CHAPTER ONE – IVY
Wet hair stuck between your thighs after a shower.
If you’d asked me the worst part about being a woman three weeks ago—hell, even three days ago—that would have been my answer.
Now?
Now, my answer was very different.
The three minutes it took for a pregnancy test to reach its determination about whether or not you were about to spend the next eight months incubating a tiny human?
Hands down the worst part about being a woman.
Not to mention the scariest. Peeing on that stick was simultaneously the most terrifying and most awkward thing I had ever done.
And the messiest.
Look, I wasn’t winning any awards for my aim with the pee, okay? My poor hand had been scrubbed red raw in the last sixty seconds, and I was sure as hell never going to yell at a man again for missing the toilet.
As long as he cleaned it up himself.
Needless to say that if I ever had to do this again, I was going to pee in a pot first. Less room for error and all that.
I checked the timer on my phone.
Ninety seconds left.
Then I could pull the pee stick from the top drawer of my bathroom dresser where I’d unceremoniously dumped it to stop me from torturing myself.
In reality, that hadn’t happened.
For one, I knew. You know how you get that gut feeling that tells you someone is an asshole? Or that the chicken is off? Or that your best friend really did steal your blusher and isn’t giving it back?
Yeah.
I knew.
My period was two weeks late. My boobs were so tender they hurt when I looked at them, and I could smell a coffee from a mile away.
Speaking of that, I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee anymore.
So yeah, I knew. I knew what the test was going to say, and I had no idea what I was going to do about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t considering anything other than keeping the little alien who was almost certainly growing in my womb. I didn’t believe in anything else, and weirdly enough, that wasn’t the scariest part about this.
Nope. It would be telling my staunchly Catholic, Jesus-loving grandmother that I was pregnant. Unmarried. From a one-night stand.
That was going to go well.
Not.
Not to mention the fact I would have to tell my next-door neighbor that our drunken, one-time escapade a few weeks ago had knocked me up.
That was also not going to be fun. As far as I knew, Kai Connors had absolutely no intention of having children anytime soon. He’d spent weeks avoiding Amanda, a single mom in the building who had kids for no reason other than she had kids.
But that was fine. If he didn’t want kids, I would move and figure it out by myself.
I checked my phone again.
Sixty seconds.
I had no idea how this had happened, either. Sure, we hadn’t used a condom because we’d been drunk and I’d assured him it was fine, but I never ever missed a pill. It never crossed my mind this would happen. I was OCD about taking my pill. I took it out every single morning when I brushed my teeth and took it immediately after, and I’d checked the package every single day for a week while I’d built the confidence up to take this pregnancy test.
All the days were clear. I’d taken it every day.
Forty-five seconds.
Oh, shit.
I knew.
The day my grandmother was rushed to the ER. That was it. That was the day. She swore she was dying but it turned out she was constipated. I’d taken my pill out, but now that I thought about it, I had no recollection whatsoever of taking it.
It was so normal for me to do it that it’d never crossed my mind that I might have forgotten that I had not, in fact, taken it.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
It was all on me.
Kai was going to kill me.
I couldn’t not tell him. No matter what he did, he had the right to make a decision about what he wanted to do. But I also had to admit this was my fault. It was my mistake that had led to this.
Thirty seconds.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t believe I’d been so damn stupid. I never should have said it was fine to do it without a condom. Such an idiot.
Fifteen seconds.
Really, by now, with our technology, it didn’t need to take three minutes for a pregnancy test to work its magic. Thirty seconds was all that was needed.
I ran my fingers through my hair and paced the length of my bathroom. I had no idea what I was going to do. I didn’t know the first thing about babies. I had no idea how to change diapers or breastfeed or how to stop little humans running into roads.
Oh, God, I was going to drop my baby, wasn’t I?
My phone sprang to life. The high-pitched chirping of the alarm ricocheted off the walls, and I stopped the alarm that signified the end of the worst three minutes of my life before it made my headache any worse than it already was.
I set the phone on the dresser and stared at the drawer that held the test. All I had to do was open it, flip the test over, and I’d get my answer. I would know one way or the other. I would know if it was a baby or just stress.
After all, I’d read that sometimes the stress of worrying about pregnancy would delay a period, creating a vicious circle.
Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and tried to center myself. It didn’t work. My heart was pounding at a thousand beats a minute, and I swore I was going to faint.
I grabbed the test from the drawer and perched on the edge of the bath.
I was going to do this. I was going to look. I was going to find out.
Right now.
I opened my eyes and flipped the test.
Pregnant, +.
The answer blinked at me from the little digital screen. A lump formed in my throat as I stared down at the window.
Yeah. I was going to faint.
I sat on the floor instead and leaned against the side of the tub. Pregnant. Definitely pregnant. Six weeks, according to my calendar. Very definitely pregnant.
Oh, shit.
***
Tori blinked at me. “You’re actually pregnant?”
I nodded, running my hand through the soft fur of her Ragdoll cat, Genevieve. “I took three tests after. They all said the same thing. Definitely pregnant.”
“Holy shit.” She dropped onto the sofa next to me. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, but if you don’t get that coffee away from me, I might throw up in it.”
“Noted.” She grabbed the mug from the table and took it into the kitchen, even going so far as to drain the cold coffee down the sink and rinse it. “And it’s Kai’s?”
“Yep.” I looked down at the cat who was happily purring under my methodical strokes. “And no, before you ask, I haven’t told him yet. I panicked and came here. Well, after I went to the drugstore two towns away and bought three more tests ‘for a friend.’”
She rejoined me on the sofa, handing me a glass of ice water. “Are you okay, Ives?”
Shrugging, I sank back into the soft cushions. “I really don’t know. I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet, you know? It’s like I knew, because everything added up, but it’s one thing to think it and another thing entirely to have it spelled out in front of you.”
Tori squeezed my hand. “How did it happen? You’re so anal about your pill. There’s no way you’d forget. Did it fail?”