Your Fierce Love (The Bennett Family 7)

“Only if I can make free use of Blakealicious.”

“Ouch. Fine, waving the white flag here. We’ll just be silent, and I’ll hold you until you fall asleep.”

He nods, opening one arm, beckoning me to snuggle up to him.

“You like to spoon. Admit it.”

“Never.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Clara

“Please take a seat, Ms. Abernathy. We’ll call your name when it’s your turn.”

I drop in a plastic chair at my gynecologist’s practice, pulling out my phone and checking my e-mails. Job hunting is a stressful endeavor, and I honestly hadn’t thought it would last so long. I went to more interviews than I could count, and still have a ton scheduled. But the cherry on the top? I applied for the illustrator job Charlie talked about, and after reviewing my portfolio, they asked to meet me face-to-face next week, and as part of the process, I have to do a custom illustration for them. I am really trying not to get my hopes up, but I’m failing miserably. I’m also working tirelessly on said illustration. If I’m fighting for my dream, I’d better do it at full speed.

“Ms. Abernathy, you can go in.”

Right. It’s high time I switched to pills for birth control. Blake was absolutely enthusiastic when I told him. I stride into her office with a big smile. After all, today I’m here just for a prescription for birth control. I’m not up for my yearly checkup yet. It’s mid-August now, and I got my who-ha checked in April. Visits to the gynecologist are my least favorite. I mean, going to the doctor is never pleasant, but something about having someone look into my who-ha is unnerving.

“Clara, nice to see you.” She shakes my hand, welcoming me into her practice, pointing to the seat in front of her desk. She’s a petite woman in her forties with a sweet and calming demeanor.

The one thing I love about her practice is that it doesn’t smell like a hospital. I can imagine I’m in an office, right until I have to drop my panties and spread my legs, but with some luck, I won’t have to do that today.

She sits behind the desk, looking at my file. “You were here four months ago. Anything wrong?”

“Oh no. I just want some birth control. I’ve only been using condoms until now.”

She smiles sweetly, closing the file. “Sure. Do you know what you want? Or should we go through all your options? There are pills, IUDs. I have to tell you right off the bat that none of them is one hundred percent certain, but then again, neither is the condom. You get about ninety-nine percent certainty.”

I laugh nervously. “I think that’s enough. I want pills.”

She nods, picking up a pen and pulling a small notebook from under a stack of papers. I make a mental fist pump. This will be a record short visit. Then she puts the pen back down. Damn it. So close.

“We need to do a urine test before.”

“Oh, okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, she looks at the results of the test and smiles.

“Oh!” she exclaims, startling me. Crap. A surprised doctor is never a good thing.

“Looks like you won’t need that birth control after all.”

I frown, not quite understanding. “Why? Am I—am I sterile?” That couldn’t be, right? It would have come up sometime in the past twelve years or so of controls.

“No, of course not. You’re pregnant.”

My mouth goes dry, and my vision clouds for just a split second. I must have misheard her. “Pregnant? With...a baby?”

She laughs softly. “Yes.”

“But I don’t understand. We’ve used condoms every time. I mean, we’ve been at it like bunnies because that man can fuck me silly on a daily basis. He has quite the stamina—” Shit. Here comes my verbal diarrhea again. The good doctor doesn’t need to know so much. “But that shouldn’t matter as long as we used protection, right? We used a condom every time. And it didn’t break. Not once.”

“Sometimes a break isn’t obvious.”

My mouth goes dry as I breathe in and out, euphoria and panic warring inside me. There is a baby growing inside me. A baby! I place my hand on my belly, not quite ready to believe there is a tiny human there. The panic pushes away the euphoria for the moment.