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What’s the going rate for having a stranger’s baby?
And what does it say about me that the number he gives might actually make a difference?
In the last year alone, I’ve pawned jewelry and sold some of my nicer clothes to a consignment shop—hence today’s borrowed duds. On my darkest days, I even poked around on a few foot fetish sites just to see what the landscape was like. I’m not above selling a few pictures of my piggies to keep a roof over Mom’s head.
But this? EvenImight not be this desperate.
“I can have a contract drawn up,” he continues, giving me no room to think and even less to breathe. “It will be more than fair to you.”
“B-but I would be… pregnant.”
“You should’ve highlighted your listening comprehension skills on your resume, Ms. Barnes.”
I know it’s obvious, but I think it bears repeating. Just in case this guy’s ultra-boujee private school skipped Sex Education class.
“I would give you a monthly salary for the nine months of pregnancy. I would also continue to give you a stipend for… let’s say, ten years beyond that. I think that’s fair.”
“‘Ten years’?!”
Forget the foot fetish sites. I should’ve started renting out my uterus years ago. Making babies is where the money’s at.
“I would also cover your household expenses, including medical bills attached to both you and your mother,” he says. “If you’d like, I can even recommend an excellent oncologist?—”
“Stop!” I fling both arms in the air like a wacky inflatable tube guy outside a car dealership. “Please, for the love of all that is pure and holy, stop. You’re making this sound like some great opportunity?—”
“It is.”
“I’d be pregnant,” I croak. “I’d have to push a real, live human being out of my body—and then what? Hand it over to you? I don’t even know you.”
He straightens up, fixes his cuffs, and saunters back around his desk to his chair. “You’re more than welcome to decline my offer. But the fact that you’re still sitting here tells me you don’t want to.”
I wince as a bolt of pain races through my hip, scything down the same old branching patterns that the familiar pain always runs.
If you really break it down, the pain is the only reason why I’m still sitting here, right? It’s not his offer; itcan’tbe his offer. It’s just that walking back down the flight of stairs I summited to get here would be daunting, and I need a break. I need to sit in this soft chair and breathe.
It has nothing to do with Arsen.
I root around inside my bag for my pain pills. “Can I have some water, please?”
He looks at me for a moment. A long, long moment.
Whatever he’s looking for, he must find it, because he nods and turns to fulfill my request.
While he meanders off to the bar cart in the corner, I try to unscrew the lid of the bottle. I get stymied by the childproof lid even on my good days, and today is not a good day.
As he approaches with a glass of sparkling water in hand, I manage to twist the lid off—victory—only for my pills to fly everywhere.
“Goddammit!”
I drop to all fours, frantically scooping pills into a pile like my life depends on it. First, Seth; now, this. My dignity is in tatters on this floor along with the rest of my deep, dark secrets.
Suddenly, Arsen is on one knee in front of me.
“Laila.” He says my name so softly that I think I’ve imagined it. But then his hand lands, feather-light, on my knee. “Leave it. I’ll get them.”
I look up and I’m caught between the pain in my hip and those devastating green eyes. All the motor control leaves my body. My limbs, my face, my words—all of it is stunned, slack, and silent. I can only watch as he gathers up the pills in his huge hands and cups them back in the bottle. All except for one, which he hands to me.
“Painkillers?”
