How upset I was about how irresponsible I’d been.
“Yesterday, you texted me to say that you were leaving town for a job and that you’d reach out to me to let me know your schedule. When I received that text, I was in a pharmacy. And when I called you, it was because I had something, I needed to tell you before you became unreachable for an unknown amount of time.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. Out of all the emotions roiling through me, not one of them was shame. “I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive.”
He leaned back in his chair, stunned. I had a feeling that, if he had been standing, he would’ve fallen. My stomach was in knots as I waited for him to say something.
I wasn’t going to rush him or get mad that he didn’t instantly have a response. Even if I’d given him this kind of news without everything he’d just been through, it would have been unfair of me to expect him to process instantly and give me the reaction I wanted.
Especially since I didn’t really know what I wanted him to say or do.
Nearly two full minutes passed before he finally spoke. “I thought you said you had an IUD.”
Not where I’d hoped his first thought would go, but at least a logical one. “I do.” I blew out a breath. “When I got home after…I was supposed to make an appointment with my doctor, but I’d forgotten until yesterday morning after I threw up. When I called Dr. Rhimes and told her everything, she said she couldn’t get me in until tomorrow morning. And then she said that I should get a pregnancy test because it was a possibility.”
“A possibility? So the test could have been a false positive?”
He didn’t sound upset or eager or anything, really. His face wasn’t blank, exactly, but he was definitely not broadcasting what he was feeling. Not with his expression or his tone. Not a single thing.
Apparently, I did have at least some small expectation of what I’d wanted from him. Some concern or attempt of comfort. But, I reminded myself, he’d just been through a lot. That helped me not to be too annoyed. Who knew how different his reaction would have been if the accident hadn’t happened and we’d had the rest of our conversation on the phone?
“It could be,” I said. “Nothing’s one hundred percent.”
And there it was. A split second of something real in his eyes.
Something that looked an awful lot like relief.
For the second time that morning, I felt like I was going to throw up. Tears pricked at my eyelids, and I was suddenly grateful that neither of us had turned on more than just a lamp in the corner. Shadows could hide what I couldn’t quite manage myself.
The silence between us turned awkward, and I pushed to my feet. “I should change.”
I was in the bedroom before I remembered that I didn’t actually have any clothes to change into. I’d come straight here from the hospital, and what I was going to wear had been the absolute last thing on my mind. I did, at least, have a clean pair of underwear in my purse. I’d made that a habit for years, and my time in Iran had made me almost compulsive about it.
I probably spent more time than necessary in the bathroom, but I needed it to get my emotions in check. I really hoped that this was some sort of placebo effect and not pregnancy hormones rearing their ugly heads. If I was pregnant, I didn’t want to be a basket case for the next nine months.
If.
I didn’t know the numbers when it came to the likelihood of an IUD failing or a pregnancy test giving a false positive, but both did happen. As my mind bounced around, I wondered if the insanity of my last couple months made it more or less likely that I’d beat the odds. And what would that look like? Was it beating the odds if I was pregnant or not?
And that was the moment I realized that I hadn’t asked myself one very important question.
Did I want to be pregnant?
I hadn’t intended it to happen. Hadn’t even considered it a possibility. Honestly, I hadn’t even been thinking about having a family in the near future. Obviously, I didn’t dislike children, as that would have made my field of study quite foolish, but a baby at this point in my life wasn’t even close to being on my radar.
Eoin wasn’t the only person who was just now processing this information. Even though I’d technically known about it longer than he had – either counting or not counting the amnesia – things had gone pear-shaped almost from moment one. I hadn’t been able to actually think about it yet.
I needed to do that. How could I hold Eoin’s reaction against him when I hadn’t truly thought it through yet myself?
My phone’s alarm went off, making me jump. I reached for it, not remembering why I had an alarm set for today. When I saw what was on the screen, I closed my eyes and cursed under my breath.
At least I now had a legitimate reason to leave.
I had promised my parents I’d have lunch with them today.
Wonderful.
Fifteen
Eoin
I thought I told Aline goodbye, but I honestly couldn’t be sure. A part of my brain was even wondering if I’d dreamed the entire conversation while still sleeping next to her in bed. Or maybe I’d actually passed out again in the hospital and was now unconscious, and my mind was trying to freak me out to wake me up. Or maybe I’d actually died, and the afterlife was just some strange shit that made no sense.
Because there’s no way this could be happening.
Could it?
I’d had sex with a lot of women over the years, and since graduating high school, I’d always used condoms, even if a woman said she was on birth control. Then I’d met Aline, and all that had gone out the window.
And now, she might be pregnant.
Might.
Possibly?
Probably?
Shit.
Then again, when I considered the odds, the fact that this was the first time anything like this had ever happened to me, I supposed it wasn’t too far-fetched. Shit like this happened every day.
Hell, it’d happened to my brother, Alec.
At least I knew how my family would take the news. Well, more or less. I’d already been enlisted when all of that had happened, but it wasn’t actually that hard to figure out.
While my parents hadn’t been the sort who’d expected abstinence from any of us kids, they’d also been big believers in making sure all of us understood the possible consequences of our actions. When they’d given us each the sex talk and discussed birth control, they’d also told us that the only way to one hundred percent avoid pregnancy and STIs was to not have sex. Well, other than the obvious exception of rape, of course, and none of us would ever blame a survivor for anything that came from something like that.
If we did have sex, we’d be expected to take responsibility for anything that came up because of it, but they wouldn’t tell us how that responsibility was supposed to look. The only thing they’d made clear was that brushing consequences off wouldn’t be allowed, and the first of us to go through this situation had risen to the occasion just like he always had with everything else.
Alec married Keli, but the marriage hadn’t lasted very long. He’d done the whole joint-custody thing until earlier this year when Keli had gone off the deep end and dropped Evanne at his house with primary custody papers, before running off with a boyfriend. That had sparked off a whole other kind of shitshow.