Chapter Sixteen
Estella
I wake up alone. Again. Ren didn’t wake me up to eat me like he had the first couple of weeks we were together.
My heart slowly starts to break. Those first weeks were…
magical. He took me to the bookstore and got me whatever I wanted.
He gave me a more permanent necklace -a collar- with the initial of his last name hanging from a gold heart.
It was the thing he bought me when I didn’t think he wanted anything to do with me.
Now I can only lay in bed and fiddle with the little gold heart as I wonder why things have changed.
Over the last three days, he’s not woke me up eating me, not been here for breakfast. Only a note to tell me he had to go into work and that I should keep resting.
I don’t like it. It makes me wonder if…he’s done with me.
Has my newness worn off? Is he looking for someone else who can give him the things I want so badly to give him?
I’ve handed over my heart without a whimper.
I love him. I might have been in love with him when I still knew him as DarkDaddy.
Now that I know him, and truly understand him, I’m even more in love with him than before, completely and totally.
And now he’s not here with me and it's got me all out of sorts.
I hear the doorbell and try to jump up to answer it but a wave of dizziness hits me and causes me to move a little slower. I open the door expecting a package maybe or even Ren himself. I am not expecting…my mother.
Oh my fucking god!
“Darling.” She leans in for a kiss and hug. “You look good. Clearly, time with Ren suits you.”
I take in my robe and bare feet as her words wash over me in waves of nausea. I stand back so she can come in and turn to her finally.
“Mom. What are you doing here? I thought…?” I thought I had another month with Ren.
“Oh, well, it wasn’t that I wasn’t having fun and God knows I love being with Benny but…,” she knows. Oh God, she knows. “Well, I felt like you might have needed me!”
“Oh.” My stomach rebounds from the swoop it just did. “That’s…sweet mom.”
“And I was afraid you might be overstaying your welcome with your brother.”
“O…overstaying?” And there goes my stomach again. “Why…why would you think that?”
Dear God! Did Ren call her and tell her he wanted me to leave?
“Oh, well, he’s told Ben he’s dating someone.”
“He did?” Is he talking about me? Would he tell his Dad about us?
“Apparently, he’s been dating her since spring.”
Spring? My stomach lurches. If he said he’s been dating someone since Spring it couldn’t be me.
“I think he said he met her online on some dating site.”
I deleted my profile but…did he not delete his?
“Oh God!” It comes out as nothing but a barely there whisper so Mom doesn’t hear it and just keeps on going.
“He seems serious about her. He told Ben he wanted us all to meet her.”
It definitely isn’t me. I wouldn’t have to meet my own mom and stepdad. Oh God!
No, no, no! It was always a set-up. A punishment like I first suspected. He made me fall in love with him and…took everything from me.
“I have to…,” throw up, “leave. I don’t want to hinder him from being with…her.” I can't say the word girlfriend. It just won't come out.
“Alright, sweetie. I’ll help you pack.”
“No!” My mom can’t find out I was sleeping with him. “No, Mom, it will only take me a few seconds. I just need to grab my bag really.”
No one must ever find out!
Mom is content to sit back down on the sofa as I rush to the room to throw clothes on and grab things from the closet.
I don’t have time to pack my stuff from the drawers.
I can buy new underwear but I’ll never be able to replace my heart.
I swipe the tears from my eyes and head downstairs.
I need to get out and try to forget any of this ever happened.
“I thought we could go do our nails…”
“No, mom. I’m…not feeling good. It’s why I was still in my robe. I just want to go home and lie down for a little while.”
“Oh, well now that you say something, you do look pale, sweetie. Guess it was a good thing I came or you could have gotten Ren and his girl sick.”
I fight back the acid that floods my mouth as I wait for the elevator to take us down. Dreams that I thought were coming true are now shattered and in ashes. When we're finally home I head straight to my room and cry myself to sleep after throwing up.
I wake to a commotion coming from downstairs. Voices carry up the stairs to me. I recognize one of them and it breaks my heart.
“Ren?! What? Ben! What is going on?!”
My mom keeps yelling for Ben as her voice gets closer and closer to my door. I sit up too fast and get so dizzy I have to rush to the bathroom to make it in time. The world is spinning around me and I’m so sick I can barely hold myself up.
The door to the bathroom flies open as I’m dry-heaving after vomiting up everything.
My body just isn’t done even though there is nothing left to throw up.
And then Ren is here, holding my hair back, rubbing my back, acting like he’s concerned for my wellbeing.
It just makes the tears come quicker. I lay my head on my arm and try to catch my breath as my heart is in death throes.
He leans forward. “If you weren’t pregnant, I’d bust your little ass so hard.”
His words take a moment to sink in and when they do I shoot up. My legs shake under me and my eyes start to roll in the back of my head.
Arms catch me before I can fall. My mom’s worried voice sounds close by. “Ren! Ren, is she going to be alright? What happened? Should I call a doctor?”
“No! I have someone meeting us at the penthouse.” I fight to come back so I can stop him. There is no fucking way I am going back home with him.
“But, Ren, why would she go back to your penthouse with you just so she can see a doctor who isn’t even her normal doctor?”
“Because…,” our eyes meet and I can tell we are at the top of the staircase, “she’s pregnant, Ava.”
Oh my God! He just…
“And I’m the father.”
I go back out. Darkness is preferable to what I know is coming. More preferable to knowing Ren has ruined my whole life and broken my heart into a million little pieces that can’t ever be put back together again. More preferable to the reality I've just been handed.