Page 6 of Plea
After Asia was done, I paid the check and we headed out. The ride to Walgreens was silent. A part of me wanted to be there for her, but I couldn’t help but think about my own feelings too. This wasn’t how I saw my family starting, or who I saw myself having a baby with. We used a condom every time, and even though I knew they weren’t 100 percent effective, I was still shocked that there was even a chance she was pregnant. The only other time I had a baby scare was in high school when I first started fucking, and I thanked God for months after the tests came back negative.
We ended up getting three different tests from three different brands before going back to her apartment. I assured her that I was here for her and the baby if she was pregnant, and that assurance didn’t seem to be enough to lift her spirits. Still, she took the tests, then joined me in the bedroom.
“Are you upset?” she asked quietly.
“That you might be pregnant? No. That you’ve been suffering through this alone? Absolutely.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. You’ve been asking what’s up with me constantly but I just… couldn’t pull myself to tell you the truth. Things were going so well between us, and I didn’t want me getting pregnant to mess that up.”
“Why would that be the case? What have I said or done to make you believe I was that kind of man?”
“Nothing,” she muttered, avoiding my eyes. “It wasn’t you really. It was me. Like I said, I don’t want a baby right now. I guess I didn’t want that to make you look at me differently.”
Taking her hand into mine, I kissed it. “You sharing your truth with me will never make me look at you differently. The more transparent you are with me, the better I’ll be able to help you. I know you don’t want a baby right now, but if you are pregnant, we have to do what we have to do. Hopefully you’ll have confidence in knowing you went half on a baby with a solid ass man that won’t let you go through this alone. This baby won’t change any of the plans you have for yourself, Asia. I can promise you that. Even if I have to have full custody. Everything you wanted to do, I promise, you’ll still be able to do.”
Her tears fell again, but this time, she smiled. Asia wrapped her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. “Thank you, baby. I—thank you.”
“Always. I got you no matter what.”
I held her until her alarm went off, then we went into the bathroom to look at the tests. All three were positive. As scaredas she was, seeing the positive confirmation seemed to shift something inside of her. She squealed before jumping into my arms. The reaction caught me so off guard it took me a second to process it.
“Oh my God, Carson. We’re going to have a baby.”
My brows wrinkled as I swayed and held her close.
“Yeah,” I mumbled before releasing a low laugh. “We’re… going to have a baby.”
I certainly didn’t feel how I thought I would, but I meant what I’d said. Neither she nor our baby would want for anything, and I was going to make sure my baby had all the love and opportunities in the world. This may not have been planned or with the woman I would have chosen, but I knew the risks every time I made my way between a woman’s legs. Asia was cool and we were having a good time, but I wouldn’t lie and say I would have proposed to her and intentionally gotten her pregnant one day. I never fucked her raw, or any other woman for that matter. When she told me she wasn’t on birth control, I should have pulled out even with me wearing a condom.
Either way, we were going to have a baby, whether we wanted to or not. The longer I held her, the more it felt like her sadness was being transferred into me. As a man, I’d carry that load, but I hoped it would leave me before our baby was born.
Chapter
Five
Venus
I lookedover Kara’s schedule for tomorrow. She’d called me from the hospital a couple of hours ago letting me know she wouldn’t be able to come to work for the rest of the week. Usually when one of my stylists called out, I handled their clients. The only people I serviced regularly were my sisters and mom. Since she was a braider, her schedule was a bit busier than I wanted to handle alone, so I’d texted my team to see if anyone was available to handle her stitch and lemonade braid clients while I handled the knotless braids and island twists.
My doorbell rang, and since I wasn’t expecting anyone, I didn’t get up immediately. It was obviously someone I knew, or else the doorman wouldn’t have let them up. My eyes rolled at the thought of it being Trevor. I turned his notifications back on last night after what happened earlier that day at lunch and saw that he’d texted me and told me to reach out to him when I was done acting like a baby. If this was him at the door of my penthouse apartment, I could only hope it meant he was readyto acknowledge the fact that he was the one in the wrong and not me.
In no rush to let him or whoever it was in, I closed my laptop, slipped into my robe, then headed toward the door. My gaze shifted toward the floor to ceiling windows, where I had an amazing view of the city. Rose Valley Hills was built a little like Chicago. We had the Mississippi River, a beautiful beach, and a lengthy manmade lake. My apartment complex overlooked the office district and river. I believed it was the second best view in the city outside of the beach. I considered moving there, but I would have ended up paying twice the amount for a condo or apartment near the beach, and ten thousand dollars a month for my current living space was more than enough.
After looking in the peephole, I sighed at the sight of Trevor. He was such an attractive man, but sometimes the shit he said and did truly made him ugly to me. I opened the door, and as much as I didn’t want to, the sight of his smile made me smile.
“What do you want, Trevor?”
“You.”
He stepped into my apartment, dropping a kiss on my forehead in the process. As he squeezed my ass, I pushed his hand away. If he thought sex was going to magically erase the tension between us, he had another thing coming. One could say I had a type. Trevor was it. He was tall, wide, and had medium brown skin. Tattoos littered his neck and arms. His square face was chiseled as if God Himself took His time sculpting it. He had dark under turned eyes, thick and juicy dark lips, and a mustache-goatee combo that constantly drew my attention to them. Trevor Bowens looked good as fuck, and he acted like he knew it.
After locking the door, I went to my bedroom and grabbed my phone to see if anyone had texted back about Kara’s clientsyet. When I was done, I went to the living room, where Trevor had made himself comfortable.
“How long is it going to take you to get dressed?” he asked.
“For what?”
“I’m going to take you out.”
