Page 46 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

“I’m sorry, did you say pregnant?” I have to ask, because maybe I was hearing things. Maybe she didn't actually say what I thought she said. I park my car, right there in the middle of the road, and get out, because maybe my brain just conjured it up for some sick reason, and I heard her say she was pregnant when that was not at all the case.

Right? That has to be it? Any second now, she’s going to tell me that my stupid brain said the wrong thing, and she’s probably going to be offended that I even heard that in the first place.

She turns to me slowly. Her eyes are wide, the pupils looking almost small, surrounded by the whites. Her face is pale, her breath coming out in ratchety pants.

She looks as if she is on the verge of hyperventilating. But she's not telling me I'm wrong, that I heard it all wrong, and that it wasn’t what she said.

“You’re…pregnant?” I try again, tentatively. She still doesn’t answer, she just keeps staring at me with that horrified look of a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and she can see it coming, but she’s powerless to stop it.

“You’re pregnant.” This time, the words are a little louder, a little firmer, more of a statement than a question. Still, I want her confirmation before I fully accept it. I need her to tell me that I’m not tripping here, that I'm not losing my mind, because otherwise I'm going to feel like I am.

She’s not telling me that, so I ask, “Who’s the father?”

That’s when she reacts. She gives me an injured look that tells me that I’ve said something absolutely stupid as she starts to walk away.

I catch her elbow before she can leave. “Wait.”

“For what? For you to insult me again?”

“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” I say. “I was just…Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. I haven’t known ever since you walked into my life.”

She spins her head around and regards me with a withering look. But I take it without protest until she calms down, seeing that I didn't mean the words the way they came out.

Her shoulders relax, and she looks beyond me to where Adam and Sam are still standing. Both of them wanted to come after her, but I convinced them that it would be too much for all of usto go at once. I told them to let me handle it, and they reluctantly agreed to wait.

But now I don't know if I should have sent Adam in my stead. I feel ill-equipped to handle this kind of news.

As wild as my past has been, I've never in my life dealt with a pregnancy scare. I've always been careful and....God.

What the hell do we do now?

“I don’t know who the father is.”

I accept that with a swallow. “Could it be…I mean, could it be one of us?”

“Possibly," She says cagily. “The timelines make the most sense, according to the doctor, although I don’t know which one out of the three of you it is.”

“Do you want us to take DNA tests?”

"No. I...” She breathes out. “Look, I just got the news a few days ago, and I'm still dealing with it myself, okay? I’m not even entirely a hundred percent sure I want to keep the pregnancy, even though it’s looking like that might be the case. And if I keep it, I don’t want any of you to feel obligated to stay in the child’s life.”

“What?”

“I mean it. I can take care of it myself. I don’t need anyone. I just…I wanted to tell you guys because I thought you should know, because it seemed like the right thing to do. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s no one else’s problem except mine, so I'm absolving you of any responsibility."

“Like hell it is,” I practically snarl, staring at her incredulously. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? 'Absolving us of responsibility'? That doesn’t even sound right. We’re just as responsible for the pregnancy as you are. Hell, we're even more responsible than you are. It's our fault this is happening."

"No, not it's not."

"Yes, it is. After you left, we found a broken condom on the floor."

Impossibly, her eyes grow even wider.

"We would have told you about it, but we literally had no way of contacting you." Then again, we didn't try very hard after she left. Hell, we could have probably described her better to James, and earlier too, and maybe he might have put two and two together. He would have probably kicked my ass six ways from Sunday, but we could have found her through that.

Fuck, speaking of James...

He's going to kill us. And we'll deserve it.