"What about when we have our child? Are you going to put up pictures of him or her?"
I was pushing her out of her comfort zone. I could see it written all over her face. "I don't know. I guess. I haven't really had the chance to think about it. This is all still really new to me."
It was new to me as well, but they were the things I was thinking about.
"You never thought about having kids before?"
Jo shook her head, and then she nodded ever so slightly.
"Is that a yes or no?"
With a heavy sigh, Jo started to explain, "I thought about them once but never again. I swore that would never be in my future."
"What happened?"
I didn't expect her to answer, but Jo surprised me. "Freshman year of college happened."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jo
I hated talking about this because I was young and naive when it happened, and I swore I would never be that girl again. But if I had any hope of making Maverick understand why a relationship wasn't in the cards for me, then I needed to explain.
"What happened your freshman year?"
"Preston Barrett's what happened."
"You're going to have to give me more than that."
Of course I was going to, but I didn't have to like doing it.
"Preston Barrett was my boyfriend my freshman year. I guess boyfriend was a loose term, considering I didn't know until later on that he had a different girl for every day of the week. I fancied myself in love and was planning our future together."
Okay, maybe not that many but it sure felt like it.
"So he broke your heart."
"Obliterated it is more like it. I gave the man my virginity, and in return he called me an easy whore who spread her legs too quickly. That any guy with half a brain could fuck me because I was in desperate need of attention."
I could still hear his words like it was yesterday. I swore that day that no man would ever have the same control over me again. And they hadn't because I never screwed a man more than once until I met Maverick.
"Is that why you have so many rules before you have sex with someone?"
"That's exactly why. I needed to make sure no man could ever hurt me again. It was hard to do, so I refused to learn their name or let them have anything besides my body."
"You took control of your destiny."
"Damn right, I did. If men can screw around, then so can a woman. I'm no different from any man who randomly picks up a woman at a bar. Men just look at me differently because women aren't supposed to be that way according to them."
"So why was I different?"
I gave him an exasperated look and threw my hands in the air. "I have no idea. I've always chalked it up to amazing sex and nothing more. I figured if I didn't think about it too hard, it wouldn't matter because at the end of the day, I walked away."
Now I couldn't walk away because for the rest of my life I was going to be tied to him due to the baby I was carrying.
"Well, I'm glad to know you enjoy the sex."
Maverick gave me a cocky smirk, and I was tempted to kick him in the shin. It was a childish response, but I wasn't feeling very mature at the moment.
