My eyes snap to her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You graduated from the Royal Sigmaran Military College, yet served less than two years as a Lieutenant,” she says softly, eyes pinned to me. “Some would say that your service pales in comparison to other past and future leaders.”
Her voice was gentle, but her implications were sharp.
“You are threatening to send me to war?”
“There is no war, boy.” It is apparently Father’s turn to roll his eyes. “But if you do not take on the responsibilities of family, then it seems only right you would take on the responsibilities of serving this country.”
“Do not think of it as a threat,” Mother adds. “We are providing two paths for you, and it is your choice.”
“Is it a choice if I am poised at the edge of a cliff with a gun at my back and given the opportunity to jump or be shot?”
“Military service would wipe that dramatic streak away,” Father adds.
I want to argue, to scream, to fight with them the way a normal child would fight with normal parents, but there is no winning here. As much as I’ve spent my life trying to fight it, they hold the keys to my future.
Even if I was somehow able to escape the crown, I would spend the rest of my life being the man who ran away. Who deserted his family, his country. It would be a shameful existence as far as the press was concerned with few upsides.
In short, my parents had me by the balls.
I stand up and move toward the door, ignoring my father’s mumbled remark about “the runaway prince.”
“Send word when Lady Freyja arrives,” I say, my back toward them, one hand on the sitting room door. “I will meet her as you have asked but will promise nothing else.”
I pushed through the door and marched down the hallway before they could respond.
Chapter 9
Jane-Ann
Two Months Later
Rhonda is shuffling piles of papers around her desk, licking her thumb between each movement to help separate the pages. It’s one of my pet peeves, but I keep an easy smile, ignoring the clench of disgust that roils my stomach. I’m receiving my annual review today, and I don’t want to do anything to upset Rhonda before she can read me my results. If all goes well, I’m hoping for a raise. I’ve been at Rufus’ Sofa Shack for three years, which is longer than any other employee.
In the two months since my run-in with Christian, I’ve focused on making improvements to my life. On doing what I told Blakely I’d do. I have focused on my career, putting in overtime and covering shifts when asked, and I’ve stopped frequenting Jimmy’s Honky-tonk.
Less time at the honky-tonk has also meant seeing Colby less, which feels like a good step forward for both of us. I don’t have to constantly spurn his advances, and he can move on. According to Blakely, he has been “moving on” with a new girl every weekend. She only told me to see if I’d get jealous, but I couldn’t care less. Good for him. At least one of us is getting some action.
Finding a serious relationship is the one hitch in my plan. Not going to the honky-tonk means my usual mode of finding a guy is gone, and short of online dating, I have no idea where to start.
But that’s okay. A relationship will happen naturally once the rest of my life falls into place. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. I hope it is true.
“Here we go,” Rhonda says, licking her finger before pulling a single piece of paper out of a folder and sliding it across the messy desk to me.
I pick it up, avoiding the corner that is curled with her spit.
“This is your third year here, so you know what this is,” she says, holding up her own copy of my employee evaluation form. “You were evaluated on a bunch of different measures, but if you look down at your final score, you’ll see I gave you a five out of five.”
Sure enough, at the bottom of the sheet, Rhonda had given me full marks in every category and circled my average score in a green marker. Next to it she’s scribbled, “Keep up the good work, Jane-Ann! We love you!” I only hope she loves me enough to give me a raise.
“That’s great, Rhonda. Thanks,” I say, studying the paper diligently, letting her know I take it all very seriously.
“No, thank you,” she says, setting my review aside and folding her hands under her chin. “You’re a valued employee here, and I hope to see you in my office in another year for another performance review.”
“Me too,” I say. “I love it here.”
Rhonda raises her brows and smiles. “That’s wonderful to hear because Rufus and I have discussed it at length, and we would both like to promote you to key holder.”
I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, Rhonda continues on.
“You’re under no obligation to accept the position, but it would come with a one-dollar-per-hour raise and more responsibility. We believe you are more than capable of taking on more duties around the shop, and we trust you to keep things running while we are away. You don’t have to answer now, but—”
“I accept,” I say, lunging across the table to grab Rhonda’s hand and shake it. “Thank you so much.”
I do the mental math quickly, figuring an extra one hundred and fifty dollars in my budget every month at least, which isn’t a lot but would give me room to relax a little bit. Maybe I could reinstate a monthly dinner with Blakely. Maybe I could even splurge on a drink from the bar. I bite the corner of my lip to keep from beaming like an idiot at the prospect.
Rhonda congratulates me again, assures me there will be paperwork and procedures to discuss on another day, and sends me home.
I’ve only just closed the door to Rhonda’s office, wondering whether I shouldn’t text Blakely back and tell her I changed my mind about stopping by the Polo for a drink after work—I just got a promotion, after all, so celebrating seems like a worthwhile excuse—when a wave of nausea rolls over me. It’s sudden, and I freeze in place, a hand pressed to my stomach. After a second or two, the feeling ebbs and then fades, but I’m still cautious, taking slow steps across the hallway.
I’m almost to the door that opens into the showroom when a second wave, stronger and more enduring than the first, rushes in, and I know I won’t get so lucky this time.
I spin to the right and dive into the employee bathroom. I barely get the door closed behind me before I lunge for the toilet and empty the contents of my stomach.
Still in the bathroom getting sick, I try to reason what could be happening to me. Food poisoning seems unlikely as I haven’t had any meat or any of the commonly undercooked foods. My diet has consisted mostly of fresh fruit and bread for the last week or so.
Due to my Texas upbringing, I’m usually an enthusiastic carnivore, but even the sight of the chicken breasts I’d defrosted for dinner the night before made my stomach turn. And I made bacon with my eggs on Saturday but couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a few nibbles from the crispy ends. Now, I wonder if this stomach bug hadn’t been a long time coming. Maybe my body prepared me by eating healthy, light foods.
My body feels hollow, and I stand on shaky legs and move to the sink. My skin is pale and sweats beads my forehead, but I feel remarkably okay.
I wash my hands, swish water from the sink to clear out the taste from my mouth, and pop a mint from my purse. I hesitate in front of the bathroom door, waiting to make sure I’m not going to get sick again, and then leave for the day.
Thankfully, it’s already the end of my shift, so I don’t have to explain to my boss who just offered me a promotion that I need to take the rest of the day off work. So, I move quickly through the showroom to avoid a conversation with anyone and slip into my car. I’m five minutes down the road when my phone rings.
“Are you coming to The Polo?” Blakely asks in lieu of a greeting.
“I told you I wasn’t,” I say.
She groans. “No one is here. It’s so boring without you. Please come keep me company. Pleeeeeeee—”
I cut
her off in the middle of her begging. “I was considering accepting your offer until I just threw up in the employee bathroom five minutes ago.”
Blakely cuts off her pleading immediately. “You got sick? Like, sick sick?”
“Yeah. Might be a stomach bug or something,” I say, and then add. “But I feel completely fine now.”
“You sure you’re not pregnant?” she asks with a laugh.
I know she’s joking, but even the idea sends a bolt of panic through me.
“Getting sick doesn’t mean I’m pregnant,” I say flatly.
“I was joking, Jane-Ann. Relax.” Then, after a pause. “When was your last period?”
I cycle back through the previous weeks in my mind, and a cold knot of fear twists in my stomach. “I can’t remember.”
Silence on the other end of the phone. Unusual for Blakely, who talks even more than I do.
“Say something,” I demand, barely able to focus on the road ahead of me. My vision seems to be blurring, and my heart is beating too fast.
“Are you almost home?” she asks, and I can tell she is holding the phone away from her mouth while she settles her bill with the bartender at The Polo.
“Just a few minutes,” I say.
“Okay, I’ll be right over,” she says.
I grip the wheel tighter. “It really isn’t necessary, Blakely. Stay out and have fun. I’m sure everything is fine, and I just—”
She ignores me. “I’ll stop and pick up a test on my way. We’ll know whether everything is fine or not within the next twenty minutes. See you soon.”
Twenty minutes feels like twenty hours. Twenty days.
I make a glass of water and drop onto the couch as soon as I get home, but my mind is too foggy to pay attention to the television, and recently, I’ve lost my taste for royal romance novels. Or any romance novels for that matter. So, I sip on my water, stare at the wall, and try not to think.
I try not to think about the fact that I should be on my period right now, that I should have had one four weeks before, as well. Yet I’m not, and I didn’t. I try not to think about how many diapers I could buy with the measly one hundred and fifty dollars extra I’ll make each month from my promotion. And I absolutely try not to think about who the father would be.
Because I’m probably not pregnant.
I’m overreacting. Blakely will come over with a test. I’ll pee on it, and then we will laugh about how panicked we were and maybe re-watch an episode or two from one of our favorites shows while we drink. Because I’ll be able to drink. Because I’m not pregnant. Probably.
“Oh God, you are in bad shape.”
I blink and Blakely is standing in the doorway, a grocery bag in her arms.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask.
She shakes her head and marches through my living room and into the kitchen, dropping the bag on the counter. “Long enough to know it’s good I came.”
I don’t say anything, but I’m glad she came over, too. I need someone to tell me how to move forward, how to react. What to do.
Blakely digs in the bag and then throws something at me. It hits my chest, and I fumble for a second before getting a grip on it. I raise an eyebrow.
“Licorice?”
“It’s either a consolation snack or celebration snack,” she says, diving back into the bag. “I also grabbed sparkling grape juice, a bottle of wine, and ginger snaps. No matter what caused the hurling this morning, you’ll probably need help getting your stomach settled.”
I swallow back a lump in my throat. “What about…” I can’t bring myself to say it.
Blakely picks up a pink and blue box and hands it to me, her dark eyebrows pinched together. “It’s pretty self-explanatory. Pee on the stick and wait three minutes.”
I stare at the box in her hand, unable to reach out and grab it. Touching it makes it feel too real. Makes the possibility that my life could be changing too imminent.
“Do you need me to go in with you?” she asks. “I mean, I don’t know what I could really do to help…aside from hold the stick…or offer emotional support.” She stops and scrunches her nose. “Please don’t make me hold the stick. That sounds so gross.”
I bark out a laugh and then smile at my friend. “You don’t have to hold the stick.”
Blakely’s shoulders sag in relief and then she crosses the space between us in two steps. “God bless you, J-A.” She steps back and presses the box against my chest. “Now, go pee on this so we know if this freak-out is warranted or not.”
I grab the box and march to the bathroom before I can lose my nerve. Blakely’s presence has bolstered me more than I expected. Knowing she’s on the other side of the door as I follow the exact steps outlined on the back of the box makes me feel better. Makes me feel less alone.
I set the stick on the counter and grip the edge of the bathtub, my fingernails bending from my grip on the cool porcelain.
My periods have never been regular. Although I’ve never skipped an entire month before, it could happen. And maybe I have some other medical condition that could explain everything. Like, some kind of parasite that makes your cycle irregular and gives you sudden bouts of nausea.
I let my head drop into my hands and take a deep breath. I should have eaten something when I got home from work. My stomach is growling, and I feel dizzy.
The thought trails off in my head as I realize how much fruit I’ve eaten in the past two weeks. My usual couple servings per day turned into eating three-fourths of a watermelon for dinner and packing a gallon-sized bag of grapes to snack on at work. Did that count as a craving? Most pregnancy cravings on television shows or in movies are for pickles and chocolate pudding. But my fruit intake has been unusual.
My stomach flips again, but it isn’t with hunger this time. My body is vibrating with nerves. With a kind of blind panic I haven’t felt since I had to sing a solo verse in my elementary school’s Spring musical. Just like in sixth grade, my brain is telling me to run. To get out. To run away from the entire situation and hide in a closet.
But unlike in sixth grade, that won’t help me now. This isn’t a situation I can run away from.
Three soft knocks on the bathroom door ground me in the present moment. “Everything okay in there?”
“Just waiting.” I stretch out and turn the bathroom knob. Blakely steps inside, her bottom lip red from chewing on it. “I set a timer on my phone, so it should be going off—”
I’m interrupted by the electronic chirp of my phone. My chest clenches, and I feel incapable of moving. As soon as I turn off the alarm and flip the stick over, I’ll know.
In some ways, blind panic is better than knowing. Right now, I am Schrodinger’s cat. Both alive and dead inside the box. Pregnant and not pregnant. As soon as I turn over the stick, I’m one or the other. And I’m not ready.
Blakely grabs my phone from the counter and dismisses the alarm. “Sorry. That was annoying.”
I stare at the stick on the counter until Blakely clears her throat. When I look up at her, she is looking at me like I’m a bomb she needs to disarm.
“Do you want me to look?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I should do it.”
“Do you want me to go?” She takes a backward step toward the hallway, and I lunge for her hand, pulling her back into my small bathroom.
“No way. Stay.”
I keep hold of her hand as I pluck the stick off the counter. It will be like ripping off a band-aid. Except, in the case of a band-aid, it is one second of pain; whereas this could very well end up being a lifetime of…if not pain, then disruption. But waiting isn’t going to change the outcome, so before I can talk myself out of it, I flip the stick over and…
“Holy shit.”
I close my eyes and fall back. Thankfully, the toilet is underneath me and saves me from hitting the tile.
“What does it say?” Blakely asks, trying to read the results from my reaction. “Are you relieved
or—”
I hold the stick out to her, and she bites her lower lip. She plucks it out of my hand and shakes it, as if she can wipe away the result. Then, she holds it up to the light, squinting to make sure she’s reading it properly. After thirty seconds of various tests that do nothing to change the pink plus sign in the test window, she sets it down on the counter and leans back against the door frame.
“Looks like there’s going to be a royal baby.”
I almost smile, but before I can, nausea rises up in me like a tsunami, and I barely manage to fall to my knees and open the toilet before I’m throwing up the water I drank when I got home.
Chapter 10
Jane-Ann
“Are we one hundred percent Prince Christian is the father?” Blakely asks, handing me another rope of licorice.
Once I finally managed to lift myself from the bathroom floor, my best friend deposited me on the sofa in my living room and began filling me with anything and everything she could, claiming the baby needed nutrients. I don’t know what nutrients it is going to get from candy and sparkling grape juice, but I’m too rattled to argue.
I grab the licorice and rip it in half with my teeth. “Unless this is a case of immaculate conception, then yes, Christian is the baby daddy.”
Blakely narrows her eyes at me, and I remember she doesn’t have the religious background I have.
“A virgin birth,” I clarify. “Or, in this case, a conception without the necessity of sex.”
She barks. “Yeah, because you are no virgin.”
I frown at her. Like she has any room to talk. The comeback is on the tip of my tongue, but I’m not in a sparring mood.
“My mom’s going to be so disappointed.”
“You’re an adult, J-A. Who cares what she thinks?”
“I do,” I admit, rubbing my hand across my stomach before I catch myself and fist it at my side. “I just don’t want to have to explain the one-night stand. If I was dating someone and got pregnant, it would be fine, but I don’t even know Christian. I don’t have any way of contacting him.”
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