Her Billionaires_ Boxed Set(114)

“Yep—want some?”

“God, no!”

“OK,” she answered, her voice a sing song. “I’ll drink it out here while you shower.”

Shower? Laura pulled her pajama top out and sniffed her skin between her breasts. Eh. A bit oily. Sniffed a pit. Whoa! She was ripe. That cotton taste wouldn’t leave, so she finished off the flat sparkling water on her bedside table. Wait. How could she have dozed off for a few seconds if the water was flat?

“How long’ve I been out?” she hollered.

“Three hours.”

Three hours? Damn. She padded into the kitchen and stopped, the wall of java in the air stabbing her sinuses. “How do you drink that shit?” she accused, closing off her nose and breathing through her dried-out mouth.

“This?” Josie said innocently, pointing to her coffee.

“Ugh.” Laura turned away and shouted back, “Just get rid of it by the time I’m out.” Years ago, her grandma had told her she knew she was pregnant when she woke up in the morning and didn’t want coffee or cigarettes. Maybe it ran in the family?

No. Don’t think that way. Just...don’t. Turning on the shower took so much effort. Moving her arm to take off her shirt felt like a Sisyphean task. Sliding out of her pajamas made her feel like she’d run a marathon. A small cup of water stayed down. Damn flu.

The shower’s spray washed away a fair amount of fear and a not inconsiderable amount of nausea, thank God. Wash, wash, wash everything away, all the pain, the exhaustion, the confusion, and the grief. Grief for what she’d wanted with Mike and Dylan, for what they could be doing right now, for losing Mike’s shy smile, Dylan’s jaunty one, for missing out on the New England fall with them, for what could be.

Tentative, she let her hands move the soap where it needed to go, her hand grazing her belly below her navel. Could she— really? She and Ryan had just started to talk about having a baby when she’d discovered he was a fraud. Both had been pleased to find the other willing. A few more years, they’d agreed. It wasn’t time. He had asserted that they needed to bond as husband and wife, first, before bringing in a third.

She snorted. Funny how there already was a third.

The lie mattered, but what also mattered was that she had been ready to think about kids, to imagine pregnancy and birth and babies and toddlers and all the roly-poly love that came with them. If she was pregnant—she allowed herself to think in hypotheticals, her hands mechanically shampooing her greasy hair, the feeling of rinsing like a baptism, washing away the past month of dysfunction—then it would be OK.

Everything would be OK. To be more precise, it would all work out in the end because she absolutely, positively, undeniably was not pregnant. And couldn’t be. It just wasn’t true, and as long as she willed it to not be true, she didn’t have to face any of the long term consequences of having a billionaire baby daddy.

Or two.

A quick rinse was all she could manage as her legs and arms felt like jelly, her body shivering no matter how much she turned the shower faucet for more hot water. Time to get out. A quick toweling and new pajamas, plus a robe, helped with warmth. By the time she wandered out, combing her hair, she still felt the underlying tiredness and a smaller blanket of nausea, less intense but more pervasive, like a layer of fascia within her body, ever lurking but not always obviously felt.

Greeting her in the kitchen were Josie, a freshly-washed coffee pot, and three boxes on the kitchen table. Pink, white, and purple.

Ah, fuck.

“Josie!” she wailed.

“You’re really glowing,” Josie replied in a tone of flattery. Snuggles was in Josie’s lap (how had she managed that?) and the cat turned and gave Laura the stare of doom. You’re pregnant! its eyes said. And I don’t care.

“That’s anger, you idiot.” The boxes stood there, judging her. Who came up with the names for these things? Early Pregnancy Test was fine, but First Response? What was she, a 911 call? Little cardboard soldiers of doom, ready to deliver a message from the front lines that she had lost, and it was time to surrender to the truth.

Never surrender!

And now she was quoting cheesy 80s songs in her mind. This was how far she had fallen.

“Water?” Josie poured more sparkling water from the green bottle and handed it to her.

“You just want to make me pee.”

A sweet smile. “I just want to make sure you’re hydrated. It reduces nausea.”

“And makes me need to pee.”

“Does it?” Josie asked, overly innocent and disingenuous. “How convenient.”

Resentment kicked in with a healthy side of sour stomach. “Why are you so determined to prove I’m pregnant?”