Bought For Marriage
“If you’re even a few hours late taking it, you’re supposed to use a backup method of contraception.”
Oh.
My.
God.
“I might be pregnant.” I slumped in the chair, dropping my head into my hands.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about the time difference when we took the red-eye flight to Australia with a layover in Los Angeles the night after our wedding. I’d been late taking my pill right off the bat, and then we’d had unprotected sex as soon as we’d arrived at our hotel. And again the next morning. And the night and morning after that.
Sullivan could have knocked me up a dozen times over with how often he’d been inside of me. Sullivan—my husband who had been incredibly clear the day we met about how opposed he was to the idea of us having kids. I’d been worried about how he’d feel if he discovered that I’d fallen in love with him, but his reaction to a pregnancy was bound to be a million times worse.
“You look like you’re about to hyperventilate,” the nurse told me as she pushed on my shoulder blades to put my head between my legs. “Don’t freak out until you take a test to confirm if you’re pregnant or not. Just because you might be doesn’t mean you actually are.”
“Good point.” I jumped up, steadying myself against the desk when I saw spots and waiting for them to clear before I moved toward my brother’s room again. I poked my head in and said, “Hey, Graham. That snack did me a world of good, but I got a phone call and have to run.” Then I took off down the hall.
He called out my name, but I couldn’t talk to him right then. Not without telling him what was going on, and there was no way that was going to happen without me spilling all my secrets about my marriage. The phone call was a lie, but the urgency with which I had to get out of there couldn’t have been more true. I needed to stop by a pharmacy to grab some pregnancy tests and take them with enough time to think about what I was going to do before I saw Sullivan tonight.
And that’s exactly what I did, hitting up the closest pharmacy to purchase several different tests and then heading back home. As soon as I walked in the door, I snagged a few bottles of water out of the fridge and headed up to our bedroom. I kicked off my shoes and tossed my sweater on the bed before wandering into the master bathroom. Dumping the contents of the shopping bag on the counter, I rifled through the pink and purple boxes to pick one out to take first.
After I read the directions on the back of a couple of them, I decided to try for more than one in the first round. Ripping two of the boxes open, I tore the inner packaging and pulled the stick out of two of them before I pulled my pants and underwear over my hips and got down to business.
Five minutes later, I was sitting on the floor with a test in each hand. One of them had a plus sign in the little display window. The other had two pink lines. The results meant the same thing—I was pregnant.
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there in a daze, but it was long enough that I lost most of the feeling in my butt from being on the hard floor, and my stomach was growling. “You’re going to give me all sorts of trouble, aren’t you?” I whispered, rubbing my lower belly. “I’m willing to bet some of this tiredness is because of you and not the trip to Australia. Same with the nausea this morning.”
I hauled myself up to my feet and splashed my face with cold water. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, but I looked the same as I had that morning. There were no visible changes to my appearance, even though my entire world had been rocked. “Those will come soon enough, I guess. But that’s okay, because I’ll love you no matter what. Just like I love your daddy. Only he doesn’t know it yet, so I’m going to have all sorts of surprises in store for him.”
I wasn’t sure when I was going to be ready to share them with him. First, I needed to figure out what I was going to do if he was as angry as I expected him to be about the baby—only I didn’t have a lot of time, because the clock was already ticking. After all, I couldn’t hide a pregnancy forever. And I didn’t want to keep quiet about my love for him, either.
Chapter Nine
SULLIVAN
Something was off with Kinsley. She’d been distant and quieter than normal. I hadn’t known her very long, but in the three months we’d been married, she’d become ingrained in my life and I could tell that she had something on her mind. When I asked about it, though, she just smiled and kissed me and assured me that nothing was wrong.