“Eddie?” I sigh. I was wondering when he was going to ask. “It’s… complicated.”
He places a hand on my thigh under the table, the heat of his palm seeping through my jeans. “I’m pretty smart. I think I can keep up.”
I blow out a breath. “I’m not really sure where to start.”
“The beginning is usually a good place.”
I roll my eyes but find myself telling him anyway. “Eddie was a counselor at my summer camp when I was sixteen.” I smile, thinking about the crush I had on him the year before. Innocent, naive. The smile slips off my face.
“He was older, you know? It was silly.” I trace patterns on the tablecloth with my finger. “When I showed up that summer, he was just…always there. Smiling, telling me how pretty I was. A week into camp, I was hooked. Thought I was in loooove. Pretty stupid, right?” I pause, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Anyway, one night he invited me into his cabin, and one thing led to another?—”
“Wait.” Dread looks down at me, his brow furrowed. “How old was he?”
“Twenty-five.”
His brows shoot up. “And you were sixteen?”
“Yep.” I pop the P.
He blows out a breath. “Baby, that’s fucked up.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, his jaw tightening.
Our waitress returns with our drinks and a basket of bread. “Are you ready to order?”
“Give us a minute,” Dread says, not taking his eyes off me.
When she walks away, he squeezes my knee gently. “What happened with you two?”
“I ended up pregnant with Tommy.” I shrug, taking a sip of the wine, savoring the rich flavor on my tongue. “My parents found out, and they threw me out of the house.”
“Damn.” Dread rubs his hand up and down my knee, the motion soothing.
I smile despite the sadness of it all. “I’ll never regret having my son. The timing was way off, but that’s life. It throws you curveballs. You can either stand there and strike out or swing and hope for the best. And my boy is one of the best things in my life. Both my boys are.”
“Where’d you go when your parents threw you out?” His voice is soft, like he genuinely cares about what I went through.
“My cousin had just moved into a duplex on Freeport Street. She took me in.”
He kisses the top of my head, the gesture so sweet it makes my chest ache. “That’s tough, baby.”
“But wait. There’s more.”
He chuckles, probably thinking it can’t possibly get any worse. It really does.
“No, seriously. There’s more.” I take another sip of wine for courage. “He got me drunk on my eighteenth birthday and…”
“No!? Jackson?”
“Yep. That’s how Jackson was conceived.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. As an adult now, I realize how very wrong it all was. How illegal it was when I was only sixteen.
Dread’s arm tightens around me. “Pisses me off that fuckhead took advantage of you, but you got your boys out of it, and they’re great.”
I look up at him, touched by his words. “They are pretty great, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, baby.” He kisses my lips softly. “They are.”
