Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad by Scarlett Rossi
Chapter 421 -

*Elena*

The brisk spring air brushed against my heated skin like a whisper through chapped lips. The clock ticked silently into the night as I stared thoughtfully out of the open window.

My socked feet were kept from the slight chill, but the simple used T-shirt I wore as a nightdress did little to hide my legs from the wind. It was dark, the sky alight with tiny dots that barely resembled stars. The last lit lamppost stood on the street corner like the shadow of a lonely man still waiting for the last bus of the night.

With my knees tucked to my chest, I took up all the room on the little bay window in my dingy one-room apartment. It was an average room, not the fanciest, but not the worst. It was just average, the kind of place a person spent their life trying to escape from, unless they were born into poverty like me. Then they might actually be trying to get to a place like this.

I had heat and electricity, and I had a place to sleep and store my clothes. That was all I needed.

Or that's what I told myself as the chilly breeze bit against my numb cheeks.

I breathed a soft sigh, shutting my eyes as I rested my head on the top of my knees. It was a silent, early spring night, and most people were asleep.

But not me.

While I sat here, wasting away the hours of the night like a gambler wasted away their coins on one last play, across the city lay a girl who looked much like me-brown hair, brown eyes, completely average. And yet, she was living a life that was very much not average.

The stranger I could mistake for my reflection lived in a massive mansion, one with a grand staircase with real wooden banisters and a full garden in the back with flowers of every type that bloomed throughout the year. With marble kitchens and gold-lined porcelain dishes, even the artwork and portraits that lined the walls were worth more than the amount of my entire apartment complex.

I could see the chandelier as it hung from the ceiling now, the crystals twinkling in the sunlight as it cast a faint glow over her pretty, untouched skin. The girl was beautiful, so young and vibrant, just like the very magnolias that blossomed in the spring-the ones she had barely glanced at.

I could admit to myself that I was envious. Who wouldn't be, after all? My reflection had everything she could ever want-a best friend who loved her to pieces, more money than she could ever spend, full tuition to any university she may have chosen that she didn't have to spend a cent for, and most of all... a man too perfect to describe.

She didn't have to work two jobs to afford a small, average apartment like me, and then I still struggled to keep it most months. She didn't have to decide between electricity and food when the never-ending bill collectors came knocking on her door.

She didn't have to soak her tired, hurting hands in warm water every night, just to keep them from blistering any further.

I buried my head into my knees, taking in a shuddering breath as a self-loathing bit at my heels. It was easier to envision her as imaginary, just an image on a screen or in a mirror, so I didn't have to face my own filthy desires that held their hand around my throat, strangling me with every moment I sat here in my small, average apartment completely alone.

The biting emptiness was easy to ignore on most days.

But not tonight.

It was wrong to harbor these ugly feelings, wrong to even consider my own thoughts, but the temptation, the warmth that lingered just out of reach when I had entered that house, was too overwhelming to ignore. I'd never seen a man love someone so deeply.

The way his arms had slid around her waist so easily, his adoring eyes locked only on her, and the way he gravitated to her no matter where she was. It was all too easy to see the worship in his lips as he kissed her-strong and protective and kind and-hers.

He was hers, like the house and the money and the endless loving people who surrounded her. All of it belonged to her.

I bit down on my bottom lip, swallowing the bitterness that threatened to come pouring out. I peeked through my arms, glaring at my own reflection in the window.

The brown eyes that stared back at me were covered in an ugly green haze, and I turned away, shutting my eyes tightly as I set my socked feet on the carpet. I gripped the floral-patterned blanket I'd placed under me, digging my fingers into the fabric.

This was all because I couldn't keep my stupid heart under control-couldn't keep it from leaping at the sight of the love I'd been deprived of for so long, even if it wasn't directed at me.

I signed up to be a surrogate because I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to give families the gift that I never had that I never would. And if it could help pay off my student loans in the meantime, well, that was just a bonus.

I had taken this chance to give good people the most precious gift in the world, good people like Olivia and Giovani.

And now I was ruining it.

I tenderly laid a hand over my belly where inside of me a baby-their baby, I reminded myself with a grimace-could be growing. All I had to do was my job. Carry the baby for nine months, hand it off, and get paid. That had always been my intention, after all, when I'd decided to make some extra money as a surrogate.

But all I could see was myself in that beautiful dress, that mansion with the chandelier glittering on my skin his hands wrapped around my waist, his lips pressed to mine, and the baby... a baby who looked like me... held in my arms. I choked on my own spit, slamming my teeth shut as a sob threatened to rise out of my throat, but I was used to holding back emotions when they had become too entangled.

I wanted that I wanted a man who loved me, a family, and a baby of my own, a big house with a garden for them to play with all day long... people who loved me, who stood by me no matter what happened, and no stress about whether I could afford to eat that week.

But it wasn't mine.

And I couldn't take it from her.

The hopelessness settled over me, and I felt like a little girl again, hiding behind my mother's door as I listened to her cry herself to sleep night after night, whispering the name of a man I never knew.

She'd driven herself mad begging for love from a man who would never give it to her. She'd spent her entire life trying to overcome the shadow he had left behind in her heart, and I was sure that eventually, that was what had killed her. I knew better than anyone not to reach for things that weren't mine. It was why I could never have a child of my own-could never start a family and bring a child into this world, not when I could barely afford to feed myself. I would end up just like my mother, sinking lower and lower into depression while that poor child had to watch me fade away.

I couldn't do that, not when I knew how devastating it was. Although....

I got to my feet, silently padding my way across the small bedroom as I headed for the closet. I fell to my knees, shoving into the one storage box I had kept. My fingers flew by through the few pictures and folders, notebooks from when I was young, and artwork my poor mother had hung onto. Eventually, I found it, pulling it from the mess of keepsakes-a school project I had made once when I was young and hadn't learned how the world worked. It was a big mansion cut from a magazine, some celebrity I could hardly remember the name of, and stick figure drawings over the cutout.

I brushed my fingers softly over each figure-a daddy, strong and powerful, who worked to keep us safe, and a mommy, kind and loving, who was always there.

And a baby.

The longing overwhelmed me and in my mind, I didn't see the dream I had given up any longer. No, I saw Giovani, so charming and kind, and I saw me, pressed to his side.

A shaky but hopeful smile made its way to my lips as I pressed a hand to my stomach.

And our baby.

My thoughts whirled at a hundred miles per hour, ideas and fantasies turning to cement. Who said I had to leave after the baby was born?

My admiration had morphed, and I couldn't tell what was right or wrong anymore as a flare of new life burst into my chest.

They'd invited me into their lives-they needed me. I was the one pregnant with the baby, not Olivia. And even if he looked at her like that now, who was to say his mind couldn't be changed?

He'd smiled at me and told me about the magnolia tree. He liked me well enough. He just needed a little push to see I was just as wonderful as she was.

And Olivia... as kind as she had been to me, she would be fine. She had everything, after all. What was one little thing taken from her when she had the world at her feet? She was young, and she still had college to go to, she'd told me. Once the baby was a little older.

She wanted to travel the world, to see art from Tokyo to Greece, she'd said. I was just helping to nudge her to what she really wanted. She couldn't go to school or go see the world with a baby on her hip and a husband trailing behind her. She could be happy without Giovani, without the baby. She could go see the world, and I could replace the void left in his heart... and we could all be happy.

I smiled shakily, tears gathering at the corners of my eyes as I stared at my childhood artwork. A little part of my mind was nagging me, a ringing bell trying to tell me something, but I ignored it.

My convictions held firmly, sealing away any more doubts or fears as I realized the solution would be so easy.

I would just have to pay a little more attention to the routines and dynamics of the household, replace opportunities to slip in between them and solidify myself as a presence they couldn't ignore, one they couldn't live without. I had the baby after all.

And little by little, bit by bit, I could have everything I'd ever wanted.

They just needed a little nudging to realize it was what they wanted too.