Here's a BONUS CHAPTER for you all. I think where we left off after chapter 9 was a bit of a cliffhanger and I didn't want to delve into Chapter 10 tomorrow without discussing The Revelation, as I've begun to call it. 

I've never really explained my updating schedule for this story, either, so let me do that now! It will be updated once a week- each week/chapter represents a week of Charlotte's pregnancy- and my update day will either be a Saturday or a Sunday, depending on what I've got going on. So, yeah. That's that. Here's the BONUS CHAPTER!

Sarah, xx

"You better start talking, Isaac," Lottie growled, her hands on her hips as she stared at me accusingly.

"In my defence, it's not like the topic of conversation has ever risen before and it's not something I tend to start conversations with, either. In fact, with most women, it tends to be a conversation killer, not that there's ever much talking when I'm with the opposite sex; it's mainly a lot of kissing, a lot of stripping, and then an epic workout. But I digress. I never lead with the fact that, at thirty-four years of age, I have a seventeen-year-old daughter. 

If you do the math work, you'd know that I was only a teen myself when Martha was born. My girlfriend at the time, Alyssa Campbell, was my first- and to date- only love. She and I began dating when we were fourteen and it was the classic love at first sight deal. At least for me. I'm pretty sure Aly thought I was a massive dick and I had to work really hard to get her to trust me. 

Eventually, it paid off and by the time we were fifteen, I'd already planned my whole life to revolve around her. Aly wanted to be an actress. She wanted to move to Los Angeles, get a part in a Leonardo DiCaprio movie and be this A-lister that the entire world knew of. I supported that, vowing to move there with her and to be a house husband and father whenever we decided to have children. 

'Not until I'm at least, like, thirty-five,' Aly would always tell me. 

Even though we were young when we started dating, it took us a good few years to become intimate. Aly said that she wanted to wait until everything was perfect and that if we rushed into it, our relationship would be ruined. The more I thought of it, I had to agree with her that building an emotional relationship was far more important than just sex. Then, when we sixteen, we took it to the next level. 

It wasn't special. The opposite, actually. It was on a rainy, disgusting Saturday afternoon and there was nothing better to do. It was over in less than five minutes and we hardly spoke after, simply lying in bed next to each other, not talking. It was the most awkward experience of my life. It got better, of course. I learnt to last longer. 

Still, our relationship continued but in those few weeks after our first time, things began to change. It was barely noticeable, at first. Aly was distracted. She wouldn't return my calls. She could hardly look at me in the eye. Sure, we were physically intimate but that emotional connection we'd built was quickly deteriorating. I couldn't understand why. 

One day, as we were sitting in my parents' kitchen, I snapped and demanded to know what was going on. If Aly wanted to break up with me, she should just come out and say it. Only, the next words to slip from her lips weren't, 'I want to break up,' but rather, 'I'm pregnant.' 

I cannot even begin to describe the range of emotions I went through. I was shocked, obviously, only then, I was sick to my stomach. How could two kids raise a kid? Fuck me, I couldn't even manage to find a matching pair of socks, how was I going to look after a baby? Then I realised what I'd called it. A baby. We were having a baby! Aly and me. Me and Aly. This was my dream woman and I was madly and pathetically in love with her. 

Hell, yeah, we were having a baby!

Our parents weren't happy with the news that Aly and I were going to be parents. They told us that we were too young, too dumb, too irresponsible... 'too' everything, really. I was determined to prove them wrong, though. I was going to be a father and I was damned well going to be ana amazing one, despite what the critics would say. 

Aly, however, was a different matter. She wasn't interested, at all. Sure, she went through the motions but I never once saw her smile or laugh or like the feeling that we were creating a human life together. As the months went by, it dawned on me that maybe the reason that she wasn't excited was because her dream of being that uber-famous actress in Tinseltown had suddenly disappeared. The only way to prove to her that it could still be a reality is if I showed her that all the other things we'd spoken about could and would happen.

When Aly was seven months' pregnant, I got down on bended knee, with my grandmother's ring, and proposed. 

She said no. You'd think that would be the worst case scenario. You'd be wrong. No, what happened next was worse than any rejection. 

'It's not your baby,' Aly sobbed, dissolving into tears as we were stood in the middle of the same park as where we'd met years previously. 'I slept with Alec the week before we slept together that first time. It's Alec's baby, not yours.'

Ever been sucker punched in the gut? Because that's what it felt like. The wind had been knocked out of me and I couldn't breathe. It was if all senses were leaving my body and I was numb, conscious yet unconscious. It's difficult to explain; I was alive but not really. Betrayal had killed everything that was good and happy within me. 

After that, it was almost as if someone had died and I was going through the stages of grief. Shock. Cloudy head, impaired thoughts, a WTF moment. Denial was next. No, there was no way that Alyssa Campbell- my Aly- would sleep with Alec. My best friend. No. No way. She was lying to me. I wasn't sure why, but she was most definitely lying to me. That baby was mine. 

But what if it wasn't? What if Aly had slept with Alec? What if they had betrayed me? Anger took over and I lashed out. Not physically but mentally, emotionally. I became withdrawn and tried to drown myself in my sorrows. Naturally, this led to despair. I cried. A lot. Not one day went by when I didn't mourn the loss of what could have been. I'd been there from day one- going to scans, picking out nursery themes, choosing names- and for what? A baby that was never mine in the first place. 

When I finally accepted this, my world was upended again. Aly went into premature labour. She and Alec had got into a major fight and Aly fell down the stairs and the placenta broke away from the uterine wall. She underwent an emergency caesarian but the baby wasn't doing well. She had anaemia and needed a blood transfusion. While the doctors could transfuse blood from the donor bank, they decided that a donation from a parent would be best. Aly wasn't a match. 

Neither was Alec. 

They called me to go down to the hospital. Wanted to do a DNA test, to be sure. It came back as a match. I was the baby's father. I was so angry. I wanted to be thrilled. I mean, I felt like the luckiest man alive when I first thought that I was the dad but this second time, I was resentful. Aly had taken everything from me, made me feel like I'd never be happy again, like I could never trust anyone again... 

It took me months to bond with her, you know. Martha looks so much like her mother that whenever I looked into her eyes, all I could see was Aly before me, telling me that I wasn't Martha's father. Do you know how painful it is to want to love someone so badly but feel incapable of doing so? I do. 

I mean, I did. I'll never forget the day she first smiled at me. Usually, whenever Martha was with me, my mum would be around, only on this day, I was flying solo. I had to feed Martha, change her, bathe her. It was a nightmare. But just as I was drying her after her bath, she reached out her hand for my finger and she smiled at me. The little giggle she gave me was cute, too, but it was the smile. Heart melting. I couldn't stay angry any longer, not when I had this little ray of sunshine in my life. 

Martha made everything better and I wanted to be better for her. I got my head in the right space, decided to knuckle down at school, get my HSC, apply to university and be a man that my daughter would be proud to call her 'dad.' I got into Oxford University, which was actually a nightmare. 

Aly had said that she was planning on moving to London because she thought it was a stepping stone on her way to LA and I thought, why not? I had a place at uni, my daughter would be here, what more could I want? 

It last about a year. Then Aly moved back to Australia, taking Martha with her. I fought. So hard, I fought. I went through every court in this country and in Australia, wanting access to my daughter, but I faced roadblocks at every turn. Courts used to be in favour of giving custody to the mother, regardless of whether or not they were the best parent. The judges all said that I didn't have enough familial support in the UK to grant me custody of Martha. She went back to Sydney and I stayed here. 

Once I graduated, became fully qualified and could start practising medicine, I went back to Sydney for a few months, hoping that Aly and I could make it work. Not romantically. God, no. That woman made damn well sure that I would never fully trust a woman ever again. I just needed to be on friendly terms with her for Martha's sake. It didn't work. She took me to court again, telling the judge that with my sudden reappearance in Martha's life, I was upsetting 'her' daughter. Noe 'our' daughter. Hers. 

The judge agreed and granted Aly sole custody and I could only see Martha when it was the school holidays. Christmas was a no go. Birthdays, too. I'd get two weeks at Easter, two weeks in July, and two weeks in September-October. Otherwise, Skype. It went on like this until Martha was fourteen and then she started to complain that Aly was never home because of work and stuff. She would call me in tears, telling me that she missed me and wanted to move over here to live with me. I petitioned the courts and they granted me extra access to her, allowing her to come and stay here over Christmas. 

Martha is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I wouldn't change her for the world. I'd change the way things were done, but I would never change her. Even if she's a pain and gets into trouble because she's lashing out."

I stop my story, looking up at Lottie to gauge her reaction. In all the time I'd been talking, she had listened patiently, not once interrupting me. Looking at her face now, she looked a lot less angry than earlier. Instead, her face was pale and full or worry. She opened her mouth to speak, only to close it and sigh wearily. In a split second, she bridged the gap between us and came to sit at my side, taking my hand in hers. 

"I'm not your ex-girlfriend," she softly tells me. Her voice is full of sincerity and I can feel the warmth in her words. "I would never do that to you, Isaac."

A pain stabbed through my chest at hearing her call me by that name. The only other woman to ever call me by my first name had been Aly. 

"When you stormed out of here the night you found out I was pregnant," she recalls, "I was devastated. I thought you didn't want to know and that I'd end up raising this baby alone. I would have managed as a single mum but that's not what I want for our baby. I want her-"

"Or him," I correct.

"Or him," Lottie laughs, rolling her eyes. "I want our child to have both its parents around. I won't settle for anything else. Got it?"

I nod. "Got it."

"Hey," Lottie says, getting my attention as she nudges my shoulder. "Want to know the one good thing to come out of this?"

"What?"

"We can totally scrap the name 'Martha' from our list," Lottie tells me. "Does she have a middle name? We could totally scrap that one too."

I smile and reach my arms out to pull Lottie into a hug. "You're too good for me," I say. We hold the embrace for a few moments and then I pull away. "Rhiannon. Her name is Martha Rhiannon Fletcher."    

See you tomorrow, peeps!