He’d seen those kids. Rolling their eyes and making their protests as they tried to stiff-arm their way out of the kind of hugs he’d never known.
Eyes drifting to her glass of water and the bananas on her counter, he knew she’d be a good mom. There would always be food in the house and—
“I could just be late. I’m probably just late.”
“I’ll give you the money for the studio up front.” He had it, and the last thing she’d need was to worry. “You’ll be able to hire another instructor to replace you. If you’re up for it, maybe you can teach a class for expectant mothers, and then work the front with your mom or help out with the childcare you were talking about providing. It’ll keep you involved and social. Help you build a network of other mothers.”
“Levi, wait,” she said with a small laugh that somehow eased the worst of what was eating him. “I know you like getting everything all fixed up, but you’re getting ahead of yourself. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out together.”
Together.
Levi looked at Elise across the table, watching him with a combination of trust and tenderness in her eyes. And suddenly he was angry. None of it belonged there.
He knew what she was thinking. Knew how far off base it was.
“Elise, you’re never going to have to worry about money. But that’s all I’ve got to give you.”
The little smile on her lips faltered. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not the kind of guy you’d want in your kid’s life. I’m good at two things. One got us to where we are right now. The other is developing clubs I sell for a lot of money. I can give you financial security. Real financial security. And if your needs change, if you need more than what we’ve arranged, I’ll only be a phone call away.”
Elise stared at him blankly, then shook her head, pushing away from the table. Her voice sounded cool, forced, as though it was taking everything she had to keep from screaming. “I think I’m misunderstanding. It sounds like you’re not planning on being around … at all.”
“Believe me, Elise. It will be better for everyone if I’m not.”
Elise just blinked, confusion swirling in her eyes until he saw the realization strike. The hurt settle in. And whatever hopes or expectations she’d been fostering about him fade away. “You’re telling me, if I’m pregnant, you won’t want anything to do with me or this baby?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
TENSION gripped him in a vise cranked so tight Levi half wondered if he was going to snap.
Elise’s soft eyes had gone to slate. “What kind of man would say that?” she demanded.
“The kind who’s honest enough to admit he wouldn’t make a good parent.” The kind who’d been telling her he wasn’t the good guy she deserved from the start.
The bitter huff of humorless laughter that answered told him exactly what Elise thought of his answer. That it was bull. A cop-out.
Only it wasn’t. He knew firsthand what it meant to be better off without someone. Or a string of someones. He knew what it meant to have your hopes crushed over and over. To be let down by the person you needed to count on most.
He wouldn’t do that to his own child.
Reluctantly his mind dragged him back through the years to a rat-hole apartment, and the nightmare that was having nowhere to run, no way to hide. To the lead weight in his small gut as he crouched in the corner, wishing he hadn’t come inside—but the cops had driven past the alley twice already and he was scared Child Services would get him. Scared of the stories his mother had told him about the kids who got picked up by them. So he’d come back and walked into another sloppy, booze-fuelled fight on the brink of violence.
The loser who’d been knocking them around the last two months was threatening to leave, his already ugly face twisted and red. Levi waited for the rest of the scene to play itself out—his mother’s slurred insults and demands that the guy go.
Only this time, it was different. This time, she pleaded through her tears, clinging to his arm not to leave her. Swearing the baby had been an accident.
Promising she’d get rid of it.
At eight years old he hadn’t fully understood what she’d meant, but it scared him anyway. He wanted to tell her to let the guy go. They’d be better off without him. She could keep the baby and he’d be good. He’d help her. He knew how to do lots of stuff on his own. He’d taken care of himself for that week she’d been gone the year before and he took care of his mom all the time. He even knew how to make money—only a little, but it was enough to buy food when he had to.
The guy called his mother pathetic and took a step toward the door, his foot landing on an empty bottle. He tripped, turning angrier than before. It happened fast. The backhand that sent his mother to the ground and Levi lunging across the room in flurry of fists and kicks that ultimately did nothing more than set the guy off worse than he already was.
The blow that came next was closed fist and the last he remembered.
He had to stay in for a week until the bruise healed, his skin itching from the inside out with the need to escape the dank space that reeked of stale smoke, booze and the guy who’d decided to stick around after all. For a while, anyway.
There wasn’t any more talk about the baby or getting rid of it. And for a while Levi let himself hope, but by his next birthday his mother’s body hadn’t changed. No baby had come. And he knew it never would.
Eventually the guy left for good. Same as the others before and after.
But Levi couldn’t. He’d just watch them leave, one after another, each year wishing more and more it could be him. Aching to get out, but knowing he couldn’t go. Suffocating in the life he couldn’t escape until finally it was his turn.
And once he left, there was no tying him down again.
He couldn’t stand it.
Some people weren’t cut out to have kids. People like his mother, whose dysfunction found its beginning and end in the bottom of a bottle. And people like him, who didn’t know anything else.
It was just like he’d told Elise about her father. That relationship was a foundation on which the rest of her life had been built.
Levi’s foundation was damaged to the point where no one was fool enough to build upon it.
He knew what he had to offer.
Money. Lots of it. Earned off a career based on leaving everything he’d built behind.
When it came to security though, the kind he’d never known, Elise would be the only one who could offer that. She’d be the kind of mother he’d wished he could have had.
He’d make sure nothing got in the way.
Elise wouldn’t have to struggle. She wouldn’t have to tie herself to some jerk-off just to get by. She knew how to love. She understood responsibility. And the cold look in her eyes when she realized he wasn’t the kind of man her baby deserved told him everything he needed to know.
They would be fine.
And he would be too.
The trill of Levi’s watch cut through Elise’s bitter disbelief. Just three short minutes … how could everything have changed?
Together they pushed back from the table.
Vision tunneling, Elise walked on numb legs toward the results that would set the course for the rest of her life.
Levi