What. The. Fuck?
“I wanted it to be you,” she whispers her confession. “Spontaneity,” she whispers.
“I don’t even know your name.” I give voice to my earlier thoughts.
“You’re just passing through town. We both know this is a one-night thing. Can we just… finish what we started so that we can maybe do it again?” She smiles. She turns to look at the three condoms she pulled from her purse. “Maybe three more times?”
“You’ll be sore.”
“So worth it,” she counters. “Please.”
I’ve known her a few hours, and already I could never tell her no. Not that I want to. “I should have gone slow. Taken my time.”
“I wanted it to be real. I wanted to feel the need that seems to be tethering us together. It was perfect. Spontaneous.”
Leaning my forehead against hers, I take in a deep breath. “You tell me if I hurt you. If there is something you don’t like, you tell me, and I stop. It’s that simple.”
“I won’t tell you to stop.” She lifts her hips, causing me to slide just a fraction deeper, something I didn’t think was possible. “You feel too good.”
“Fuck,” I curse. My lips find hers as I pull out and slowly push back in. Our tongues battle as my hips thrust to a rhythm that has us both gasping for air.
“That… right there,” she pants. Her legs tighten, just like her pussy as it grips my cock.
Resting my weight on one arm, I slide my hand between us, finding her clit, and with my thumb, I rub small circles. She’s squeezing me like a vise, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.
“Y-Yes!” she screams, and her body convulses around me. I feel the shudder run through her body, and that does it. I can’t hold on any longer as I release inside her, in what will go down in the books at the best fucking orgasm of my life.
After we’ve both caught our breath, I kiss her softly before pulling out of her and climbing out of bed. I take care of the condom and wet a cloth from the bathroom to clean her up. Her eyes pop open in surprise, but otherwise, she says nothing, letting me take care of her. Tossing the cloth through the bathroom door, I climb into bed and pull her into my arms. As we lie in the darkness, nothing but our breathing between us, she has me questioning everything I’ve ever thought about myself. She’s making me reconsider taking a job that will give me roots just to be next to her.
Over the next several hours, even with my protest that she’s too sore, we manage to go through the three remaining condoms, and each time is better than the one before. As I finally drift off to sleep in the early morning hours, I know that I want to see her again. I’ve never felt this kind of connection, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep her and the feeling of her in my arms and in my life.
However, when I wake just a few short hours later and reach for her, the bed is cold. Sitting up, I look around the room, and there is no sign of her, except for the condom wrappers on the floor and her torn panties that are lying under the chair. She must have missed them. Plopping back on the bed, I curse myself for not insisting on getting her name. My dream girl gave me the best sex of my life and snuck out like a thief in the night.
All I have left is a memory.
Chapter Three
Nine months later
Cadence
I’m sobbing uncontrollably, my face is covered in sweat, and I’m utterly exhausted, but that doesn’t stop my smile when the nurse lays my little girl on my chest after her first bath. My hand rests against her back, holding her close to me, and my lips press to the top of her tiny little head. She’s bound up like a tiny pink burrito, and my heart is full.
I’m a mother. I have a family.
Sure, it’s small, just the two of us, but we will always have each other. I will never let a day go by that she doesn’t know that she is my greatest accomplishment, my greatest gift in this life.
“Mommy loves you,” I whisper to my daughter.
I have a daughter.
I’m a mommy.
Sadness washes over me as I think about her father. The man who gave me this incredible gift, yet he has no idea. I never knew it was possible to be in the happiest moment of your life, but also feel sadness and regret.
I left like a coward that night because of what he made me feel. I was embarrassed to do the walk of shame and if I’m being honest, I had already fallen hard for him. It took one night, and I knew my heart couldn’t take the rejection, so I left like a scaredy-cat. I tried to convince the hotel to give me his information, even offered up cash that I didn’t really have to spend on my journey to single motherhood, but it was useless. They refused.
I’ve cursed myself more times than I can count for not paying attention when he booked our room. I was so wrapped up in our “spontaneity” that I stepped away. That’s just another regret to add to my growing list from that night.
“We’ll give you a few minutes, then we need you to try nursing her,” a nurse tells me, bringing me out of my thoughts.
“Okay.” I nod as more tears well in my eyes.
When I found out I was pregnant, I was surprisingly calm. It’s not how I’d planned to have a baby. I wanted to meet a man, fall in love, get married, and then start a family—a family I never really had growing up. When I was nine, I was placed with my foster family. After jumping from one placement to another, the Gardners stuck.
The Gardners are decent people. They made sure I had a roof over my head and three hot meals a day. I always had clothes that fit and the supplies I needed for school, but there were no hugs. No declarations of a job well done when I placed first in the spelling bee. No, “we’re proud of you” when I graduated high school at the top of my class. They were detached. And while I still keep in touch with them—I send them Christmas and birthday cards every year—there are never any in return or invitations to join them for celebrations or the holidays.
The day I graduated, they told me I could stay until I left for college in the fall, and I haven’t been back. That’s not my home. But I was lucky and found that at college. Shelby and I were roommates freshman year, and we hit it off. We’ve been thick as thieves ever since. She’s been my only family and listened to me as I obsessed over grades and my life plan.
However, life often has other ideas, though I’ll never regret the night that resulted in me being a mother. Not just because this little angel was created, but because of him. Hazel Eyes as I’ve taken to calling him. He was my every fantasy come true. He told me the same thing, that I was his. He made me… feel, and I knew the score. It was a one-night thing, so when he fell asleep, I snuck out. I forced myself to walk away to avoid the awkwardness that was sure to be there when the sun came up.
When I found out I was pregnant, that wasn’t the first time that I regretted running out that night. It wasn’t the first time I wished I was still back in that hotel room, laying in his arms, feeling whole for the first time in my life.
As I lie here holding my daughter, who’s not even an hour into this world, I worry about how I’ll tell her about her father. I don’t know his name, but I know deep in my soul that if I did—if I had a name and if he knew about her—he would have accepted her.