He always kept it on hand for me.
He knew it was my favorite.
There was never a time when I didn’t walk into his home and find a jug of it waiting for me.
Just like when he flew to Miami, I’d always let him in my home. He’d always be able to find his root beer stocked and ready for him, even though I despised the taste and smell myself.
I took a healthy swig of my Sunny D, then focused wholly on him.
“I’m pregnant.”
Boone, the asshole man who had such a strong hold on me that it was hard to breathe sometimes, stared at me in shock.
“Um, what?”
This felt like a repeat of the first time I’d told him I was pregnant.
Though, this time would go differently.
This baby would make it.
I would make sure of it.
And the awful, no-good, very bad, I’d rather die than let you date my son woman that was to be a grandmother wouldn’t be able to stop it.
She couldn’t pay off a high school girl to kick me so hard that it would send me to the hospital.
And she couldn’t pay off her doctor friends to accidentally give me a drug that would cause me to miscarry.
I didn’t have proof that she’d done it.
I just knew in my heart that she had.
I’d gone to the doctor as a precaution after being kicked in the stomach that hard.
When I’d gotten there, a woman had come in and smiled at me and told me everything would be all right.
I’d seen my baby’s heartbeat on the screen.
I’d gone home that night with medication that was supposed to help me sleep from a nurse who had looked at me like she was dissecting me and finding me lacking.
But it hadn’t helped me sleep.
It’d caused me to miscarry.
I’d miscarried our baby in the bathroom of the apartment with my sister holding onto me while I sobbed.
And when I’d told Boone what I suspected, he hadn’t believed that his mother would do anything like that.
When I’d given him an ultimatum, her or me, he’d hesitated.
And that was all that I’d needed to know.
He’d choose me. I knew he’d choose me. But his mother would forever be a problem. She’d always be at the back of his mind, riding him hard just like she did in real life.
Though I loved Boone Windsor with my whole heart and soul—and would forever—I wouldn’t ever get his mother out of my life if I stayed.
Every time we broke up, I promised that I wouldn’t go back.
