Page 24 of Cinderella's Secret Baby

“No, it’s okay. I’ve never told anyone that, but it always makes me laugh when I think of it.” She was smiling through her tears. “That’s what he was trying to do, make me laugh. We’d lost Mom a few months before and he knew I really, really needed her that day.”

“You miss him a lot.”

“I really do.” She picked up her head and cleared the thickness from her throat, swiping one more tissue across her face and resolving she was finished breaking down. “He also put the fear of Jasper into any boy who looked twice at me, mostly because he’d been through a pregnancy scare himself.” She wrinkled her nose. “The girl actually went away with her aunt and only told him after she came back that it was all dealt with. She expected him to be relieved, but he was kind of messed up by it. Her body, her choice. He understood and supported that, but he was really adamant that if I was going to put myself in the position of having to make a choice like that, I should be serious about the guy. Not some random, you know?”

A harsh laugh cut from his throat.

“The irony, right?” She drew a pillow into her lap and hugged it. “When I started seeing Gareth, I explained that I wanted to go slow, that I needed to know we had a future before we had sex. He said he was fine with that, but whenever we fooled around, he was always pushing me to go all the way. He would pout when I made him stop, laying on a guilt trip. Some of that was my fault—”

“None of that was your fault,” Hunter interjected firmly.

She waggled her head. “You’re right. I know you’re right, but I always think I should have seen him more clearly. There were other issues. He was controlling, but in a subtle way so I couldn’t really argue with him. If I did, he would make me feel as though I was being petulant rather than standing up for myself. He wanted to tell me what to wear and who to talk to and what to say.”

“Is that how you feel with me? Because I convinced you to stay here?” He drew his head back as though bracing for an unpleasant answer.

“No.” She gave herself a moment to really consider the question, able to say truthfully, “I’m not thrilled that I feel stuck here, but you talked me into staying with facts, not manipulation. He always made it about him. He would say that if I genuinely loved him, I would want to make him happy. I knew I was putting too much pressure on myself to make my wedding night some big, romantic culmination, but I also didn’t like feeling pressured by him. Even so, I was starting to think about doing it so he would shut up about it.”

“That’s a terrible reason to have sex.”

“I know. Fortunately—I use that word loosely—a fellow student told me she was sleeping with him. She had just found out he and I were in a relationship and she was really sorry she had helped him be unfaithful to me, but she thought I would want to know. I did. I told him to kick rocks and he said it didn’t count as cheating. He said we weren’t really together since we hadn’t consummated our relationship, but also, that’s why he slept with her, because I wouldn’t satisfy him.”

“And you didn’t order a hit? There’s an app for that.” Hunter curled his lip in disgust.

“Under self-help, I know. I made an account, but didn’t go through with it.”

“Ha,” he barked. “At least you can laugh about it.”

He eyed her with something like admiration, making her tingle.

“I did at first, yes.” She brought her knees up and hugged them, resting her chin on top. “Then he spread rumors that I was frigid and uptight and whatever.”

“What a piece of work. What’s his name again? His Wi-Fi is going to become very spotty.”

“Appreciated.”

“Was it limited to campus, that gossip? Or online harassment, too?”

“Mostly on campus and it was embarrassing, but it wasn’t untrue. Mostly. It meant that only two kinds of men approached me after that. The ones who thought I was a challenge—I’d been there, done that and no thank you to the headache. The other types were also waiting for their wedding night. They were nice, but I never met anyone who intrigued me enough to consider marrying him purely to find out what all the fuss was about.”

Hunter had the one brow down again as he tried to make sense of all she had said and, perhaps, the things that she hadn’t.

“Then I met you and you made me want to know what the fuss was about.” She lifted a defensive shoulder. “You were open about it being only one night, which was refreshing honesty. I didn’t know when I would meet someone else who made me feel like that, so I let it happen. And even though we ended on a sour note...”

His somber gaze reiterated that it had been a misunderstanding, not a payoff.

“I didn’t regret it. I kind of thought, at least I had that one happy memory before we lost Jasper. Then I gotpregnant, which made me feel like a world-classidiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. From what I’ve been told, sex is the leading cause of pregnancy. We both took the risk, and here we are. You still could have told me it was your first time, though.”

“Then I would have had to tell you all of that and we only had the one night, Hunter. I wanted to get to the good part.”

“Oh.” He smirked. “Same.” He studied her, expression sobering. “Was it good? Worth the wait?”

She was dying, curled up as small as she could get, holding in not just self-consciousness, but that odd mix of excitement and sweetness and joy and unfettered lust that had exploded between them. It had been a good memory, one she had clung to through a lot of bad. One that made her daughter a precious gift.

“How would I know?” she asked wryly. “I had nothing to compare it to. You tell me.” A hard, stinging blush heated her cheeks. Yes, she was fishing for a compliment. Some sign that it had meant something to him.

“I thought you were amazing,” he said, voice pitched one note lower than usual. Shadows of conflict chased across his expression.

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