Too Late by Colleen Hoover
She lifts her head, shaking it, looking up at me. "You don't need this stress. You're doing everything you can to keep us safe and now I've gone and made it even worse." She pulls away from me and picks up the damn spoon and starts stirring again. "I'm not going to put you through this," she says. "I'm not going to make you watch me carry a baby that you don't even know is yours or not. It isn't fair to you." She sets the spoon down and grabs a napkin, dabbing it beneath her eyes. She turns and looks at me, her face full of shame. "I'm sorry. I can..." She swallows like the next words are too hard for her to get out. "I can call tomorrow and see what I need to do to get it...to get an abortion."
I just stare at her, letting all of that soak in.
She's apologizing to me?
She thinks I'm the one who will be stressed by this?
I take a step forward and slide my hands through her hair, lifting her gaze to mine. Another tear begins to roll down her cheek, so I wipe it away with my thumb. "If there was a way we could find out this baby was mine, would you want to keep it?"
She winces, and then shrugs. And then she nods. "Of course I would, Luke. The timing is shit, but that's not the baby's fault."
As much as I want to wrap my arms around her in this second, I continue to hold her face in my hands. "And if you knew right now for a fact that this baby is Asa's, would you want to keep it?"
She doesn't respond for a moment. But then she shakes her head. "I wouldn't do that to you, Luke. It wouldn't be fair to you."
"I'm not asking about me," I say, my voice firm. "I'm asking you. If you knew this was Asa's baby, would you want to keep it?"
Another tear falls and I let it roll down her cheek. "It's a baby, Luke," she says quietly. "It's an innocent baby. But like I said, I wouldn't do that to you."
I pull her to me and I kiss the side of her head and hold her there a moment. When I find the words I want to say to her, I pull back and force her to look at me again. "I'm in love with you, Sloan. Madly in love with you. And this baby growing inside of you is half you. Do you know how lucky I would feel if you allowed me to love something that was a part of you?" I lower my palm to her stomach and rest it there. "This baby is mine, Sloan. It's yours. It's ours. And if your decision is to raise this baby, then I'm going to be the best damn father that ever walked the earth. I promise."
She immediately brings her hands to her face and begins crying. She cries harder than I've ever seen her cry. I pick her up and I take her to our bedroom where I lay her on the bed again. I pull her to me and I wait for her tears to subside. After several minutes, the room is quiet again.
She's now lying with her head against my chest, her arm wrapped around me. "Luke?" She lifts her head and looks at me. "You're the best kind of human there is. And I love you so, so much."
I kiss her. Twice. And then I lower my face to her stomach and I lift her shirt and I kiss her skin. And I smile, because she's giving me something I never even knew I wanted. And as much as I can hope this baby is mine and not Asa's for Sloan's sake, it truly doesn't matter. It won't matter because this baby is part of the one person I love more than anything else. How lucky am I?
I sidle up to her side again and kiss her cheek. She's not crying anymore. I brush the hair back from her forehead. "Sloan? Did you know that concrete pillars dissolve into donuts every time a clock falls off a turtle's head?"
She laughs, hard, and her smile is huge. "Well, a victory isn't a victory if the empty room fills with dirty socks when the Christmas fruitcake is stale."
Our baby is going to have the strangest two parents in the whole world.
I'm not sure if I inherited my intelligence from my mother or my father, because if you ask me, they're both a couple of ignorant fucks who somehow managed to only get one thing right during their combined years on this earth: My conception.
I didn't know my grandparents, but sometimes I like to imagine my paternal grandfather, rest his soul, was a lot like me. They say things skip generations, so I probably looked a lot like him. I probably act a lot like he did. And like me, he's probably disappointed as fuck that his son--my father--turned out to be such a fucking twat.
He's more than likely proud of me, though, and he's probably one of the few humans, dead or alive, who appreciate what a goddamn fucking genius I am.
Let me explain.
Ankle monitors. They're impossible to beat. You cut them, you get caught immediately. The fiber optic sensors inside of them will send an immediate signal as soon as they're tampered with and the police will show up at your door within seconds.
You can't just let the battery die, or the police will be notified. You can't possibly slip them off your foot because feet don't bend the way wrists do, and God didn't take ankle monitors into consideration when he designed the human skeleton, the fucking selfish bastard. You can't leave the perimeter of where you're confined to or the police will be notified. Hell, you can't even get drunk. Most ankle monitors come with sensors that periodically test alcohol levels in your skin. Not that I'm upset by that. I was never one to need alcohol. I just enjoy it, but I can do without.
Unless you're a tech geek with more knowledge than the tech geeks who invented the motherfucking ankle monitor, there's absolutely, without a doubt, no way to get around them without the police immediately being on your tail.
Which sucks, because knowing Luke, he's set it up so that he'll be notified as soon as my monitor indicates I've left my house or that the monitor has been tampered with in any way. There's no way I could make it from here to their place without them being given plenty of advance warning. And yes, I could send someone to their apartment to do my work for me, but where's the fun in that? Where's the fun in watching a bullet stop Luke's heart when I'm not standing in front of him, smelling the gunpowder? Where's the fun in making Sloan realize what a pathetic life choice she's made when I'm not the one tasting her tears when she cries for mercy?
It's a good thing I'm a big planner. I plan everything. I look at all possible scenarios and I develop ways around them before the events even occur. Because I'm a motherfucking genius. Just like good ol' grandpa.
I remember when I was a kid, there was a moment I thought I was going to die. I had slipped into my mother's bedroom and had stolen some pills from her. Fuck, I was so little I couldn't even read yet. I had no idea what I was taking, I just knew I wanted to feel whatever she felt. I wanted to chase whatever feeling it was that she loved more than her own child.
I woke up a few hours after I had taken them and my ankles looked like fucking baseballs. Both my legs were swollen. Back then I thought it was because I was dying and all my blood was pooling in my feet. But now I know it was because of the medication. Anti-depressants, pain pills, calcium channel blockers. They all cause severe edema, which was what I was experiencing as a kid. I just didn't realize it then.
A few months ago, Pansy Paul told me there was a chance I might get house arrest while we waited for the trial. Most defendants in my situation would be offered some sort of bail so they could walk around free, but with my record, he was almost certain I'd be confined to my house until a verdict was reached at trial. That's one of the few things I'm grateful to Pansy Paul for. The forewarning. It gave me a good solid week to obtain and consume as many fucking pills I could to guarantee a good couple of inches on each ankle. Wasn't hard to do since I was already in a hospital, thanks to those two fuckers who thought it'd be a good idea to actually fucking shoot me. Pricks.
Since the ankle monitor was attached, I've had to keep up with the medications just so the follow-up visits from the probation officer wouldn't raise any red flags. Stupid fucker has never even thought twice about the fact that my ankles and calves are the size of tree trunks. His name is Stewart. Who in real life is really named Stewart? Stewart thinks I'm just "big boned." I rejoice in his stupidity with every visit. I also kind of like the guy, because he feels bad for me. He thinks I'm a good guy because I laugh at his lame jokes and I talk to him about Jesus. S
It's a lie, of course. I doubt my grandpa ever even stepped foot inside a church. And if he really did own a crucifix, he probably used it to beat people with.
Stewart liked it, though. Said he has one almost identical to it, but it's not quite as big. He also checked my ankle monitor and told me everything looked great and that he'd see me in a week. I gave him a slice of coconut cake before he left.
Now I'm standing here, staring down at the bottle of hydrochlorothiazide in my hands. I have to be smart with it, because taking too much could drop my blood pressure like a motherfucker. But I need to take enough to get rid of the edema. Enough to create a large enough gap between me and my ankle monitor so that I can slip it off and onto Anthony's wrist.
That's where the genius comes in. If a person could actually slip an ankle monitor off without tampering with the fiber optics, the chances of it picking that up are slim to none. Ankle monitors are monitored periodically throughout the day. Set up on timers and shit. So the switch from my foot to Anthony's wrist will go completely unnoticed, so long as the actual piece of equipment isn't tampered with. They thought ankle monitors were foolproof because they don't slip off the ankles of people of average intelligence.
It's the geniuses like me they should have been more concerned with. Now I just have to be able to trust Anthony enough not to leave my fucking house or drink any alcohol until I tell him it's done. Then I'll put the ankle monitor back on my ankle and it'll look like I never left my house.
In the meantime, I still have more planning to do. I open the bottle and pop four of the pills. I open my laptop and begin searching obstetricians while I place phone calls for two hours straight. By the time I finally figure out which obstetrician Sloan is seeing, I've already pissed four times. The ankle monitor is already starting to feel loose. I was thinking this would take a few days, but I think this can actually happen as soon as tomorrow morning.
The person who answers the phone puts me on hold while she searches the file for what I'm assuming is a confidentiality agreement. HIPPA compliance and all that shit.
"Sir?" she asks to see if I'm still on the line.
"Here," I tell her.
"What did you say your name was?"
"Luke," I tell her. "I'm the father."
Ha! I laugh internally at all the Star Wars jokes that poor fucker must have endured in his lifetime.
"Can you confirm your address and date of birth?" she asks.
I confirm both of them. Because I know both of them. Because I'm a genius. Once my "identity" is confirmed, she says, "And what is it you were wanting to know?"
"The due date. I'm having a video made for our family to announce the pregnancy and I don't want to ask Sloan, because she'll get mad that I forgot the exact due date. So I'm hoping you can just share that information with me to keep me out of the doghouse."
The woman laughs. She likes that I'm such a loving and caring man, excited about the birth of my child. "Looks like the conception occurred in March. Due date is...Christmas Day! Not sure how you could forget that, Dad," she says with a laugh.
I laugh, too. "That's right. Christmas Day. Our very own little miracle. Thanks for checking."
"No problem!"
I hang up the phone and look at a calendar. Sloan was still living with me in March.
Luke was around in March. A whole fucking lot.
I'm not sure when the brainwashing started, or when she gave herself to him. My whole body stiffens at the thought. I can't believe he fucked her. My Sloan.
I can't believe she let him. I have no idea if they even used a condom. I know for a fact the fucker didn't use one when he decided to take her right in front...
Not going there.
I will not allow those visions to repeat in my head. The worst fucking moment of my life. I keep telling myself it was a nightmare, that everything I saw--the words that came out of her mouth, the noises they made--it was a nightmare. I had been shot four fucking times, I lost a lot of blood. It could not have been real. There's no way that bitch stood in front of me and allowed another man to stick his...
Not. Going. There.
I stand up, filled with renewed rage. I pick the chair up I was just sitting in and I throw it across the room, watching it smash against the door. I sprint across the living room and pull the fucking crucifix off the wall. I bash it against the TV, cracking the screen.
That feels good. Sloan was with me when I bought that TV. It feels good to fucking smash it. I look for something else to smash. A mirror. I run toward it and slam the crucifix against it three times until all the glass is shattered on the floor.
Fucking bitch. I can't believe she had the nerve to do that right in front of me.
I take my crucifix down the hallway to the bathroom. I stare at myself in the mirror, wondering if that baby inside her is mine. Just knowing there's a chance it could come out looking like Luke makes me fucking hate it. Knowing it was inside her when he fucked her right in front of me makes me fucking hate it.
I swing the crucifix at the mirror and smash it over and over.
Fucking bitch.
I walk upstairs and do the same to that mirror.
I don't even want this fucking baby. It's been inside her since March, and there's no telling how many times Luke has been inside her since then. Even if it is my baby, he's already tainted it. Pretty sure fetuses have ears, and every time Luke speaks out loud in the vicinity of Sloan, that baby probably thinks Luke's fucking disgusting voice is its father.
When Sloan grows my baby inside her, Luke won't fucking be around to corrupt my child.
I walk through every room, finding more things my tiny Jesus-on-a-stick can destroy. Lamps? Done. Vases? Smashed. Jesus-on-a-stick is on a rampage.
Fucking bitch.
Fucking baby.
Fucking Luke.
Every fucking nice thing I've ever had in my life has been destroyed by that man. My empire. The love of my life. My potential child. Everything that's ever meant anything to me now means absolutely nothing to me because of him.
When I make it back to the kitchen, I open the bottle and swallow another pill. The sooner I'm able to get this ankle monitor off, the sooner I can destroy what he's slowly corrupting.
I'll be a dad when I'm goddamn ready to be a dad, and it'll be to a child who isn't a single goddamn part of that pathetic piece of shit.
This thing growing inside Sloan right now wasn't made from love. Even if it's mine, it wasn't created innocently. She was allowing another man to corrupt her while I was making love to her at night. If I'd have known that, my dick would have never been inside her. I would have ended her before she went and made all the stupid decisions she's made. She wouldn't have had a fucking viable womb capable of creating life if I'd known what she was doing behind my back.
Now I just need to put a stop to it. I look at the screensaver on my laptop. It's a screenshot of the moment she put her hands on her belly and smiled down at that fucking abomination. I pull a new chair around and I sit down and change my screensaver. I find a picture of Sloan from back when she was sweet. I make it my screensaver and I stare at it, wondering how she let this happen. How does she still have the audacity to smile when the whore doesn't even know whose baby is inside her?
"Fucking whore." I look down at the crucifix in my hand. "Jesus-on-a-stick, do you want to go on a little road trip with me tomorrow? I know a girl who has some serious repenting to do."
In the last two weeks, I've cooked and photographed twenty-seven meals. Maybe it's because I'm trying to keep my mind off the fact that I can't leave my apartment,
When I'm not thinking about the pregnancy, of course. Which is every other moment.
I don't know what I'd do without Luke. Part of me thinks he's too good to be true. That men like him don't really exist and that this is all some sort of wishful thinking on my part. I live in constant fear that he was only brought into my life so I would have to endure the pain of him being taken out of it. I hate those thoughts and I try not to think them, but I do. Constantly. I fear losing him more than I fear death.
But every afternoon when Luke comes home and wraps me in his arms and asks how "we're" doing, it completely reinforces his claim that this baby is his. No matter who is biologically responsible for the conception, Luke loves it, simply because it's inside me. That's enough for him. And somehow, he makes me think it's enough for me. When I'm actually in Luke's presence, I feel a sense of self-worth. I feel all the things that Asa stripped from me.
I don't know if I'm as good at forgiveness as Luke seems to be. He didn't even make me feel ashamed, not even for a second. And he continues to remind me of how lucky he is, even though I know it's the other way around. He always redirects my thoughts when I start to worry about Asa finding out about the pregnancy, or when I worry about the upcoming trial. But when he's not here, like right now, the only thing that can redirect my thoughts is this cookbook.
I'm making lasagna tonight. I'm not sticking to a certain type of food, like specifically Italian or Asian. I'm including all of my favorite foods. I'm even including some of Asa's favorites, like his damn coconut cake. I like that his favorite recipes are going in a cookbook that goes against everything he is as a person. It feels a little like revenge. For every two dollars this cookbook makes, it's a dollar that helps women who have suffered at the hands of men like Asa.
So yes, I'm including his stupid fucking coconut cake and his stupid spaghetti and meatballs and even his stupid protein shake that he used to wake me up at the butt-crack of dawn to make for him. As much as I hate all the times he demanded I cook for him, at least some good will come of it. This whole cookbook is like a huge middle finger to Asa Jackson.