Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,63

the words he couldn’t refute. “Except you loved me before you hurt me.”

• • •

I watched him leave. Forced him to leave with the promise that I’d consider everything he had said, because I needed to think and I didn’t want to tell him the one thing that would make him refuse to go. Didn’t tell him that I was pregnant, just as I hadn’t told anyone else yet.

But I was twenty-one and I wasn’t certain what I wanted to do about the situation. If anyone had asked me how I felt about terminating a pregnancy just a few months ago, when I was in college, I would have said it’s a viable option if the situation would ruin the mother’s life. Except, I’m the one who ruined everything. Not this … nascent life, which was causing small changes in my body that made denial, at least to myself, impossible anymore. I wasn’t a child and helpless. Yes, there would be sacrifices but …

It was part him. Part reminder of something so precious, even if it had hurt. This decision was not purely logical. Because I did love him, and I knew he loved me. In a way that obliterates everything else.

But even if I did keep it, that didn’t mean I should be with Daniel. And as I had told him, I needed to think, away from him, away from his overwhelming presence and the way it managed to obliterate my ability to think. Regardless, if I kept this child, I’d have to tell him.

Eight weeks had passed since that night on the beach in the Hamptons. The one night we hadn’t been safe. I’d have to make my decisions soon.

Chapter 20

In the first week of October I was still pregnant. Only now, it wasn’t just my secret. Leanna knew and my mother knew. I still wasn’t talking to my father, and I hadn’t decided what to do about Daniel, even though my mom was adamant that waiting longer wouldn’t make anything easier. And with each day that passed, it was entirely possible that he would feel differently about me.

I knew she was right but I felt everything so intensely. How could such a brief relationship hurt three months after its end? There should be some rule of breakups, that the pain is equal to or lesser than the length of the relationship.

That Wednesday, late in the morning, I walked down the path to the studio. I’d been sleeping in a lot the last few weeks, and according to my mother and the doctor that was normal. But as normal as it might be, it made me feel guilty that I was wasting this time when I could work on my art with no limitations. After all, when I left here in three months, I would be on my own: no job, no home, and of course, pregnant.

I stopped still at the threshold of the studio, staring at the open door and the familiar silhouette within. Not only was Daniel the last person I expected to see, but also he was in my studio, mid-week, when no one except the housekeeping staff should be there.

Which was probably how he had gotten in. Of course.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. He turned to me and my eyes stung. I blinked quickly. No. I would not cry.

I scanned the room, searching for incriminating evidence, as if some symbol of my insidious feelings for him were stamped upon everything I touched. An open sketchbook in the corner gave me a sudden jolt when the dark slashes of ink reminded me of my fanciful attempts for a logo for Daniel’s new venture. Our affair had been less than two months in length. A span of time even a high schooler would consider short.

“I love you.”

My gaze snapped back to him.

Those three words. They’d been in my dreams ever since he’d first said them. As he’d said, they seemed to obliterate everything else. Almost everything. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time.

In all my youthful fantasies those words had held power, could transform everything. But now here Daniel was, looking heartbreakingly handsome and saying them again. Those three words changed nothing.

“So what?” I demanded, a cool anger at the injustice of it all filling my voice. “So you can come stalk me? Isn’t that what that model from the Ukraine did to you? I heard you had her thrown out of the club. Maybe I should have you thrown out.”

But