Chasing Carly (Holiday Cove 3)

My fingertips smoothed away the hair and swept over her cheek, bare of any makeup. “It’s okay, Leash. We’ll figure everything out later. Right now, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Alesha didn’t answer me. Instead, her eyes darted to Gemma and widened.

“Alesha, it’s up to you what you want to tell your sister. I can explain everything if you’d like. But I need your permission to disclose since it is in regards to your medical record.”

Alesha’s eyes danced between Gemma and me for a moment longer, the struggle evident on her face. After watching her war with herself for a minute, I squeezed her shoulder and leaned over the side of the bed. “It’s okay, Leash. Gemma’s right, it’s your business, but I’m here if you want to talk about what happened.”

Her color was pale but I couldn’t be sure if that was from the lack of the thick makeup she usually wore, or if it was the lighting of the room or something linked to whatever had happened to make her so sick. Possibly a little of all three.

Other than the tone of her skin, I had no idea what had happened without getting the full story. She was hooked up to a handful of monitors that all made soft whooshing and beeping noises at regular intervals. Her pulse and blood pressure numbers looked okay. But I couldn’t ignore the IV attached to her arm and wonder what was being fed into her system. Pain medication? Antibiotics?

“You can tell her,” Alesha’s voice was frail, barely a whisper, and once the words left her mouth, she closed her eyes and waited.

Gemma cleared her throat and I turned to look at her, my hand still resting on Alesha’s shoulder. “When the paramedics found her, she was passed out from severe dehydration and low blood sugar levels. We’re pushing liquids to get her back into the normal range.”

“Alesha?” I said, alarmed by the thought that she hadn’t been drinking enough. “Does she have some kind of condition? Diabetes? Hypoglycemia?”

Gemma shook her head. “No, Alesha told the doctor that saw her that she hasn’t been eating for at least a week.”

“What? Why not?” I asked, careful to keep my tone soft even as alarms went off inside my head.

Alesha’s eyes opened and locked with mine, shiny with tears. “I thought I was getting fat…I kept gaining weight every day. I thought it was from all the pastries and coffees and stuff…but…” She broke the eye contact and looked back at Gemma. “But it’s not that, Carly. I’m…I’m…pregnant.”

The room spun and I grabbed ahold of the bars on the side of the bed to keep from falling backward. “Pregnant?” The word sounded foreign on my tongue. My baby sister—my teenage sister—was going to have a baby? No…it couldn’t be right. Something had to have gone wrong with the test. I was under no illusion that Alesha was a virgin.

But a baby?

“Yes, she’s about fourteen weeks along,” Gemma filled in.

“I’m sorry, Carly,” Alesha said, the tears spilling past her lashes.

I leaned down and wrapped her in my arms as best as I could. “Honey, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not! Dad’s gonna kill me…” she sobbed against my shoulder.

I held her tighter. “Shh, shh. No, he won’t, honey. We’re going to figure this all out.”

Somehow.

21

Carly

* * *

After getting Alesha calmed down, she fell asleep and I settled into a comfortable chair that Gemma had sent in for me to use, planning to spend the night in the hospital at Alesha’s bedside.

“How’s she doing?”

Gemma stepped into the room on ninja quiet feet. “She’s been sleeping for about an hour,” I replied.

“Good,” she replied, smiling. She came over and perched on the arm of the chair. “How about you? It’s quite a bombshell that got dropped on you both today.”

I laughed softly. “Understatement of the year. Truthfully, I don’t know how I feel.”

Gemma nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, it takes some time to process. Not that it’s any of my business, but how do you think your dad will react?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out for the last hour,” I said softly. “I have no idea. The ironic thing is that his wife, our stepmom, has been bugging him to have a baby for years. So, in a way, I imagine the idea of having a teenager and a newborn in the house was inevitable. With a twist. Obviously.”

“For what it’s worth, I think Alesha took the news very well.”

“She’s probably just relieved she’s not getting fat,” I scoffed, shaking my head. As soon as the words left my lips, I wished I could take them back. With a cringe, I glance up at Gemma. “That’s not exactly how I meant that to sound.”

Gemma patted my shoulder. “Not here to judge. It’s not really my thing.”

“I just want her to grow up, ya know? We got into this big argument because she couldn’t take care of a puppy. And now, less than a day later, this?”