Her Swedish Billionaire’s Baby

“I was going to call you and tell you where I went, of course. Hopefully after it was too late for Dad to drag me back.”

“Like he could?! You’re eighteen now, Samara, you can do whatever you want. What did you think he was gonna do, tie you up?”

“Maybe.” Actually, Samara had envisioned all sorts of scenarios. When it came to his daughters, Samara honestly wasn’t sure he had any limits. “But I guess I may as well not have called,” she couldn’t help saying bitterly, “since you wouldn’t have answered, anyway.” When Alison only scoffed, Samara snapped, “Why didn’t you answer my calls, Alison?”

She heard Alison breathing, loudly and almost evenly, like she was trying to calm herself. It didn’t work. “Because I wanted to wait until it wouldn’t end in a screaming match, but looks like I didn’t wait long enough. So what, that’s it? You just ditch out to be the big kahuna on campus and tell your family to fu*k off? You’re done with us?”

Samara sighed sadly. “Of course not! But, you know, did it ever occur to you and Dad–ever once, in eighteen years–to think about what I wanted?”

“We did think about what you wanted! That’s all we ever thought about!”

“Then how come it never occurred to you to let me have it? This is the only way I was ever going to get it, Alison. The only way you guys would ever let me have what I want is if I left and got it for myself.”

Alison was obviously trying to restrain the nastiest words that were jumping to mind. “So all that matters is what little Samara wants, is that it?”

“No, but in eighteen years, I’d think it should matter once.”

“It always mattered! All Dad and I were ever thinking about was–”

“Yeah? Then how come we never once did anything I wanted to do, Alison? We didn’t get a house. We didn’t stay in one school. Hell, it was all I could do to get any studying done at all, between hustling and constantly being on the move. Do you have any idea how hard it was to learn what I had to learn so I could do this?! All day, every day, it was Dad and his hustles! That’s all you guys thought about! The closest I ever got to something I wanted was trying to read in the back of the Cadillac, tuning you guys out. That was your big concession to letting me do what I wanted, and you still never stopped giving me a hard time about it!”

“That’s bullsh*t!” Alison hissed viciously. “You had friends, and boys, teachers–”

“Sometimes! For a few weeks! Then Dad would rip them away from me again! I NEVER HAD ANYTHING, Alison! Could you and Dad just let me have one nice thing, for once?!”

“But this isn’t for once, is it!” Alison sounded like she was practically foaming at the mouth. “This is forever!”

“I’m not the one who made it that way,” Samara said coolly. “You did. You and Dad.”

“Fu*k you, Samara!” Alison roared. Samara saw Amy flinch out of the corner of her eye. Yeah, there was no way she hadn’t heard that. She wasn’t the only one who flinched.

Samara looked sadly at her phone for a few seconds. She had really hoped for more caring and understanding. She’d actually finally up and left, and still, nothing was different. Nothing at all. She was begging for her sister’s understanding, for her blessing to live a life that didn’t make her unhappy, and this was her response? ‘Fu*k you’? She’d always thought Dad and Alison, or at least Alison, were dimly aware of Samara’s feelings and desires and needs, but maybe not. Somewhere in her mind, she’d always believed that, deep down, they wanted her to be happy, but maybe she was wrong.

She put her phone up to her mouth only long enough to say, “Goodbye, Alison,” and closed it. She knew she’d never call Alison again, and from the sound of things, Alison would never call again, either. So this was it. Dad and Alison, always going on about the importance of family, but they only meant it as long as they were the beneficiaries of that arrangement. They meant that Samara had to do what they wanted, not that they had to do what she wanted. Hell, they wouldn’t even let her do what she wanted all on her own. They wouldn’t even stand by her, support her. How hard could it be to let her live her life the way she wanted to?

She stood there staring at her phone until Amy got out of the bed and hugged her around the waist. Eighteen years of trying to be a part of her family, gone up in smoke with one phone conversation. She shouldn’t have been surprised. She was never really one of them.

“Well … I thought you were sh*tting me last night,” Amy told her on their way to breakfast. They were holding hands. “I mean, it didn’t make any sense that your family could be anything but proud that you’re going to UCLA, but … there’s the proof.”

Samara squeezed her hand. “It sure is nice to hear you say that. Sometimes I’ve thought maybe I was nuts, thinking my family should maybe, oh I don’t know, value education or care about what every member of the family wants, not just one or two of ’em.”

“So what, your dad’s like some crazed NRA guy who just loves to kill things?”

Samara couldn’t help chuckling softly at that image of her dad, until she realized it wasn’t that far off. “More or less. More because he’s ex-military than because he’s a gun nut, but … he’s into weapons, too, now that you mention it.”

It was heavenly, to be able to share at least some of the truth about her bizarre life with someone and for her to simply accept it–and more, for her to acknowledge how crazy it had been, to have someone validate some of her own perceptions about it. Dad and Alison acted like it was all normal, but it was so not normal.

“And that’s all he did? Your sister, too?”

“Pretty much.”

“Freaky. You’re so not that type. Where did you even come from? I can’t imagine you coming from people like that.”

“Well, my mom was normal. Actually, I hear the whole family was pretty normal, until she died.”

“Oh, she died? Oh, Samara, I’m sorry. How old were you?”

She really didn’t want to tell her. She seemed to like feeling pity for her, but there was only so much sorry a person could feel for another, and she felt like the few things she’d told her must have already strained her capacity to sympathize to the limit, or possibly push her story past credulity. Had her life really been that tragic? Maybe so, but Alison and Dad obviously didn’t think so. They’d always acted like she had it made, looks and smarts and being the baby of the family. “Six months,” she finally said shortly.

Yeah, she pitied her. She saw the pain for her on her face. She let go of her hand, put her arm around her waist, and hugged her close. There was one person in the world who understood. It shouldn’t surprise her that it wasn’t family.