AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prologue
Allie
Sitting alone in the bathroom, staring down at the little white stick in my hand, I had a hard time wrapping my head around how I’d found myself here. Not literally, since I was happy to finally be back in my own home after seven weeks. But I was about to do something I figured was many years ahead, if ever for me. Alone.
“You can’t put it off any longer,” I mumbled to myself. Removing the protective cap from the absorbent tip, I shoved the pregnancy test between my legs until my urine hit it midstream. I left the stick there while I counted to ten, then yanked it away to put the cap back on and stare at the test window while I finished peeing. As I held onto the test as though it was my lifeline, with my gaze locked on that tiny window, it was a little awkward to wipe, flush, and pull my yoga pants up. Then I set the stick on the counter so I could wash my hands.
The next five minutes felt like the longest of my life as I paced in front of the sink. My emotions seesawed back and forth. On one hand, I hoped the test was positive because then at least I’d always have a part of my first love, and on the other, I prayed it was negative so I wouldn’t be forced to see the cheating bastard on the regular for at least the next eighteen or so years.
When the time was finally up, I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. No matter what the results were, I was going to be okay. Between my parents and Morgan—and now Gage since they were attached at the hip—I had an incredible support system. My career was finally taking off, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t write from home while I was pregnant.
I could handle anything.
Even the two pink lines that had appeared in the test window.
“Holy crap, I’m really pregnant,” I whispered, stunned even though the results didn’t come as a total shock. My period usually came like clockwork every twenty-eight days, so being a week and a half late was unheard of for me. I’d tried to shrug it off as the stress of wrapping up the filming on the first script I’d ever sold…and the shock of finding out that Vaughn had moved some chick into his home two weeks after acting like I was the only woman in the world. When he’d been in Chicago with me, everything between us had seemed so perfect. We’d barely left my place the entire time he was there, spending every waking hour together and having sex countless times. And surprise, surprise—I’d wound up unexpectedly pregnant.
When my cell phone rang, I glanced quickly at the screen while picking it up. I was expecting to see Morgan’s name on the screen since she was the only one I’d talked to since I got back. But as luck would have it, Vaughn was calling me. Again.
Correction. I could handle almost anything. Talking to the man who’d broken my heart less than a minute after finding out he’d knocked me up wasn’t one of those things.
1
Allie
7 weeks earlier…
My heart raced in my chest as I followed Morgan Kelly, my best friend since kindergarten, out of the limousine. It was hard to believe that we were on the red carpet at the Oscars with everyone clamoring to talk to her because she was up for a Best Actress award. After I fixed the train on her killer dress, Morgan stepped forward. I moved in front of her and stood slightly out of view while Gloria Garrison, Morgan’s director in Dimming Her Light, joined her on the red carpet.
“Morgan, care to tell us who your mystery man is?”
“Gloria, do you know who it is?”
“Yet another reporter who deserves horrible diarrhea,” I mumbled under my breath. My annoyance stemmed from the fact that the people shouting the questions were ruining her big moment. They should have focused on her Best Actress nomination, not the name of the man she was sleeping with. The questions had been relentless ever since a photographer snapped a picture of the huge hickey on the back of her neck last weekend. The interest in uncovering the identity of her mystery man was intense, but her lips stayed sealed because the press would go wild if they knew she’d snagged the unattainable Gage Ryan as her boyfriend.
She and Gage had been keeping their relationship on the down low, but I’d had a ringside seat to their romance. The sparks between them had been instantaneous, so it hadn’t been a surprise to me when he’d come knocking on the door of the condo I shared with her the morning after they met. It had been incredible to watch my bestie fall head over heels for a guy who looked at her like she was the only woman in the world. It’d also given me a little pang of longing a time or two since I didn’t have a man of my own, not that I was looking for one. My focus was on my career because it needed to be.
