Her Swedish Billionaire's Baby: A BWWM Pregnancy Romance For Adults (2 page)

Samara had grabbed
her stuff and gone without a second thought. She heard Alison’s
quick sob, saw the disbelief on her face. Alison had seen their
family broken once before, and it was like she was living it all over
again. Samara knew that was probably the worst part of it for Alison,
that Samara didn’t hesitate for even a second before walking
out the door, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Not
even for Alison.

Samara took out her
phone and stroked the contact list with her thumb. Alison. Samara
hadn’t missed Dad once since she left, but Alison .... Alison
had been a constant presence since she could remember: sometimes
frustrating, sometimes sweet, frequently annoying, but always there.
Alison had been like another limb. Samara almost didn’t know
how to function without her; she felt naked, vulnerable, like ...
like no one had her back. Well, she would just have to learn how to
live without her. She wanted Alison to come with her, but Alison
would never get into UCLA. She hated school. She couldn’t
challenge Dad, not like that. Alison loved the life of a hustler.
Alison loved Dad and Samara pretty much equally, Samara figured, so
the tie-breaker was what she wanted to be doing, and she wanted to
hustle.

Samara tried hard not
to feel betrayed by Alison staying behind with Dad. Samara was the
one who’d made the big, life-altering choice. Who was she to
expect her sister to make it with her--without any warning, even?
Samara had thought not having any warning would be the best, that
Alison would come with her if only out of desperation, to try to talk
her into going back to Dad, and once she was away from it all, she
would see how great it could be .... If she had told Alison her plans
earlier, she was afraid Alison might succeed in talking her into
staying, maybe out of guilt. She’d tried to harden her
heart--she’d had to, to be able to do it--but the consequence
was that now it felt soft as bread. Tears slipped down her cheeks,
and she thought how nice it was, to be able to sit and feel what she
felt, without Alison there calling her a sissy for it and Dad hissing
that she’d better toughen up if she hoped to survive that
night’s hustle. She wasn’t tough, not like that. Not like
them. She couldn’t be.

Maybe it was better
this way. What a black sheep Samara was--in a family of black
sheep--had been the elephant in the room for as long as she could
remember. Alison tried to pretend it wasn’t like that, Dad
alternately yelled at her for it and loved her all the more for it,
but there was no getting around it. Samara loved them, loved them
like she loved to breathe, but they didn’t get her at all.

Everything she valued
and loved and wanted to talk about was stuff they didn’t even
recognize as real: science, philosophy, art--everything colleges were
all about. Maybe here, at last, she could strike up a conversation
with someone about an amazing book she’d read or an incredible
theory she’d heard and they would respond with something other
than a blank look and a question about the state of something in the
arsenal in the trunk. She tried not to think it, but she couldn’t
help wondering if Alison and Dad would be happier without her there
casting a gloomy cloud over their happy hustling with her perpetual
dissatisfaction and disapproval of their lifestyle, their ignorance
and their values and everything else.

If she didn’t
know better, Samara would think she was someone else’s child.
Dad and Alison were like peas in a pod ... or, at least, Alison had
been able to change herself into a pea that would fit in Dad’s
pod, which was something Samara had never been able to do, try as she
might. Maybe, deep down, they were glad she was gone, the way on the
surface she was glad she was gone and deep down she wished she was
still back home pranking Alison and rolling her eyes at Dad and
calculating what she could get away with saying to him without
setting off a firestorm in the Cadillac.

Samara hadn’t
realized how much she’d been counting on Alison deciding to
come with her until she walked out the door and Alison didn’t
follow right after her. She almost couldn’t believe it,
standing around in the dark on the street for a little while, waiting
to see if she would change her mind, but she heard Dad ranting loudly
about Samara and heard Alison trying to talk him down. From what was
said, Samara could tell Alison had made her choice, so Samara, after
taking one last look at her through the curtains, wandered out to the
road and held out her thumb.

That had been the
worst part: walking away from Alison. Watching Alison make that
choice. Knowing Alison thought that was the choice Samara was trying
to make: to leave Alison, when really, it was everything else she
meant to leave, and take Alison with her away from that life they’d
both been forced into when they were just children, that life no one
should ever have to live.

Samara thought about
them now, wondered if they were still upset or if the sting was
easing or if it was back to business as usual. Truth be told, she
wasn’t naïve enough to believe it would actually happen,
Samara’s real hope was that her leaving would get through to
Dad just how bad things had been for Samara. In her private
fantasies, Dad would say, “My God, I’ve made you so
unhappy that you’re willing to leave everything you’ve
ever known behind with nothing to your name but a couple of changes
of clothes?” They would break down and have a big
heart-to-heart, and Alison and Dad would drive her to UCLA and come
visit whenever they were hustling near the area--even as far away as
Nevada or Oregon, maybe. Maybe they’d come this far out of
their way just to see her. But of course it hadn’t been like
that. Of course. It would never be like that, and that was why she
had to leave.

When she thought
about them now, all she could imagine was them on the highway in the
Cadillac, talking business. When Dad wasn’t concerned about
something, he didn’t talk about it, just like he didn’t
talk about it when he was upset about it, so even if she was a fly on
the wall, Samara would never know how or if her leaving had impacted
her dad. She knew it had impacted Alison, and she knew Dad wouldn’t
let Alison talk about it, wouldn’t help her feel better about
it.

So basically, the one
Samara wanted to feel bad wasn’t, and the one she didn’t
want to feel bad was. It hadn’t been the dramatic
family-dynamic-altering exit she’d hoped for. Then again,
nothing in her whole life had been what she’d hoped for ...
until she got out of the car today next to the student union, looked
around the campus, and knew she’d made her dream of the last
four years finally come true. Was it worth it? She hoped it would be
... but whether it was or not, as Dad had made so clear, there was no
going back.

Samara sat by herself
in the cafeteria that night, which was how she wanted it. She was
still feeling fragile emotionally, and she needed time to observe the
way the students interacted so she could figure out how to fit in.
Maybe she wouldn’t be able to here any more than she could with
Alison and Dad, but she could probably at least appear to on the
surface.

Sitting there alone,
all these excited conversations going on around her, other freshmen
so stoked at coming to college just like her, made her lonely. At
least she had being excited to be here in common with these other
students. The two girls at the next table were bashfully admitting
they came from “weird” families, and Samara’s ears
perked up. One was home-schooled. “Oh, mine was much weirder,”
the other one insisted, finally admitting she lived in a commune.
Samara felt better. At least she hadn’t grown up in a commune.

Bolstered by this,
and lonely enough to overcome her natural shyness, that evening she
joined the group of freshmen gathering in the common room in her
dorm, getting to know each other. They were friendly and seemed eager
to make friends with everyone in the dorm, welcoming her warmly.
Samara sat there, saying nothing, listening closely, as everyone went
around the circle answering whatever get-to-know-you question had
been posed by a robust girl who had taken it upon herself to be the
group’s de facto leader. Samara demurred or answered vaguely,
and things seemed to be going well, even when she had to admit things
like that she’d been to dozens of high schools and had never
stayed in one place for more than a year in her whole life. Her
dorm-mates only seemed interested.

All was going well
until, talking one-on-one with the girl next to her, she missed the
question, and when it came back around to her, she had to ask them to
repeat it. “First-person shooters,” said a jock. “Your
favorite.”

‘
First-person
shooters’? Weren’t they all kind of ... first-person
shooters? She guessed on rare occasion they’d worked with other
hustlers and used more complicated cons that required more than one
person to carry out, but ... well, she certainly had sufficient
knowledge on the subject to answer this one appropriately, even if
she hadn’t even known what they were talking about with some of
the other questions. “Um ... well, I guess the .45 I got when I
was nine,” she answered, smiling shyly. This brought up a lot
of memories. “That was my first gun, so ....”

Something was wrong.
They were all staring at her with horror. She thought madly over what
she’d said, but she couldn’t identify the problem. “But
I like ’em all, you know,” she said amiably, so as not to
offend anyone else’s opinions or preferences. “They’re
all good for different things. I really like the nine millimeter I
got when I was sixteen ....” She trailed off. There was a long,
horribly awkward silence. A couple of people exchanged meaningful
looks. Here was where Alison would make some brash, inappropriate
joke and everyone couldn’t help but laugh, but Samara had no
such skill. She looked down, embarrassed, and prayed for it to blow
over quickly.

With difficulty, the
conversation finally, slowly got going again. Samara flew through two
more rounds of questions without any trouble, and then came the
question, “What’s the worst thing your sibling ever did
to you?” Samara thought frantically as other people were
telling funny stories. One girl had the whole group in stitches.
Funny, funny .... Alison was funny. She had funny Alison stories. She
just had to pick the right one.

The guy next to her
was telling about a knock-down, drag-out fight with his younger
sister, and that made Samara think of the perfect story. She was
feeling good as her turn to talk arrived--if she could tell a really
good story and make them all laugh, maybe they’d forget about
her faux pas before. Everyone could relate to wacky sister stories,
right?

“
So
my sister gets around, if you know what I’m saying.” This
was going well already; a few people giggled, and one whooped. “And
I ... well, I liked her boyfriend, he was nice, and I hated to see
him duped, so I told him my sister was seeing another boy from
another school, and when Alison found out .... I mean, I thought I
was showing restraint, because actually, there were two other boys!”
People laughed. “Maybe three. And she was so pissed .... She’s
all, ‘I’m gonna salt and burn your bones!’ And she
gets out the salt and she’s throwing it all over me, and then
she gets out the kerosene, and then she seriously busted out the
blowtorch and chased me around the house with it! Dad was mad,
especially because I ... well, my hair was half as long by the time
he got home--she got close enough to singe a couple of times, even
though I’m fast ....” The giggling had kind of died out
as she told her story. She looked around and realized they were back
to staring with horror.

“
She’s
pretty good with a blowtorch she wasn’t really gonna hurt ....”
More meaningful looks were exchanged. “But, I mean, no bones
were broken. She didn’t cut me or anything; I don’t think
she even bruised me.” This attempt to reassure didn’t
help in the slightest. The girl next to her moved farther away. No
one would make eye contact anymore.

When the next
question came around to her, everyone seemed awkward and
uncomfortable, like they didn’t want to have to sit there and
listen to her answer. In fact, they all seemed so uncomfortable, she
took her leave after a few more minutes, and everyone seemed really
relieved.

Samara returned to
her room and flumped onto the bed. That was pretty much every
freshman in her entire dorm she’d managed to alienate just now.
Her only comfort, as she crawled under her coat to sleep in her
clothes on the bare mattress, was thinking of how Alison would be
laughing her ass off right about now at Samara’s misfortune.
“That’s my little sister,” she’d say with
gusto, patting Samara’s shoulder. “You’ve always
been a freak.” That had always been okay with Alison and Dad.

A little over a week
later, she was so homesick and lonely, she finally broke down and
called Alison. She hadn’t before because, you know, it was
Alison. If Alison had wanted to talk to her, had been ready to talk
to her, she’d already have called. Samara was the one who’d
committed the betrayal; she had no right to go asking Alison for
forgiveness or conversation or anything right now. She’d
already texted an apology, which there also had been no response to.
Still, she just couldn’t help herself. She needed to talk to
her sister.

There was no answer.
Samara called again. Same thing. She left a brief message, then gave
up. Alison always had her phone on her. If she didn’t answer
... she must really be pissed.

It didn’t occur
to Samara until she was eating lunch alone in the cafeteria, again,
that Alison might actually never speak to her again. She’d
expected that of their dad, but Alison? Was she really such an
obedient daughter that she might toe Dad’s line to the point of
disowning her own sister? The only other possibility there could be
for her failing to respond was ... she couldn’t let herself
think about that. Anyway, if her phone still had enough charge to
ring on Samara’s end, she must be okay.