Tempting Perfection

prepped, I peed on stick after stick and set my timer. Maybe the doctor’s office had been a bad dream—a hallucination. The milk in my cereal this morning had tasted a little off.

My thoughts circled back to Kurt. What will he say? What will he think? I knew marriage was not part of the equation. Will I just be the baby mamma to him? Or will he even want us in the picture? He’d said he agreed with me about no kids.

My head hurt and my heart physically ached. Babies were supposed to bring happiness, and yet all I felt was contradictions warring within my mind.

The timer dinged, and I shot off the counter.

One by one I examined the tests.

Pregnant.

Pregnant.

Pregnant.

Fuck.

“Sawyer?”

I froze at Edge’s voice. “In here. I’m coming.”

On wooden legs, I walked out of my bathroom, through my room, and out to the living area. I knew I wasn’t all there, mentally, but I was trying to be okay enough to send Edge on his way.

“You okay?”

But the fog kept closing in. “Yeah. Umm…what’s up?”

“I love the suspenders. They kicked ass last night.”

“That’s good.” I tried to smile, but I wasn’t sure it I pulled it off.

He cocked his eyebrow. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I asked Kurt what your favorite kind of coffee was and stopped to get you some.”

Coffee.

Caffeine.

That was on the no-no list.

All of a sudden, the room felt like it was closing in on me. The air was becoming too thick to breathe. “I need to go. I’ll see you later.”

I dashed into my room to grab my purse and ran by Edge as I escaped out into the fresh air.

“Sawyer!”

Without slowing down, I ran to my rental car. Edge called my name twice more as I ran. I pulled out of the parking lot without answering him. Some small part of me knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I needed to get out of there. I needed to figure out what I was going to say to Kurt. I put my hand to my stomach, and something passed over me. Some sort of indescribable connection.

I drove. And drove. And drove.

My mind was blank with nothing but the word pregnant being chanted repeatedly. My baby. Our baby. Part of Kurt was inside me.

My parents. The last thing I wanted was to hear their thoughts. It was the same story as my sister Adriane. Accidentally pregnant.

Later. I’ll think about them later.