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I knew I had pushed my luck, talking to him about the possibility of a life outside everything he had known for so long. But I could tell some part of him craved it, even if he never would have admitted it to himself. He had been locked into all of this for so many years now. It was clear just from looking at him that he didn’t want to consider the thought of what could have been if he had given it up.
Or maybe I was just imagining it because I wanted him to feel that way. I wanted him to see another way out of this, even though he was so tied up in the darkness of this city. Maybe he didn’t want a way out. Maybe he thought this was where he belonged, and fine, if that was the case, he could stay there.
Even if the thought of giving up on him, or being wrong about him, made my chest ache.
And now, I was back here, in my hotel room, trying to pluck up the courage to take the damn test waiting for me in that paper bag I’d picked up from the drugstore. I had to get this over with. The chances of me being pregnant when we’d only hooked up a handful of times were slim, right? I didn’t actually have anything to worry about. This was nothing more than a precaution.
Finally, I ripped open the packet and went to the bathroom. My heart was beating so fast I could hear it, but I ignored that and went ahead and took the test, balancing the plastic strip on the back of the toilet and breathing in slow deep breaths. I had to get through this. Just one little test and it would all be done with.
I counted down the seconds, my leg bouncing nervously. I was crunching the numbers in my head, trying to work out how likely it was that I was really pregnant. There was no way, was there? It had to be miniscule the possibility of it. And yet...
And yet, I couldn’t rule it out entirely, and that scared the shit out of me.
My mind couldn’t help but wander as I tried to pull myself together. What was I going to do if I really was pregnant? It would be a nightmare. I was only just out of college. I didn’t have a job yet, hell, I didn’t even have a place to live outside of this hotel. And the man I was pregnant by...my brother hated him, at least in that context, and he was caught up in so much dark shit I couldn’t even wrap my head around it.
Finally, the count was up. I took a deep breath and turned around to check on the test...
And there it was. Staring right back at me like a cruel, twisted joke.
Positive. It was positive.
I felt my stomach lurch as the corners of my vision blurred, and I dropped down to my knees, heaving over the toilet as the panic hit me square in the face. No. There was no way. There was no fucking way I could be...
Once I had managed to stop dry-heaving, I lifted my head and looked at the test again. There they were, the two little lines that told me everything I needed to know. I was pregnant.
And I knew it was true. I had known deep down the moment it had crossed my mind it was true. It was the reason I had taken the test in the first place. Some part of me just feared, just knew that this was real. I planted my hands on my stomach and looked down, staring blankly at the spot where my child was growing.
I had never really given much thought to having kids before this—had never needed to. I had always been so careful when it came to hooking up with guys, but I had let all of that go out the window when I had been with Scott, the intensity of our chemistry making me stupid.
And now, I was paying the price for it.
I made my way to the bed and collapsed onto the covers, staring up at the ceiling as I tried to work out what I would do next. Would I—was I going to keep it? I could just get rid of the baby if I didn’t want to have it. It was early enough that it would have been simple and painless. Nobody else would need to know.
But I didn’t want to do that. It might have been the more sensible choice, but I didn’t want to go through with it. I wanted this baby. I could feel this deep attachment growing to it already, to this little life growing inside of me. Maybe it was just the jolt of emotion and shock talking, but I didn’t want to have an abortion.
Which meant...
Which meant I was going to be carrying Scott’s baby. Shit. The enormity of it washed over me, and I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to wrap my head around it. What the hell would my life look like with his baby?
Scott wouldn’t want anything to do with it. I was sure of it. He didn’t strike me as the family type. But he seemed to have enough decency in him to pay for it, as far as he could—unless he thought this had all been a game on my part, and I had just been trying to trap him into child support. Oh, hell.
I couldn’t even talk to anyone about this. It would have been too much to catch Shelby up on, and I couldn’t put it into words, not yet. It was all too complicated, the way I felt about him, the way I felt about this baby, all of it. It was more than I could wrap my head around—more than I could begin to imagine.
And what would this baby be born into? That was what I was scared of. Would it become part of his father’s legacy? If Scott chose to continue the family business, surely he would want to involve our child in it.
Our child. Even letting those words cross my mind felt enormous. It would tie us together for life. There would be no getting away from it if I let this happen. If I chose to tell Scott. There was always another option. Just hide it from him. Keep the child to myself.
But I knew I wouldn’t have been able to handle it all alone. I didn’t want to. I knew if I had this child, I would need my family around me, this child’s family including Mark, who was going to flip his shit when he found out what was really going on, of course. He would lose it if he knew I had managed to get pregnant by the guy he didn’t want me anywhere near. It would be a permanent tie between our family and Scott’s Mafia ties, beyond just the connection of the business deal they had made with one another. It would be something to force us to stick together, no matter what happened, no matter how dark things got.
And I didn’t know how much darker they were going to get. I had barely scratched the surface of what Scott was really like. I felt like I was getting to know him, but there was still every chance he was putting up a front to draw me in. What he wanted from me, I didn’t know, but I had to keep my guard up, even if it was incredibly tempting just to let it fall, let myself fall for him the way I wanted to.
If I brought this baby into this world, I was making sure that it was going to be a part of his family—and that meant it would be a part of what his family stood for, too. Could I, in good conscience, let that happen? Maybe our child would want to embrace such a life, or perhaps it would resent me for drawing it into a dangerous lifestyle.
I cupped my hands on my lower belly again, wishing I could talk to the little cluster of cells growing inside me. Wishing I could ask it what it thought of all of this. But I couldn’t. I had to be the one to make the call, and I wasn’t sure what the right call was, and it was tearing me up inside.
I didn’t know what was going to happen. I really didn’t. But I was sure of one thing—I would be the best parent I possibly could be to this little one. Scott? Yeah, I couldn’t account for him, what he would do, or how he would react. But I could make sure I didn’t fail this kid.
No matter what, I would do what it took to look after our child. I might have been terrified, looking down the barrel of a life I could never have imagined up until this moment, but sometimes, the world just threw you a curve ball, and you had to find some way to keep hold of the bat and knock it right out of the park.
