Impossible To Resist (BWWM Romance Book 1)(96)

People who knew her mother told her that the older she got, the more she looked like her mom, and it was a compliment she was always glad to get. It made her feel connected to the precious woman she had lost from her life, and as she laid there in bed touching the glass over the old photograph of the woman smiling back at her, she sniffled and cried quietly.

“Mama, I wish you were here. I need you so much. What am I going to tell daddy?” She cried a little more until she fell asleep, and she didn’t wake up until she heard the front door close, and then she opened her eyes and looked around.

The light was faint in the early evening sky and her mother’s picture frame was still in her hands where she had fallen asleep with it. She sighed and got out of bed, setting the photograph back on the shelf carefully, and then she told herself that she had to do it eventually, so she might as well do it right then.

She opened the door of her bedroom and walked out to see her father sitting in his chair by the kitchen table, pulling his boots off of his tired feet. He looked up at her and frowned.

“Where were you just now? I didn’t hear you come in,” he told her, looking around and sighing. “I can’t be that tired.”

She shook her head. “You’re not that tired. I stayed home from school this afternoon.”

He looked up at her and frowned. “Why is that? You feeling okay?” he asked, a look of concern in his eyes.

She took a deep breath and sat in the chair beside him. Catalina looked at her father seriously and told herself to say the words. Just say them, she thought.

“Daddy,” she began hesitantly, and then there was only one thing to do, “I’m pregnant,” she told him in a soft voice.

He froze where he was, his fingers tugging at his boot laces, his body bent over as he was taking his boots off. He stayed that way for a long moment and then the shoelaces fell from his fingers and he slowly rose back up in his seat and turned his head to look at her.

“What did you say?” he asked solemnly, looking at her like he expected her to say it again with different words that had a completely different meaning, because he must certainly have heard her wrong.

She had already said it once, and saying it the second time was no easier, but it was no more difficult either. “I’m pregnant, Daddy. I’m going to have a baby.” She said the words a second time, her eyes on his. His eyes were dark; they were the deep brown of mahogany wood. She had gotten her mother’s eyes when she was born, and her mother had gotten them from some distant European ancestor; blue gray eyes.

Eyes that searched her father’s dark brown ones for some kind of sympathy, for some kind of help or direction or guidance or advice… or something, anything, that could make her feel like she wasn’t completely alone in the world with her life change.

He stared at her in silence for a long while as he processed what she said, and then he leaned back down and took his other boot off, stood up, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out a bottle of beer. He didn’t drink often, but on very long days, he liked to relax with a beer, or on days when his patience had been taxed too much.

Or on days when he found out his only daughter had been sleeping with one of her college professors. Or on days when he found out that the college professor who had been sleeping with his only daughter had gotten her pregnant. On those days, he drank.

He opened the beer bottle and kept his back to her, tossing the lid into the trash can at the end of the counter. He never missed it. The lid made a soft tinkling noise as it bounced off tin and glass in the trash bin. He tipped the bottle back and swallowed half of it before he pulled it from his mouth, and then he leaned over the counter and placed his hand on the edge of it, standing there silently as the old clock on the mantel ticked away in the quiet of the room.

She breathed in and breathed back out again. Her heart banged against her chest. Her blood raced through her veins. Her brain felt like it was going to explode. She breathed in again and let the air out slowly as she tried to calm herself even a little.

He finally turned and looked at her, leaning against the counter and taking another long drink from his beer bottle.

She waited for him to speak, her eyes locked on his. She could do nothing but hold her breath.

“I don’t know what to do, Daddy.” She finally breathed, not sure what he was thinking, but desperately needing his help and advice.

100He walked toward her and set his beer on the table, standing beside his chair. “I’ll tell you exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to get an abortion and kill that thing immediately. Then you’re going to change schools, because I don’t want you anywhere near that son of a bitch.”

Her heart felt like it broke right in her chest. She hadn’t considered abortion. Every thought that she had that day had centered around keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption, but abortion had never crossed her mind. As her father spoke the word, it felt like a ton of steel had landed right on her heart and smashed it completely.

His words echoed in her head as she stared at him. ‘…you’re going to get an abortion and kill that thing…’ he had told her. She could not unhear his words, and they found no anchor in her mind, so they kept zinging around, banging against the walls and wreaking havoc in her mind and heart.

“Daddy… I don’t think I can get an abortion. I don’t feel like that’s something I could do, and I’m not changing schools. Connor isn’t there anymore, Daddy. He is on suspension right now, so other people are teaching his classes. I don’t see him at all, and I don’t talk to him,” she told him quietly, looking up at him.