Sterling
I FOUND HIM pacing in front of the fireplace when I came back from putting Ami in her crib.
I watched him and he looked different from before.
He wasn’t as confident. The self-assurance that he normally exuded didn’t look to be anywhere in him now.
The pleasure of last night and the joy of this morning seemed to be completely gone.
I got closer to him but something told me not to get too close. His body language screamed that he was battling something heavy.
“She’s asleep. If you’ve changed your mind about wanting to talk to me—”
It was the wrong thing to say but I also felt like I was intruding just watching him pace back and forth. He acknowledged my presence with a grunt and then went back to silently stewing in a cesspool of emotions that I knew wasn’t doing him any good.
I waited a few more minutes but I was ready to eat before our food got cold and maybe catch a nap while Ami slept. He needed a minute and I wasn’t about to catch a stray from Aldrich’s shitty mood so it was better to leave him there. As soon as I turned around, I heard him speak up behind me.
“You wanna know why I was so angry?”
I turned back seeing that the anger on his face had been joined with pain and what could only be aggravation. I hated feeling like I was putting him on the spot so I shook my head to let him know this wasn’t necessary. “You don’t have to do this, Aldrich—”
He stopped moving and flexed his hands at his sides as he grunted out a breath.
“No, I do. You were here and you saw me at my worst. You didn’t judge me. We got close and I know there were still moments where you wondered what the fuck I was on. The man you see now isn’t the one who was present when you first got here.”
“I knew you were going through something. Your life was being interrupted by a major change. No one can judge you for that.” I mean I did, some, but still.
“The woman…I think her name was Marley. She was my stalker; I didn’t know I had one.
I didn’t even know the bitch was really that crazy.
I rarely check my social media DMs because I don’t deal with women who slide in my messages like that.
But she’d apparently been after me for a minute.
Hung around the team.” Aldrich’s mouth was tight, his body tensing with each word he spoke.
“So, a groupie. But like to the nth degree.” I was trying to understand where this was headed but the more he talked the more worried I got. Aldrich’s face got tighter, his anger clear.
“Yeah. She broke in my house and started moving stuff around—”
“Wait, this house?” I immediately got creeped out thinking that she’d been in here. I should’ve just let him talk but my discomfort wouldn’t let me keep silent about that.
“Nah, I moved out of that place for a fresh start. Brought it through a shell company so that it wouldn’t be found on a lot of the easy searches you can do online to get people’s information.”
I was nodding because there was no reason for someone as famous as him to have anything in his name. I wasn’t famous but with the background I had, even my house in Sag Harbor was under an LLC. “Smart man.”
One side of his lips raised slightly but he still looked anxious. “Billy’s idea.”
I shrugged because he was constantly dismissing my compliments. “But you listened. That takes a lot of courage.”
He smiled again this time with less pain in his features. “Nah, I’m smart enough to know that I can only do so much on my own and listening to the people I pay to help me with life is a smart move.”
My head cocked to one side because that sounded exactly like what I said. “Tomato, tuhmato.”
“But her conception…Ami’s…was coerced.”
I was trying to think of the appropriate thing to say but nothing eloquent could come to mind.
Probably because my thoughts were crowded as my base reaction to his comment was pure unaltered anger.
From the man I knew he was, I knew there was no chance in hell that he’d been the one to step wrong.
Even with the attraction we’d had to one another he hadn’t moved until I gave him the green light.
That left only one conclusion but I still dreaded confirmation.
“On her part to you.”
“Yes.” His answer was clipped and I knew he wasn’t going to give me anything more until he was ready so I changed the subject.
“And that’s why you were distant with her?” A kid who was a product of a bad situation would probably cause resentment in the best of people. But if what he was saying was what he was saying, this was far beyond that.
My body felt like ice had been injected into my veins. I was somehow hot with anger and cold with sadness at once. I couldn’t believe that anyone would do something like this to another human being.
“Yeah. I mean…I don’t remember anything that happened that night.
And I didn’t give consent for any of it.
” Aldrich’s voice broke as he spoke and he hesitated like he was waiting on me to say something or storm out.
I could see how still his body was. He was bracing himself for whatever he’d thought I would say or do to him.
Truthfully, my heart was breaking. I hadn’t ever been in that position but I knew it was a reality for so many people. For him to have no memory and then for him to have a child produced from it, I wasn’t sure how he was able to handle all of his emotions.
“I’m so sorry, Aldrich.” I thought of how stressed out he’d been.
The anger he’d felt and the betrayal he had to feel from being named the father of a kid he didn’t remember the mother of.
And that she tried so hard to drag his name through the mud when she was the one who’d done irreparable harm to him.
He seemed to flinch as though my words of empathy were even worse than what he’d braced himself for me to say. “Nah. I don’t want that from you.” His face got tighter, my apology an insult to him.
“What do you mean?”
He was back pacing in front of the fireplace and I needed to calm him down. But I was out of ideas with how I could help him.
“The sympathy. I feel like the few people who know are trying to make me feel some kind of way.” The desire to comfort him was strong, even stronger than my desire to weep for him and I was barely containing the dual emotions.
“We’re good and I’m good. I’ve been handling all this shit pretty well up until now—”
“I’m sorry that you feel negatively about emotions I’m giving you.
I care about you, Aldrich. If someone didn’t react this way I would wonder what the fuck was wrong with them.
” I could feel the frown on my face and knew if my mother saw it she would be insisting on me going in for tox to erase the fine lines.
“I’m not trying to look weak in front of anyone. Have y’all thinking I don’t know how to handle my business or protect my daughter.” Aldrich practically growled the words out like he didn’t want to offend me but he was angry at thinking I’d viewed him as something less.
“Why would anyone think that way about you? That you were weak?”
“Because—”
I was going to be gentle with him because this was a stupid time for him to have his chauvinism come out, but I could understand how no one, especially a man wanted to feel helpless.
“If the roles were reversed and it was me, would you be telling me that I should feel weak because someone gave me a date rape drug? If I were unconscious and taken advantage of? I know you wouldn’t say that to Ami. ”
He shook his head, the thought of ever saying that to Ami or to me was indefensible. “It’s different for a man. And just hearing you say that shit like it’s a possibility for someone to harm either of you has me ready to hit something.”
“And it shouldn’t be. Because no matter what you think, that shit had to be traumatizing. She didn’t have the right to do that and I’m so mad that she’s gone because that means I never get the chance to beat her ass. The only good thing she ever did was live long enough for the baby to stay alive.”
“She tried to kill her to get my attention.”
His words stopped me cold and I felt that icy feeling travel from my spine and then throughout my chest. It was the thought of her little life not being here. Her never being allowed to exist that had me stuck. “What? I thought that was just a rumor. The accident was just an accident.”
Aldrich’s eyes were sad as he nodded his head.
“The police told me she had no reason to perform the maneuvers she had. Even if she was driving distracted, she sped up before impact and she made no attempt to stop. They think she was trying to cause a severe enough accident that she would lose Ami. This is Texas so taking something would’ve landed her in jail when they did a toxicology report so she felt a wreck would be the best option.
The law says they don’t give a fuck about her as the mother but they were going to do whatever they could to save the baby.
The penalties for them allowing the baby to die were harsher than letting the mother pass away.
And she didn’t realize that at the speed she was going she’d be injured far worse than she expected.
I don’t know if she planned to garner sympathy over the situation if Ami didn’t make it or if she thought that a premature delivery would send me running to her bedside.
I’ll never know because of how selfish she was. ”
I was rendered speechless my pro-choice opinion of mothers mattering more almost feeling relief that she hadn’t been considered in the equation. Lord, forgive me.
“Basically.”
“Do you feel better talking to me about it?” I wasn’t a professional but I could at the barest of minimus listen to him while he worked out his feelings. I could tell they were weighing him down hard and I wondered what triggered him into thinking about her.