Her Billionaires(118)

Peeing for a stick that would determine her fate? This was #1 on that list now.

What an honor.

Filling the cup was easy, some of the stream missing and hitting her wrist, warm and cloying, Her own urine never bothered her but right now, everything bothered her, stomach a barometer of stress and hormones. Hormones that could be detected by the reactions the chemicals in the little cloth-line end of the pregnancy test’s stick. Urine-filled cup in hand, she emerged and shoved the warm container in Josie’s hand.

“Thanks.” Josie made a flowery production of dipping the stick, waiting the appropriate amount of time, then setting it on the table.

“Do, do, do, do,” she hummed. The music to Jeopardy, the little ditty they play while the contestants wager as much as possible to win final jeopardy—where some people bet everything and fail, and others bet everything and succeed in ways that exceed their wildest dreams.

No final jeopardy for Laura, though. The only way out was through.

Through pee.

“How long does this take?”

“Three minutes.” Josie stared at the stick as if it were a chess opponent in check. Laura forced herself to go and wash her face, then brush and floss. That should kill three minutes, right? She wandered back into the kitchen to find Josie frozen in place, face serious and scowling. She looked like a chihuahua doing an impression of Grumpy Cat.

“How much more?”

“Fifty seconds.”

Laura let herself remember Mike’s hands, those gentle, enormous fingers that laced so effortlessly, so eagerly, with hers when they walked together. Dylan’s eyelashes. The scent of both when they—

“How much longer?” Laura asked, her foot bouncing a mile a minute as she sat down at the kitchen table, legs crossed, her fingers drumming on the top.

“Thirty seconds,” Josie answered. “Twenty less than the last time you asked.”

“Shut up.” To her surprise, the smart ass went quiet. Damn well she better. This was no time for jokes. Josie’s fingernails caught Laura’s eye. Each was a rotation of a positive and negative pregnancy test. She inhaled sharply.

“Jesus, Josie, your fingernails! Have some compassion!” Did she seriously go out and have the hot dogs changed to this?

“I thought they were cute.” Josie shot Laura a sideways glance and rolled her eyes. “Someone’s lost her sense of humor completely. Besides, the hot dogs made you puke, so I just changed them.”

“Yeah, well, I must have puked up my sense of humor along with my lunch. If it means so much to you, go find it in the toilet.”

Ding! The oven timer beeped and Josie met her eyes, both of them scared shitless, Laura moreso. It was her life in the balance, after all, and while her best friend could be the most empathic person on the planet, she couldn’t give birth for her.

Laura covered her eyes. “You look. I can’t.”

“Okay.” Silence.

“Josie?” Laura could feel the sandpaper in her voice, could hear her unacknowledged truth, knew exactly what Josie was about to say but needed her to say it. To make it real. Her stomach roiled and that full-body flush—not the good kind— flooded her senses again. She willed herself to take deep breaths. Three of them, to be exact, before Josie finally said:

“It’s positive.”

“It—what?” She snatched the stick away from Josie and forced herself to look. Pregnant. Belly swelling, hands growing, her face and skin felt like a sheet of someone else’s cells. Something was growing in her. And it wasn’t an infection or a crush or an idea or anything else she’d fostered or cultured or spawned.

It was spawn.

She knew that was one of the options. Hell, there were only two. Either she was pregnant, or she wasn’t. No third choice here. No threesome to deal with. This was binary, baby.

And, apparently, it was baby all the way.

“Oh, holy mother of god fucking shit damn whodathunkit?” Sprinting for the bathroom, she hit the toilet at just the right moment, projectile vomiting straight in the bowl, the water splashing up in ricochet as if to slap her out of her panic.

“I’ll make some peppermint tea,” she heard Josie shout, her voice weak and uncertain. “No—ginger. Ginger is good for morning sickness.”#p#分页标题#e#

Ah, God. This was real.

She was pregnant. Pregnant! Her best friend was talking about morning sickness strategies. That meant this would happen again! Being sick day in and day out for weeks meant that this wasn’t going away. Wasn’t transient.

Some might even say it was kind of permanent.

Heaving into the bowl, the contents of her stomach scrambled to evacuate, to flee the situation, to get as far away from Knocked Up Girl as possible.