Chapter 10: Before School
The fog on the car windows thinned to a greasy film, revealing the blurred green of hedges and the stark grey of her driveway pavers. Ares’s weight was a solid, anchoring heat on her lap. She could feel his heartbeat through their clothes, a slowing drum against her chest.
“You’re crushing my bladder,” she murmured, her voice raspy.
He huffed a quiet laugh into her neck but didn’t move. “Good. Means you can’t leave.”
He eventually shifted, pulling out of her with a soft, wet sound that made her flinch. The reality of their situation rushed back in with the cooler air. He tucked himself away, zipped his jeans. She fumbled for napkins in the glove compartment, the mundane act jarring after the violence of their coupling. The napkins were thin, useless. She wiped what she could, then balled them up in her fist.
They walked to the house in silence. The distance from the car to the front door felt like a mile. Inside, the sterile quiet of the foyer was accusing.
“I need a shower,” she said, not looking at him.
“Yeah. Me too.”
They didn’t shower together. She went to the master, he used the guest bath down the hall. She stood under the scalding spray, trying to wash the smell of him, of the diner, of the transgression, from her skin. It was futile. Her body felt permanently imprinted. Between her legs was tender, well-used. She traced a faint bruise on her hip from his grip. A strange, possessive pride curled in her stomach.
When she emerged in a robe, the house smelled of coffee. He was in the kitchen, barefoot, wearing only his low-slung sweatpants, muscles moving under the smooth skin of his back as he poured two mugs. He’d made it strong, the way she liked it, a splash of cream in hers.
He handed her a mug. Their fingers brushed. His green eyes were unreadable, the morning’s frantic energy replaced by a watchful stillness.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Paperwork’s on the table,” he said, nodding toward the dining room.
The thick envelope lay next to the forgotten lily bouquet, which was beginning to brown at the edges. The contrast was cruel. She sat, ignoring the forms, and watched him lean against the counter. The silence stretched, filled only with the hum of the Sub-Zero.
“What happens if you don’t fill it out?” she finally asked.
“Then I don’t play.” He said it simply.
“That’s not an option, Ares.”
“Why?” He pushed off the counter, coming to stand over the table. “Give me one good reason that isn’t about what’s ‘right’ or ‘smart’.”
She looked up at him, at the beautiful, stubborn set of his jaw. “Because you love it. I’ve heard you talk about it. It’s in your blood. You can’t just throw that away.”
“I can throw away anything that isn’t you.”
The words were a bomb in the sunlit room. She had no defense against them. She took a sip of coffee, the bitterness perfect on her tongue. “Don’t make me the villain in your story. Don’t make me the thing that held you back.”
He stared at her, his chest rising and falling. Then he turned and walked out of the kitchen. She heard his footsteps on the stairs, not toward the guest room, but toward her bedroom. She followed, her robe cinched tight.
He was standing by the bed, his back to her, looking out at the city. The tension in his shoulders was a physical wall.
“Come here,” she said, her voice softer now.
He didn’t turn. “Why? So you can give me another fucking lecture?”
“Come here.”
He turned slowly. His eyes were bright, angry. She walked to him, untied her robe, and let it fall open. She didn’t drop it, just let it hang, framing her nakedness. An offering. A distraction. A truth.
His gaze burned over her, the anger transmuting into a hotter, darker need. “You think that’s the answer to everything?”
“Isn’t it?” she whispered.
He closed the distance in two strides. He didn’t kiss her. He grabbed her by the waist, spun her around, and bent her over the foot of the low bed. The crisp linen scratched her cheek. He kicked her legs wider apart with his foot.
“You want to shut me up?” he growled, his hand sliding between her thighs from behind. He found her slit, still damp from the shower, from him. He pushed two fingers inside, hard. “This how you do it?”
She moaned into the duvet, pushing back against his hand. “Yes.”
He withdrew his fingers, slick, and she heard the rustle of his sweats being shoved down. The broad, hot head of his cock nudged against her. He didn’t guide himself in. He just pushed, a relentless, tearing pressure until he was seated to the hilt. She cried out, the stretch immense, glorious.
He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each deep plunge jolting her forward on the bed. His hands gripped the sides of her hips, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her ass. The sound was obscene—wet, slapping flesh, the groan of the bedframe, his ragged grunts.
“This what you wanted?” he snarled, driving into her. “To just be a wet hole for me to use so you don’t have to fucking talk?”
“Yes!” she screamed, the word ripped from her.
He smacked her ass, once, twice, sharp cracks that sent waves of heat radiating through her pelvis. The pain was a bright, clarifying shock. He leaned over her, his chest plastered to her back, his mouth at her ear. “You wanna keep me? Huh? This how you keep me? Letting me breed this perfect fucking cunt?”
The word breed detonated in her brain. A forbidden fantasy, now given voice. Her nails scrabbled at the linen. He fucked her with a brutal, piston-like efficiency, his pace losing all rhythm, becoming pure, driving need.
“Tell me,” he gasped. “Tell me you want it. Tell me you want my fucking kid in here.”
She couldn’t speak. The idea was madness, catastrophe. And yet, as his cock stabbed deep into her womb, a primal, dizzying yearning unfolded. To be claimed that completely. To have a piece of him that was irrevocable. To trap this light, this passion, inside her forever. Her silence was answer enough.
He read it in the way her body clenched, in the broken sound she made. “Fuck,” he breathed, awe and fury mingled. He pulled almost all the way out, then slammed back in, so deep she saw stars. “Gonna come. Gonna fill you up. Make it take.”
It was the trigger. Her orgasm erupted, a convulsive, milking series of spasms that seemed to pull the very soul from her body. She shook, sobbing into the bed.
With a final, shuddering roar, he buried himself and came. She felt the hot, urgent pulses deep inside her, a claiming more profound than any word. He collapsed on top of her, his sweat mixing with hers, his weight a comfort.
Long minutes passed. His breathing slowed. He softened inside her but didn’t pull out. He nuzzled the damp hair at her nape. “I’m scared,” he whispered, the admission so small and young it cracked her open.
She couldn’t turn. She just reached a hand back, finding his where it lay splayed on her stomach. She laced her fingers with his. They lay there, joined, in the wreckage of the morning.
Later, he dressed in silence. He pulled on a clean t-shirt, shouldered his backpack. The scholarship envelope was still on the table. He looked at it, then at her, wrapped once more in her robe.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Practice.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He walked to the door, paused. “I’ll do the paperwork.”
It felt like a surrender, and a death. “Okay.”
He left. The house settled into its profound, expensive quiet. She walked to the table and picked up the envelope. It was heavy. Official. She placed her hand on her lower belly, a useless, instinctive gesture. The fantasy, now spoken, lingered like a ghost. It didn’t feel like madness anymore. It felt like a possibility. A terrifying, beautiful possibility.
In the silence, she realized he’d taken his coffee mug to the sink and washed it. The simple, careful act undid her more than anything else that morning. She slid to the floor, her back against the cool cabinet, and finally let the tears come. They were for the lies, for the fear, for the scholarship forms, for the clean mug in the drainer. Mostly, they were for the desperate, impossible hope taking root in the dark, fertile soil he’d just left inside her.
Mostly, they were for the desperate, impossible hope taking root in the dark, fertile soil he’d just left inside her. The silence after his departure was a physical weight. She pulled herself up, the cool marble of the kitchen floor imprinted on her skin, and mechanically began her day.
The conference call was a buzzing, distant thing. Her stomach, around ten-thirty, gave a slow, uneasy roll. She muted herself, sipping ice water. It passed. By noon, reviewing a contract for a telecom merger, a sudden, sharp lurch of nausea had her clamping a hand over her mouth. She bolted for the private bathroom adjoining her office.
She made it to the sink, dry-heaving over the polished porcelain. Nothing came up but acid and dread. She gripped the basin, knuckles white, staring at her wide-eyed reflection in the mirror. The math was insultingly simple. Her period was nine days late. She’d blamed stress, the chaos of him, the divorce residuals. But this—this specific, rising tide of sickness—was a new and terrifying ledger.
“Tasha? You okay in there?” Olivia’s voice came through the door.
“Fine!” she called, her voice strangled. “Just… bad shrimp salad yesterday.” The lie was automatic, slick as oil. She ran the tap, splashed cold water on her face. The nausea subsided to a low, threatening hum. She leaned her forehead against the glass. Morning sickness. The words were a bell tolling in the hollow of her chest.
She canceled her afternoon meetings, citing a migraine. Driving home, the smell of the car’s leather interior, usually clean and neutral, seemed greasy and overpowering. She cranked open the window, sucking in cold air. The city blurred past. All she could think of was the raw, claiming heat of him that morning, his snarled words about breeding. A dark, thrilling shiver ran through her, completely separate from the fear.
The sterile emptiness of her house offered no comfort. She stood in the pharmacy aisle after circling the block three times, her sunglasses hiding her face. The sheer variety of tests was overwhelming. She grabbed a two-pack of digital ones, the kind that spelled it out in clear, cruel English, and a cheap single-stick backup, hiding them under a bag of cotton balls and hand sanitizer.
The cashier was a bored teenager who didn’t glance up. Tasha’s hands trembled as she fumbled her credit card.
Back in the master bathroom, she tore the boxes open with frantic fingers. The instructions were diagrams of mundane horror. She pissed on the stick of the cheap test first, her heart hammering against her ribs. She set it on the edge of the tub and looked away, counting to ninety in her head like a death row prisoner.
When she looked, two lines. One was faint, a pale pink ghost, but it was unmistakably there. Positive. The digital test required holding the tip in her stream for five seconds. She did it, her body rigid. She placed it next to the first on the white Carrara marble and turned her back, unable to watch the hourglass icon blink.
It took three minutes. She heard the faint plastic click of the result locking in. She turned.
PREGNANT.
The word stared back, black and definitive in the little window. A fact. A consequence. A life. She sank down the wall until she was sitting on the cool tile floor, the two tests beside her like exhibits in a trial. The hope she’d cried over now had a heartbeat, a cellular reality. It was his. It was theirs. It was a catastrophe woven from lies.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. His name flashed. Ares.
She stared at it, ringing over the tiles. She imagined his voice, his laugh, the way he’d just washed his coffee mug. She saw the scholarship papers on her dining table. She saw the ghost of that faint second line. The phone stopped ringing. A text appeared.
Ares: Coach ran us into the ground. I’m fucking dead. Thinking about you bent over that bed.
Another wave of nausea rolled through her, fresh and violent. She scrambled to her knees and vomited into the toilet, a bitter, empty retching that left her shaking and clammy. She spat, flushed, and rested her cheek against the seat. The phone buzzed again.
Ares: You there?
She picked it up. Her thumbs hovered. She could type the truth right now. It would be three words. I’m pregnant. Ares. It would detonate his world, hers, every careful fiction between them. Instead, a different, older instinct took over. The instinct to protect the fragile, impossible thing. To protect him from the consequences, or to protect it from his reaction, she didn’t know.
Tasha: I’m here. Just a long day. Miss you.
She sent it. The lie was easier than breath. She crawled to the bed, pulling the duvet over herself, curling around the secret taking shape inside her. The sickness was a rhythm now, a constant reminder. It was no longer a maybe. It was a when. And she had no idea what to do.