Yeah. Not so much, apparently. I needed to leave right now. Go be alone for a while until I had things figured out again, now that my bright shiny future had been flushed down the toilet.
Martha retrieved a couple of papers from her handbag and shoved them in my general direction. “You want me to believe you’re not just using my brother and this child to make some money? Prove it to me. Sign this.”
The whites of Ben’s eyes were huge, massive. “Martha—”
“What is that?” I asked, the noise of my voice coming from far, far away.
“It’s the contract he had drawn up, covering shared custody and a more than fair payment for maintenance—upon proof of paternity, of course,” she answered.
“Of course.”
“Shouldn’t be a big deal for you to sign.” She took another step forward, still holding out the papers. “Your own sister signed a prenup. Did you know that?”
“It’s what Anne wanted. You’ve got no fucking business talking about that, Marty.” Mal slowly got to his feet, a hand on my sister’s shoulder. “And I am very unhappy at Adrian for discussing that shit with you.”
“He didn’t.” The snake of a woman sneered. “But his new little secretary is very chatty. Not the brightest, though, unfortunately for her.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” said David. “Now, Martha.”
“Doesn’t concern you,” she said without sparing him a glance. Still looking at me, she continued, “You want to prove to me that you love my brother? That you have his best interests at heart? Sign it.”
I just stared at the papers, perplexed.
“Martha!” David kicked back his chair.
“When?” I asked Ben, doing my best to meet his eyes, but not quite managing. I stared off over his thick shoulder at the lights of the city below. It was all just too raw, too painful. “You agreed we’d handle this between us not twenty-four hours after you found out I was pregnant. So when exactly did you ask for this contract to be drawn up?”
He stared at me, unmoving.
“Let me guess. You had it drawn up ‘just in case’?”
“Lizzy.” His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Did you think I wouldn’t understand your need to protect yourself?”
“You didn’t like the idea when I first brought it up.”
“I barely had a chance to get used to the idea,” I cried. “Christ, Ben. Most people would be a little wary at the mention of having lawyers sicced on them, don’t you think?”
“What’s it matter?” he asked, jaw shifting angrily. “I haven’t asked you to sign it.”
“Don’t play stupid with her, Ben,” Martha sneered. “Adrian sent you a copy weeks ago. His little secretary said he asked her to double check that you still had it last week. He was wondering what the holdup is.”
Ben glared furiously at Martha, but he didn’t deny it.
“Just in case.” I wrapped my arms around myself, holding on tight. “Why are we even doing this? I mean really. You lied to me, Ben. You’re just waiting for this to fall to apart, aren’t you? You’re not the marrying kind? Honestly, I don’t even know that you’re the relationship kind. In a lot of ways you’ve avoided commitment at every step. I was just too stupid to see.”
“Check it out, Ben,” said Martha, voice low and hypnotic. “This is what happens when you threaten their money. The claws come out and you find out what they were up to all along.” She turned on me. “So go on then. Storm out and lawyer up all you want—but everyone here has seen you for what you really are now.”
“God, you…” There weren’t words bad enough for this sort of bitch. I snatched the contract from her hands, slapping it down on the table. It was surprisingly slim, only three or so pages. “Pen!”
Martha hunted through her handbag for one.
“Don’t,” Ben said, pushing the word out through gritted teeth.
I grabbed the pen Martha was offering. Funny, there was none of the triumph or venom remaining on her face now. If anything, her gaze seemed confused, cautious. Like I could care. This had nothing do with her anymore.
I moved my dinner plate aside and flipped through the papers, finding the big, juicy number meant to buy me off. Fuck’s sake, he’d already put half a million into my bank account. How ridiculous. Without hesitation I scribbled out the number and wrote in a big fat zero. Then I read through it, doing a check on the custody and other assorted details. As promised, Bean would be shared evenly between the two of us. Any disputes would be sorted out in family court, in the event of mediation failing. Good. It all seemed standard.
There. Signed and done.
If they needed anything else they could catch up with me later. At a mutually beneficial time when I wasn’t about to have a messy emotional breakdown, possibly involving puking my guts up.
His sister snatched up the contract, hurriedly examining it.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d give me an hour to remove my belongings from the room before returning to it,” I told Ben, not even bothering with the pretense of facing him this time.
“We need to talk,” he said. “Liz.”
“You signed it,” Martha said. “You even crossed out the money.” The look on his bitch of a sister’s face would have been hilarious had I not been in the middle of getting my heart broken. Her brows might never return to normal, they’d risen so high on her perfect forehead.
“I don’t give a fuck about the contract,” Ben snarled, grabbing hold of my arm.
“If you didn’t give a fuck about the contract, then it wouldn’t exist.” I tugged my arm from his grasp. “You sure as hell wouldn’t be carrying a copy of it around with you.”
“Sweetheart—”
“No. Never again. I’m never … ever … going through this with you again.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Don’t feel too bad about it, Ben. You did warn me, after all. I was just stupid enough to believe that maybe I could matter to you as much as you do to me. My bad.”
Still, Martha stared at the papers, stunned.
“You do matter to me,” he said, breathing hard.
“But not enough. Not enough to be honest with me. Not enough to talk to me about this, about your fears … God, did you really think I would be like her?” I pointed a thumb at his abomination of a sister. “That I would cheat? Lie? Use you for money time and again, messing with your life?”