When she was sure the waves of sickness were over, I helped her to her feet and supported her while she walked over to the sink. If there was one thing I remembered about her getting sick when we were younger, it was that she tended to get dizzy when she threw up.
She rinsed her mouth out, then brushed her teeth. I helped her back into the bedroom and held the blankets up for her while she slid into bed. I got in on my side and slid over to wrap my arms around her. I held her close and kissed her on the side of the neck.
“I’m getting worried about you,” I said. “If you’re not feeling better really soon, you should go to the doctor. There might be something else going on. I didn’t even get sick, so I don’t think it’s food poisoning.”
“It could be,” she said. “I did eat some things you didn’t. And some people are more sensitive to foodborne pathogens than other people.”
I looked at her strangely, and she let out a sigh.
“I was starting to wonder about it, so I did some research. They say it’s not uncommon for foodborne illness to not hit until several hours or even a couple of days after eating, and then it can last up to a week. It probably came from one of the things I ate that you didn’t, or you are just resistant to it,” she said.
“You should still talk to somebody,” I said. “I don’t want you to be sick and just suffering when they might be able to give you medicine or something.”
“I’m going to try to ride it out for at least a little another day or two,” she said. “I hate going to the doctor, especially if it’s not for something they can give me medicine for. Which they wouldn’t be able to if it was food poisoning and might not be able to if it’s a sickness like the stomach flu. Besides, don’t forget that I haven’t been able to get insurance yet. I had it through the Cabinet Factory, but obviously that’s gone,” she said.
“I wouldn’t worry about the insurance,” I said. “I’m a millionaire now, remember? I think I can cover a couple of doctors’ bills for you.”
She giggled, and I kissed her on the tip of the nose. We nuzzled down into the pillows and went to sleep. I had already packed everything I would need for the race, so I stayed in bed with Maya for as long as I possibly could Saturday morning. When it was time that I finally had to leave, I gently kissed her and whispered goodbye, then grabbed my bag and headed out.
The lack of sleep got to me almost as soon as I got onto the bus. I put a sleep mask over my eyes, put my earbuds in, and went to sleep. I got a decent nap in, and then when I woke up, I moved over to sit next to Minnie. She was deeply engrossed in a paperback, but she put it down beside her when I sat down.
“Hi, Greg,” she said in the gentle, nurturing way that always made me feel like even if something was going bad in the world, she could make it better. It was the tone of a woman who was made to be a grandmother and would have just filled in with anybody around her if the babies hadn’t been born. “How are you?”
“I’m doing fine,” I said. “But I think Maya might be sick. And she was talking to me about the fact that she doesn’t have insurance. Obviously, Lindsey doesn’t provide insurance to people working in the bar, and she doesn’t have the policy she used to. I wanted to know if there was a way I could get her put on my insurance.”
“She’s sick?” Minnie asked. “I hope nothing serious.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think so. I think she just has a little bit of a bug. But if it is something else, or if something might go wrong at some point, I want to make sure she can go to the doctor. Is there a way she can be added to my policy?”
The Freeman matriarch looked at me with a knowing expression, but I didn’t say anything else. Right now, I was going on what Maya told me, and that was that she was dealing with some food poisoning. And if that wasn’t the case, then she might have picked up a stomach virus. I just wanted to make sure she got the care she needed. No matter what was happening.
27
Maya
Sunday was my second day off during the week because the bar was closed, and usually I spent it with Greg. When he’d first mentioned the race and that he was going to be gone not just most of the day Saturday, but all day Sunday as well because of an event the day after the race, I was disappointed. I would miss him and wished I could go along even though I knew I needed to be at the bar Saturday night.
But when I woke up that Sunday, I was glad I hadn’t gone. I still felt horrible and didn’t want to do anything but lie in bed for the rest of the day.
Hopefully just being a bit of a slug for the day would help me get over whatever was going on so I could go back to normal. To say that I wasn’t great at being sick was a major understatement. I didn’t get sick often, and usually when I did, it was fairly minor. It had actually been years since I was sick enough to actually throw up, and I just wasn’t handling it well.
I hated being sick. And even more than that, I hated Greg seeing me sick. It was ridiculous, especially considering he had already said it didn’t bother him in the least and he wanted to take care of me, but there was still embarrassment. He talked about taking care of me when we were younger and I was sick, but that was just the thing. We were younger. Much younger.
At that point, he was still just Greg, my best friend. He was the only person in the world who I could rely on and really trust to take care of me. There were a lot of times when I felt like he was the only person in the world who cared about me at all. Who loved me. If it was going to be anybody who was going to take care of me when I was sick, it was going to be him.
Things were different now. Not only were we adults, but our relationship had totally changed. There was something very different about him holding my hair for me and rubbing my back twenty seconds after I was getting ready to peel his boxers off.
I needed to get over it. If we were going to have a serious relationship, I needed to accept him seeing me at my worst. And this was my worst.
I just wanted to stay in my pajamas, drink an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of ginger ale, and get over this. Greg didn’t have a TV in his bedroom, but I was comfortable and wanted to stay there. It was also closer to a bathroom than the living room couch, and I wasn’t going to discount the value of that. Not when the waves of nausea were coming so randomly and suddenly.
Instead, I just pulled my laptop up onto the bed with me and was watching a stream of crappy reality TV. I wanted something mindless that I didn’t have to think too much about and that would be okay to miss if I fell asleep. In fact, it would be fantastic if I fell asleep.
Before I could nod off, though, a particular scene of the episode jumped out at me. I sat up a little straighter, my breath stopping in my throat. I rewound the episode and watched the scene again. I listened carefully to how the woman was describing how she felt and the reaction of her best friend. It took one more watch through for me to really understand what I was seeing. And what I was realizing.
I got out of bed and dragged on clothes, not caring if they were clean or what I looked like. This was not the time for me to be concerned with vanity. I needed to get to the pharmacy and back home as fast as I could.
It only took a few minutes for me to get to the store and back. I was shaking and exhausted when I got into the bathroom, and I realized I hadn’t eaten a real meal in two days. But right then, that was the least of my concerns. I flipped the plastic bag over, dumping all the cardboard boxes of pregnancy tests out onto the bathroom floor. I had gotten one of every brand and type I could find.
I didn’t want any sort of ambiguity. I needed results, and to be sure they were accurate.
After taking several of the tests, I lined them up on the counter and set the alarm on my phone. It didn’t seem like waiting three minutes could be so much of a challenge, but those were the longest three minutes of my life.
The minutes ticked by painfully slowly, and I checked my phone over and over to make sure I hadn’t missed the timer going off. I forced myself to go into the kitchen an
d raid the cabinet to see if I could find something easy to eat. I had just pulled a can of soup out of the cabinet when my phone alerted me that it was time. Setting the can down, I walked slowly back to the bathroom.
For all that waiting and anticipation, now I was hesitant to see the results. Just like I had been before Greg and I settled into our relationship, I was in a place where so many things were possible. And as long as I hadn’t seen those results, they were all still possible. I knew as soon as I saw the results, things were going to change.
Even if it was negative, having this experience forced me to think about the future in a totally new way. A way I hadn’t before, and one I didn’t know if I was ready to even consider.
But it wasn’t something I could think about. Because the tests weren’t negative. I looked at every one of them. I picked up each and looked at the results, comparing it to the box to make sure I was reading it correctly. But every single one of them said the same thing. I was pregnant.
I sat down on the edge of the tub and stared at the sticks in my hand. I didn’t cry. Instead, I tried as hard as I could to think logically. Letting myself get overwhelmed and overemotional right now wasn’t going to do any good. I needed to approach this in the calmest way possible. I needed to keep a clear head and think it through.
The most important thing I needed to figure out was what I wanted to do. It was a massive, insurmountable question. This wasn’t just one decision that loomed over me heavily. No matter what choice I made, I wasn’t just making that one choice. I was deciding something that would affect the rest of my life. In that one choice, I was making countless others.
For the first time in a long time, I longed for my mother. I wished I had her to call and talk about this with so I could hear her advice and get her comfort. I needed someone to talk this out with, but I didn’t have my mother. I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have anyone except the people I met here.
And Greg.
Thinking about him made my stomach sink. This really wasn’t just about me. It never was. This was about Greg, too, and I had no idea what that meant. Children weren’t something we ever talked about. Of course it wasn’t. Why would we? We hadn’t even ever really talked about being together.
This whole time I convinced myself that the fact that we hadn’t sat down for that monumental conversation was a good thing. It meant it was natural. It was just what it was supposed to be between us.
Now I was wondering if it actually meant our relationship was up in the air. A pregnancy wasn’t supposed to be in the cards for us. Not right at this point, at least. I had no idea how Greg was going to react to the prospect of being a father.
It occurred to me right then that even having that thought was a big deal. It meant whether I realized it or not, I had decided how I felt about it. I didn’t need to think about it anymore or consider any options. There weren’t really any options but one. I was going to have a baby. I was going to be a mother.
It was mind-blowing. Even as I sat there staring at the test and telling myself over and over that it was real, I didn’t feel like I was really grasping the magnitude of it. There was no way I could tell Greg about it right then. I needed a little bit of time.
Fortunately, I had it. The media event was a fairly last-minute addition to the race weekend, tacked on because they were already planning on spending the night on Saturday. This meant Greg would be at the track for the better part of the late morning and early afternoon. Then the team would need to load up all the equipment and set off on the ride home, which would take a couple more hours.
They would most likely go to the compound and unload all the equipment so it didn’t need to be done on Monday, which would push them into the evening. If I knew the Freemans at all, I knew they would probably then all have dinner together. All that added up to him not getting home until late that night.
It gave me the time I needed to keep resting and keep thinking this through. At the same time, I didn’t want him to think I was completely ignoring him. I stuffed all the pregnancy tests into the cardboard boxes, put those into the bag from the pharmacy, and buried them in the bottom of the trash can.
Climbing back into bed, I changed the show on my laptop. I checked the time and realized he would probably be busy, which meant it was the perfect time for me to text him.
If he was busy when I messaged him, he wouldn’t be able to respond immediately, which meant I wouldn’t break and tell him about the pregnancy right then. And that would have been terrible. This way he would see the message when he had some time and know I was thinking about him.
The message sent, I curled up under the blankets, stuffed my head under the pillow, and did my best not to cry.
28
Greg
The popularity of Merry’s events never ceased to amaze me. Even when she came up with something on the fly and put it together at the very last minute, it seemed to be a tremendous success.
The media event she put together for the day after the race wasn’t a completely new idea. It was something she had done a few times before, so at least she had the basic structure she could build off of. However, it was still a matter of piecing together the vendors, media, and other elements to bring it together on incredibly short notice.
Despite that, the crowd was huge. Fans swarmed to the parking lot she had set up, hoping for a chance to meet Darren and me. It was very much like the tailgate parties we had at home but felt more intimate because of the smaller scale, and it wasn’t right before a race, so we had more time to linger.
Just like she coached us, we ignored the media and put all of our focus on the fans. After all, they were the reason we were there. If it wasn’t for the people who loved to watch us race and had a loyalty to our team, we wouldn’t matter. So, Darren and I spent the event greeting fans, taking pictures, and signing autographs.
It really was fun. I enjoyed seeing people’s faces light up when they got near us and felt humbled when they talked about how devoted they were to our team. It was a good reminder of why we worked so hard, and why I was determined not to let the money I inherited stop me from racing. I wasn’t going to let it change me. It was just a nice cushion if I needed it.
The event was fantastic, but it did mean we got back on the road to Charlotte late in the afternoon. By the time we unloaded everything at the complex and had dinner, it was well into the night. It wasn’t nearly as late as it usually was when Maya came home from the bar, so I was surprised when I got back to the apartment and didn’t find her up.
I had expected to find her in the kitchen coming up with new, amazing recipes, or battling against the baked goods she hadn’t quite gotten to her standards yet. As I approached, I wondered what kind of music she would be listening to and looked forward to her silly dancing.
But when I opened the door, the apartment was dark and quiet. Was it possible she had gone out?
I stopped by the kitchen to put some leftovers in the refrigerator, then went to the bedroom. Maya curled up asleep came as a surprise. It wasn’t the light, shallow sleep of someone who was watching TV or reading a book and drifted off. This was deep, full sleep with the lights off and the blankets pulled up close around her face.
I worried that she might still not be feeling well. I was totally convinced at that point it had nothing to do with food poisoning. She was grappling with something else, and she couldn’t just keep ignoring it. I decided the next day I was going to make sure she went to the doctor. Even if I had to call and make the appointment myself.
It would make her feel much better to know Minnie was going to look into having Maya added to my insurance so she wouldn’t have another situation where she didn’t feel like she couldn’t go to the doctor. Minnie said she wasn’t completely sure of all the details and would have to run it by Vince but was certain they could work it out by listing her as my domestic partner.
That kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t sound right. There w
as an almost judgmental lean to that, and it seemed like less than we actually were. That was a ridiculous reaction, I knew, but I couldn’t help it. At least it would make sure she had insurance fast and would be able to get the care she needed when she needed it.
And until it went through, I would be able to pay for her care. I just hoped when she finally did get seen, it wasn’t anything serious.
I leaned down and gently kissed her temple, brushing away some strands of hair that hung across her face. I couldn’t help but stand there and watch her sleep for a few seconds. She was so beautiful, even with no makeup, her hair a mess from lying in bed.
I went into the bathroom as quietly as I could, so I didn’t wake her up. Carefully turning on the shower, I stepped under the hot water and let it rinse away the day. I stepped out, still trying to be quiet and not disturb her. But I promptly kicked the trash can, sending it tumbling to the tile floor and skittering toward the wall.
Cursing under my breath, I stood absolutely still, listening to see if I would hear Maya stirring in the bedroom. I didn’t hear anything, so I leaned down to clean up the mess. Picking up the trash can, I stood it up right again, then went to work picking up all the trash that had spilled out and spread across the floor. Among the tissues, Q-tips, makeup removal pads, and empty shampoo containers, I noticed a plastic bag from the pharmacy.
It struck me as strange, and when I picked it up, I noticed it had several things in it. Concerned it might have accidentally fallen into the trash can from the counter, I undid the loose knot at the top and looked inside. My heart jumped into my throat.
The bag was full of pregnancy tests. Every box in that bag was open and a used test was inside. I sat down hard at the edge of the tub, the bag slipping from my fingers. Gathering myself, I reached in and took out one of the tests. The results were no longer legible. The test had been taken too long before for the results to still be visible and accurate.
The Freeman Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection Page 99
