Page 35 of The Virgin's Baby
Hell, I didn’t even deserve to have a baby.
But all that didn’t make me want any of it any less. I wanted to make my grandfather proud. I wanted him to see that I would be okay without him. I wanted him to get to leave this Earth knowing I was making roots for myself.
And not in a selfish way either.
I’d been going about things all wrong. I’d been doing the thing I usually did: just getting by.
Is that what I really wanted to show my kid? That it was okay to do the bare minimum?
That was all I had ever done. And here I was giving what would hopefully one day be my child the bare minimum.
I gave myself one hard slap as I looked into the mirror again. “Time to grow the fuck up, Ransom Whitaker. Time to do what’s right.”
But even as I looked into that mirror and saw a grown-ass man looking back at me, I still didn’t know exactly what the right thing to do was.
And I didn’t know what Aspen Dell wanted to do either.
Chapter Sixteen
Aspen
Lubbock, Texas – May 31st
Sitting in a café with Margo, I felt a bit more like myself for the first time since I’d moved into the Whitaker estate. “It’s good to see you, Margo. I’ve really needed this.”
She picked up her cup of steaming hot coffee then blew across the surface. “So, tell me all about it.”
I wasn’t entirely sure if I should tell her about my substantial secret virginity thingy, but Ransom and I had such a lengthy discussion about it that I felt I needed to talk to someone about it.
Chewing my lip nervously, I went for it, “I’m a virgin.”
She laughed. “I suspected that.” She took a sip of the coffee. “Yuck. Needs more sugar.”
I passed the sugar shaker to her then went on, “Well, Ransom didn’t. And neither did the doctor. It all came out during the most embarrassing examination in history. I’ll leave that horror story for another time.”
“Let me guess how he took it,” Margo wiggled her eyebrows at me. “He’s been at you like a dog in heat, right?”
I shook my head. “Wrong. I kind of thought that might happen, but that’s not what happened at all. He actually told me he was very sorry for not asking me more questions before we got as deep as we have into this thing. He said that he needs to work on himself. He’s been selfish and knows he needs to change. He’s actually been spending lots of time with his grandfather.”
“And have you met that man?” she asked.
I picked up my cup of water as I wasn’t allowed to consume caffeine, per the doctor’s orders. “I have. He’s very stoic. I’m sure he was a hard man when he was younger. Ransom has shown me pictures of his grandfather when he was in good health. He was handsome. He lost his wife when she was only thirty-five to dengue fever. She caught it when he took her on vacation to Hawaii. He never married again.”
“And his grandfather is cool with all this?” she asked. “Even the…you being a virgin thing?”
My face heated as I blushed. “He doesn’t know about that. Ransom nor I think he needs to know about that.”
“So, how do you feel about having a baby while you’re still a virgin?” She put the cup of coffee on the table to give me her full attention.
It was a little odd talking to her about it, but I felt like I needed to become more vocal. “I don’t know. Honestly, I’ve been kind of feeling lost lately. I don’t know if it’s the hormone injections or what. But I haven’t felt the same.”
“I’m sure it’s the shots. How can it not be the shots?” She looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know how you’re doing this. I honestly don’t. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I don’t think you should do this just for the money, Aspen. I think there should be more. Like love and stuff. This is too shallow. I don’t like it for you.”
Somewhere deep inside of myself, I knew she was right. And I didn’t know how to explain things to her. “I think there are forces at work here that I don’t quite understand yet. But I think I am supposed to do this. I really do.”
“And I think you’re really desperate for money, and it’s making you think there are forces at work.” She picked up the coffee cup, taking a sip. “Be honest with me. How does Ransom treat you?”
I had to think about how to answer that question in a way that didn’t seem bad, not that I felt that he treated me poorly. I just wanted more from him than he wanted to give me. “Okay, here it is in a nutshell. I want that man more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I dream about him. I think about him all the time. I want to carry his baby. I want to see that little version of us in our home.”
