Plagiarized (18 page)

“What’s wrong with your dad?” The more I learned about his family, the more I feared ever meeting them.

I felt him shrug his shoulders before he explained. “I guess our mom left his dad for mine. His dad has never really wanted anything to do with him, and my dad was never very warm to him. Keegen said that he treated him differently than me. I saw it as we were older, but Keegen also didn’t make it very easy on my dad. I don’t really know the whole story. Keegen would be able to answer that better than I could.”

Except I would never ask Keegen. So I guess I wouldn’t ever know that answer.

“So where does his family money come from?” I don’t know where that question came from. I opened my mouth to say something, not really sure what, and that question just flew out. I wanted to open my mouth back up and swallow my words back down before he thought too much about it, but knew that wasn’t really a possibility.

His shoulders shook under my head and it took me a second to realize he was laughing.

“You really do like money, don’t you?”

“I was only curious. Forget I asked,” I responded angrily.

He flipped over so that his body was hovering over mine and we were face-to-face. He gently touched my cheek with his hand while smiling brightly down on me. “It doesn’t bother me at all, Sage. If money is what you like, then it’s a good thing I can provide that for you. All I ask is that it’s me you love. Like my money, love me.”

Love him? Could I do that? The more he talked about money, I was pretty sure I could. Except for the first time in my life, I was actually starting to feel something. And it had nothing to do with money. Over the last twenty-four hours, being in Craig’s arms had me imagining all kinds of things. Things that didn’t include price tags or black credit cards. Could I love him? I might have already begun and just didn’t know it.

He kissed me softly and then laid back down. “His father has money. That’s where his comes from. I don’t know how much he has since he never touches it. He lives off his income from the bar. He makes good money bartending. It doesn’t provide wealth by any stretch of the imagination, but even I’m impressed with the tips he takes home.”

I knew that to be true, since I had seen firsthand how much he made. But I wasn’t about to bring that up. It would only add salt to the fresh wound that our new relationship had inflicted at dinner. I figured we had talked about Keegen enough for one night and simply closed my mouth on the topic.

We both lay there silently until we drifted off to sleep. It was amazing how things could change in a split second.

I went from thinking we would break up tonight to feeling closer to him than I ever had before.

After that night, I never left Craig’s house. I went home to get more clothes, but I kind of just stayed there indefinitely. When his parents came home for a couple of days, we moved to my house, then when they left, moved back to his. We were pretty much inseparable.

He still had to go to school, but it was only for a week. He had graduation and then would start the training he needed to take over the family business.

We both kind of seemed to mature after the restaurant debacle. Craig had talked to Keegen and smoothed things out between the two of them; I didn’t know if things could ever be smoothed out between Keegen and me. The thought of him with Missy almost sent me into convulsions, so I tried not to think about it much. Instead, I concentrated on my upcoming book signing, which was only one week away.

My book was literally moments from becoming a bestseller; there were heaps of chatter on social media about me—the new author that had taken the sales charts by storm. The problem with that, though, were the pressures that came along with discovering what my next book would be. Part of me wanted to stick with a good thing. Maybe develop a series? Trilogies had a way of doing well because people fell in love with the characters and were desperate for more.

My first book had ended with a murder, the second book could be about her life after the murder and the ramifications she faced, but I would definitely need help writing it. I sucked at coming up with a plot and wasn’t very good with character development, either. My editor was also on my ass for not staying in the correct tenses when I was writing and using too many taglines. It was a never-ending battle; I would write something, she would change it, and then I would change it back.

Readers didn’t have a clue how hard writing was. I sure didn’t until I tried it. I knew this to be fact, especially after I had read some of the reviews that had been left for me. I tried not to read them, but sometimes, when I was alone or it was late at night and Craig was sleeping, I couldn’t stop thinking about them and would give in, quickly logging on to Amazon or Goodreads to scan them all. I would toggle back and forth between the pages, trying to figure out who wrote them. Most of them were five stars, with a few four stars and then even fewer three stars, but no matter how few and far between the three star reviews were, they still had a way of upsetting me. That’s when I wished the readers would take into consideration how difficult my job was as a writer. I guess you couldn’t please everyone. I mean, when you take into consideration how many hundreds of thousands of personalities there are in the world, strike that, there had to be millions of personalities, it was impossible. How could I include the different personalities and take into consideration how dissimilar people react to situations?

It was one of those lonely nights. Craig was at his last football game of the year. Football season was over, so this was just an exhibition game. He had insisted that he wouldn’t go and would stay home with me instead, but I made him go. Now, I wished that I hadn’t been so insistent. I wanted him with me so that I didn’t have to be alone.

I was continually surprised at how mature Craig was when dealing with the adult decisions that had been forced upon him. Plus, in bed, he acted light years beyond his age. Thank God he was so gifted. I needed the sexual release he provided daily. I found that I craved it, especially with the current stressors in my life.

I was excited about the book signing. I couldn’t imagine anything better than having people fawn all over me for hours, giving me compliment after compliment, telling me how lucky I was, how gorgeous I was; it sounded amazingly wonderful. But I was worried about the husband factor. I supposed I could just continue to play along. I had tons of pictures I had taken of Keegen that I hadn’t even used yet. Plus, after a while, I could start recycling some of them. I had recently started the topic of pregnancy on my page. Author S. Roby was desperate to get pregnant more than anything. In addition to S. Roby’s daily sexcapade updates, she had also started posting baby pictures. She was intensely jealous of her new baby niece, which was where the old pictures of my niece came into play. Thank goodness I had them! It saved the time of looking on the internet for baby pics. It wasn’t really lying if you think about it. I was telling the truth because in actuality, they
were
pictures of my niece, the timeline was just off.

I heard the front door open and called out, “I’m in here.” I was waiting for Craig in the downstairs living room, closest to the foyer. I had my laptop on and was fiercely trying to write. I was desperate for inspiration.

“Who are you?” a female voice shrieked and I looked up into the face of a stranger.

I knew immediately it was Craig’s mother; they looked so much alike. I felt uncomfortable being in her house without Craig there, and awkwardly put my laptop down to stand. My legs were a bit wobbly and it made me worry that I looked like a bumbling idiot. “I’m sorry, who are you?” I tried to ask past the lump in my throat.

“I live here; this is my house,” she said with an uppity authority. “Again, who are
you
?”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Marten. I’m Craig’s girlfriend, Sage.” If I had been Craig’s
teen
age girlfriend, I would have been in the corner pissing myself. I internally chastised myself, reminding myself that I was not a teenager and should act my age.

She gawked at me and slowly scanned her eyes from my feet to my head. I thought I saw a smile on her perfectly Botoxed face, but couldn’t be sure. She seemed like a real bitch and it reminded me of how I used to be treated by women just like her when I was younger, and how it turned me into the person I became. That was enough to dislodge the knot in my throat and strengthen my unsteady legs. My back grew straighter and I held my head up high. This bitch wasn’t going to get to me.

“Oh,” she chuckled. “I can’t believe he’s fucking someone who’s almost my age!”

As if!
There was no way I was the same age as this bitch. She had at least fifteen years on me, I could see through the plastic surgery that riddled her body. She wasn’t as young as she wanted me to think she was. I also recognized the superiority complex she had. If I had reason to think I was a bitch, I had another thing coming. This woman was the
queen
bitch. I could tell. It was weird how you could immediately figure out a person with them only speaking a couple sentences, but I had her completely pegged.

She cleared her throat nervously and walked over to me, taking the seat across from where I stood. Being so close to her was bringing back my anxiety and worry, but I was grateful she hadn’t sat right next to me. My heart was pounding, nonetheless. I was pretty sure I had finally met my match.

“How did you meet my son? Dare I even ask.” She looked down at me as she spoke, even though we were eye level.

“I – I actually met him at Rosemary Academy,” I tried to unsuccessfully hide the uneasiness from my voice, but failed miserably. And the self-chastising began again.

“Oh, please,” she laughed. “Please don’t tell me you’re his teacher.”

I looked down glumly. I was struggling with trying to figure out how this woman had managed to outdo me in under two minutes. She was good! Really good… I was pretty sure she became my role model at that very moment.

“I knew it! I knew it as soon as Craig told me he was seeing someone older. You fucked a student.” She stuck her finger in the air at me in an authoritative way. “Did you see who his parents were, see dollar signs, and figured you didn’t need your lousy teaching salary if you bedded my son?”

“That’s not it at all, Mrs. Marten,” I defended myself quickly.

“So you just like to sleep with students?”

“NO!” I shouted and then sat back down, placing my head in my hands. No matter how worried I was to meet Craig’s mom, nothing came close to the reality of it. She was harsher than I had imagined. I thought his dad would have been the one to worry about. This woman was nothing like the loving mother I had imagined in my head.

I looked up from my hands and saw her cold and calculating smile. It was small, but definitely noticeable on her tight face. It sparked something in me, something deep within. At the sight of her amusement, I started laughing. Cackling, really. And once I started, I couldn’t stop.

She looked at me in bewilderment. “I’m sorry, Sage, do you find sleeping with a child funny?”

“Child? Craig? I’m sorry to say this to you, but your son is most certainly
not
a child.”

“I don’t need to hear the intimate details of your relationship. He’s my son, if you haven’t forgotten—”

“That’s not what I was talking about,” I interrupted her lecture. “I was merely trying to say that this relationship was brought on by your son. Craig is the one that pursued me. Not the other way around. I never intended for this to happen. It had nothing to do with dollar signs, or your family name. I care for Craig more than I ever imagined I would.” And there it was. The truth. My admission had shocked me as much as it seemed to have shocked his mother.

“That doesn’t surprise me. When Craig sees something he wants, he goes after it with passion and doesn’t give up until his goal is obtained. What surprises me is that he seems to have decided so quickly that you are the one he would like to spend the rest of his life with.”

I gawked at her. “What do you mean?” her comment had completely stunned me.

“He’s talked to me about you. About how he believes you are the one. I haven’t been able to get much out of him since all he seems to do is ramble when you’re the topic, but I’ve been able to understand enough. I thought you were younger; he seemed to have left out your age.” Her lips pursed as she mentioned my age once again. Nothing made a woman feel old than having her teenage boyfriend’s mother constantly throw it in her face. “He’s told me he’s in love and wants to marry you. It has made me want to know more about you. After all, if you’re going to be in this family, then I should know who you are. I need to know your intentions with my son. If it’s about the money, then fine. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a hypocrite. Everyone knows I’m with my husband for the money. But if that’s your reason, then at least be woman enough and admit it. But what I’m not okay with, is if you’re only using him. I may be with his father for the financial benefit but I still love him. Do you love my son, Sage?”

I looked at her, unable to respond. How could I answer the magnitude of questions she had tossed my way? Questions that I didn’t even know the answers to? I hadn’t even thought of love and Craig in the same sentence. Everything was happening too quickly. I felt the blood rush through my ears and my heart pound achingly in my chest. I felt so lightheaded I was afraid I’d faint.

“I can’t marry your son. We haven’t even been seeing each other long enough to make those kinds of decisions. Not to mention, I’m still married to someone else!” I would have gotten up and started pacing if I wasn’t afraid I’d fall over in a dead faint. I had so much nervous energy I felt as though my skin crawled.

“Your words actually mean a lot to me,” Craig’s mother smiled, a genuine caring smile. “I was afraid that you would jump at the chance to marry him because you were just using him. Now I know you aren’t. He hasn’t said anything to me about marrying you; I made the entire story up!” She clapped her hands animatedly with glee. This woman was certifiably insane. “Don’t get me wrong, he has talked about you nonstop, but he hasn’t mentioned anything about you being the one or that he’s even in love with you—although from the sounds of his excited jabber about anything Sage, I wouldn’t doubt if he was. But I’ll let him be the one to tell you that.”

“You just about gave me a heart attack,” I admitted. I wasn’t angry with her; in fact, I admired the hell out of her. That was something I would have totally done had I been in the same situation as her, but that would never happen because if I had a little demon baby, I would die. I could never be a mother. Ever! I would never have a child go through the same experiences that I did.

“Well, I won’t apologize for that. In fact, I rarely apologize for anything I do. If someone doesn’t like what I do, then they can eat shit and die for all I care. I don’t really feel the need to waste time worrying about what other people think of me. My opinion is the only one that counts.”

“Are you going to be home for a while then? Craig must have forgotten to tell me that you were coming.”

“Oh, Craig doesn’t know, my dear. He will be just as surprised as you were. It makes my visit so much more pleasurable. He will be squirming big time when he walks in and finds us chatting. I have a feeling he left out your age on purpose.”