Claimed Darker by Em Brown

Chapter 48

BRIDGET

Past

Love at first sight.

Not being a big romantic, I didn’t really think such a thing was possible. Until I met Ethan, my son.

I didn’t think I would ever have a baby this young. I saw myself graduating Berkeley, going into a master’s program, getting a job, getting married, then having a baby. That was the right and orderly way for my life to unfold.

But I didn’t count on falling in love with a gangster.

I had thought that the father of my child would be in the birth room. Not that I don’t appreciate Aunt Coretta and her daughter were there instead. But I didn’t want to be a single mom like my mother.

“You aren’t her,” Coretta had assured me.

An abortion made the most sense, given the circumstances, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt like I wanted some small piece of my previous life. That Bridget Moore as I knew her wasn’t completely dead.

And maybe it was because I felt lonely. Even with Coretta sleeping in the room next to me, I often felt alone at night. I missed Amy. And I even missed Darren—the Darren I thought I was in love with, that is. But he was an ideal and not the reality. Maybe that’s what humans actually fall in love with: not an actual person, but the idea of love. That would explain how I could have been so wrong with Darren.

As I hold Ethan to my chest, I promise him that I’ll be enough. I know that by leaving the father’s name blank on the birth certificate, I’m depriving Ethan. I hope he forgives me someday. But he’s better off not knowing about his father.