Free Girl's by Darla Phelps

same time.
    Dressed only in her diaper, as soon as they reached the living room, he wrapped her warmly in a thick quilt, pulled her thumb from her mouth to replace it with her pacifier and slapped the back of her hand, then glanced quickly out the window. "Perfect. We haven't missed it yet."
    Grabbing a cup of coffee for himself and her hot chocolate, he opened the front door. He smiled at her. "Come on."
    There were two pillows from the couch propped against one arm of the porch swing and another quilt already spread over it, ready to be thrown around them. Setting the cups on the rail within easy reach, David sat down with one leg stretched out on the swing and his back against the pillows. She was on him almost before he had even settled himself, throwing open her quilt to cover them both as she lay down between his legs and promptly put her head upon his chest. Though she had moved quickly, her nipples had puckered the instant the cold air touched them and he could feel them right now, pressed against his stomach as she cuddled in close to him for warmth.
    "Meggy," he admonished. "I didn't want you out of your blanket, it's too cold for that."
    She just snuggled into him, sucking contentedly on her binky, those pointy little nipples burning into his belly. It was hard to object to that part, so he handed her the hot chocolate, held her to him while he sipped his coffee and rocked them gently with one foot.
    The sunrise was a beautiful display of oranges, yellows and pinks. He didn't even have to prod her to stay awake, either. As she accepted her sippy cup, he realized that today was going to be a 'naughty day' when she flicked her binky from her mouth with a pop and sent it flying over the railing into the flower bed.
    "Meggy!" he scolded.
    But she just sipped her cocoa, cuddled snugly against him and said, "Pretty pink."
    He cleared his throat. As cute as that misbehavior was, to laugh now would only encourage more of it in the future. "Are you warm enough?"
    She nodded, then suddenly raised her head and pointed across the field. "Look! Deer!"
    Sure enough, there were two of them, hesitantly making their way across the meadow, from one tree line to another, pausing midway to drink from the creek.
    Stroking her back beneath the warm blankets, as they watched the slow progress of the deer, David bent to press a gentle kiss to the top of her head and asked the question that had been bothering him since the previous night, "Why do you think I don't want you?"
    At first Meg didn't move and, if he hadn't felt her tense against him, he might have assumed that she was too focused on the deer and the rising sun to have heard him. He continued to caress her, waiting patiently until he felt her lift one shoulder in a kind of shrug.
    "Is that what your mother did?" he asked. "Is that why you lived with your Nanna? Because you did something and she sent you away?"
    "All I did was be born," Meg finally said, and it took everything David had not to jump up and paddle her silly. If not for her words, then for the way she'd said it: soft, painstakingly neutral, as if the insult had been repeated over and over in her mind so often that it was now little more than a brutal matter of fact. Then she rolled her head, lifting her face to look at him as she continued, "Nanna said she was a prime example of why babies shouldn't have babies. My mother was only fourteen when she had me; my father was eighteen. I guess Holly thought it would be more fun, like playing house with Barbie dolls only cooler. Except that pregnant cheerleaders got struck from the team, the dream home became my father's parent's basement, and Ken turned out to be a jerk, who insisted that Barbie get an abortion because taking an obviously knocked-up girlfriend to the prom would be too embarrassing. He threw her out when she refused and ran away with Skipper instead. I think they're in Florida somewhere."
    "You don't talk to him?"
    "He'd just as soon I didn't exist." Bathed