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Well, it hadn’t taken long for Jonah and my parents to catch up and catch on.
The rustic vacation rental I’d spent a small fortune on the last three weeks was somewhat suffocating as I paced in front of the bathroom counter. I’d stayed with Jane and her family for a week, sleeping on the couch in their two-bedroom condo. Leavenworth was expensive. Washington was expensive, and it was pretty damn obvious after nearly a month here that the jobs I qualified for would do little to help get me into an apartment and set up a life for myself.
So, I was relying on my savings and stressing the fuck out because I’d gotten a phone call from my mother on the phone I’d bought thinking there was no way to track me down with it.
I wasn’t sure how’d she done it, but it had been when she called that she knew where I was now, and so did Jonah, and he waslivid.
I’d embarrassed him. I’d run off into the night two months before a huge, star-studded wedding in the Hamptons at his father’s estate.
How pissed would he be to find out I’d slept with someone else?
How furious would he be to find out that I was currently waiting for the results of a pregnancy test right now, at this very second?
I hadn’t told Jane that I could be pregnant. It was not in my mind at all until I dragged myself to an urgent care clinic after spending two entire days puking until my back was giving out. I’d been told it was too early to test, but my symptoms lined up with pregnancy, which was insane. Jonah and I hadn’t slept together in months, and Pete had used a condom.
But I hadn’t taken my birth control pills at all. I hadn’t even packed them in my haste to get out of town. I hadn’t thought about them until now.
“Test at four weeks after your last sexual encounter,” the nurse at the urgent care told me, giving me a pregnancy test.
That had been that, and now I was losing my mind as I waited for the timer on my phone to go off at the three-minute mark. I had a job interview in an hour at a gas station. This couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t pregnant. I was stressed out, starving myself to try to save money, and living in an expensive, but dingy vacation rental because I didn’t know where else to go. I couldn’t burden Jane like that, staying in her condo on her couch, even though she’d offered to sleep on the couch and give me her and her husband’s room.
She was too good for this world.
I couldn’t burden her with a baby.
The timer on my phone buzzed and I snatched the test off the grimy counter and sucked in a breath as I turned it upright in the palm of my hand.
Two pink lines. Positive.
I crumbled to the floor, unable to breathe for a moment.
How was this possible? Had the condom broken? Had he even worn it? I remembered him putting it on but… I don’t remember… I’d been so wrapped up in the feel of him and his touch and smell and taste that that condom was the last thing on my mind when we eventually fell into each other’s arms. I’d snuck away two hours later without even a word.
If it had broken, wouldn’t he have noticed?
It wasn’t like he had a way to tell me that since I’d dipped out on him without a word or a way to get ahold of me.
I curled my knees into my stomach and rocked back and forth. There was nothing in my mind for a moment as I stared blankly at the pregnancy test I’d dropped on the aged vinyl floor.
I’d always wanted to be a mother. The thought of children—of a baby, of the weight in the arms and the unconditional love… Of being able to do things differently than my parents, well, that had been the only silver lining I’d had when my engagement to Jonah took place.
I wanted this, somewhere deep, deep down I knew that I wantedthis.
But I had no money. I’d cut myself off from my old life. I couldn’t provide for a child on my own right now.
I was alone—wholly and utterly alone.
And this baby… was Pete’s, without a shadow of a doubt. This baby was his as much as it was mine.
I knew I had options but my mind stayed fixed on the fact that there was a glimmer of life inside of me. Maybe I wasn’t so alone after all.
My hands left my knees and I stretched out my legs in front of me, my hands grazing over my still flat stomach. My breasts were already huge, bigger than they had been before, but they hurt like crazy. I’d chalked it up to a period that wasn’t coming now.
What was I supposed to do? I knew what my parents would have me do, and in a split second I brushed that though from my mind and dug in my theoretical heels.
This was my decision, and I made it.
I couldn’t go back home for several reasons. One, I didn’t want to. Two, to keep this baby safe I would have to do what I had to do to keep my family and Jonah out of the picture.
