The Billionaire's Illicit Twins - Holly Rayner Page 0,20

off my phone. Because if I was going to think, I didn’t need him constantly calling me back and interrupting my thought process. Or giving me anything else—or anything more complicated—to think about.

Chapter 12

Bella

A week later, I finally managed to get into my OB/GYN’s office again, and I’m sure you’ll be really shocked to hear that getting into that office was about the only thing I’d managed to decide on in the week since I’d talked to Ethan and he’d given me his outlandish, terrifying… and tempting offer.

Yeah, so I was tempted. Can you really blame me? I’d grown up poor, in a shattered family. We’d lived in a cheap area of New York, but it was still New York, and that meant outlandish prices for everything from rent to a gallon of milk.

My dad, a custodian, had barely been able to afford the bare necessities for us. He’d kept a roof over our heads, but even that was touch-and-go some months, and though we almost always had food to eat, there were times when I ate and he didn’t. And there were times when we’d both gone hungry. Or when we’d survived for weeks on packages of ramen and eggs.

So was it any surprise that I’d grown up with a big gap where the ideas of safety and security were supposed to be? I’d decided on a career because I wanted to be rich—and safe—and I worked as hard as I did because now that I’d reached the level of having the job I’d wanted, I wasn’t willing to do anything to put it in jeopardy.

The real truth, I suppose, was that I was constantly terrified that I was going to lose the job itself and be right back where I started. Unable to pay the rent. Unable to buy decent food. No money for clothes. And alone, now, since my dad had died.

So the idea of millions of dollars of my very own… Well, it was almost too good to believe. It was also very nearly too big and too wonderful to pass up. I’d be safe for the rest of my life. Secure in a way I’d never been before. Best of all, I’d be able to work for myself, open up my own practice and call all the shots when it came to my career.

Yeah. There was that side of things.

There was another side, though, and that was the baby itself. Because as much as I wanted to keep him or her, as sure as I was that keeping him or her was absolutely the right thing to do, I had to be honest there as well. There were months when I was barely home, and months when I still had to stretch to make sure the utilities were paid on time. There were months when I didn’t know if I was going to make it, mentally and physically.

There were definitely, definitely times when I wanted to call it quits and run off to the Caribbean somewhere to work in a bar for the rest of my life, and just forget about the rest of the world.

Was it really fair to bring a baby into that? Could I guarantee that I would be able to care for him or her and love them and give them everything he or she ever wanted? Yes, I would give him or her everything I possibly could, but what if that wasn’t enough?

What if, at the end of the day, it really was better to hand the baby over to Ethan so he could raise the child with all that money of his? What if that was the only way to make sure the baby always felt secure?

I didn’t want my child growing up with as much fear as I still carried in my heart. And that right there? Yeah, that was what was making this decision so freaking hard. It felt wrong on just about every level to think about giving my child up… but it also felt wrong to keep them, if it meant sentencing them to a half-life rather than what they could have with Ethan.

I was furious with Ethan in a bone-deep way that I just couldn’t shake, for the way he’d callously offered to buy my baby and the fact that he’d come along and completely ruined the plan I had.

Hell, I was angry at him for sitting in that bar that night and talking to me!

But that fury wasn’t going to get me anywhere,