Lily flicks my forehead and hisses, “Didn’t I just say not to worry yourself? You’re groaning like a dummy. You will stress yourself and the prob baby.”
“Prob,” I exclaim. A few seconds pass, and I jump to my feet. “Maybe I should go check on it.”
“Don’t. They’re not ready…” Lily calls after me, but I’m already running to the bathroom.
I throw open the door and pick up my test. I stare at the little blank screen. Then a crying baby and Grey walking away from us flash by my eyes, and I close my eyes, scream, and set the test down. Opening my eyes, I shake my head and sit on the toilet. I sit there and imagine what it’d be like raising a baby by myself. Without Grey by my side.
My stomach flips, and I quickly set the test down before running back into the room, locking the door behind me. That was not a good idea. At all.
“Take a breath, bitch. I can’t have you stressing out, ’cause then I will stress out, and I actually have a human being in here.” She rubs her stomach and narrows her eyes at me. “So you better shush and not upset her.”
“You’re having a girl?” Lily gasps and looks over her shoulder.
Holly beams and nods. “Yup. She should be coming out February thirteenth.”
“That’s crazy. I had Max on the fourteenth,” Lily exclaims, sitting up with a grin, oblivious to my dropped jaw.
“Oh, that’s so cool. We should totally do a double birthday party or something,” Holly suggests.
“That would be so cute. Max loves that cheese place with that big ass fucking rat. Loves the candy and skeeball, and—”
“Hello!” I wave my hands around, catching their attention. Finally. I’ve been here crying my eyes out and worrying so much, I can literally feel my heartbeat on my tongue. “Can you plan your kids’ birthday parties another time? Right now, I’m fucking freaking out about being pregnant. I know Grey won’t want it, but what if I do? Do I break up with him? Get an…an…fuck, not doing that. I can barely say the word. Just…fuck, guys. What do I do?” I sit on the edge and cover my face with my hands, letting my hair cover me like a curtain, a shield from worry.
Arms wrap around my body, and I am cooed at and reassured. I thank them and apologize for snapping at them. I am just so wrapped up in my own mind and freaking out.
“You’ll figure it out when we see the test, m’kay?” Lily pokes my cheek, and I smile at her affection.
“Yeah. Everything will be fine. I’ll kick Grey’s ass to the moon if he doesn’t support you and your probs baby,” Holly backs her up, kissing my cheek.
“I hope so, and thank you, Holly,” I whisper, wiping away my tears. I’m probably just over-exaggerating. But what nineteen year old doesn’t when there’s a chance she’s pregnant?
“No problem. Think of it as payment for letting David and me stay here while our house gets repainted. Crazy man doesn’t want me breathing in dangerous toxins and upsetting our baby girl.”
“He’s actually right—” I begin.
A loud ringing noise pierces the calm air, and my heart skips several beats. The timer. Oh God, oh God, oh God—it’s time. They tense before slowly pulling away, grabbing onto my hands.
“You’ve got this,” Lily says.
“To the moon,” Holly reiterates, giving me a fierce look that tells me she truly means it.
Unable to open my mouth without bursting into nervous crying, I nod. We stand and slowly make our way to the bathroom. The door creaks open, and my heart is thumping between my lips. I chew the lower one, listening to my heart and blood pump like a conga drum. I quickly shut my eyes like the scared coward I am.
I will look in one…two…
“Three,” I whisper with a shaky voice. I am on the verge of tears as I slowly remove my hand. I pick up my test, and after listening to Lily squeal beside me, I just know what mine says.
Two lines.
“Pregnant…” I mutter as tears fall down my face.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Days have flown by. The world spins. Life goes on. No matter what existential crisis you may have going on around you, the universe does not care. To it, you are nothing but a mere blip in its existence. The unmeasurable force can and will live with or without you. Whether you are questioning life itself or are enjoying and living your life to its fullest, it will throw curveballs whether you expect them or not. And no preparation is ever enough. Ever.
I am sitting behind my desk in my glass office. Slowly, little by little, I feel my aspiration for my dream career fade away like smoke. Invisible to the naked eye. All of my studying in high school, my accomplishments, restless nights—everything is gone up in flames. Like I did nothing for the past eighteen years of my life. Like I didn’t bust my ass and put my everything into my dream.
All because of the baby sitting inside of my belly. I am not blaming him or her, just…it’s all gone. And it sucks. But it’s not their fault, it’s mine. Should have been more careful. Should have been celibate. My mother warned me of this happening. She preached to me about all I’d be throwing away for just a few minutes of pleasure. I listened to her, lived by her expectations.
But then a certain boy with black eyes and a smile that had me from the beginning stepped into my life and erased all of her warnings.
I don’t remember anything from my time spent in my office. When I look back on it, all I see are blurs. Matthew rambling about baby facts, Lily holding my hand during lunch, Garrett being his normal creep self, Jenna stopping by and giving me her personal information, my mother crying to me about my father’s worsening cancer.
Life passes me by. And I make no attempt to run after it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lily whispers next to me. Concern is evident in her tone, and I look at her blankly. Then at the children sitting a few feet away from me on the floor, playing with blocks. Pregnant women reading magazines. The smell of disinfectant-scrubbed counters burns my nose.
“Yes.” I pause. “I have to know for sure if I am pregnant. I don’t trust pregnancy tests. They’re always showing false information.”
“Yeah,” she says, “for false negatives, but yours was positive.”
I chew on my lower lip and insist, “But that doesn’t mean this one wasn’t false. According to statistics, ninety-seven percent of the time, it’s reliable and correct…but there is still a three percent. I could fall under that percent.”
“It’d be one in a million,” she points out.
I look at her and shake my head. “Thirty thousand.”
“Same shit.” She waves a dismissive hand at my exact science.
“Different shit,” I utter, throat tightening as Grey and I say the same thing to each other, each time smiling and happy, haunts me through the fog clogging up my senses.
“Olivia Westerfield?” a soft feminine voice calls out.
I sit up in my chair and suddenly feel my numb walls come crumbling down. Lily notices my fear and hesitance, because she grips my hand. I look into her eyes, and she smirks at me with confidence I so desperately need right about now.
“You’ve got this, babe,” she encourages.
I throw my arms around her, grateful that she’s here with me. I would have had Jaimie and Julia come with me for support, but they’re at an important doctor appointment. But Jaimie let me know that she will be waiting for me after this, waiting to hug the hell out of me no matter what the official verdict is. But right now, I am more than glad Lily is here for me. She’s the greatest friend I could ever ask for.
“Olivia?” the nurse says.
“Right.” I reluctantly pull away, stand. Giving her a nervous smile, I wave and say, “Catch you on the flip side.” I clutch my hands into fists at my side as I walk over to the smiling nurse, strained and hopeful. Hopeful that a young girl like me isn’t pregnant, but ready to be flipped if it turns out I am.
“Good luck,” she calls after me before the translucent door closes softly. Encasing me from her encouragement an
d luck. I am now swallowed in a world of real-life and proof and heartbeats of fetuses and pamphlets for different options.
After a blood sample is withdrawn and I re-dress in a gown, I sit silently waiting for the doctor. The wait for the doctor is torture. I am left to my imagination, something I have despised every time I am alone, which seems to be all the time for the past few days. I just want to reach inside and shut everything down. I feel like I’ll fry myself because of thought overload. I’m thinking too much about what if’s and what will I do’s, but it’s what I resort to when I don’t have the facts—but I will be getting the facts pretty soon.
I feel sick.
I don’t know if that’s a bad or good thing…
“Sorry for the wait,” Dr. Jacobs apologizes, flustered as he sweeps into the room, shutting the door after him. He flashes me his dimples and white smile and lab-coat tag. “I was busy with a patient. One too many questions,” he jokes but quickly adds, “but it is very important you ask clarifying questions. I want you to be in on with what’s going on with your body.”
“Of course.” My voice goes out scratchier than I intended.
He smiles gently. “Don’t be nervous.”
“Can’t do that yet. Not until I know.”
“Understandable. But don’t stress yourself out. It’ll only damage your health.”
And my probs baby, he wants to say but thankfully doesn’t.
After flicking the lights off, he sits on his stool, pulls on latex gloves. “So you want to find out if there’s a baby in your tummy,” he makes conversation as he pulls out an ultrasound wand attached to the sonogram monitor.
“What’s that for?” I ask him.
“This is used for earlier pregnancies instead of the usual transabdominal ultrasound.” He scoots over to me on his low chair, eyes trained on the machine as it starts up. He looks over at me. “Did you know babies don’t have kneecaps at birth?”
“Yes.” I nod.
He pouts and glances at the black and white screen, punches a few buttons. Moves a handle-stick. “Patients don’t normally know that kind of fun fact.”
“I have a friend that knows too much,” I tell him, and he laughs. I wasn’t kidding.
“Place your legs on the stirrups,” he instructs.
I do as told. Fingers trembling, breathing going haywire.
“Okay. Now, this may feel odd. Don’t freak out. Please. I’ve been kicked. And a guy can only take so much,” he jokes and puts a hand over his heart.
I laugh. “Okay, I’ll try not to.”
He smiles, and in a flash, I can see my insides on the screen. Hmm. I expected more pain or discomfort. It may be the nerves masking anything and everything else.
“You’re doing great so far.” He chuckles, and I blush. I look away but look at the screen in curiosity as he adjusts the wand and plays with controls on the monitor.
I hold my breath.
I feel guilty for not having Grey at my side. Even if this could be a scare, he should be here for the potential sighting of his child with me.
“Well?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Baby or no baby?”
He doesn’t reply immediately, just stares at the screen and searches, squints…“No baby.”
The flood of relief that pours over my entire body is unbelievable. I feel much lighter and even do a little dance, making Dr. Jacob laugh as he removes the stick and turns off the machine. I can’t believe I was worrying over nothing. Oh my God. I’m not pregnant! I thought I’d feel even a sliver of sadness, but I don’t. All I feel is relief and tranquility. Now I don’t have to worry about what to do with my probs baby or how I would support it and myself.
“But I don’t get it,” I say. “I took a pregnancy test, and it showed positive. So how is there no baby in me?” The tests prove to be right minus three percent; I said so myself twenty minutes ago. I should write a bad letter to the First Response company for getting me so worked up for nothing.
“False positives are highly rare, but it must have gotten you.” He leans against a counter as I sit on the edge of the bed.
“But it had two bold, unmistakable pink lines,” I tell him.
He opens his mouth, then shrugs. “Like I said, rare, but not impossible.”
“But I’ve been feeling weird lately, different,” I admit.
“Like?”
“Bloating, vomiting, cravings…”
“Symptoms of periods.”
“But I missed one.” I pout. I don’t understand.
“Really?” He frowns. I fidget nervously.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm…” He wags a pen at me. “Might want to do a deeper examination. Set up an appointment. It may have something to do with the birth control pills. I’ll switch and see if that makes a difference. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.” I grin like I’m on top of the world. I may as well be: I’m not pregnant!
After a brief examination and a few pamphlets later, I exit the facts world and enter Lily’s world of positivity.
“How’d it go? Am I going to be a godmother?” She jumps up from her seat.
“Nope.” I shake my head, and she frowns as we exit the building. She looks at me. I can practically hear her questions and words of concern, but I can’t listen to her right now. I appreciate her coming with me to the appointment, but I have so much to think about.
On my way up to our apartment, I rub my face and think about everything. About him and Lorenzo and his kidnapping Dean, my extreme pregnancy scare—everything and in between. I have been extremely distant with him, and I regret it. He should have been in the loop about this, of all things. I could have been pregnant with his child, and I didn’t even tell him I suspected I was pregnant. I feel horrible and extremely guilty.
As for the mob affiliation and Lorenzo specifically, and what he did to Dean…I want to forget they ever happened. I know I was totally strong on my despising them and his involvement in anything and everything illegal, but he had good intentions. He went above and kind of crazy, but he wanted to protect me. Put away a dangerous man. As for Lorenzo, I want him to stay far away.
I will not risk him or me getting hurt because of him. If he wants me to forgive him, he has to promise to focus on his career and me alone, nothing else. Nothing that can put him either in prison or the grave.
Exhausted, relieved, and forgiving, I step off the elevator. I kick off my shoes, place them on the shoe rack, and slip off my coat. I shake off the snow coating my beanie before putting it on the coat rack under my coat. It’s absolutely freezing outside. I don’t want to go back through those elevator doors until it is an emergency.
“Hey, Grey, can we talk?” I ask as I open the door to our bedroom.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head cast down.
“What’s wrong?” I can feel the weird energy in the room. I feel heavy and…off. Like something big is about to crash into me.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” He lifts his head and holds up a pregnancy test.
My pregnancy test…
Chapter Thirty-Four
Grey
I was an asshole all of my life. I’m ninety-nine percent sure I came out of the womb an asshole. Probably pissed on the damn nurse as she wrapped me in a blanket.
But it didn’t stop there. I carried my unrelenting hate toward the world and all the horrible people for twenty-one more years. But that all changed when I met a girl named Olivia Westerfield.
Sweet, caring, hyper-intelligent, organized, beautiful—she was everything that I wasn’t. Everything about her made her perfect, sculpted from glittering clay. She had her entire life planned.
She was destined for more, greater things, but being the selfish asshole I was, I snatched her away from the world and kept her for myself. Like the Hades guy in hell stealing that beautiful goddess. I stole her from the heavens and dragged her down to the pits of darkness, despair.
I didn’t know love before her.
I thought I was madly in love with Rose, but I never even liked her. The only thing I could say I loved about her was her lips—they were good for sucking.
Other than that, she was an older bitch who stuck around me a little while after we’d fucked in the bedroom. I didn’t admit it then, but I was so goddamn lonely. My father hated me, my mother was crazy, and I had no siblings because my mother tied her damn lady tubes. Maybe she’s where I get my selfishness from.
Anyway, I never truly knew how to love. Never knew the true concept of it. How it was supposed to be shown or received. To me, love was swallowing my come. But now, now love is her making breakfast for me. Love is her turning on the shower to heat up when I wake. Love is her laughing at me, even when I’m my most crude. Love is the way she looks at me: like I am the only man in the entire world. The only man who could ever truly love her. For every flaw and imperfection—however limited—she had.
Even after one year of knowing my sweet, beautiful girl, I still don’t know how to not be a fucking dumbass. I still don’t know how to not fuck up with her. I always do some dumb shit that I think is protecting her, will do good for her, but it always backfires on me. Shits in my face. Blows up, in every fucking sense of the word.
All I want is to keep her safe. Distance her from the darkness that surrounds me everywhere I go. But no matter how much I pull and will it away from me, it snaps right back and slaps me in the face like a fucking rubber band.
I wish there was a way to erase and replace myself with someone better. Smarter, stronger, good-enough-for-Olivia-Westerfield. But unfortunately, there isn’t. I am stuck as asshole Grey Wyler. The pathetic piece of shit who had a fucking insane mother who kicked him out for killing his father by being himself.
The crazy motherfucker who burned down his high school’s lab because a kid bumped into him and didn’t apologize. The asshole who fucked girls only for his own pleasure and screwed up their names after, kicking them out and yelling how they were worth nothing. Were whores.
I was such an asshole.
Grey: Everlasting (Spectrum Series Book 6) Page 24
