Free Baby Makes Five (A Multiple Birth Book 1) by Nicole Peters

surprised.
    She laughed “why does that surprise you?”
    “I wouldn’t have taken you for the sporty type.”
    “Well, that should tell you never judge a book by its cover. I was a pitcher, and I’ll have you know we won the championship four years in a row, out of the five I was on the team.”
    “Impressive.”
    “Yes, I was a tomboy and had a lot of extracurricular activities from aikido to cookery club and tennis. My mom was an administrative assistant at the local hospital, so my schedule worked perfectly with hers. That way, I won’t have to be home alone. She worked extra hours and sacrificed a lot to make sure I was happy and taken care of.
    “What about your father?” he asked curiously.             
    “I don’t have one,” she said flatly.
    “I’m sorry if it’s difficult to talk about—”
    “Didn’t your research on me tell you anything?”
    “There isn’t much said about him,” he said not trying to deny he had had her investigated.
    “There isn’t much to tell. I never met him or saw a picture of him. I know my mother loved him, and he apparently loved her. He was a professor at the college she attended. They started dating when she was nineteen, and he was twenty-eight. Three years later, she got pregnant with me three months after they had moved in together. My conception wasn’t planned. She was sick, and the antibiotics didn’t mesh well with the birth control pill she was taking.
    “When she told him, she was pregnant, he told her he wasn’t ready to become a father and didn’t want to have kids’ period. It was either him or the baby.”
    “She chose you.”
    “Yeah, she didn’t believe in abortions, and she had always wanted a child. She told him that, and he left the next day. She never saw or heard from him again. I only know his name is Benjamin Clarke. It’s on my birth certificate. My mother never kept his name from me.
    “Have you ever been curious enough to want to look him up and ask him why?”
    “No, he made his choice. I had a happy childhood. I can’t complain about wanting anything. She loved me. I was her life. I was the one thing she got right she always said.”
    “She sounds great, strong someone I would have liked.”
    “She was, all the way to the end.”
    “I wish I could have met her.”
    “Me too. What about you. What was your childhood like?”
    “Not as great as yours. My dad died when I was seven.”
    “Sorry, it must have been hard. Were you two close?”
    “Thank you, I’ll like to say yes, but my parents shouldn’t have procreated. They were too self-absorbed and had no patience for a child. I grew up seeing my nanny more than I did my parents.”
    “I can’t imagine what that felt like.”
    “It wasn’t that bad, not when you don’t know anything else. When my dad died, I went to live with my grandmother, his mother.”
    “Why, was your mother ill?”
    “No, she didn’t want to give up her partying lifestyle. So my grandmother offered her five million dollars to get out of my life. She took the money, and I haven’t seen her since.”
    “That’s terrible what kind of mother sells her child?” she asked, mad on behalf of the seven-year-old boy. She thought of her babies and put a protective hand over her stomach.
    “As I said, my parents weren’t meant to have children. They weren’t ready to grow up.”
    “Were you, at least, happy with your grandmother?”
    “I was comfortable. She wasn’t the hugs and kisses type of person. When I was nine, she sent me to boarding school in England. She died when I was eighteen.”
    She sniffed she couldn’t help crying for the boy who had lost his childhood. He sat up and put her head in his lap wiping her tears away.
    “Don’t cry for me, I am okay. My childhood made me stronger."
    “I am not crying for you. I am crying for the seven-year-old boy who didn’t get a chance to a wonderful childhood. The boy who didn’t get hugs or his boo-boos kissed. The boy