Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair 3)

“Thirst is a symptom,” Hannah said in singsong.

“Fuck, and after that she had to puke. Oh, God.”

“Some women get morning sickness in the evenings,” she announced, “Fred will even tell you it’s very common.”

“What else happens to you?”

“I got very moody and emotional. It’s the massive amounts of hormones raging around.”

Check. My Medusa joke from a couple weeks ago suddenly didn’t seem funny anymore.

“Extreme exhaustion, necessitating naps.” She tilted her head all the way to the side. “I’ve never napped in my life except for the three times I was pregnant.”

Check. Brynne was sleeping right now at my sister’s house. I wanted a smoke and then another, and to just keep on going until the whole pack was gone.

“Breasts get very tender to the touch, a little painful. Again, it’s the hormones starting the process for milk to feed the baby.”

I just gaped at her, and I’m sure my mouth was hanging open like the village idiot’s as she talked about hormones and breasts and milk production. This cannot be happening. It can’t. Not now.

But my sister rambled on, scaring the absolute shit out of me with every subsequent sentence that came out of her mouth.

“This

last part is something that happens and trust me, I would rather not say, but I suppose I should tell you anyway since you asked.” She held up her hand to stop me from speaking. “I don’t want to hear if it’s true or not. I really don’t need to know.”

“What?!” I yelled at her. “Stop fucking around and tell me!”

Hannah glared at me and then slowly changed it into a smirk. “Pregnant women get very randy and want sex all the time. Their men are usually too stupid to realize why they’re getting lucky with the extra shagging all of a sudden.” She got a kick out of telling me that one, I am sure. “It’s definitely the hormones.” Hannah folded her arms and waited.

“We need to go back,” I said in a strange voice. Even to my ears I didn’t sound normal. All I could see was Brynne begging me to fuck her in the shower before I came here. Oh my God. Petrified shock didn’t even begin to cover the enormity of this bomb drop.

As I stood there beside my sister, gazing out over the Somerset coast, on a warm summery day in July, with my niece chasing the dog over the grass, I knew two things were an absolute certainty.

The first was that Brynne wouldn’t take the news well at all.

The second part came to me quickly and with extreme clarity. The reaffirmation that I was a very, very, lucky man for reasons I could only admit to myself. I wouldn’t even tell Brynne the reason. It was all for me to know and to keep private. Very simple logic, really. And the more I thought about it, the easier it was to accept the possibility.

If Brynne is truly carrying my child . . . then she can never leave me.

7

? "What could cause her pills not to work right? Brynne told me she’s been on them for several years. Explain this to me,” I demanded.

Freddy looked at me sympathetically. “Relax, mate. It’s not the end of the world. She won’t be forced into anything. We live in 2012. There are options.”

“Oh, fuck!” The idea that she could be pregnant was enough to process at the moment, but even thinking about what Fred might be suggesting was even worse. “A termination, you mean?”

“Yes. She’s within her rights, and it is one option. Adoption is another,” he said softly.

I flopped down into a chair, set my elbows on my knees and leaned my forehead on my hands. I just sat there and breathed. As much as I was in shock, I knew that terminating the pregnancy was out of the question. Out of the fucking realm of possibility. No way would I allow my child to be killed or have it hushed away. I just hoped that Brynne felt the same way I did. What if she doesn’t?

“Well, you two need to have a talk and then she should have a test to confirm. If you want me to do one and speak to her I will, but you’re going to have to go there first, E, and discuss it together.”

I nodded into my hands and hauled arse up from the chair. Fred clapped a hand on my back in support. “But how? If she’s taking her pills, why would this happen?” I persisted. Maybe in some far reaches of my pathetic attempt at denial I hoped a bell would ring proclaiming it was time to wake up.

Freddy smiled and shook his head at me. “Things change, other medications can diminish the effects of contraception, condoms blow out, people get drunk and have a go, they get illnesses that alter their body’s ability to metabolize the drugs, and most important, nothing is one hundred percent effective. The only thing is celibacy.” He gave me a look. “Condoms?”

I shook my head and looked down at the floor.