Catching Preeya (Paradise South Book 3)

by Rissa Brahm

  “You’ll see, Pree, it’s gonna be great. So, so unbelievably great…us being pregnant together! I mean, it’s a dream!”

  *

  Preeya put her hands on either side of a sink and attempted to catch her breath. Fuck.

  She leaned into the sink, scared to glance at herself in the mirror of the crappy mall bathroom. She turned the water on, cupped some into her face, her burning cheeks and eyes.

  Gigi handed her a piece of paper towel.

  “Thanks, Geej,” she whispered.

  Gigi squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll go grab a water from the vending machine outside the door. Be right back.”

  Water, yes. And breathe. Chill.

  And as she mellowed, a small glint of hope crept in.

  Because Gigi had been wrong before. Yeah, wrong about…well…there was…

  Nothing.

  Gigi had never been wrong about any ethereal call she’d made about new life or pending death, at least not in Preeya’s presence. Gigi’d known about a chick in high school, an acquaintance of theirs who had gotten knocked up then had an abortion before anyone besides Gigi, and therefore Preeya, knew about it. And then there’d been the wrestling captain their senior year. Overdosed at a house party. If not for Gigi, who knew if they would have ever found him in that unfinished basement? She’d also known about the death of her grandfather weeks before his passing—the man had been an ox.

  And every year in school, some teacher was pregnant—Gigi’d called it each and every time, and long before any baby bumps began. Oh, and Preeya’s favorite: the ten tiny gerbil babies in fourth grade. The classroom pet, Big Al, had actually been super-pregnant Alice. A snicker escaped her there in the thankfully empty restroom. She ventured a glance up at the mirror then in a foreverblink she hid behind her swollen eyelids.

  Please let Gigi be wrong. Because just like her best friend had freaked out their entire fourth-grade class with her impossible gerbil premonition, Preeya felt this close to freaking the fuck out now.

  “I need to take a test,” she mumbled when Gigi returned with a water. Preeya took the bottle without looking up at Gigi, scared shitless to crush her friend’s heart with her doubt—Preeya had never doubted Gigi, she’d been the only one in the world to never doubt her.

  But on the other hand, this was much larger than a litter of damn gerbils.

  “Yeah, I need to get to a drugstore and pick one up.” She forced her eyes up. “It’s just too much, Geej. It’s too goddamn big. I need to see the sign on a stick.”

  “Of course, Pree. Yes, it’s huge, and yes, you should take a test—like at a doctor’s. At my doctor’s. She’s alternative, like a midwife but—”

  “Gigi, please. No doctor yet.” God. “Just a pee-on-a-stick now kind of test. Need to be taking one step at a time, here.” Gigi’s excitement, despite Preeya’s dread, was driving her nuts. “One baby step at a friggin’ time.”

  She rinsed her face one last time, pumped the lever of the paper towel dispenser and ripped, then wadded and tossed it. “I need to leave this bathroom now.” The association alone was making her gut surge again.

  She and Gigi walked down the long corridor and passed ten strollers in a matter of seconds. Fine, two. Two goddamn baby strollers with babies—one cooing, one crying—and their doting, glowing mothers.

  “Awww…”

  Preeya glared at Gigi then picked up her pace, needing more than anything to get her hands on a pregnancy test, like, yesterday.

  Because, a baby? Preeya thought of her mother.

  Now she’d be a mother—possibly—to a tiny, innocent baby.

  A chance to right her own mother’s wrongs?

  A soaring gust filled her chest. She’d be the best mother humanly possible, taking all the boiling, buried hurt and spinning it into magic. For her baby.

  A baby…

  Ben’s baby. For certain Ben’s baby.

  Ben’s baby…without Ben.

  “Pree? You okay?”

  Am I okay? She’d be raising this baby, his—no, theirs—on her own. Alone.

  In an instant her lungs went airless, shoulders sunk. She felt beaten. Old panic renewed.

  Count, breathe, calm.

  “Are you? Answer me.” Gigi grabbed her hand.

  Preeya nodded as she finished a mental one-to-ten in a second flat.

  Start over, slow down. She had to find the peace she’d felt that morning. Psyched to see her best friend for fun and epiphany-sharing then to sign up for classes…

  Shit!

  “Gigi, I’ve got to register for classes today.”

  “I think that’ll have to wait, Pree. You’re completely flushed. Let’s take the afternoon to—”

  “No, Geej. It can’t wait. Today is the summer term deadline. And if I am, you know…I need to get my ass in gear. I mean, a kid?” She was suddenly so thirsty, but she’d left the damn bottle back in the bathroom. “A kid on my own? I need to support it, us. And I’ve got my plan. I need to start my—”

  “Your plan can wait.”

  “It can’t!”

  “Then it can change. But, Pree, you need to stay calm.” Gigi squeezed her hand. “You can always hit the fall semester or next summer after the baby’s—”

  “No. School to residency to career. That’s the plan, the only plan.” She shook her head. Gigi just didn’t get it. No more talk; only action would do. It had been decided on the beach in Vallarta—with the sea as her goddamn witness.

  And apparently Gigi had Rod, the father.

  While Preeya had goddamn no one.

  Don’t you dare say it, Preeya. Don’t say it out loud and make Gigi feel horrible—as horrible as you feel. She locked her jaw down tight to abide by her inner instruction.

  “Did you hear me, Preeya?”

  Deer in the headlights.

  “I said that your dad won’t let you or your child go without.”

  She didn’t need anyone for the money. Well, except for school, but she’d already set it up to pay her dad back. No, going with her plan—busting ass in school, then residency, then practice—she’d support herself…and this potential baby. Money’s not the missing piece here.

  Ben is.

  “…so do you get that your grand plan has got to fit a baby now?” Gigi asked, sitting her down at a sitting area they’d come to—across from a fucking maternity outlet.

  Preeya sat but pulled her hand back.

  No more discussion. No more wasting time.

  And no more fucking advice from someone who…who had Rod and ultra baby-joy and who had no earthly goddamn idea what Preeya was about to be up against.

  Eyes on the ground, Preeya licked her lips—dry and cracking, she just realized, from her ongoing puke-fest. “I need to sign up for my goddamn classes, Gigi.” She stood up and stormed off toward the parking garage, leaving Gigi to explore the goddamn Maternity Warehouse.

  Or her best friend would sit there on the hard mall bench in sheer shock, crying—but Preeya wouldn’t know because she refused to look back over her shoulder.

  CHAPTER 36

  Footsteps and heavy breathing echoed against the dark cement of the parking garage.

  “Hormones are already going crazy, Pree. I get the roller coaster of emotions,” Gigi said through gasping breath as she caught up to her in the B2 section.

  Hormones. “Not in the fucking mood, Gigi.” Now where the hell is B4?

  Gigi picked up her pace to keep up. “No more swearing, Pree.” Practically panting now. “The embryo can hear and feel that energy.”

  Ignoring Gigi, now…and searching for B4. Ah, B3…now where’s B4?

  “Seriously, Pree. Stop, already, would you?”

  Preeya stopped and spun on her heels. “What, Gigi. What!”

  Gigi’s eyes glistened with impending tears—and mean as it was, her dear friend’s loss for words felt like heaven.

  Preeya sighed and shook her head. “Sorry, Geej, but…I’ve just…got to go.”

  G
igi snatched Preeya’s car keys. “I’m driving you, then.”

  Her best friend took the huff-away-in-ludicrous-anger baton, hit the keyless remote to find Preeya’s car, and marched to it in the next row.

  *

  On the way to campus Preeya scanned each street corner for a drugstore and stayed atomic-silent as Gigi drove and talked. And talked and squeed.

  That irritating goddamn enthusiasm.

  Preeya rolled her eyes.

  This is so like us. Either she or Gigi could be scorching pissed—at each other or at the universe, whether justified or not—while the other hit fast-forward to the point after making up. It’s what happens when unconditional love glues two people together. For them, making up was a given—actually, the only given either of them could ever count on. So, per their routine, Gigi rambled on and on despite Preeya’s underlying fit of jealous rage, however unwarranted.

  Because, damn it, she should’ve been happy for Gigi. Happy that Gigi was happy.

  Opposite of her dismay. And terror. But the involuntary fury that flooded her brain sent her mind flying light-years to nowhere.

  Because this was too much all at once.

  Her hand glided over her belly and tears welled then plummeted down her cheeks. She’d pushed him away. The one good thing in her life—finally, a really good thing—and she shoved him off. To Central fucking Mexico.

  Fists clenched, knuckles white, she felt insane. Paralyzed. Her heartbeat pulsed everywhere, pummeling her from the inside out. She had to shelve the jumble—Ben, baby, lost, found, alone—because there wasn’t a thing she could do to find him and fix this, other than what she’d already done. A sharp heat hit her right temple and began to spread across her skull.

  Focus and shove it down fast, Preeya.

  But she couldn’t. Gigi wouldn’t shush for her to focus and shove. Baby plans and nutritionists and special yoga classes, all the way to cribs and playgroups. And the new head pain shooting across her forehead.

  “Gigi, stop! Just stop talking, please. First I need to get through this day.” And maybe be sure that I am carrying my ex-lover’s child. “My plans. I just need to focus on my—there. Pull in there.” A big-box drugstore.

  Her seat belt hadn’t fully recoiled before her feet hit the pavement. “Be right back.”

  “You know I’m right,” Gigi called before she’d reached the entrance.

  Yeah, I know you are.

  *

  Gigi knew, yes, but she cried anyway when Preeya came out with the pink plus sign showing.

  Preeya sighed, swallowed, then gave Gigi the slightest of smiles. Then through brimming tears and nervous tremors running up her neck, she cleared her throat to hear herself say the words out loud. “It’s a fact.”

  The reality had nearly settled in her palpitating chest from the drug store women’s room to the register to the car. She was having a little baby girl or boy. Yeah, it nearly, almost, not-at-all-in-her-wildest-surreality had settled in. That she would have two heartbeats within her soon or already…unreal.

  Gigi reached over the console and pulled Preeya into her. “Whatever happens, Pree, you will not be alone in this. I am here for you every ‘baby step’ of the way.”

  “Until you’re a balloon like me…and in labor like me, and sleepless and raw nippled—”

  “Like you. Yes, but Rod will help—” Preeya could feel Gigi’s breath hitch through their embrace. Her friend’s guilt hit her like static electricity.

  “It’s okay, Geej, really. I’m weirdly…not scared to be alone in this now. Somehow, I know it will work out. Before the baby comes, I’ll get through a solid eight months of school. Added to the year I’d already finished, I’ll only be, what, a quarter of the way through?” She broke down laughing, just from the ridiculousness of it. “Hey, I can leave Baby Nameless with you and your little psychic wonder through my entire residency, right?” She winked.

  “Yes! I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our girls are going to be sisters.”

  “Girls? Gigi Donlow, please don’t tell me you just told me the sex of my child.”

  “No, no. It hasn’t been decided yet.”

  “Geej, you will not be telling me the sex of my child. I want to be surprised. When you know, you promise me you won’t?”

  “Sure. Of course. I’m just being hopeful that they’re both girls, is all,” Gigi said, crossing her heart and smiling. “I won’t tell you the sex of yours or mine.” She hugged Preeya with all her might.

  “Listen,” Preeya said in Gigi’s ear, still stuck in their tight embrace, “I know you’re here for me as much as you can be, and I am for you too…I love you, Geej, and your little peanut.”

  “Oooh, our little peanuts.” Gigi giggled.

  “Yeah, our babies.” Preeya pulled away and looked down at her belly, at the mystery growing inside. She shook her head. How unbelievably crazy. And amazing.

  Amazingly scary, yet thrilling.

  God, she wanted Ben to be with her now to feel the thrill and craziness of it all. “Gigi…while I don’t need Ben here, in this, with me, with us…I really just…want him. I want him in my life, with our child. That…that would just fit. He made me so happy, fulfilled. Want to be better, you know?”

  “Preeya, let’s find him, then. Let’s find Doctor Ben…Ben what?”

  “Trainer. Dr. Benjamin Trainer.”

  “Heck yeah, let’s find Doctor Benjamin Trainer.” Eyebrow waggle. “Good name…sexy and solid.”

  Preeya smirked. Yes, sexy and solid. And sorely missed.

  CHAPTER 37

  Registration was a process, and when Preeya finished the papers and lines and all, she was exhausted.

  “Home to rest?” Gigi looked tired, too.

  Preeya looked at her new working watch. Two fifty. “Yes, that sounds—shit.” Sudden panic pressed on her chest. “Evan!”

  “Preeya…language.”

  “Sorry, Geej, not gonna happen today.” Silence. Then a sigh. “Anyway, I’d forgotten that after registration, I’m meeting Evan for coffee. Three p.m.”

  Gigi gave her a sideways glance. “Evan, huh? Why exactly would you ever want to meet Tight Ass for anything…ever?” Again, Gigi’d never loved Evan, and now they were stuck in one car too far from the mall, with the 405’s bridge traffic preventing Gigi’s escape.

  And while Preeya still wanted to make things right with Evan, shed her guilt—and no, she wouldn’t, couldn’t stand him up—she wanted nothing more than to go home, crawl up in a ball, and sleep away the tumult of her day, or her life. Even the hunt for Ben, Gigi’s new mission, felt heavy and draining to her. Just thinking about the unknowns, the danger Ben faced, and then the possible, probable rejection she’d face if they did get a hold of him. Shivers shuddered through her and she blinked to reset. “Just tying up loose ends, Geej. That’s all. Putting it to bed so Evan can move on.”

  “First off, I never again want to hear the words bed and Evan come out of your mouth within a minute of each other. I’m pregnant, Pree, and I don’t need the stress.”

  Preeya just shook her head.

  “Second…grrr…fine, we’ll do this. I’ll just…read…at my own private table.” Gigi gave her a crooked, half-assed smile. “You so owe me.” Gigi grabbed a stick of gum from her purse while the light was still red. “I mean, between Josh and Evan, your gamut of assholes is baffling.”

  Preeya glared at her then laughed. But her laugh was a hollow one. After all those “assholes,” she’d finally found her partner in crime, in life—her just-right, brutally honest, sharply intelligent, wholly humble and humbly sensual and loving match.

  All she had left of him was a tiny remnant of them glowing and growing inside her.

  Ben Trainer, damn it… Come back to me. To us.

  CHAPTER 38

  Even with Gigi driving as slow as a damn grandmother—“We’ve got the babies to think about now,” she’d said—they got to the Ave. at 2:59 p.m.

  She texted Evan—Just
parking—and anxiously scanned up and down the street for vacant spots.

  “Relax, Pree.”

  “I just don’t want to be late.”

  “He knows you’re always—”

  “Not anymore, Geej. I’m not like that anymore.” She gave her best friend a stern, almost too stern, stare. She had changed. Evan seeing that would confirm it for her.

  He was early as usual, coffee already in hand at their table in the far back corner where the aroma of the grinders was strongest. Handsome to a fault—a familiar flash of heat welled below her belly—he stood up and waved to her. Well-built and clean-cut in his sexy rimmed glasses, she wanted to spin around and leave.

  No. “Hey, Ev.”

  “You look amazing. Glowing, almost. And punctual?” He tucked his chin to look over those sexy frames and, once sure Preeya wasn’t an imposter, he winked with condescending approval. “Impressive, Pree.” He kissed her cheek then pulled her chair out. “Really impressive.”

  “Oh, thanks. Um…” Gigi had conveniently hidden behind her so she reached and took her arm to pull her forward. “You remember Gigi?”

  “How could I forget? Hello, Gigi,” he said with an unconvincing smile then kissed her on the cheek as well. They’d always kept a healthy arm’s-length distance from each other during Preeya and Evan’s short-lived stint. He was a reporter, a news guy, a facts man. And Preeya’s best friend, though punctual, was anything but fact-based and black and white.

  “Good to see you, Evan. And on the anchor desk now…congrats.”

  “I didn’t know you watch the news, Gigi,” he said as polite as his sarcasm would allow.

  Gigi hunted for a smile, gave Preeya a nod, then spun around, making her way to a table on the other side of the coffee house. “Come and get me when you’re ready,” she called to Preeya over her shoulder.