Pregnant by the Man Who Couldn't Have Kids

I spent five years as a kept woman for a man who couldn't have kids. Then I got pregnant.

I asked him, careful about it. "Do you want a baby someday?" He didn't look up. "I'm never having kids." The room tilted. I ran that same night.

Before I left, I set the test on the kitchen table. Two lines. And a note. I cheated. The baby isn't yours. Don't look for me.

I hid in a small town down south and waited to get big. The baby never came first. A pair of hands did, over my eyes.

He pressed against my back like something damp that crawled out of a wall, and his palm slid down until it stopped flat on my stomach. "Be good.

Get rid of it, and I can pretend none of this happened." I never told him. Only one man in this world has ever touched me. Chapter 1 "That kid is unreal.

I want one." Dinner was done. I was flat on the couch scrolling, and a little girl came up on my screen. Big eyes. Milkpale. The kind of sweet that doesn't look real.

I liked the video. So cute. God, I love her. I want one exactly like that. Rhys had just finished clearing the table. He sat down beside me and read my comment over my shoulder.

His eyes went dark. He said nothing. Something occurred to me. I pushed myself upright and tugged his sleeve. "What's with that face?

You don't think she's cute?" "Mm." Barely a word. I wasn't giving up. "Don't do that.

Answer me." This time he didn't even glance at my screen. "I don't like them." My breath caught. That flat tone was gone. This one was different. I could hear it. He meant it.

He really didn't like kids. I played dumb. "Why not? Look at her. Pretty, quiet, doesn't scream at anybody.

What's there to not like?" "Does not liking something need a reason?" I had nothing for that, so I let it drop.

The only sound in the room was the kid in the video, calling whoever held the camera Mommy in that sugar voice. Swipe. Next video.

I almost never like anything, so the second I liked one about a baby, the algorithm went feral. It fed me nothing but kids after that. Last time a girl.

This time a fatcheeked little boy. Maybe he was one of those men who only wanted a son. Maybe that was all it was. I tugged his sleeve again. "What about this one?

He's cute too." Same voice. Same answer. "I don't like them." Or maybe it was other people's kids he didn't like. I kept scrolling and stopped seeing anything.

If it were his, would the answer change? I didn't tug his sleeve that time. I waited until he was done working.

He leaned down and kissed me, and I let it go somewhere warm and stupid, and with my arms around his neck and my breath coming short, I asked, "Do you want one of your own?" He rubbed the top of my head. "Why are you still on this?

I don't like kids. Girls, boys, none of them. And I'm never having one." I froze. Lucky for me my face was against his chest, where he couldn't read it.

My hand went to my stomach on its own, then jerked back like the skin was hot. So he didn't like kids. I said I was tired, went to shower, and shut myself in the bedroom.

Under the blanket his words kept playing. He didn't like kids. He didn't like any kids. He was never having one. My eyes started to burn. I blinked hard until it passed.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Sleep and it stops. Except I couldn't. In the dark I kept running my hand over a stomach that was still flat.

The test with two lines was still in the trash. I hadn't made myself take the bag out. Tomorrow. How was I supposed to say it out loud?

Chapter 2 My eyes had barely closed when the smell of neroli folded around me and he pulled me back against him.

His voice went low and warm at my ear. "I'm not fighting you for sport. I really don't like kids. And I was diagnosed with severe oligospermia. I was told I couldn't have them.

Can we not do this over a baby?" It didn't help. My whole body locked up like a brick. He was telling me he could never have a child of his own. Except. Except.

I looked at the trash can across the room. There was a used test in there. Two lines. Mine. I was pregnant. There was no arguing with it. I was pregnant.

Rhys and I had been together almost five years. The first two, he was careful. Then one day he stopped. I figured he was done inconveniencing himself and had decided it was my turn.

I didn't push. He was my sugar daddy. He got to decide. So I went and bought birth control pills and set a daily reminder on my phone.

The box sat on the nightstand in the afternoon. By that night it was in the trash. He didn't look the least bit guilty. "Don't take those.

They're bad for you." Getting pregnant and having an abortion is worse for me! Rhys is not a man you win against. However many boxes I bought, wherever I hid them, he found them.

Eventually I gave up. Fine. No pills. He wouldn't let me take them, so if it happened it was his to deal with. Nothing ever happened. Years of nothing.

I thought somebody up there was looking out for me. Turns out I was just sleeping with a man who can't have children. He can't have children. So how am I pregnant?

I couldn't work it out. What I really couldn't work out was how to make him believe me. A man who's been told he's sterile walks in and finds the woman in his bed pregnant.

What's the first word in his head? It isn't miracle. He is the only man I have ever slept with. I've never even held someone else's hand.

No blackout nights, no missing hours, no version of this where I did something I don't remember. But my period didn't come. I opened the period tracker app.

Ten full days past due and still nothing. A little reading about late periods, and then it landed — we never used anything. Ever. Late period plus that adds up to one thing.

I had a test delivered, read the instructions, and did it. A few minutes later, two lines. No surprise there. Two lines means pregnant.

The second it registered, I was already a mother in my head. I could almost see it in there, growing, stubborn about it.

A heartbeat the size of nothing, coming up through my blood and hitting my eardrum. That was my baby. Mine and Rhys's. Which is where the problem started.

He's sterile and he hates kids. So how do I tell him this. I'd been saving it for my birthday, a couple of days out. A surprise.

Now the surprise was a bomb, and telling him was the worst option on the table. No. Not like this. I was too wound up to think straight.

The one mercy was that Rhys had planned a trip for my birthday. He'd been buried for weeks, flying city to city, burning through work so he could clear a long stretch of time.

He didn't trust me alone. He texted me on a schedule, like clockwork. I only got to breathe once he flew across the ocean. The time difference knocked our hours out of sync.

I stopped taking his video calls. Short answers became normal and nobody questioned it. I couldn't handle him right then. Better this way. While he was gone, I thought it through.

The day he landed was my birthday. That gave me a few nights to figure out how to say it out loud. The clock was already running.

Chapter 3 When I asked him, he didn't know I was pregnant. If he'd known, maybe the answer comes out different. It's like a kid dragging a stray kitten home.

Dad swears up and down he hates cats, and two weeks later Dad is the one buying the expensive food. Maybe Rhys was a Dadandthecat situation.

Once I decided that, the knot under my ribs finally let go. Something this big, you say straight out. You don't sneak up on it.

On our call that night my face must have looked different, because he caught it. "Something good happen?

Are you going to share?" I propped my chin on my hand. "I figured something out." "What?" "Not telling you." He put on a wounded face. "So you have secrets now." "Huge ones.

Enormous." "How enormous?" I drew a circle in the air. "Enormous enough to knock you over." We talked about nothing for a while. It got late. He had work. I needed sleep.

He waited for me to hang up, and right before I did I grinned into the camera. "That secret? I'll tell you when you land. "And don't you dare drop everything and fly back early.

Go be productive, Mr. Moneybags. I'm waiting for you to support me." And our baby.

That night I dreamed he was holding our kid, tipping a bottle like the whole thing might break in his hands. He'd be a good father.

Good mood, nothing to do, so I went to a party I didn't care about. I don't normally go to those. They send me an invite anyway, since printing one more card costs nobody anything.

Nobody expected me to show. Nobody expected me early.

I was headdown at the dessert table comparing little cakes when I heard his name. "I heard Rhys turned down another merger marriage." "How is that news.

He's turned down how many by now? Stop acting shocked." "This one's different. The Whitmore girl fell for him on sight.

She's an only child, she's not exactly a killer, and if those two marry, the whole of Whitmore Holdings lands in his lap. Their board can't think about it without wincing." "So?

You think he needs Whitmore? After all these years you still don't get it. He's dead gone on that girlfriend of his." A snort. "Girlfriend? Kept woman, more like.

What girlfriend dates a man five years and never gets a ring? She's just something he's playing with." The frosting in my mouth went flat. I leaned in and kept listening. "Fair.

Although why don't they get married? Isn't she in a hurry? She won't get another shot like this. Honestly, if he's that into her, she should get pregnant and babytrap her way in.

He'd never make a woman he loves have an abortion." Nobody answered that one. The silence sat there, strange. My hand went to my stomach on its own. He loves me.

He wouldn't make me do that. Even strangers can see it. Then the other voice came back. "Mm. I wouldn't bet on it.

If she turned up pregnant —" the voice dropped, and I have good ears, so I got it anyway. "It stops being about the abortion.

Might end up being two coffins, not one." "Why?" The listener sucked in a breath. "Rhys doesn't do second chances. Nobody who crossed him ever got to explain first.

He cleans it up and it's clean." Two coffins, not one. Those four words went into my ear while my hand was still resting on my stomach.

Chapter 4 I set down the cake I'd taken one bite of and left through the back. The frosting stayed on the back of my tongue, sweet enough to taste bitter.

I'd slept fine the night before. One day later and I was a different person. I turned over and over and couldn't get under. Nights make everything bigger.

The lines from the party ran on a loop. Merger marriage. Kept woman. Never gets a ring. Playing with her. They circled in front of my eyes and turned into other words. Abortion.

Crossed him. Never got to explain. And — Two coffins, not one. I opened our thread. The last message in it was goodnight. Then I remembered him telling me he was sterile.

I went out to the balcony. Clear sky, easy wind, autumn starlight crossing however many lightyears to land in my eyes.

The universe is enormous and there's no room in it for this baby. I put my hand on my stomach. Its father doesn't want it. I do. I can do this by myself and do it well.

Deep in the night I went through the closet and started filling a suitcase. Tomorrow, then. Leave this place. Leave Rhys.

After tomorrow it stops being his baby and becomes only mine. Before I left I stood there a second, then set out a note and the test.

If I just vanished, he'd assume something had happened to me. He'd turn over every rock in this country, and the odds of him finding me go way up. I cheated. The baby isn't yours.

Don't look for me. I finished writing and took one last look at the home I'd lived in for five years. My whole life was in there, in pieces, all over it.

None of it had anything to do with me anymore. Goodbye, little house. Goodbye, Rhys. Cloudwater is the kind of town you blow past on the interstate without turning your head