This was untenable.
It was unimaginable.
“I can raise the child by myself. But if I do that, you can’t be involved at all. You can’t claim them. You can’t… There is no middle ground when it comes to this baby, Romeo. There can’t be.”
He stared at her, and he couldn’t even begin to describe the feeling that was flooding him. The intense possessiveness, the anger. “I would never deny my own child.”
His own distance from his father echoed inside of him now. The sense of rejection. He would never, ever consign a child to such a feeling. What a horrendous thought. What an evil thing to suggest.
“You know how we are,” she said. Her teeth were chattering now, and she looked sick. “We spent years living to hurt each other. When we are left to our own devices the choices we make are poor. There have to be…protections. Rules. If you want to be in this child’s life, we have to get married.”
“You dare come in here and make demands of me? Prove correct the thing I thought about you all those years ago? You were trying to get me to impregnate you then, weren’t you? I always suspected it.”
“No,” she said, vehemently. “And I don’t need you to. I was left just as much as you. This has nothing to do with trying to get anything, but it has everything to do with being the child that was always on the outside. Think about it. This child would never truly belong if we didn’t get married. I would marry someone else, give the child some siblings, and they would only be half of that family. You would do the same. Who would that child belong to? And what would happen to them? I know what it’s like. I loved your father so much, Romeo, and you never accepted me. You made me feel like I was an outsider all of my life, and I will not allow it.”
“Why do you think you’re in a position to allow anything? One way or the other. Why do you think—”
“If you don’t agree, then I will fight you with all of my resources, and I will paint a picture of you that isn’t flattering at all.”
“And what will that do to our child?”
“You have choices, Romeo, you just don’t like them.”
“What will a marriage look like between the two of us? We can’t even be in the same room without wanting to kill each other.”
“I know. It’s terrible. An awful situation and a terrible idea. But from where I’m sitting we don’t have another choice. We need to do what we must for this child.”
“So for eighteen years you expect us to live in a prison cell with one another?”
The truth was, he would’ve demanded marriage. He would have. Because he would not allow any child of his to be born and stigmatized the way that she was. He had been part of that stigma. He knew it. He couldn’t deny it. And he had seen how cruel the other children could be. Even when she had been the stepdaughter, they had whispered behind her back. She had friends, plenty of them.
But…
The trouble was, she was scratching the surface of the deep truth.
A child who was the product of a union between stepsiblings who had a reputation for long hating each other was going to face extreme ostracization. And it would be only their fault. They would’ve created the situation. And so it was up to them to mitigate the damage. He had already lived thirteen years of hell where Heather was concerned. What were eighteen more years of it?
It nearly made him laugh. They both thought that they were going to be free.
And yet, when had he ever been free? He had been thinking about her constantly since that moment. He had been obsessed with her.
For so much longer even than the last month and a half.
“We will have to construct a narrative,” he said. “One of romance.”
“Why?”
“You’re thinking about our child, and that I find admirable. In some ways. But what you’re forgetting is the fact that you and I have a reputation for hating each other. It is well known. Particularly in the circles that I’m in. Not unknown in yours. If you want to nip gossip in the bud, then it must… There must be a story. It can’t be that we hate-fucked on the dining room table.”
Her face turned red, and he felt his own body go warm in response to mentioning what had happened between them.
“I guess. I guess you’re right. And what will our marriage look like?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and nothing pained him more than admitting that he didn’t have an instant, immediate plan. It was infuriating, in fact, but there was no roadmap for this. He was a man who was accustomed to control, but with her, he was always out of it.
With her, everything was always near destruction.
“We will have to draw up paperwork. Very clearly defined paperwork.”
