‘Then what is it, sweetheart? I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what we’re facing here. But, if you tell me what it is, maybe we can work it out?’
She looked up at me. ‘Promise you won’t tell a soul,’ she implored me.
I looked at her and felt my heart breaking in two. What the hell else could I do but agree? ‘Okay. I promise,’ I said.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she sniffed and I almost sighed with relief.
‘Pregnant?’ I asked instead.
She nodded.
‘Okay. We can deal with that,’ I said.
She shook her head again. ‘That’s not all,’ she said and started to sob again.
I squeezed her hand. ‘Okay. What else is there?’ I asked softly.
‘I’m only sixteen,’ she whispered. ‘After my parents died, I was going to be taken into care, but I ran away instead to live with my boyfriend.’
Oh! Sixteen. Shit! ‘But your paperwork, it all said you were eighteen.’
‘Blake forged it all so we could get married without consent. It was all part of his plan …’ she started to cry again and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and stroked her hair as she sobbed against my chest. I assumed Blake was her ex-boyfriend and father of her baby.
‘Everything is going to be okay,’ I whispered.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? They’ll make me go back to Chicago. They’ll take me into care,’ she sobbed.
‘I won’t tell anyone – for now, I promise. But we’re going to have to figure out what to do next, Lucy.’
‘We?’ she said as she looked up at me with wide eyes.
‘Yes, we,’ I smiled at her.
‘Everything okay, Alana?’ Hugo asked me as I sat in the back of his car on the way home.
‘What?’ I asked absent-mindedly, even though I’d heard his question. ‘Oh, yes, just some shelter stuff.’
He nodded and went back to driving and I went back to staring out of the window and wondering what the hell I would do about Lucy. After she had stopped crying she had told me that she was three months pregnant. Her parents had died in a car accident a couple of years ago and she had been living a life on the run ever since.
The father of her baby was her ex-boyfriend, Blake, who from what she said was a nasty piece of work. He had basically coerced her into running away with him and had managed to get her some fake documents. She’d been all set to marry him when she’d caught him cheating on her with a waitress and had jumped on the first bus she had found, which happened to be headed to L.A.
She was terrified. Terrified of being pregnant; of being taken into care; of having to leave the shelter she had come to think of as home, but it seemed she was mostly terrified that Blake would find her.
I wracked my brain to think of a solution that would protect her from all her fears, and right now I couldn’t think of one. I knew I’d have to talk to Kristen eventually, but only once Lucy had given me permission. I was a firm believer that a problem shared was a problem halved.
I wondered briefly if Alejandro could help me. I was sure he could find out more about Blake for a start, and he had plenty of officials in his pockets who could help us out. But, I couldn’t. He had made it abundantly clear that we were about sex and nothing more. I couldn’t betray Lucy’s trust by telling him, when I wasn’t even sure he would care or offer any help at all.
No, for now at least, I would have to figure this out on my own.