Page 93 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I don’t let myself sit in it.

I press a kiss to Maddox’s shoulder instead and take him in for a second in the gray early light, the sharp line of his jaw shadowed with overnight stubble, dark lashes resting against his cheekbones, lips parted slightly around whatever he’s dreaming about. He’s breathtaking in a completely unfair way.

I untangle myself slowly, easing out from under both of them, and they shift and resettle against each other without fully waking. I find my dress crumpled near the foot of the bed and pull it back on, no underwear, apparently a permanent house rule now.

That’s when I feel it. A low cramp behind my hip bones, a vague pressure that feels less like nausea and more like my stomach bracing for something.

Oh, I think. My period’s probably coming.

I grab my phone and open my cycle app out of habit, and my eyes go wide enough that I have to sit down on the edge of the bed.

I’m late. Not a little late. Significantly, inconveniently, I’ve-been-ignoring-this-for-two-weeks late.

I dig through my purse for my pill case, flip it open, and count.

I’ve missed four.

Four. Not a forgivable, life-happens two. Four, scattered across exactly the worst possible stretch of weeks, important enough to make me forget the one thing I haven’t forgotten in five years.

FUCK.

I keep it internal. Mostly.

I lean over to find Asher’s face too before I go, his jaw softer than Maddox’s but no less perfect, dusted with the kind of facial hair that somehow always looks intentional even at six in the morning, mouth slightly open against the pillow. I press a kiss to it anyway, light enough not to wake him, and he makes a sleepy sound before settling back under. Then I’m moving, grabbing my shoes, easing the suite door shut with the precision of someone who’s done this walk more than once this month.

In my own room I peel off last night’s dress and shove it in the closet, no way I’m walking into the village in the same thing I wore to the boutique launch, and pull on jeans and an oversized sweater instead. I order a car before I’ve even fully decided what I’m doing.

The pharmacy’s small, tidy, mercifully empty except for one employee restocking shelves. I find the right aisle and just stand there staring.

There are so many options.

Digital result window. Early detection, six days sooner, like that’s a luxury upgrade. One brand promising actual words instead of lines. I can’t find a single test without some gimmick attached, and all I want is one that just works.

And the prices. I laugh out loud, alone, in a French pharmacy, at how much they’re charging for a stick a woman pees on. Is pee in that high of demand? Did I miss a global shortage?

I grab the cheapest one that still looks trustworthy and pay cash, because the last thing I need is a transaction history that says pregnancy test somewhere Killian’s accountant or Sophia’s curiosity could find it. Some things I get to keep entirely mine.

The ride back feels longer than the ride there. I head straight for my bathroom and pull the box open with hands that have started, somewhere in the last ten minutes, to shake.

I read the directions twice even though there’s really only one way to use this thing, do what I need to do, set the timer, and fold a piece of tissue over the result window so I won’t watch it happen in real time.

She’s going to burn my Louboutins.

That’s the thought. That’s the whole thought, and I stand there holding a piece of plastic with two lines on it while the bathroom goes quiet around me, the way a room does when you stop being able to hear anything outside the little window in your own hand.

My legs stop working.

Not dramatically. Just a slow loss of structural integrity, my back sliding down the marble wall until I’m sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up and the test still in my hand. Standing isn’t currently available to me.

Two lines.

Positive.

My heartbeat fills the silence of my surroundings. Steady. Loud in my own ears. It isn’t racing, isn’t doing the frantic thing I’d have expected. It’s just present, insistent, making sure I notice it the same way I’m noticing everything else right now, slow and strangely clear, the marble cold under me, the test warm in my hand.

I don’t decide to do it. My hand just goes there on its own, flat against my stomach, fingers spread, like some part of me is already caught up to the math my brain hasn’t finished running yet.

There’s nothing to feel, obviously. I’m not even showing, no bump, no flutter, nothing physical under my palm. But I know there’s something there. Something small. A little bean, or whatever it looks like this early, tucked in somewhere it has no business being and also every business being, depending how you look at it.