Free Giving It Up by Amber Lin Page A

scaring me,” Shelly said. “Tell me what happened. Is it Rick?”
    “What? Why would it be Rick?”
    “I thought maybe…I don’t know. You’re just not giving me much to go on. You come back late from work, and now you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    “I’m sorry I was late.” I set Bailey down, and she immediately went back to her toys.
    I sat down on Shelly’s couch. My fingers stroked the soft leather. It was so out of place in this crappy apartment, but I knew why she was here. It was for me. For Bailey. Oh God, what would I do? She reached for my hands, and I jerked back without thinking.
    “Jesus, Allie. Tell me what’s going on.”
    “It’s Jacob.” I waved my hand. “He was here.”
    “Where? In Chicago?”
    “No, here . At our apartment. Just outside. I watched him drive away, but he said he’ll be back. He’s coming back.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    “And he saw Bailey’s car seat. He knows about her. I need to go. I need to take her and leave.”
    “That’s crazy. Where will you go?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll track down my dad. Ride in his truck for a while.” It was mostly a joke. My dad may not have been a stellar example of fatherhood, but he’d help me if I were in trouble. Still, riding around in the cab of a semitruck with a baby wasn’t a realistic plan.
    But what could I do other than run? The law wouldn’t be on my side. I’d found that out two years ago.
    It would only take a DNA test to confirm what Jacob already suspected. He was the biological father of Bailey. And if he pursued it, he could be her father legally too. At one time I would’ve thought those were the only ways that counted, but not now.
    I didn’t think of him as Bailey’s father. I couldn’t. She was mine.
    If I stayed, he could compel me to let him near Bailey. Hell, to let him near me . The court system, the authorities, they would support him.
    But if I ran, what kind of life would that be for Bailey? When would it end? I had trouble enough keeping her stocked in diapers and secondhand plastic toys even with a reasonably steady job at the bakery. On the run, even that would be in jeopardy, and who would watch Bailey when I worked? I wasn’t sure I could hold up without Shelly.
    “Hey, there,” she said. “I know this is bad, but we’ll work it out. You’re not in this alone.”
    “Ah, God.” I put my head in my hands. “I’m not trying to be a whiny bitch here, but sometimes it feels like the cards are stacked against us, you know?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “I know. Do you think…?”
    “You know the police won’t help. And I don’t have money for a lawyer, much less a good one.”
    “I wasn’t going to say that.” At her pause I looked up to see Shelly tracing her fingernails in the woodlike grooves of the plastic coffee table. “What about that guy?”
    I blinked. “Colin? What about him?”
    “Don’t say you haven’t thought of it.”
    I hadn’t thought of it, but I was now. To send Colin like he was some goon to shake Jacob up. To fuck him up. After all, Colin had already shown a willingness to protect me in the physical capacity. “You’re crazy.”
    She pressed her lips together and refused to look me in the eye.
    I shook my head. “No. Freaking. Way.”
    “Okay, okay,” she conceded. “I wasn’t saying it was a great plan. Listen, do you want me to talk to him?” And the way she said the word “talk” made it clear what she really meant. Persuade him. Maybe even whore herself out for me.
    “Shelly,” I said; then I couldn’t get any more words past the lump in my throat. I couldn’t let her do that. But God, that she would even do something like that for me. For Bailey. She was my daughter. I should be able to protect her, but I couldn’t even protect myself.
    “Come here, sweetie.” She folded me in her arms. Between the two of us, I was the mother. I was responsible for Bailey and myself. And I felt responsible for Shelly too. She was only a