it off like it was nothing…
“I can’t believe you would do this,” he muttered. He sounded like someone had reached inside him and pulled out all the pieces, left him empty. And I knew that person was me. I hated knowing that I’d hurt him so much, wishing that I could lift this pain from him, but I couldn’t. It was my fault, just like it had been my fault that I’d kept so much back from Devon when we first met again. Just like it was my fault that Matty didn’t have a father in his life. All of those were my choices, and I had to live with them, no matter how much they hurt, no matter how much I wished I had made different choices through the years…
“It’s not?—”
“It is,” he replied, cutting me off before I could make any more excuses. I grabbed his hand, a last-ditch effort to get him to understand that I hadn’t done this to hurt him, or any of them—to find some piece of our physical connection and use that as the thread back to one another, even in the midst of this mess.
He looked down at my hand on his, as though considering it for a moment. I saw something in his eyes, a glint that spoke to his desire to forgive me—to forget this and go back to what had been there before.
But then all at once, he dropped my hand and pulled away from me, shaking his head.
“I need to think.”
“Are you going to tell the others?” I asked, my heart stutter-beating in my chest. He just looked back at me, his eyes heavy.
“I don’t know.”
And with that, he turned his back and headed for the door of the trailer—leaving me behind to wonder what the fuck I was supposed to do now.
And whether I would ever be able to repair the harm that I’d done to him in keeping this enormous secret to myself.