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“For later?”
“Yeah. It’s still dark out so maybe my brothers don’t know I’m missing. Not yet. And I also know that no matter how many times I tell you, you won’t put me in a cab. You’ll bring me back yourself. Because for some reason, you’re weirdly protective of me.”
He shifts on his feet. “What’s the point?”
“The point is that when you do bring me back yourself, they’ll only beat you up again. This time for kidnapping me. So I want to clean your wounds before you get new ones.”
Reed studies my face and probably sees the determination in it. Because I’m not budging.
If we’re pointing fingers about who did what then I should be the one to blame. It was my spur of the moment plan. I wanted to move on so badly that I misled him. So if we’re blaming someone, it should be me.
But we’re not.
Because he’s right.
It doesn’t matter how she came into existence and it doesn’t matter that this is going to be so difficult. Because she’s not a mistake, and I’m not going to blame or point fingers when I have her to think about now.
When we have her.
He says gruffly, “Fine.”
With that, he goes to the closed toilet seat and sits down on it and my breaths scatter for a second. I know why he did that. I know why he took a seat.
Because of the stark differences in our heights.
Because last time when I did this I had to get up on a stepstool to tend to his wounds.
So he’s made it easier for me without me having to tell him first. He’s even got his hands resting on his thighs, his veins all taut and thick under his moon-kissed skin. Like he’s ready now and he won’t stop me if I want to clean his cuts and scrapes.
And so I go to do that.
I walk up to him as he sits there like a king.
No, like a criminal. A thug. A villain.
All bruised up and battered and I’m the girl he’s chosen to tend to him tonight. The girl who’ll take care of him.
I clean them up as I try to control my breathing, my heartbeats. As I try to control this rush, this warmth in my chest at the onslaught of memories and the fact that he’s being so… good.
So docile.
For me.
But his eyes tell another story. His eyes are thrumming with currents, with pulses that makes me think of our one night together.
Don’t, Callie. Please.
When I’m done and I go to put everything back into the cabinet, I notice something.
Something I hadn’t before: colorful little boxes stacked on the top shelf.
With trembling hands, I take one out — a hot pink one — and face him. “Why do you have these?”
He’s standing now, his face still battered but at least he’s got bandages and his cuts are clean. He looks at what I have in my hand and replies, swallowing, “Because you probably didn’t have a chance to get these. Not in the dorms. Not yet.”
He’s right.
I haven’t had a chance. “I was going to go get one this weekend while I was home. But you…” I glance back at the cabinet. “You bought like a ton.”
Just like when we were talking about the book, his cheekbones sport a slight flush. “I didn’t know which one would be best.”
I know what he means. Because there are so many. I Googled them at school.
Rapid detection. First response. Early detection. Digital countdown, whatever that means. And I was so dreading it.
I was so dreading going to the pharmacy all alone and getting myself a pregnancy test. I was dreading walking down the aisle, standing there and picking out the best one among hundreds.
And then I was dreading taking the test. All alone.
But I don’t have to now, do I?
I don’t have to buy the test all alone. I don’t have to take the test all alone either.
Because he already bought me one and he’s here.
I blink as I feel tears filling my eyes again.
God, I have to stop this. I get emotional about everything, on the littlest things.
But then, this is not little, is it?
Nothing that has happened here today is little.
Because somehow there’s an us.
“Thank you,” I whisper, hugging it to my chest, hugging it right where my heart is spinning.
He watches me for a few seconds and then throws out a short nod. “I’ll wait outside.”
With that he leaves.
And I do the very first thing a girl does when she finds out she’s pregnant: take a pregnancy test.
The door is thrown open as soon as we get there.
The door to my house, I mean.
We live in a decent neighborhood, not too rich and not too poor, where all the houses pretty much look the same. All the front yards look the same too, mostly with slightly overgrown shrubs and messier grass — people don’t have a lot of time to tend to their gardens or the money to hire regular help so they do the best that they can — and more often than not cracked cement driveways.
