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1535 Words
Yvonne stared at the pregnancy test again holding it up to the light as if a different angle might produce a different result.
It didn't, the lines were clear, certain, and completely unmoved by her desperation.
She was pregnant!
With a stranger's child!
How had she been so careless?
"Come on, stop sulking" Sheridan said for the fifth time her voice carrying that particular edge it got when she was trying to sound casual and failing.
Yvonne didn't respond she stared numbly at the test, her mind drifting somewhere far beyond the four walls of her apartment beyond the city noise leaking through the windows beyond everything.
Yvonne Rossi, a twenty three year old Black American who had spent the last four years clawing her way toward becoming one of the country's top event planners sat in silence so heavy it pressed against her chest like a hand refusing to let go.
'This baby will tie me down' she thought the words felt like a door slamming. All night she had replayed the same questions over in her mind examining them from every angle the way you examine something broken hoping to find the piece that would explain how it all fell apart.
How would she manage as a single mother? How would she keep her career moving forward?
How would she do any of it alone?
Who was the father?
The memory was frustratingly incomplete she could feel him more than she could see him.
The low timbre of his voice, warm and dark as aged whiskey.
The Italian accent that sent a shiver racing down her spine like a live wire dragged across bare skin, his lean muscular frame cutting a shape in the dim light that she had thought in that moment she belonged to a dream rather than a man.
Argh!!!
"Damn it" The way he had claimed her. Possessive and deliberate like he had already decided she was his before she even knew his name, and the worst part was how easily she had let him.
He was the first man to ever touch her and she could not let him walk out of that bar without knowing what it felt like to belong, just once, to someone like him.
One night! That was all it was supposed to be.
One night had turned into the worst morning of her life.
---
"Come on, Sheri he doesn't have beards. Well even if he did it was shaved."
"Hmm" Sheridan murmured pen moving across the notepad balanced on her knee with the focused energy of someone working a case.
"What's next?" Sheridan handed Yvonne a glass of water before settling back into her chair with her own crossing her legs and looking every bit like a detective who had seen worse.
"He had tanned skin uhmm defined muscles and perfect abs." The memory arrived uninvited and sharp, his dark eyes locking onto hers a heartbeat before he kissed her slowly and certainly like a man who had never second guessed a decision in his life.
"s**t! s**t!" Yvonne knocked over her water the glass tipping sideways and spilling across the table between them.
"Yeah, he's got you rattled" Sheridan said reaching past the spreading puddle to grab her notepad. "We're finding him." The thought alone made Yvonne's heart race with a fear that had nothing to do with excitement.
What if he was broke?
Homeless?
Dangerous?
"Stop 'what if'-ing babe" Sheridan said, reading her expression with the ease of someone who had been doing it for years. "No broke guy gets into a VIP lounge." That was probably true.
She was probably overthinking everything the way she always did.
How had she been so reckless with a complete stranger?
"He was hot though" Sheridan added almost to herself.
Damn it. That wasn't helping at all.
---
Yvonne ordered a latte the moment she stepped into the café sliding into a corner seat and wrapping both hands around the warm ceramic cup the second it arrived like it could anchor her spinning thoughts. She needed to think, She needed to go back to that night
*Flashback*
The bar smelled of expensive cologne and cheaper ambition, the particular scent of people pretending to be exactly who they wanted to be. Neon light bled across the walls in shades of amber and blue.
"Hello ladies. What can I get you?" the bartender asked his smile the practiced kind that came with the uniform.
"Your choice tonight babe. I'll be back" Sheridan said pressing a quick kiss to Yvonne's cheek and dissolving effortlessly into the crowd the way Sheridan always did, like she was made for rooms like this and Yvonne was merely visiting.
Yvonne sat alone on the barstool completely out of place in the loud pulsing energy pressing against her from every direction. The music thumped through the floor and up through her feet and laughter crashed around her in waves, she felt like a quiet painting hung in the wrong gallery.
"What can I get you?"
"Coffee."
"Just coffee?"
"Uh, a latte please" she said coaxing out a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
Moments later, the bartender set the cup down in front of her.
"Thanks."
"Non berresti il caffè in un bar, vero? Sei italiana?"
She blinked. "Uhmm, I'm English."
"My apologies, milady."
The exchange felt electric a current jumping between two wires that had no business touching each other. And then he was fully in front of her and the rest of the bar fell away.
He was everything and more than what she had imagined, the thick Italian accent that rolled off his tongue like warm honey poured slowly. The full lips curved in something between a smile and a dare, the slow deliberate movement of his throat as he spoke, like every word was chosen with care.
Argh.
"Try this" he said sliding a glass of lemon liqueur toward her across the polished bar top, the glass was small and elegant. "The best in Italy."
The scent reached her first clean and sharp and entirely foreign to anything she knew. And before she could find a reason to say no, before the careful and guarded part of her could step in and remind her who she was and what she stood to lose, Yvonne let her guard down. Something inside her she had kept bolted shut for years swung quietly open like it's just a c***k.
"Let's go to my place."
"Your place?" she asked weakly the word catching in her throat.
"Yes, You'll love it."
Without much persuasion at all he led her out into the night air that was warm and thick with the smell of the city, headlights and street food and summer concrete all mixed together.
"You sure about this?"
"Yes."
---
Morning sunlight carved its way through the gap in the curtains and fell across the bed in pale gold stripes, slow and merciless. Her head throbbed with a dull, insistent ache that pulsed behind her eyes.
'Ugh.'She must have drunk too much. Far too much.
She turned carefully and found a tall striking man asleep beside her. The sheets had fallen low across his torso and she allowed herself one long , quiet and foolish moment to look at his broad shoulders that tapered into a defined, sculpted physique the kind that looked carved rather than built by anything as ordinary as effort.
Dark lashes resting against sharp cheekbones, a jaw that could cut glass even relaxed in sleep.
Then it hit her.
What was she doing here?
Her gaze dropped to the rumpled sheets twisted around her legs then to her own clothes scattered across the floor between the bed and the door like a trail of evidence.
'What the f**k. f**k. Fuck.'
She had lost her virginity to a stranger. To a man whose last name she didn't know. In a city she was just passing through.
Carefully moving like the room itself might betray her if she made too much noise she got out of bed and gathered her torn clothes from where they had landed.
How drunk had she been?
'He won't miss these' she thought bitterly, bundling the ruined fabric under her arm before slipping out and closing the door behind her without a sound.
*End of flashback*
---
"I can't believe in nine months I'll be an aunt" Sheridan said as they walked through Manhattan, the city loud and fully indifferent around them. The sidewalk crowd moved past in both directions and neither of them belonged to it in that moment, Yvonne said nothing and the noise felt very far away.
"I'm giving the baby up for adoption."
"Yvonne!"
"I'm sure Sheri. A baby will tie me down and you know how much I'm struggling already."
"Adoption isn't the only option."
"Sheri, please will you support me or not?"
"I will, Whatever you decide" Sheridan said quietly m. And her voice dropped the argument like a stone into still water.
But as she said, something in her chest held on.
Maybe Yvonne would change her mind before the baby arrived, People changed their minds about things far more certain than this.
She hoped so.
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