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“I haven’t taken a test. I’ve never missed a period. In all the time that I was married, and we tried. We were trying to have a baby, but I never got pregnant. Not one time. I was never late... Nothing.”
“You didn’t think about protection with Kit?”
“I didn’t think aboutanything,” she said, throwing her hands out wide. “If I had stopped to think about anything, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
That was a lie. But it made her sound a little bit more thoughtful. A little bit more balanced and sane. So she was going to go ahead and go with that.
“Right. Well. You have to tell him.”
“Why? He doesn’t want... He doesn’t want to have kids. He doesn’t want to settle down.”
“Neither did Chance.”
“I don’t think that I’m going to be able to contrive to give Kit amnesia so that he can forget all of his trauma and fall in love with me.” Just saying that made her cringe.
“Anyway. I’m not in love with him. He’s... He was this vaguely bad object that I had in my life and I... I don’t know that I want to get married again. I don’t know. I don’t think that I love anyone else. I loved Chuck for all of my life. And it was special. I had this... This weird thing with Kit. And I hated it. I’ve never really known him, I’ve never especially liked him, and I just wanted to tear his clothes off. From the minute I first saw him. It’s never been okay with me to feel that way. It’s never been what I wanted. This thing with Kit has never been what I wanted. I do want a baby. I was even moving away, Juniper.”
“You can’t do that,” Juniper said. “You can’t give me a little niece or nephew and then move away.”
She realized when she said that the moving thing wasn’t feasible. Or fair. Moving away when she was having a baby. What would her parents think? Her grandparents? Well. What the hell were they going to think when they found out she was pregnant without a husband? That was the whole thing. It was a whole damn thing that she hadn’t thought she would be dealing with when she was twenty-eight years old.
“Kit needs to know,” Juniper said. “You need to give him a chance to do something.”
“He’s a Carson. He’s an alpha male. What do you think he’s going to do? He’s going to storm in here and try to take over my life.”
“So, tell him no. You’re an alpha female, Shelby. And you know that. Why are you acting like he’s going to run you over? He’s not. You’ve got to handle this with honesty. You have to.”
“Why?” Shelby said, knowing that she sounded petulant. “Why do we have to be grown-up about this?”
“Because you’re going to have a baby. Maybe. The first thing you need to do is take a pregnancy test.”
“Do you know if they expire?”
“I... I don’t.”
“Well, I have a few. In the bathroom. I was just avoiding them. I’ve been avoiding everything. I’ve been trying to pretend that it didn’t happen. That all of it... Just didn’t happen.”
“Very healthy. But, it might be time to take a different approach. But I’m here. If you want someone here. I can also go if you don’t want me here.”
“I’m afraid to know,” Shelby said.
“What exactly are you afraid of?”
“That it will be positive. That it will be negative.” The idea made her want to burst into tears. Both of them. Seeing the results at all.
“Well, it’s going to be one of those things. I’m sorry. That’s just... A fact. But you want to know, right? So that you can start figuring out what you’re going to do.”
“I don’t want to.” She was about to say something along the lines of she had been working way too hard to figure out what she was going to do for too long, since she had been thrust into a change she hadn’t asked for. But she hadn’t been. She had just been sitting. She hadn’t chosen to lose Chuck. It wasn’t the consequence of anything. It was an accident. A car accident that had changed her entire life in the blink of an eye.
But this... This was her fault.
This was the direct result of her actions. It was... She’d slept with Kit without a condom. And she had put herself in the situation, and just suddenly that felt a little bit powerful. She wasn’t sure she would ever be able to explain that to her sister. Because it sounded a little bit unhinged. But... This was her life. It was a choice she made. To be with him, to not take precautions. So... Here she was. At least she was doing something. Even if it was just a reaction to something else she’d done. She had earned this.
This moment, positive or negative. It was something new. It was, in a very messed-up way, that step forward that she had been avoiding taking. And now here she was taking it.
“Okay. I guess I’ll try one of the tests that I have.”
“Okay. I’ll wait for you.”
