Page 28 of The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

She sat on the edge of the bathtub, with the two very positive pregnancy tests lined up on the basin, and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. This all seemed easier to process if she could just reduce the amount of information coming into her brain at any one time. Was the human body actually meant to process this many emotions at once? It didn’t feel like it because Kayla thought her heart might give out at any given moment.

A baby was great, objectively. She’d always wanted to be a mom at some point in her life. But the idea had been to find the right guy, settle down and, you know, plan a pregnancy. Kayla wasn’t all that keen on surprises at the best of times. So, yeah, a baby was amazing. Unfortunately, the practicalities came rushing in and dampened the mood.

She had just quit her very stable, very normal job to go and start from scratch in a very not-stable line of work. A line of work that she wasn’t even qualified for yet. She was living off her savings currently, looking around for serving jobs, thinking that it might get her into the industry from the ground floor. She was doing the math on all of the things you needed to buy in order to take care of an infant, all of the things she would need to buy before it was even born, not to mention the medical bills and… oh, God. Now she didn’t know if she was sick from the pregnancy or from panic.

There was a knock on the door and Kayla jumped, her hands flying from her eyes and returning her to the rest of reality, blinking from the brightness.

“Considering you’ve been in there for about twenty minutes now,” came her mom’s voice through the door, “I’m going to hazard a guess that I’m officially going to be a grandmother?”

Kayla stood and opened the door, and Liz was right there with a sympathetic smile on her face. She knew what to do, surging forward and sweeping Kayla up into a hug.

“Congrats,” Kayla said in a dry voice. “You’re officially going to be a grandma.”

“And you,” said Liz, pulling back and smoothing some curls away from Kayla’s face. “You’re going to be a mom!”

“Yeah, well, there’s the matter of the father that needs to be dealt with.”

Kayla needed to sit back down, but she’d spent more than enough time in the bathroom for one day. She walked around her mom and made her way to the living room, perching on the edge of the couch and trying to take some deep breaths.

“So you’re going to tell him?”

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“I mean, you don’t have to do anything. You set the rules. You do what’s best for you.”

“Is this you giving me an out just to make me feel better?”

“Yup.”

Kayla rubbed her forehead. “That’ll sure be a fun conversation.”

“You said he was nice?” Liz asked, following along, unconsciously tidying things as she went. “This guy was a good one, didn’t you say?”

“Yeah, for a fling. He was nice for not throwing me to the sharks when that storm rolled in and I was stuck. In the end, it doesn’t matter how nice he is, because if I tell him, ‘hey, mister billionaire who’s already in the middle of one lawsuit, I’m having your baby.’ Tell me something that sounds more like entrapment than that.”

Liz just pursed her lips again for a moment, thinking, because there wasn’t any real arguing with that.

“So you are… having it, then?” Liz asked with an impressive amount of tact, given her reputation.

Kayla stilled and realized that, yes, she was. It wasn’t even a decision really, just a fact. She sighed and put her head back in her hands. She felt the couch cushions shift as Liz sat beside her and put a warm hand on her back, moving in soothing circles.

“I’m not crying, by the way,” Kayla said without looking up. “I’m just despairing.”

“And that's different?”

“Completely.”

“No need to do either, you know. This is happy news.”

Kayla sighed through her nose, still refusing to leave the safety of her hands. This all seemed easier with her palms pressed against her eyes.

“It can be a lot of things, Ma, as well as happy.”

Liz’s hands started stroking her hair, and Kayla eased back into the feeling of it. Then her mom’s hands were tugging her own away from her eyes, lifting her chin up so that she was looking her in the face.

“I figured it out,” Liz said with a shrug and a small smile. “And you turned out to be the best kid I could have asked for.”

That was what started the tears, the silent sort that filled up and ran over Kayla’s cheeks without her permission, dripping off her chin as she blinked. She had nothing else to say, not right now. Talking wouldn’t change anything. She was just going to have to dive headfirst, straight into the deep end and figure this all out as she went along. And no matter what ended up happening with Elio, however he reacted, she’d have her mom. That was more than enough.

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