“But—”
“No buts, Jessa. Just say okay.”
She stares at me, her blue-brown eyes catching the one ray of sunlight that has managed to squeeze between a gap in the cloud cover.
“Okay.”
She smiles and leans back. “Good. I’m glad we’ve got that settled.”
She’s using the word generously, though. Because I know, deep down, nothing is settled. I’m going to have a baby in seven or eight months. I don’t have a job or a plan. I don’t even have a family I can rely on to help me if things get tough. Both my parents are of the mind that children should be born within the confines of marriage. Anything else is simply unacceptable.
I don’t want to face their judgment. I don’t want lectures, either. Because the simple truth of the matter is, as utterly inconvenient and scary as this pregnancy is to me, it’s still something I’m happy about.
Despite the circumstances that led me here.
Despite Anton.
I close my eyes and try to push his face from my mind. But no matter what I do, I can still see him. I can picture the tender smile that played over his face minutes before everything fell apart.
I also see now what I should have seen then: if something feels that good, it can’t possibly be trusted.
“I take it you’re going to keep the baby?”
“It wasn’t ever a question,” I admit.
“You’re a brave one. It’s going to be okay, Jessa,” Freya says. “You’ll see. I have you now.”
I smile at the way she phrases it. “I appreciate that. More than you now.”
She’s quiet and contemplative for a moment. Then she asks, “You miss him, don’t you?”
I’m too tired to pretend anymore. “It’s weird how much. I haven’t even known him for that long.”
“I wonder how many other women have felt that way about him,” she muses. “Probably quite a few, if I had to guess.”
That sends a wave of unease straight through me, but I don’t address it. I don’t want to.
Freya presses on. “I know how you feel, Jessa. I know what it’s like to want something you know is bad for you. I know what it’s like to love a man you know you must leave.” She hesitates for a moment before her eyes finally find mine again. “And I know what it’s like to want a baby whose father you can’t keep.”
It takes a moment for me to catch up with her words. “Wait… You mean… you were pregnant?”
“With my ex’s baby,” she confirms with a sad smile. “I lost the child, though. Somewhere in my second trimester.”
“How?”
“We had a bad fight,” she explains. “He hit me, I started bleeding, then I miscarried a few days later.”
My chest clenches hard. “Oh my God, Freya…”
A tear gathers in the corner of her eye, but she manages to keep her composure. “That’s when I decided to leave him, once and for all. That’s why I came to Los Angeles in the first place.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she says. “I just… I didn’t want you to pity me.”
“I don’t pity you. I feel sympathy for you,” I tell her, grabbing her hand. “I can’t imagine what you must have gone through.”
“I tell myself it was a good thing that I lost the baby,” she says. “A child shouldn’t be born into a hateful home. But most days, I don’t believe myself.”