Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
I tell the girl at the desk I had an appointment to get on birth control a while back, but they had to cancel my appointment, and I never got around to rescheduling it.
“At the time, I didn’t think I needed it anymore, but… well, I do.”
“My notes say you canceled,” she tells me, looking at her computer. “But we can get you set up with a new appointment, no problem.”
I frown. “I didn’t cancel the appointment. Someone called me. Michelle, I think?”
She shakes her head. “No Michelle works here, hon.” Her gaze finally leaves her computer and she looks at me with concern. “Do you have the phone number in your call log? If someone called you from our office, I can check the schedule and see who it was.”
Slowly, I shake my head. “No, it’s okay. I… I must be remembering wrong.”
“I can get you in for a check-up Friday,” she says, tapping keys on her keyboard and shifting her gaze back to her computer screen. “Is afternoon okay for you?”
My stomach rocks and that queasy feeling hits me again. I grip the edge of the counter and take a breath, trying to will the nausea away.
“Miss Blakely?”
I open my eyes and look at her, but I still feel ill.
More ill, in fact, because I know what I have to ask next.
“Do you by chance have any pregnancy tests?”
___
I don’t want to take it.
I know how reckless we’ve been, and I’m not an idiot, so I knew the risks.
But I can’t face them.
It’s perfectly reasonable that maybe I’m just queasy all the time because Killian made my life so messy.
That has to be the reason, because I can’t be…
I can’t be pregnant.
It would ruin my life, and he has already ruined my life so much, but this…
No.
I can’t be.
I refuse to be.
If I never take the test, then I’ll never know.
I glare at the little wrapped stick on my bathroom counter, but then I realize living in denial is the thing I’m not supposed to do. All my choices are supposed to be the opposite of hers, and that means…
I need to take the test.
It could be negative.
It’s totally feasible.
I have a lot of reasons to be stressed out, and you can miss periods because you’re stressed out.
You can definitely experience bouts of nausea because you’re kind of dating Killian Walsh. I mean, there haven’t been conclusive studies done, but I’d put good money on it.
Just take the damn test.
Deciding to get it over with, I do a quick read-through of the directions I’ve already read three times, then I rip open the packet and do the thing.
I nod, feeling good as I put the stick down on the counter.
Definitely not gonna be pregnant, I can feel it.
I’ll hit Killian with a frying pan before I let him inside me without a condom again over the next few days, and then come Friday I’ll see the doctor and get emergency birth control. The fastest acting stuff they have so I never experience a scare like this again.
I don’t look at the stick until my phone timer goes off because I don’t want to risk inaccurate results, and when the time comes, I grab the stick and…
Fuck.
“Oh, no.”
I frown at the stick, then back down at the directions. Maybe I’m remembering the results backward…
Oh, dear.
I’m not.
I drop back down on the closed toilet lid and my head swims.
This can’t be happening.
My phone vibrates on the counter like Killian can sense my emotional disturbance from wherever the fuck he is, but I’m only dimly processing the text as I read it.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“Oh, I’ve got one for you, too,” I tell him.
“We should go out for dinner tonight.”
“I want to stay in,” I tell him.
“Works for me. Then I don’t have to drive home to get dessert,” he says with a wink.
I don’t know if you’re going to like this surprise.
I don’t say that.
I don’t even like this surprise, because this surprise is…
It’s shackles.
It’s a life sentence.
It’s locking me into this arrangement I never wanted to begin with for the next twenty years of my life, because if Killian wanted to trap me…
Well, this was it. This was the way. I’ll never date a man if I’m a single parent because I won’t risk bringing a creep into their life the way my mother did, and since the father of my baby is marrying someone else…
I grab my phone, my lungs closing in, and text Addison. “I think your room might be cursed.”
“Why?” she texts back a moment later.
“Because I am now pulling a Rory Gilmore. I’m freaking out. I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“I’ve made a mistake. A lot of mistakes.”
A couple of seconds pass, then she asks, “Did you sleep with Killian again? You have to stop that. Put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it every time he swings those big blue eyes your way.”