Strays - An Anti-Hero Romance - Cora Brent Page 0,1

Along the way, my foot accidentally kicks a double-bowled dish filled with pet food and water. Everything spills. Not my problem.

Her eyes are wide and she nervously tucks an escaped strand of artificially red hair back into place.

The hand returns to guard her big belly. “I didn’t know you had been released.”

“Just yesterday.” I gesture to the reason I’m here. “You look like you’re about ready to pop.”

A smile flashes. “Eight more weeks.” The smile fades. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

My fingers itch to hold a cigarette. Or a bottle. Something, anything, to shove away whatever emotion is bound to develop from this moment.

“You tell me you’re having my kid but you didn’t think you’d see me again?”

“Hush.” She waves her arms and looks behind her as if the closed door might get its feelings hurt. “Kevin’s inside.”

I’m not keeping my voice down. “I couldn’t give less of a fuck.”

Her brow furrows. “How on earth did you find me?”

Either she thinks I’m as dumb as a dog or else she forgot that the Internet exists. Took all of sixty seconds of online searching to discover her address. Dana liked to run her mouth after getting her brains fucked out. When she wasn’t going on and on about her boring charity work that has something to do with stray animals she was blabbing about her husband’s law firm in the city’s pricy new business park and the custom, marble-floored McMansion she’d designed here in the land of Real Housewives Of Clueless Rich Bastards.

Dana doesn’t await an answer to her question. “If you need money-“

I cut her right off. “I don’t.”

She nods. Another pat to the belly. She stares down at it fondly. “Look, Kevin knows about you. He’s been very understanding. We’re going to raise the baby together.”

I feel like being mean. “It’s nice to hear I was able to give you something that your dickless wonder of a meal ticket couldn’t.”

Her head snaps up. “Rafe, you understand nothing.” She’s about to say something else but then she sighs and deflates a little. “It’s not your fault. You’re a kid, haven’t even reached your twenty-first birthday. My god.” She sniffs. “I turned forty last week. Old enough to be your mother.”

My laugh is as sharp as a bark. “You didn’t think I was a kid when you were choking my cock down your throat.”

She can’t stop herself from flinching. “That’s not necessary.”

“Truth hurts. Why’d you tell me you couldn’t get pregnant?”

“That’s what I thought. I didn’t lie to you. We tried IVF. It didn’t work. Kevin refused to consider adoption and-“

“I really don’t fucking care.”

“Then why are you here? What do you want?”

My eyes shift to her belly. There’s a quick ripple beneath the satin. I was careless about many things but I always wrapped up my dick before sticking it in new places. Then one time I didn’t and now here I am, staring at the consequences. If Dana had it to do over again I’m sure she would never have told me. She would have just waved farewell on the morning I needed to report to lockup in order to serve time for a fight that I didn’t even start. Life is less fair than it is on the grade school playground and judges don’t care who hit who first. I would have forgotten about her on the inside while the days passed with unbearable slowness and I would have just assumed she’d moved on too.

But she did tell me.

She’d pressed my hand to her stomach and her eyes misted as she said, “I’m pregnant, Rafe. It’s yours.”

And for a hundred and fifty three days I had lots of time to think about that.

“I don’t want anything,” I tell her, my eyes still on the ripple in her satin robe as the piece of me inside her belly shifts again. “I just needed to see if you were all right.”

She relaxes slightly but she doesn’t quite believe me. She’s spent enough time in my company to understand I’m not made of tender feelings.

Her nerves are betrayed by the shake in her voice. “Kevin will take care of me. He’ll take care of both of us.”

Kevin Walsh’s photo is on his law firm’s About Us page. He’s even older than Dana, with a face like a pale weasel with bad hair plugs. One of his suits is likely worth more than I’ve ever owned at one time. Yeah, he would be the kind of man to take care