Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (7 page)

“It’s
nothing really,” she said, blushing slightly. “It’s easier to make up egg
noodles when we need them then to buy them and have them take up cupboard space
forever.”

“They’re
delicious,” I told her, taking more bites of the soup. It warmed me up and I
could feel the pressure in my head starting to relax, my sinuses starting to
ease up on me. It made my throat feel better, too; the heat, saltiness, and the
chunks of chicken were just exactly what I needed.

“There’s
more in the jar—I left it out, but if you’re going to wait to eat the rest of
it you’ll probably want to put it in the fridge so it doesn’t spoil.”

“I
appreciate it,” I said, nodding as I set the bowl aside and picked up the glass
of Gatorade. “And, thanks for coming out all this way to bring it.”

Autumn
shrugged, blushing again. “I just thought… I didn’t know if you’d have anyone
else to bring you soup or anything, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You
really don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to,” I told her. “I mean,
I’m not asking you to leave or anything, but I’m sure you’ve got important
things to do around the house, and of course Adelyn probably isn’t used to you
being away from her for very long.” Autumn smiled.

“She’s
in very good hands with my mom. And, dinner at home isn’t for another few
hours, so it’s not like anyone will miss me for a bit.” She gave me a quick,
almost stern look. “Take the medicine before you finish off that Gatorade.”

“Yes,
Ma’am,” I said, almost laughing at her sternness. I poured myself a shot of the
medicine in the little cup that came with the bottle and knocked it back,
chasing it with the last of the Gatorade in my glass like chasing a shot of
whiskey with a slug of beer.

Autumn
stood and gathered up the tray, taking it back into the kitchen, and I heard
her rinse the bowl out in the sink. She came back into the living room and sat
down. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just stick around until you start feeling
sleepy,” she suggested.

“I
don’t mind at all,” I said, nodding. Autumn had brought the bottle of Gatorade
with her and handed it to me.

“You
might as well drink some more of it while you’re still awake,” she pointed out.
I poured myself another installment of the drink and sipped it, sitting back on
the couch. I pulled the afghan my mom had made sometime years before around me.

“You
know, maybe it’s forward of me, and if you don’t want to answer, I’ll back
off,” I said, “but what’s the story with you and Adelyn?” Autumn laughed—a
little bitterly, I thought.

“You
mean, why am I a single mom?”

I
shrugged and half-nodded. “Not that I’m passing judgment or anything. I was
just curious how a beautiful woman like you ended up taking care of a baby all
on your own.” Autumn smiled sadly.

“I
was engaged when I got pregnant with her,” she began. “And for the record—I
didn’t get engaged because I got pregnant, I got pregnant because Adelyn’s
father and I had stopped being careful after we got engaged.”

“Sounds
normal.” I could feel the medicine starting to work—not just drying me up, but
making me a little drowsy, a little dopey. It wasn’t so bad that I’d tell
Autumn to leave, but it was making my tongue a little looser than usual. “So
what happened?” She looked down at her hands and sighed.

“Titan
was his name,” she said, meeting my gaze once more. “He—I guess—found someone
online. I guess he was technically cheating on me just about the whole time,
though it feels weird to say it since he never…”

She
shook her head. “Anyway, a few months into my pregnancy with Addie, he told me
that he wanted to move out East because he’d found someone online who lived out
there. New York maybe, or somewhere like that.”

“What
a pissant,” I said, frowning. I couldn’t imagine exchanging messages with
another woman when the woman I was engaged to—the woman I loved—was carrying my
child. But then, I knew from some of my friends that there were plenty of men
out there who were only ever interested in the hunt. “That’s no kind of man.”
Autumn lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.

“Anyway,”
she said, sighing again, “he decided he wanted to try things out with her, and
I didn’t think there was any real reason to try and convince him to stay—not
for me, anyway. As soon as I found out that he was cheating on me, it was
like…” She shook her head. “I can’t say my heart broke, exactly, but any
feeling I really had for him just evaporated.”

“That
makes sense,” I said. I was relieved to hear that she had had the sense to
sever ties with a man who’d mistreated her and enough command of her emotions
to keep from wanting to salvage something with a man who obviously didn’t
respect her.

“It’s
a shame in a certain respect,” she said. “He’s never even seen his own
daughter. I don’t want him in my life anymore, but you’d think he’d at least put
a token effort into his own daughter, wouldn’t you?”

I
smiled back at her sadly, hoping she knew just how sympathetic I felt.

“Well,
if he doesn’t want to know his own daughter, then she’s better off without him,
right?” I shifted on the couch; my head was starting to feel heavy again—but
not in the clogged-up way. I yawned and shook my head to try and keep the
sleepiness from taking over.

“The
medicine is starting to kick in,” Autumn observed. “I should leave.”

“You’re
a good mom,” I told her, feeling sleepy and comfortable and content for the
first time all day. “You’re a good mom, and you’re a much better woman than
Titan could ever deserve—so it’s good you’re not with him anymore, anyway.” She
snickered. My eyelids were so heavy.

“I’m
going to put this on the coffee table for you,” she said, and I felt her hand
on mind, felt the glass of Gatorade sliding free of my fingers. “Get some sleep
and feel better in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,”
I agreed. “I’ll call in if I’m not better…but I hope I am…” The medicine
started to kick in more strongly and I wasn’t even sure if I said goodbye to
Autumn; all I knew was that I was warm, my head wasn’t full of snot, and I was
too sleepy to even think about staying awake. I hoped she’d understand.

Chapter
Nine

Autumn

About
a week after I visited Cade’s house to check up on him and bring him soup,
everything was back to normal at the farm. I had somehow managed not to come
down with the bug—whatever it was—that Cade had had, and none of the members of
my family had gotten it either, which was a blessing.

I
never told Tuck or even Dad about taking the soup to Cade; in the case of Dad,
I was sure he’d think it was inappropriate, and Tuck would have teased me for
the rest of my life about it. As far as I knew, Cade hadn’t mentioned it,
either.

“Let’s
get some work done, baby girl,” I told Addie as I stepped out of the house with
her in my arms.

It
wasn’t quite as hot as it had been the previous week, but it was still pretty
warm out—and, of course, Adelyn’s baby skin needed protecting from the sun even
if it wasn’t all that hot. I had set her playpen outside before I grabbed her,
and I pulled it over to a shady spot underneath a tree so that she could enjoy
the nice weather while I worked, and so I could keep an eye on her.

Mom
was inside, working on the accounts, and the guys were out in the field. I had
to water the kitchen garden, do a little weeding, and clean the exterior
windows. Mom and Dad always said that just because it was a farm house, that
didn’t mean we could let it get to looking old or run-down. I’d probably have
to take a few days later on in the season to paint—if I could get Tuck and
maybe Cade to help me, it would be easier.

I
looked out at the fields and saw the shapes of the guys moving along the rows.
It was still early in the growing season, but they were already putting down
pesticides and fertilizer to give the soybeans and corn the best possible
chance.

For
my own part, I had fertilized the vegetable garden a few days before. Things
were starting to sprout, starting to show some progress, but it’d be another
few weeks before I could even think of taking some early produce out—even the
strawberries.

I
started walking around the garden, looking at everything, taking stock as Mom
called it. By midsummer, it would be nearly impossible to keep up with
everything; we’d be harvesting daily, pulling as much as we could, canning and
preserving whatever we knew the family couldn’t eat in the week.

I
grabbed the hose and started watering everything down, careful not to flood any
of the little plots with their sprouts reaching up towards the sky.

Addie
gurgled at something and I looked over to see a squirrel watching her intently,
chattering at her. I would have intervened, but I didn’t see any sign that the
squirrel was going to launch an attack. Addie lurched up in her playpen,
reaching ineffectively out to grab at the distant squirrel, and I laughed to
myself, shaking my head.

I
watered the garden and plucked a few obvious weeds, but so early on—and with
such constant supervision—there weren’t many to pull. Mom stuck her head out
the window right about the time I finished up. “Can you do me a favor and put
the washing out on the clothesline? I was going to get it done this afternoon,
but I can tell I’m going to be stuck in here all day,” she called out.

“I
can handle it,” I told her. I glanced at Addie; my baby would be safe for the
few minutes it would take for me to go inside, grab the laundry, and carry it
out. I hurried into the house and down the hall from the kitchen into the
laundry room.

The
washing machine had obviously just finished up a few minutes before; the sheets
and towels were still a little warm from the hot water Mom had used in the
cycle. I pulled them out and dumped them into a basket, hefted it onto my hip
and then hustled out of the house as quickly as I’d gone in.

Addie
was fine, of course; the squirrel had moved onto more important things like
finding food, and my baby was playing with one of the toys my cousin had gotten
her, babbling to herself in nonsense syllables.

Everything
had more or less gone back to normal after I’d visited Cade’s place to bring
him soup, but something about the conversation we’d had continued to nag me
ever since. I hadn’t minded telling him about Titan; he had to be one of the
few people in the county who didn’t know the story, and honestly, it was better
coming from me than from someone else.

But
it had brought the whole situation with my ex back to the forefront of my mind.
I straightened a towel over the clothesline and reached automatically for the
pins to hold it in place, thinking about the day that Titan had broken up with
me.

I’d
noticed that he was pulling away, but I hadn’t really thought anything too
serious was going on. After all: I had been pregnant with his child, we were
engaged, and he had told me more than once that everything was fine between us.
I’d come to the conclusion that it was just one of those things that
happen—that Titan was pulling back because things were just getting intense.

But
then, one day, he’d sat me down in the living room of our apartment. “I have to
tell you something, Autumn,” Titan had said, looking both shamefaced and cocky
somehow.

When
we’d started dating, I’d thought he was one of the most gorgeous men I had ever
met; and even though I didn’t have feelings for him anymore, I couldn’t be too
upset at the fact that Addie had half Titan’s genes. She would grow up to be a
beautiful woman one day, and that was partially because of Titan’s dark hair
and bone structure.

“What’s
going on?” I’d felt my heart beating faster in my chest, and some part of me
had to have known—but I couldn’t bring it to the forefront of my mind, form
words to describe what I’d been suspecting for weeks.

“I’ve
met someone,” he had said. “I didn’t mean to—I loved you—but things just sort
of...happened.”

“What
do you mean, things happened?” I could remember the way my hand had gone down
to my abdomen, to where Addie was growing inside of me.

“We
started chatting, and we have a lot in common…we fell in love, Autumn. I’m
sorry—I wish it was different—but I can’t stay with you when I’m in love with
someone else.”

I
closed my eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath. Titan breaking up with
me hadn’t exactly broken my heart—at least, not in the way that other breakups,
with other guys, had done. I’d felt strange, almost free but at the same time
trapped. I’d been angry, and I’d told Titan that I didn’t give a fuck whether
he was sorry. I’d told him that he could move to the East Coast as far as I
cared, and I wouldn’t even bother saying goodbye to him.

My
feelings had softened a little bit after Titan had gone, but not in any way
that made me want to get involved with him again. The fact that I was carrying
a child, that I was going to give birth to Titan’s baby, was the important
thing—the only thing—that connected me to him.

He’s been a dad for almost a year,
and he’s never once seen her,
I thought, glancing at
my daughter. It wasn’t fair to Addie.
She
doesn’t know anything about having a father,
I pointed out to myself.
She doesn’t ever even have to know anything
about it.