Holland

I curl into a ball on my side and snuggle deeper into a warm, peaceful haze of mint and spice. As the fog lifts from my brain, I peek out of one eye to see King laying in front of me, mirroring my position. He’s asleep. I close my eye and try to think . . . where am I . . . oh yes. Helicopter, beach, lunch . . . fainting, limo, and sex. Good Lord, the sex.

“Welcome back, sleepy head. I thought you’d never come around.” I open my eyes and find myself in King’s bed in his apartment. He trails his finger along the side of my cheek, ending with his hand cupping my face. The air around us is chilly. My nose is cold, and I swear I could probably see my breath if the lights were turned up brighter. The only warmth is in our little cocoon under the covers. I scoot closer to him, and he turns me around to spoon the entire length of his body.

“You have something against heat?” I ask, and he kisses my ear.

“You’re cold?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s gotta be like forty degrees in here. My nose is running.” He feels my nose for drips and, finding none, he rubs his free hand up and down my arm in an attempt to warm me, but it’s useless. I’m a Popsicle.

“I like it cold. I’ll have Sebastián turn it up when you’re here, though, if you like, but I rather like keeping you warm myself.”

“Maybe a little bit of both.”

“I can live with that.” He rolls away for only a second to get his phone from the bedside table behind us, and I shiver when the cold air rushes between us. He’s back against me in seconds, which causes me to shiver again, but for different reasons. He props up on his elbow, and I listen to him have a brief conversation with Sebastián, instructing him to turn up the thermostat.

“You can’t do that? Run a thermostat, I mean?” If he tells me no, I’m going to lose faith in him as a man. My daddy has been teaching me practical things like that for years. I can change the oil in a car, flip a breaker switch when the power goes out, change the light bulb over the stove and in the fridge, and fix just about anything that can go wrong with a toilet. Daddy’s been into DIY ever since Mama made him figure out how to do electrical and plumbing work to save money. ‘That could be Juilliard money,’ she used to tell him when the sink was leaking and he wanted to call a plumber. I felt bad that he worked so hard at his job and got bossed around by Mama at home, so I pitched in and started helping.

Mama . . . ugh, God, the thought of her demanding that King pay for Juilliard and encourage me to have an abortion disgusts me. I hope he doesn’t want to talk about her anymore, because I don’t.

“You okay, baby?” His arms tighten around me and I feel so safe, so at home.

“Yeah, I’m just cold. It’s freezing in here,” I say, pulling the covers up over my shoulder. It’s a half lie. I am freezing, but more so, a piece of my heart is breaking over my mama. How could she be so awful? It’s a delay in my career, not the end of it. She’s always been pro-life, she taught me to be pro-life and she raised me in the Catholic Church. I can’t believe she blackmailed King into encouraging me to abort. Who asks a father to have his own child killed? I’m really starting to wonder if I know who she is at all.

“And yes, for the record, I am perfectly capable of running a thermostat, but the control is in the security room downstairs in the club, where they control the temperature throughout the building. I’ll keep you warm, though. Don’t worry.”

He wraps his long, lean muscles around my limbs, curling around me like a cat and nuzzling into my neck. His warm breath on my skin causes another shiver to race up my spine. Under the heavy gold and black duvet, he protects me from the chill in the air. It occurs to me that he protects me from so many things in my life right now—the critical eyes of the world, my mother, the Juilliard admissions board, and probably other things I don’t even want to know about. He is on my side all the way . . . or our side, I should say. All three of us.

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought I was going to have to find a replacement for you.” Braving the cold air, I slide my hand out from under the covers, along his scruffy jawline, and back into the soft curls on the nape of his neck.

“Oh, baby, no one can replace me. I’m the King. And I’m deeply wounded to know such an insignificant task would make you reconsider our relationship,” he says, nibbling my earlobe. I feel bad for teasing him.

“You’re right. You’re irreplaceable, and I love you too much to ever let you go—even when you try to freeze me to death.” I’ve never told him that before, but now seems like the right time to start, and he doesn’t miss a beat returning the sentiment.

“I love you too, sweet Holland, so, so much. You’ll never know just how much.”

“Thank you for having my back . . . with my mama, ya know, and the Juilliard people. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“I’m more than happy to have your back anytime,” he says, pressing his thick length into my backside. “And your front.” His hand slinks up from my waist to cup my breast. “And all the parts in between,” he says, kissing my neck. Electricity zaps across the surface of my skin, igniting a fire in my core. Now I’m hot, but I don’t know if it’s from King’s heat kicking in or King’s heat kicking in.

“Are you trying to get me pregnant again?”

“Maybe.” His scruff plays against my cheek when he smiles against it.

“I don’t think I can handle more than one.” King plunges us into darkness when he pulls the duvet over our heads and rolls me underneath him.

“You’re not doing this alone, baby. You’ve got me, and I can do anything.” I believe him beyond a shadow of a doubt. We could have a litter of kids, and I think King would rise to the occasion—pun intended.

* * *

Four hours later, at home, on my back in my own bed, with my hands behind my head, I’m feeling opposite of how I did at King’s today. Funny how a place I’ve spent every day of my life in feels so irrelevant, and the place I’ve spent nearly no time in feels like home. It’s not the place, though. It’s the company. My parents are at each other all the time about my situation, as Mama calls it, and they’re miserable to be around.

They think they’re being sly and secretive, but I hear their slightly raised voices at night in the room next to mine, arguing about whether or not I should keep my baby. It’s not up to them. It’s my damn baby. Daddy isn’t happy about any of this, and what good father would be, but thankfully, he wants whatever I want. He says it’s my body and my life, and that God doesn’t make mistakes. He must have wanted me to have a baby, or he wouldn’t have given me one.

It’s a simple way of thinking, I suppose, but I believe it’s true. Mama, on the other hand, sounds like she’s going to have an aneurism or break her teeth off when she gets going about my future and my career and how hard she’s worked, how much she’s sacrificed, and what a waste it is to throw it all away for a baby. She even had the gall to say I could have a baby anytime, but I can only go to Juilliard now. To hear her talk about it, you’d think it was her own talent and career that’s being wasted.

I want to go back to King’s where I feel wanted and loved. King asked me to live with him today, and I happily accepted, but he thought it would be best to ease my parents into the idea. My birthday is next month, and I’ll be twenty. Twenty sounds so much better than nineteen when you’re talking about pregnancy. People are so judgmental about teen pregnancy. When a teenager gets pregnant, they say she got knocked up, but when it’s a twenty-year-old, she’s having a baby.

“Why aren’t you practicing?” Mama asks from my open door. One of her strange new rules is that I have to keep my door open at all times, so I didn’t even know she was standing there. I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s going to accomplish with the new rule. I’m already pregnant. What else could happen?

“I was just resting. I’ll start now,” I say, slowly sitting up and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed without getting dizzy or nauseated. King was right. Moving slowly is much better. When I pick up my violin and raise my bow, I expect her to leave me alone, but she hangs back, pressing her hand against the door jamb and looking down at the floor.

“What did you two do today?” Her eyes never leave her feet. She’s nervous. She wants to know if he asked me to get an abortion. She still doesn’t know that I know that she’s trying to blackmail King, and I’m not telling her. I want to see her squirm.

“Nothing much. We had lunch and talked, that’s all.”

“Lunch . . . and talking,” she repeats.

“Yeah.”

Squirm, Mama, squirm.

“Did you talk about the . . . about . . .”

“The baby? No, we didn’t.” I drag my bow across the strings, playing the first notes of Brahms’s Lullaby just to irritate her. She looks up at me, wide-eyed, but she composes herself quickly. I blink innocently and begin playing scales to warm up, essentially dismissing her, but she doesn’t move.

I continue my scales, and when I’m finished, I switch to a piece of my favorite music, trying to get lost in it—but it’s impossible with her standing there, staring at me. I play louder and louder, trying to get my message across, and at some point she gets it and leaves. With my back to the door, I can’t see her go, but I don’t feel her eyes boring a hole in my back anymore. Only then am I able to let my fingers fly up and down the strings with the passion and determination of a person fighting for her life. I feel as though I’m fighting for my life lately, the life that I want with King and the life inside of me that my mama wants to smudge out.

Two hours later, I tuck my violin into its case. I’m exhausted after my long day with King, but if I hadn’t practiced for a little while, Mama would never have been satisfied.

I catch my reflection in the mirror over my dresser when I turn around. “You’re going to be a mother. You . . . Holland Bennett . . . a mama.” I turn to the side and smooth my hands over my belly. This doesn’t feel real. I mean, the nausea is real as hell, but the baby growing in there won’t be until I can see it. We have an appointment with the obstetrician later this week, and I’ll be having my first ultrasound. Maybe then it will feel real.

* * *

Twelve weeks, twenty weeks, thirty weeks, and now thirty-four. It’s January and I’m freezing. My teeth are chattering as I wait on the sidewalk in front of STRINGS for Sebastián to pull the car around. It’s forty degrees, which isn’t cold by most people’s standards, but when you’re used to sixty degree highs, forty is damn near arctic.

I couldn’t see my toes anymore if I tried. My eight-and-a-half-month pregnant belly blocks my view of anything below my waist. King assures me my shoes match when he helps me dress every day. He tends to me tirelessly every day, picking things up off the floor that I’ve dropped and making sure I don’t slip getting into the tub. He even painted my toenails once, but he ended up taking me for a pedicure the next day because he messed them up so badly. I would have never known they were a mess except that he laid me down in bed and lifted my foot up high to show me.

I moved in above the club with King when I was five months along because my mama was insufferable. She pouted and complained and bitched and moaned on and on about my decision to keep the baby. She had me so depressed that there were days that King had to come and force me out of bed.

It got so bad that Daddy moved into a hotel nearby after a huge blowout in the middle of the grocery store. Right there, between the celery and the tomatoes, she lost her shit and started screaming that she’d wasted her entire life supporting my dream, and that I was an ungrateful, selfish daughter with no respect. He turned around and left her gripping the shopping cart in the hard light of the produce aisle, with customers staring while she shouted after him. And when she noticed, she shouted at them to mind their own business. I know this because Mr. Jefferies told Mrs. Moore, who of course passed the juicy gossip on to her book club that Savannah’s mother attends. Small world.

I visited Daddy in his hotel room one afternoon and listened as he confirmed the story. I felt so guilty, but he assured me that it was a long time coming and that they had been pretending for years to be happy for my sake—and that made me feel even guiltier.

I hated leaving him there. The room was so cold and unlike home, with no photographs or knickknacks, only generic lamps and a clock radio that was cemented to the bedside table. King offered to put him up somewhere nicer, but he declined, as I knew he would. Daddy’s too proud for that.

Daddy was the only buffer between my mother and me, so when he left, I did too. King insisted. He said the stress wasn’t good for the baby or me, but I knew he just really wanted to have me under his roof, and to be honest, it was a huge relief. He was right, too, of course. I got more rest, ate healthier, got more exercise—in and out of bed—and felt a million times better.

King has also been teaching me to drive, and yeah . . . that’s been interesting. I never got my license when everybody else did in high school. I never went anywhere besides practice and school, and if I did, Mama insisted on driving me.

It’s crazy how easy it is to see that she was controlling me now that I’m out of her grasp. I never questioned her decisions or her rules because she brainwashed me into believing it was all for me—for my future, for my career—but now, I think a lot of that was her trying to live vicariously through me to achieve her own dreams.

So at age twenty, I am learning to drive. Learning to drive is not something to do when your hormone levels are roller coasting up and down. Poor King is so patient, though. More than once, we had to pull over so I could cry. Everything sounds so much more critical when you’re pregnant. ‘Holland, you need to put on your blinker to switch lanes.’ ‘Holland, ease up on the gas.’ ‘Holland, watch out. Squirrel!’ Ugh, I got so frustrated, but he was persistent, and today, Sebastián is taking me to the Department of Transportation to get my license. King had to leave town unexpectedly for the day, and I want to surprise him with it when he gets home tonight.

I really wanted Savannah to go with me, but she’s working at a cosmetics counter full time at Saks Fifth Avenue. I miss her so much. King is wonderful, but sometimes a girl just needs her best girlfriend. I’m proud of her, though. She couldn’t afford to go to college, and she’s doing something she’s awesome at. King offered to pay for her to go to cosmetology school, but she said no. She’s afraid she won’t do well and his money will go to waste if she flunks, and she says nobody’s going to sing Beauty School Dropout behind her back. I am convinced she would flourish if she just gave it a chance. She’s smart when she applies herself. I’m not giving up on her, though. That girl is phenomenal with hair and makeup, and I’m not about to let that talent go to waste.

Five minutes later, when I’m about to text King and complain about being cold, Sebastián pulls up to the curb in the Bentley. Not very many people my age can say they learned to drive in a Bentley, but not very many people are involved with a man like King. The Bentley is pretentious, but so is King—to an extent—but his boyish charm more than makes up for it.

The window glides down and Sebastián leans across the seat.

“Don’t move. I’ll come around,” he says.

I wait until the window is up to roll my eyes. My helicopter boyfriend is rubbing off on everyone around us. Sebastián won’t even so much as let me open my own car door.

“Thanks, Sebastián.” I step off the curb and lower myself into the front seat, holding onto the edge of the roof. When I think I’m close, I release my hand and plop the rest of the way into the soft, warmed leather seat. I turn to Sebastián and smile with pride. Now it’s his turn to roll his eyes. He doesn’t like me to do any plopping at this point in my pregnancy. He’s scared it’ll break my water or something, and honestly, I’m not sure it wouldn’t, but I’m just too large and in charge to help it now.

“Please be careful, Ms. Benn—Holland.” Sebastián hasn’t been able to stop calling me Ms. Bennett, but when he does, he corrects himself right away. One afternoon I had an emotional meltdown. He called me Ms. Bennett, and I cried for half an hour because I thought it sounded so old.

“How are you feeling this afternoon?” he asks when we’re both buckled in and pulling into traffic.

“Fine. Cold. Can we turn up the heat?” I briskly rub my hands together and begin to relax my tense muscles into the heated seat. I love heated seats. I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I got into King’s Audi for the first time and thought I was wetting my pants when the warmth spread across my butt and thighs. King thought that was hilarious. He chuckled all the way to the symphony that night.

“Of course.” Sebastián taps a button on the steering wheel column, increasing the flow of hot air until I’m sweating, which doesn’t take more than three minutes in my condition.

“I’m dying of heat stroke, Sebastián,” I say, pressing my hand to my forehead and fanning myself. He turns the heat down with a sigh, and I feel tears prick at the corners of my eyes. I’m sick of being pregnant. I’m not gonna lie—I want my body back, and I’m sick of being so damn emotional.

At the DOT, he jumps out to open my door, and by the grace of God, he allows me to walk in alone, on my own two feet.

The smell of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke are mildly nauseating in the waiting area where I snap ticket number 800 from the dispenser. I say a little prayer thanking God that King quit smoking in my second trimester, and then I say another when the display screen shows that they are on #799. I squirm in one of the uncomfortable chairs and drop my purse on accident. I watch it sag onto the floor between my feet . . . great. I’ll probably throw up if I bend over that far to get it. Should I wait for Sebastián or attempt to pick it up myself? The DOT isn’t the kind of place you take your hands off your purse in, so I scoot my legs to the side and reach for the beautiful bag King gave me for my birthday last August. My fingers just barely skim the leather strap when a feminine, well-manicured hand takes my elbow.

“Let me, baby, don’t hurt yourself.” The woman rights me in my seat and easily squats down to grab my purse. She hands it to me, smiling and glancing at my big belly.

“Oh gosh, thank you so much. It’s impossible to reach anything these days.”

“No problem. I remember being pregnant all too well,” she says.

“I can’t believe people do this more than once,” I say. I adjust myself in the hard chair and catch a glimpse of Sebastián coming through the door.

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be one of those people,” she says, chuckling.

“I’m Candy. Nice to meet you.” She thrusts her hand out, and I reach across my belly to shake it.

“I’m Holland, and thanks again,” I say, looking down at my purse and back up at her.

“Is everything okay here?” Sebastián says as he approaches.

“Yes, fine, Sebastián. I just dropped my purse, and Candy here saved me from falling on my face trying to get it.” I gesture toward Candy, but Sebastián ignores her.

“You could have waited. I told you I wouldn’t be long.”

I hold up my hand vertical to my cheek, blocking Candy’s view of me, and purposely whisper loudly, “This place is sorta shady, Daddy. I didn’t want anybody snatching my purse.” He rolls his eyes and takes the seat on my left, and Candy sits down on my right. I’m surprised at his lack of manners. Sebastián has never been overly chummy with strangers, but he is always respectful.

“Your daddy’s kinda cute,” Candy says quietly, looking around me at Sebastián. He stares straight ahead and never acknowledges her compliment. What a stick in the mud. He can’t be mad that I teased him about his age, because he is old enough to be my daddy, maybe even my pop, so I don’t know why his panties are in a wad.

“He’s not really my daddy. I was just kidding.” I turn to join her in assessing Sebastián. He shifts in his chair and places his ankle on his knee while he tries not to look at us.

“Hmm, too bad. I could have been a grandma,” Candy says.

“Number 800.” A robotic voice announces over the PA.

“That’s me,” I say, and Sebastián rises from his chair to help me up.

“It was nice to meet you, Candy. He’s usually more friendly. Sorry . . .” I say. Sebastián snorts in disgust and places his hand on the small of my back to guide me away.

“It’s okay, sugar. Good luck with the baby.” She has such a genuine, warm smile, and I miss her companionship as soon as we walk away.

Savannah hasn’t been right across the street for a long time, and although I still see her often, it’s not the same. I miss girl talk.

“Thanks,” I say as Sebastián practically pushes me toward the counter where I sign my name and have my picture taken. Ten minutes later, a heavyset woman in a tight polyester DOT uniform hands me my first driver’s license. The picture looks like a mug shot. I’m puffy and pale, but inside, my old skinny self is jumping up and down with excitement, chanting I did it! I did it! For a moment, I almost regret not waiting for King to share this milestone with me, but there aren’t many ways to surprise a billionaire.

“So why were you so rude in there?” I ask Sebastián when we’re headed home.

“I wasn’t rude. You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

“I couldn’t just let her pick up my purse and not thank her.”

“Yes, you could have. She could have been a pickpocket. Did you check your bag?” Sebastián gestures toward my purse.

“You’ve been in security too long.”

“Maybe so, but you’re my responsibility while King is gone, and you are his top priority, so that means you’re my top priority.”

“Well, I’ve been making it through every day for twenty years without the two of you, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine.”

“Holland . . . do you remember when I told you to stay away from him, that he was dangerous? Nothing has changed. If you hadn’t been pregnant, you could have gotten away. You would never have been associated with him and you wouldn’t be a target. King is extremely thorough when it comes to your security for a good reason. Anybody who has a problem with him knows that his weakness is you.”

I watch Sebastián’s foot moving from the break to the accelerator and back to break. I’m a target, a weakness? The idea crossed my mind early on in our relationship, but King has always made me feel so comfortable and safe.

Sebastián glances over to me and back to the road.

“I don’t mean to scare you, but I can only protect you as much as you allow me to. If you don’t know you’re in danger, how can you watch out for it?”

“Should I be worried about something specific, Sebastián?”

Sebastián maneuvers the car across two lanes of traffic and pulls into a hardware parking lot. He shifts into park with the car still running and turns his full attention on me.

“You are always in danger. You will always be in danger, and so is your child. Unless King finds some way to get out of this business, you will be looking over your shoulders for the rest of your lives.”

My gaze drifts away from his dark eyes to the passenger window, where raindrops are beginning to drizzle down the glass. The weather seems to be mirroring my mood. His words repeat in my head, and for the millionth time in the past eight months, I wonder how my life could have taken such a drastic turn. Sometimes my reflections are upbeat and pleasant, like how could I have possibly found such a loving, caring man? Other times, like right now, I can only imagine what an ominous, dark life King leads and how much danger his life brings to us all.

My silence is Sebastián’s cue to take me home. He makes sure I’m inside the apartment and that I’ve locked the doors before he leaves me—if he ever really leaves me.

I pad down the hall to our bedroom, strip down to my bra and panties, and crawl in between the two thousand thread count, Egyptian cotton sheets. Lightning flashes through the room, casting long shadows on the wall, and five seconds later, I jump when a crack of thunder follows. I usually enjoy a good thunderstorm, but it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and King’s dangerous life is weighing heavy on my mind. I need the escape that only sleep can bring.