Pregnant By The Man Who Hates Me

Elena's Point of View I was having sex with my boss. A moan left my lips as I felt him go deep inside me. What the hell was I thinking? He was Damian Cross, the man who yelled at everyone and treated people like dirt. But here I was, and God, it felt good. The music from the club downstairs shook the floor of the private suite. The bass pounded through the walls, loud and heavy, matching every hard thrust. Somewhere below us, people were screaming and laughing and dancing like nothing was wrong in the world. Everything was wrong in mine. Because eleven hours ago, I had wanted to kill this man. It started at nine that morning. I walked into the meeting room with the quarterly report in my hands. I had stayed up until two in the morning finishing it. I had checked every number three times. I was proud of it. Damian sat at the head of the table, his jaw tight, his dark eyes already cold. "You're late," he said. "It's 8:59, Mr. Cross." "Then you're not early." H

Elena's Point of View I didn't even have time to breathe. One second he was across the lobby. The next, he was right in front of me, so close I could smell his cologne, the same one that had been on the sheets that morning. "You." That was all he said. Then the papers hit my face. They slapped against my cheek and burst apart, and white pages fell around my feet like snow. One of them stuck to my blouse. Someone in the crowd gasped. "Do you know what those are?" His voice cracked through the lobby like thunder. "Do you?" I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. "Those are the Hartley contract files!" he shouted. "Confidential. Locked in my office safe. And they were sent to our biggest competitor at six o'clock last night!" I looked down at the pages on the floor. I saw the Cross Industries logo. Numbers. Signatures. I had never seen these papers in my life. "Mr. Cross, I don't—" "Don't you dare speak!" I flinched. My whole body flinched, and I hated that everyone saw it. "T

Elena's Point of View I don't know how long I sat on that bathroom floor. Maybe ten minutes. Maybe an hour. The little white stick lay on the sink above me, and I kept looking at it, hoping the second line would fade away if I stared hard enough. It didn't. The front door opened. Tessa's keys jingled. "Elena? I brought Thai food!" I couldn't answer. Her footsteps came closer. "Elena? Are you in there?" I wiped my face with my sleeve, but it was useless. My eyes were swollen, my nose was running, and my whole body was shaking. I reached up and unlocked the door. Tessa pushed it open and froze. She looked at me. Then at the sink. Then at the two other boxes on the floor. "Oh my God," she whispered. "I'm pregnant." Saying it out loud made it worse. The words hung in the small bathroom like something heavy. Tessa dropped the food bag and got down on the floor next to me. She didn't say anything. She just pulled me into her arms, and I cried into her shoulder lik

Elena's Point of View My mom came down the porch steps almost running. She had her arms out before I even got Amelia out of the car seat, and she was crying already. She always cried. "Oh, my girls," she kept saying. "My girls are home." I laughed and let her hug us both. Amelia squeezed in between us, holding her rabbit up like she wanted my mom to say hello to it too. "Hello, Mr. Rabbit," my mom said, wiping her eyes. "Aren't you handsome." Then she took Amelia out of my arms, and Amelia let her. She never did that with strangers. But she looked at my mom's face for about two seconds, and then she patted her cheek like they had known each other forever. I grabbed the bags, and Henry helped me carry them up the steps. My stomach was tight. All the way here I had been getting ready for the worst. I thought about what I'd say to my dad. I thought about how thin he might look, how tired, how many machines I'd see in his room. I had practiced a calm face in the airplane bathroom.