26. Chapter 26
Chapter 26
That night, David was actually not annoyed to get home before Ashley for once. He paid Casey and watched her leave, then carried Jacob from the couch to his bed, this time without waking him. After David carefully tucked the blankets around the little boy, he sat there stroking Jacob’s narrow back with gentle fingers for a moment as his mind drifted back to the night Ashley had told him she was pregnant, almost four years ago.
She’d invited him over to dinner and while he was drinking a beer, she’d started crying.
Perplexed, he’d stared at her.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” she’d said, wiping at her eyes. “I was hoping I wouldn’t cry until … after.”
Setting his beer down, he’d asked, “After what?”
“After I told you I was pregnant.”
There had been the most horrific silence, ever, as David tried to process what she was telling him.
“You’re positive?” he’d choked out, for a moment hoping she hadn’t actually taken a test, that she was just suspecting she was pregnant—
“Yes. I’ve taken two tests. I’m sorry. I don’t know how this happened. I take the pill religiously.”
He’d taken several deep breaths, as deep as he could given how tight his chest had felt and accepted what she was telling him. And in that moment—which was miles away different from when Paige had told him she was pregnant—several truths rained down on him, some of which were exceedingly unpleasant.
This baby was going to forever change the landscape of his life, irrevocably tying him to Ashley, whom he wasn’t in love with and didn’t want to marry. He also felt a certain amount of guilt, as if he was betraying Paige. And, even though he’d harbored no hope that they would ever be together again, this baby pushed him even farther away from her.
Not to mention … he’d only been divorced nine months.
“You’re pissed,” Ashley had said.
“I’m not pissed.”
“Well, you’re not happy.”
“You don’t seem happy, either,” he’d pointed out.
“I don’t know what I am, to be honest.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Do you want me to get an abortion?”
To David, the word abortion was one of the ugliest words in the English language. He knew he was no friend to feminists, because to him, terminating a pregnancy was killing a child, something he couldn’t live with. He knew that if Ashley aborted this baby, he’d wonder for the rest of his life what the baby would’ve been like and looked like; just like he did with the baby he and Paige had lost.
“No. I don’t want you to get an abortion.” The words came out without a second thought, sealing his fate. “But the question is, do you want to get one?”
“What if I said yes?”
“Then … I wouldn’t be happy,” he’d finally said. “But I know it really isn’t my decision. I can’t make you have the baby, just because I’m against abortion.”
“I don’t want to get an abortion,” she’d told him, sniffling. “But I’m scared, because I won’t be able to do this by myself.”
“And I wouldn’t let you. Jesus. What kind of an asshole do you think I am?”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole, but we’ve only been seeing each other for a couple of months.”
“I know. And it’s a shock, to say the least. But we’re in this together.”
As the bittersweet memory receded, David’s hand stilled and he leaned over to plant a kiss on Jacob’s head, lingering to breathe in the comforting scent of his baby shampoo. Jacob was the single most important thing in David’s life and when it came down to brass tacks, whether or not he’d been played didn’t matter.
However, that didn’t mean he wanted to get played again.
With resolve, David got up to begin his recon for Ashley’s birth control.
Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find her prescription in her designated drawer in the bathroom they shared. He thought he would feel guilty for basically invading her privacy, but he didn’t (at least not enough to stop what he was doing, anyway). He did feel like he was going to get caught at any moment, though, so he quickly pulled the pill packet out of its little storage ‘sleeve’ and almost fell to his knees in relief when he saw that some of the pills were missing. He knew that her last period had been two weeks ago and after examining the packet more closely, it appeared that the correct number of pills had been taken.
However, he remembered Evelyn’s warning that Ashley could be pretending to take her pills and then flushing them and his relief started to dwindle. He thought back over the past two weeks when she’d been all over his dick—they’d had sex almost every day, sometimes twice. So, if she was flushing her pills … all he could do was wait and see if she got her next period and pray like Saint Francis of Assisi that she did. In the meantime, though—until he knew one way or the other—he was going to make sure he didn’t actively do anything more to increase his chances of getting her pregnant.
As it was, he’d done plenty in the past two weeks.
Replacing the pills in the sleeve, he returned it to its place in the drawer. Then, like a soldier preparing for battle, he went to his night stand and took inventory of his condom supply, finding four. He would obviously have to buy more in the morning, but for now, he was golden. Then, trying not to think about Ashley possibly becoming pregnant, he lay in bed and waited for her to come home.
When she did, an hour later, he could see she was just shy of intoxicated, which wasn’t surprising since that was usually how she came home after being out with her friends. Spotting him in bed, bare-chested, with his hands behind his head, she gave him a predatory smile and he knew what was coming—Ashley plus alcohol equaled rough sex.
She held his gaze as she stripped out of her clothes, then straddled his thighs and began kissing him aggressively. It wasn’t too long before she was yanking the bedding off his lower body, then pulling his briefs down, taking his cock in her hand and stroking him with purpose.
Feeling slightly detached, he reached over to his nightstand and grabbed a condom.
It took her a second to register what she was seeing and when she did, her face lit up. “Hell yes,” she said eagerly. “Where’s the lube?”
Oh, shit. He blinked at her, belatedly realizing what she thought the condom signified. He’d been so focused on the birth control aspect of it, that he hadn’t even thought about the main reason he had condoms in his nightstand to begin with.
Anal sex.
Having expected a totally different reaction from her—one where she was pissed at him for wanting to use condoms—David was now faced with a situation that gave him pause.
“What is it, baby?” she asked, confused at his reaction. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t even know how to explain himself. “I wasn’t trying to instigate anal,” he finished, somewhat lamely. He sounded like a total idiot.
Understandably, she looked even more confused. “Then what’s the condom for?”
“Birth control.”
She frowned at him. “We don’t need a condom for that. You know I’m on the pill.”
Then, as if that was the end of the discussion, she plucked the condom from his fingers and tossed it over her shoulder; it sailed in the air and then ended up somewhere on the floor.
“You got pregnant with Jacob when you were on the pill,” he reminded her. “Remember?”
“You know that was an accident.”
“Well, who’s to say we couldn’t have another accident?”
She picked up on the slight emphasis he placed on the word ‘accident’ and her eyes narrowed. “Why did you say it like that?”
“Say what like what?”
“Accident.”
“I didn’t realize I said it in any particular way.”
Her expression tightened and it looked like she didn’t believe him. She also looked like she was unsure how to proceed, probably because of her alcohol intake. “You said it like you were implying that Jacob wasn’t an accident. But he was. And I’m sure the chances of that happening again are zero. I mean, nothing’s happened in the past three years, has it?”
He figured that had everything to do with her actually taking her birth control during that time, but he kept the thought to himself. Undeterred, he reached over and snagged another condom.
“I’d rather not take any chances. I know you want another child—” it was a bit of a struggle to say that like he believed it, “—but right now, I don’t, and I just want to make sure that we don’t have one until it’s what we both want.” He held up the condom. “So, it’s this way, or no way.”
Clearly unhappy, she grabbed the condom and for a moment he thought she was going to chuck it again, but she opened it instead. “Fine. We’ll do it this way,” she said shortly, as she rolled it down his dick in record time. “But that means in my ass.”
She said that like it was meant to be a hardship for him, like she was punishing him by keeping him from her pussy.
He grabbed the lube.