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I folded my arms. That was encouraging. “Where’s Sebastian now?”
“He’s right outside. Usually, nothing peels him away from his office. But it’s like I was saying. Ever since he brought you to me last night, I keep catching him looming around this room. I don’t think he has even gone to his office yet.”
I tried to picture that and couldn’t, so I chose not to believe her. “Can I leave?” I asked.
“You’re free to go when you like, but I wouldn’t advise it right now. I’ll need to do a little more testing now that you’re awake to be sure, but you probably suffered a concussion last night. The symptoms vary, but until we know more, it’d be best to keep you put. Do you have a job I could write you a note for?”
“No official job at the moment,” I said. A little more of last night was coming back to me then. I’d lost my latest dead-end job, which had partly motivated the brief but intense emotional spiral that had inspired me to… It was still fuzzy, but I thought I remembered seeing that Sebastian St. James would be attending a book signing a few blocks from my place. I also thought I remembered Trinity desperately trying to talk me out of “doing something stupid. Again.”
Well, the joke was on Trinity. I didn’t even really remember what I did, so it was going to be hard for her to scold me.
“Should I go to a real hospital, maybe?”
The woman—I finally noticed she had a name tag that read Dr. Willows—gave a sympathetic shrug. “We had you at my hospital last night. We did brain scans and everything else imaginable at the request of Mr. St. James. It really wasn’t that big of a fall,” she added when she saw the look on my face. “He insisted we bring you here to recover. I suggest you take him up on the offer since he’s covering all the expenses. But I do feel obligated to say that under normal circumstances, we’d probably send you home after a simple concussion test and schedule you for a checkup in a day or two. Sebastian’s being over-cautious with you.”
“Wait, I fell?”
“Sort of?” The doctor looked like she was holding back a smile. “I’m sure it’ll all come back to you soon.”
I thanked Dr. Willows as she left the room and then sank into the comfortable bed, simmering on my situation. I had no job, no family to look after, and apparently, I was pregnant, too.
I wasn’t sure if my brain could’ve coped with that last fact on a normal day. Today, though, it didn’t feel like it was registering. The baby was his. That much was certain, based on the roughly zero penises I’d let inside me since I was with him. And nobody needed to go into details about how long it’d been before I was with him, either. The condom had clearly been faulty. I’d seen him put it on and take it off and there was no visible damage—not that I’d paid that much attention, but still.
Somehow, it had happened. That fact was staring me in the face, whether I liked it or not. It appeared when the universe screwed you, there were no orgasms involved. Just babies. Evil half-devil babies, at that.
I let out a low groan and covered my face with my hands. I had no idea how to handle this.
So I did what was natural and had a full-blown, silent panic attack. I took short, halting breaths, felt like my chest was going to cave in, and then even gave laughing hysterically a try for a little while. Nothing really helped, and I was still just as pregnant with that bastard’s baby when I was done.
I hadn’t come to grips with any bit of my situation when the door opened again.
And there he was.
It had only been four months since the conference, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Sebastian St. James, just like I’d expertly predicted, had been catapulted to global superstardom. His book, Embers, was on pace to break nearly every record in the publishing world. He became an overnight sex symbol and multi-millionaire. Mr. Already Perfect had gone and grabbed the world by the throat, demanded his due, and been given everything he could ever want.
He was living every author’s dream, but he walked into the bedroom with drawn eyebrows and a glare to peel wallpaper and make babies cry. He was wearing a dark gray sweater that looked distractingly good on him. His dirty blond hair was pushed away from his forehead and his eyes were smoldering pits as he loomed over my bed, looking down at me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You’re in my house,” Sebastian said simply.
“Right. I was meaning to ask you about that. Why am I in your house, exactly?”
