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Physically, yeah I was fine. But mentally? Emotionally? Everything was a fucking mess, and I had no one to blame but myself.
Well, and Cal.
The tears sprang forth once more, and a broken sob escaped my chest, echoing through the room. The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off the floor. Delia gripped me under the arms while Ella took my feet, shuffling into my room and dropping me on the bed. It was completely undignified, the way they lifted me off the floor like I was a heavy sack of grain instead of their sister in clear distress, but I couldn’t summon the energy to care. Once nestled on the white down comforter on my bed, I shrunk into myself, and my sisters curled their bodies around mine. They didn’t push. They didn’t even speak. They just held me.
Fuck, I wished Chloe was here too. She’d know exactly what to say right now to make me feel better, to convince me that my life wasn’t falling apart thanks to a couple pink lines. And Brie would bake for me, firmly believing carbs could fix anything.
But still, if only Delia and Ella were able to answer my SOS text, that was enough. I was safe in their arms, their embraces holding me together when that stupid pee stick threatened to shatter me into a million little irrevocably broken pieces.
“Mar,” Brie—who I clearly hadn’t realized arrived—said quietly some untold moments, hours, days, who the fuck knew, later. “What’s going on?”
I considered staying quiet, keeping the secret to myself. The longer I held the words in, the less real it was. The moment I released them into the universe, I’d have to face the fact that this was happening. That there was a tiny life growing in my womb.
At last, I croaked, “I’m pregnant.”
One of them gasped, but all three hugged me tighter.
God, I’d been so stupid. I was twenty-eight, for fuck’s sake. Iknewbirth control was fallible. But…the odds had been so slim. How often do you hear of babies being conceived while their mother was on the pill? Rarely.
We should’ve used condoms after that first time. We’d never even talked about it. Like a fucking teenager, I’d been so consumed by everything Calvin Ryder was that I’d waved a flippant figurative hand at the protests my mind screamed at me.
I should’ve listened.
We never should’ve slept together at all.
Now I was a damn statistic, my baby anoops, the product of a relationship that never should’ve happened in the first place.
I had to breathe. I was spiraling too fast, thinking things that made no sense. I loved Cal, and he loved me. That would be enough to get us through this.
Right?
Delia spoke next. “What are you going to do?”
“Keep it,” I said quickly.
The circumstances were all sorts of fucked up, but this baby was a gift.
I shifted so I could settle a palm across my abdomen.
“What the hell is going on?”
The voice from the doorway startled the four of us, and I whipped my head in its direction, meeting the emerald gaze of my big sister.
“Chloe!” I cried, shakily rising to my feet and throwing myself into her arms. “What are you doing here?”
“I got your SOS text,” she said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You needed me. I came.”
“How did you get here so fast?”
She and Logan had been in Detroit for the weekend, visiting his family and meeting his sister Berkley’s new baby—their new nephew—Bentley.
Looked like Chloe was about to be an auntie again.
“Mar, you sent that text four hours ago,” Delia told me.
“Four?” Fuck, I was in worse shape than I thought.
Chloe held me at arm’s length, eyes darting across my face. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m here now, and someone better tell me what the fuck is happening.”
