Jerk It by Lani Lynn Vale

PROLOGUE II

Bosshole-a person that turns into an asshole ten seconds after turning into the boss.

-Mavis to Fran

MAVIS

“Only you, Mavis Jean Pope.”

I looked at my grandmother and felt the anger rise, but I didn’t take the bait.

“Grandmother, it’s not like she knew that her birth control, as well as the double protection of a condom, wouldn’t be effective,” Fran, my baby sister, argued. “You seriously think that she would’ve done that if she knew? Because, I can guaran-damn-tee you that she wouldn’t have. Not when she’s getting close to finishing school.”

I was in the downhill half of school. And my sister was right. I wouldn’t have experienced that crazy night if I’d known that it would interfere with my plans.

But, seriously, that night I’d let loose. I might have done it anyway with how I’d been feeling thanks to my sister’s freak out in the middle of a store.

Which got me to thinking.

My grandmother really knew how to fuck people over.

Pearl Pope, the most prestigious woman deep in the heart of Texas. Mrs. Yamboree Queen. Mrs. Well-to-do. Mrs. Kick people out when they’re hurting the most.

“Why are you such a horrible person?” I asked with a snap, my temper fraying right along with my patience. “For one second, let’s not think about how this will affect your stupid self, and let’s consider how this will affect me.” I paused. “I’m in year four of my nurse anesthetist degree. That means clinicals. That means schooling out the ass. That means little to no time to be pregnant. So no, I of course wouldn’t choose this, for Christ’s sake. I would’ve waited. But, unlike you, I’m going to treat this like the miracle that it is, and thank God that I got pregnant and I’ll have a baby at the end of this. Then I’ll think about the fact that you won’t be there to be a part of his or her life.”

I was taken back to another time where my grandmother had been an awful person to a little boy that lived on our property with his mother. His mother was a maid at my grandmother’s estate. She lived in her own little small house at the back of the property, and every once in a while, I would see Alessio, her son, running around the back part of our property.

Until my grandmother asked them to leave because Alessio’s mother ‘couldn’t control her son.’

My grandmother snorted. “The moment that you need money, you’ll be singing a different tune.”

I might.

Or I might not.

Technically, I was a nurse. I made a hundred grand a year as it was. With my new degree that I would have at the end of this year, that would put me closer to the higher end of the hundreds. So no, I probably wouldn’t need this woman ever again.

But, like my grandfather said, burned bridges didn’t allow you to turn around and go a different way. Burned bridges were for people that were resolute in their path.

Was I resolute in my path? Probably not.

But this was the moment in time that I needed to make a decision.

“You can’t speak to me the way you’re speaking to me,” I finally said. “You may be my blood, but blood doesn’t make you family. Acting like a decent human being is obviously not your strong suit, so I guess that now’s the time to tell you that I want nothing more to do with you.”

My grandmother’s eyes blazed.

“Mavis…” Fran tried, but I was done.

“I’m pregnant. With a baby that is half a man’s that doesn’t want him. Now, I would appreciate it if you got out of my house,” I ordered.

“This house was bought and paid for by your grandfather,” she snapped. “I…”

“It’s in my name,” I said. “Because Granddad wanted to make sure that we both had something when he passed away. There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

Her eyes lit with an inner fire. “Well you can kiss your trust fund goodbye.”

“You can keep it from me right now since I got pregnant out of wedlock, but you can’t keep it from me forever. It will be mine eventually. And even if you were able to find some random loophole, you couldn’t keep it from me.” I rolled my eyes.

She hissed out a breath.

She hadn’t known that I knew that.

Which was funny as fuck because it’d been her husband that told me.

The man that had been the only shining star that had to do with my grandmother.

Our Granddad had been gone for eight years now, and not a day went by that I didn’t miss him.

But he made sure that my grandmother couldn’t hold our trust funds over our heads like she was doing now—at least not for long.

Whether she liked it or not, that money was mine in a year and eleven months.

“We’ll see about that,” she snapped. “Greevis. Time to take me home.”

I rolled my eyes and watched as my grandmother strolled proudly out of my sister’s house. Greevis, her driver and altogether helper for anything she might ever need, gave us a look that clearly said ‘sorry.’

I waved him away and then waited until the door shut before my sister looked at me. “I’ll help if you need it. She didn’t cut me off.”

I rolled my eyes. “If I don’t touch it, it’ll all the more money in the long run. Granddad invested it well.”

Fran looked down at my stomach. “I can’t believe you’re pregnant.”

I placed my hand on my belly.

It was still flat, but it was hard and very unusually weird feeling from the inside, so I knew that the pregnancy test was true.

If all was correct in my calculations, then I was twelve weeks along.

That meant that I knew the exact day that the baby was conceived.

“Did you really talk to Bayne?” she asked.

Bayne Green, the hot shot country star that’d been spawned by Paris, Texas, was my child’s father. And he didn’t want anything to do with my baby.

To the point that, when I’d called him, he’d offered me money to ‘take care of it’ and then had hung up the phone.

“I did,” I confirmed. “But when he found out, he told me to ‘take care of it’ and then sent me a few abortion clinics in the area.”

Her eyes rolled. “I swear to God. How did you step into that pile of shit?”

“Bayne is hot, and I had my beer goggles on that night,” I defended myself, then I let her have it. “I wasn’t having a good day. The day that I got pregnant, I was at that bar because of you,” I explained. “You’d had a bad day. You’d had a panic attack in the grocery store, and you wouldn’t calm down, so I had to force feed you your anxiety meds. And…I just wanted to escape for a while. Which was why I was at that bar that night. Why I slept with the guy in the band.”

Her eyes went haunted for a few seconds, then she dropped her head and looked at her hands. “Shit.”

Shit was right.

Not wanting to pour salt on a healing wound, I hoped to distract her with my next words.

“Sadly, I have to go to work.”

My sister grimaced.

“I wish you still worked there,” I sighed. “It sucks without you.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But it was toxic after the ‘incident.’”

It was.

My sister had worked at the hospital with me as a nurse on the same floor, but an error on another nurse’s part had made it to where she couldn’t handle being there anymore, so she’d left.

I’d stayed because right around the time that I’d decided enough was enough, nobody fucked with my sister, I’d found out that I was pregnant. And, knowing my Grandmother’s attitude was going to be this particular outcome, I’d made the difficult decision to stay at the hospital. Only after having the conversation with my sister, though.

She’d decided that I didn’t need to leave because of her dealings with the hospital and the staff—not that I agreed—but ultimately I took her assurance that she would be okay with me staying to heart.

My sister and I did not lie to each other.

We were the only thing each other had.

“What time is your appointment?” she asked.

I looked at my watch.

“In thirty minutes. Do you want to go?” I asked.

She snorted. “Of course.”