, my heart broken. The love of my life was demanding we get married, so I should be happy; hell, I should be the happiest girl in the world. But I wasn’t.
I looked back at him, and his hard, tight eyes stared straight back at me. The usual warmth and tenderness was entirely gone from them. He regarded me like I was an annoying, dirty little stripper he felt obligated to marry. He actually looked like he despised me.
Swallowing my sob, I grabbed a couple of sets of my clothes, putting them in the middle of my bed. I sorted Sasha’s stuff next, bundling up nappies, wipes, clothes, sleepwear, and dummies. I pulled open the drawer containing her blankets and sheets, unsure if I needed this type of thing. I didn’t want to talk to him again, but clearly I had to. I flicked my eyes over to him; he was leaning casually against my doorframe, watching my every move as if he thought I was going to bolt out the front door any second.
“Do I need bed sheets for Sasha?” I asked quietly.
He frowned at my question. “Er, I don’t know. What does she usually have?” His eyes settled on the cot at the foot of my bed and his nose crinkled in distaste. “I’ll buy a new cot,” he stated, waving his hand at it dismissively. Obviously, the second-hand cot Lucie gave me wasn’t good enough for him.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He had a real talent for making me feel useless and dirty with just a few words. “Fine. What about sheets?” I asked, swiping at the tear which fell down my face.
He groaned, rubbing his temples in small circles. “I don’t know… I’ll buy all new stuff!”
I threw the sheets back into the drawer. “Have you even thought this through? Do you have any idea how hard it is to live with a two-year-old? It’s not all fun and games, you know. This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about. Trust me, it’s hard,” I spat, looking at him knowingly. Maybe I could scare him into thinking about it again.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m not stupid, Emma. I know it’s gonna be hard, but I’m not one to walk away from my responsibilities. I’m here now to make it easier for you, all of you. Please, just pack your shit, just enough for a couple of days. Everything else we’ll get new or pick up another time.”
I sighed, threw another armful of clothes onto the bed, and then headed to the bathroom, grabbing wash things and toothbrushes before heading to Rory’s room. I tried not to go through his personal items too much as I grabbed his clothes. I had no idea what Rory was going to say about all this. How was he going to feel when he found out his big sister got knocked up by a client in the strip club she worked for? I hadn’t told him. I’d lied and told him it was a guy I’d been seeing for a few weeks. I couldn’t bear to see any disapproval from him at the time, so I’d hidden the truth.
I headed back to my room, setting Rory’s clothes on my bed. I didn’t bother with school books; he could have a couple of days off. Hopefully, I’d be able to talk some sense into Carson and then we could just go back to normal before this went too far. I looked at the huge pile of stuff on the middle of the bed wondering what I could put it in.
I bit my lip and Carson stepped up next to me. “You have a suitcase or something?” he asked, looking around my room.
I laughed humourlessly and shook my head. “No.” Suitcases were for people that could afford to go on holiday. That certainly wasn’t us.
He sighed. “A bag then? Anything?”
I sat on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. “Carson, please, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but you’re not. Raising a child in a home where the parents don’t love each other can be worse than being raised by a single parent. Let’s just talk about this. You don’t really want to marry me, and I don’t want to marry you.”
Only part of that statement was true. I would marry him in a heartbeat if he just told me he cared about me, even just the smallest bit. If he smiled at me and asked me to marry him, I would say yes immediately, and I would play the dutiful little wife for the rest of my days. The wife who did everything her husband wanted – the perfect little wife who had dinner on the table when he walked through the door and her sexiest underwear under her clothes just in case. I would do that for him in a heartbeat if he would just give me the smallest sign of affection.
I looked at him again, silently begging him for a smile, a touch, a kiss, anything.
“We’re not talking about it, it’s decided,” he stated confidently.
I needed to try another tactic. “If you really don’t like her living here, then set up some sort of trust fund for her. If this is about what I can afford, then help me. Please, don’t force us all into something that’s gonna make everyone miserable in the long run,” I begged.
He didn’t say anything, just walked out of the room, leaving me staring after his back with my heart in my throat. He was being so cold to me. Was it because I hadn’t told him about Sasha? If I had told him when I was pregnant, would he have insisted the exact same thing he was insisting now? I gulped and rubbed my eyes. I just needed to go back to sleep and then wake up to find out this was just a horrible nightmare. That was what it felt like; the way Carson was looking at me with those hard hateful eyes felt like something from my worst nightmare.
He padded back into the room with a couple of black bin liners. Silently, I watched as he started picking up all the things I’d put on the bed, throwing them into the bags. “Is there anything else you want to take?” He didn’t even look at me as he spoke.
I pushed myself up from the bed. He couldn’t even be bothered to answer my questions or discuss it with me. It was my life, Sasha’s and Rory’s lives, and he was just making all the decisions. And we just had to go along with it?
“You’re a fucking arsehole, Carson,” I growled.
“Yeah, and you hate me, I know,” he replied in his detached tone.
Anger fizzed inside me. Without thinking, I slapped his shoulder. He turned to glare at me so I slapped his chest, taking out all my frustration on him. When I raised my hand to hit him again, he grabbed my wrist tightly and shook his head. A second later, his other hand closed over my shoulder as he threw himself at me, slamming me against the wall and kissing me fiercely. He was kissing me so hard it was hurting my lips, but I kissed him back immediately.
It was raw passion. Anger-fuelled passion. He pinned me against the wall as both of us ravaged the other’s mouth like animals. He let go of my wrist and his hands roamed desperately down my body as I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him impossibly closer to me, needing to feel his body against mine.
He pulled out of the kiss just as I was gasping for breath and started kissing down my neck. His hands went straight to the buttons of my jeans, pulling on them frantically. I could feel how turned on he was when he pressed his crotch against my hip, showing me just how much he wanted me physically.
I squeezed my eyes shut as a realisation hit me. This was all I was to him. A body, nothing more. Something for him to get his kicks with, just like he did with hundreds of other girls. He wasn’t demanding we get married because he wanted to; he was doing it because he didn’t want Sasha to hate him.
All this little thing was right now was him laying claim to me, him claiming his dominance over me and my body. But I wouldn’t let him have it.
I gulped, trying to find my voice as he pushed my jeans down slightly, his hand groping my bum, one hand slipping down the front of my underwear. “Carson, stop.” My voice was barely more than a whisper. His mouth came back to mine and one of his hands wove into my hair, halting my protests as he kissed me roughly. I whimpered into his mouth and pushed on his chest. “Carson, stop it!” I said louder, using my forearms to shove his body away from mine.
He stopped and looked at me, his eyes filled with both want and anger. “Why?” he asked, his voice husky and thick with lust.
I tried desperately to get my breathing under control. “Because I don’t want this.” Not like this, anyway. It would be easy to just give in to my body’s urges because goodness knows I wanted him, but not like this, not just because he was demanding it.
He sneered at me, stepping closer to me again and pressing his hard body to mine. “Would it help if I offered to pay you? How much do you want? What’s the going rate for your bedroom?” he shot out.
His spiteful words felt like a punch in the stomach. My eyes filled with devastated tears as my chin quivered. I felt so dirty and used. I’d never felt so low in my life. I couldn’t speak. With that one little speech, he’d just showed me exactly how little he thought of me, and exactly how little he cared for me. With that one little speech, he’d ripped my heart out and had torn it into a million pieces.
Almost instantly he frowned, averting his eyes as if he wished he hadn’t said it. “I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have…” He stepped back, gripping his hand into his hair as he scowled down at the cheap bedroom carpet. My shoulders slumped as the last of my self-confidence, self-worth and self-belief went out the window. I turned my face away from him as silent tears fell down my cheeks. “Look, I don’t even know why I said that. I’m angry, it just slipped out.”
I felt empty inside. Everything I’d fought hard for since I was sixteen, everything I’d been through, how hard I’d worked to make something of myself, going to university, being a mum – they were all nothing now, because I was a cheap, dirty whore. The man I loved had just made that clear to me.
I shrugged him off and headed over to the bed where my stuff was half-packed, buttoning up my jeans as I went. “Are you still making us move in with you?” I asked, trying not to display any emotion in my voice as I spoke.
“Yeah,” he huffed.
I nodded and threw the remaining clothes and stuff into the bin bags and then picked them up, turning to walk out of the room. I kept my eyes firmly on the door; I refused to even look at him. As I got level with him, he took the bags from my hands.
“Emma?” he called, obviously trying to get my attention.
I just walked off; I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to him. I tried to hate him for making me feel this way, but I couldn’t. Instead, I hated myself, because everything I was feeling inside was my fault, not his. My parents were right about me all along; I was a cheap, dirty girl who had the devil inside her. Maybe I should have just joined that convent when they gave me the chance. Maybe then I’d have been able to save my soul.
I didn’t speak to him as I picked up my keys and mobile phone from the side table.
“You’re ignoring me now?” he asked incredulously as I stood silently by the front door. “One thing I say in the spur of the moment and I get the silent treatment?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m not ignoring you; I just have nothing to say to you right now.”
He groaned in frustration. “I’m the one who should be fucking angry! You’re the one that’s kept me in the dark about my daughter, yet you’re angry with me?” He shook his head in exasperation. Clearly, he had no idea how much he’d wounded me with his nasty, spiteful comment about paying me for sex. “I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean what I said. It just came out!”
I shrugged, trying to go for the unaffected approach. “Don’t be sorry. You think I’m a dirty whore who sells herself for money, and you’re right, I do.” Technically, what he said was right; he paid me for sex all the time, so that made me a prostitute of sorts. It didn’t matter that I never saw it that way, that I saw it as love-making, that I used the money as if it were a child support payment. Technically, I was a hooker, plain and simple.
His lips parted as his eyebrows rose in shock. “I don’t think that.”
I sighed sadly. “It doesn’t matter if you really think that or not. You’re making me move in with you and marry you, or you’ll take my daughter away from me. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. All I need is for Sasha to be happy, and I need to be with her. So if that means living with someone who makes me feel cheap and used, then so be it.” I pulled the door open and stomped down the concrete, graffiti-covered stairs without waiting for him. He was silent as he trudged along behind me, closing the door to my flat before following me down into the damp foyer.
As I reached for the handle of the main door leading outside, his hand closed over mine, stopping me. “Wait,” he huffed. I didn’t bother looking at him as he spoke. I didn’t really care what he had to say because in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything. “The reporters are probably still outside. They’re going to crowd us as soon as we walk out of the building. My car is over on the right-hand side, about four spaces in. Just get in the car and ignore anything they ask you,” he instructed.
I nodded once in acknowledgement, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the door, refusing to even glance in his direction. “Fine.” I pulled my hand from his and caught the door handle, yanking it open and stepping out. As soon as I was out of the building, reporters swarmed around me, taking photographs and shouting questions. I raised my chin, put on a fake smile and stalked toward Carson’s shiny silver car parked exactly where he said it would be. A second later, the door slammed closed behind me, and then the reporters were shouting questions at him, too. He answered ‘no comment’ to everything as he jogged to catch me up.
When his arm slipped around my waist, I didn’t push him off in front of the cameras. If I had to act like the dutiful little wife so I could be in my daughter’s life, then I would.
When we were level with his car, he opened the door for me, waiting until I was in before putting my two bin liners’ worth of possessions in the boot and heading to the driver’s side. As we peeled out of the car park, I slumped down in my seat and looked out the window, watching as he sped me away from the only place I had truly called home. Admittedly, it wasn’t much, but it was home to me. The first and only place I had been happy.
Awkward silence filled the car as I ground my teeth, wallowing in my self-pity and self-hatred. I pulled out my mobile, turning it on and sending a text to Lucie to tell her I was with Carson and I’d call her later. Less than a minute later, she replied telling me Rory and Sasha could stay with her as long as I needed them to.
I relaxed marginally as I read her message, but then my thoughts drifted to Rory and what he would know now. He’d know I’d lied to him about who Sasha’s dad was for the last couple of years. I’d have a lot of explaining to do. A lump formed in my throat as I wondered if my little brother would think I was some kind of dirty whore now, too. If he looked at me like Carson had, I wasn’t sure how I was going to cope.
I didn’t bother paying any attention to where we were going, just watched the streets whizz past without actually seeing them. When we slowed down, I looked out the windscreen to see a big white house, three stories, big windows and heavy-looking wrought iron gates outside. Those big, iron gates were currently swinging slowly open to allow the car inside. The place was incredible, beautiful even. It looked very, very expensive. This kind of property in London would easily set someone back a couple of million pounds. It was every little girl’s dream house – but it looked more like a prison to me.