Page 74 of The Irish Arrangement

“You—” She stood and folded her hands together, so excited that she practically jumped.

“What?” I repeated.

“Are you pregnant?”

I opened and closed my mouth, trying to hurry and connect the dots. Why she’d ever leap to that conclusion was beyond me, but as I thought back to health class in high school, I realized that maybe what I was suffering could sound like morning sickness.

I’m not. I shook my head. “No. It’s not that.”

“You know?” She smiled. “Have you taken a test?”

I shook my head again. Not necessary.

“Are you late?”

I was. I thought I was. My cycles were never that consistent. I used to assume it was because I did too much manual labor and was so fit that my body never went through it. Athletes often had wonky schedules with their physique like that. And then all the stress… I never considered the details of my unreliable menstrual cycles because of my life and the complications when I was a teenager.

“No.”

She tilted her head to the side. “You hesitated to answer. Are you?”

I furrowed my brow. “I’m not pregnant.”

She huffed. “I know there’s got to be tests in the bathroom. Try one. You might not know.”

She just didn’t get it. But I didn’t want to lose the one friendly person here. If I had to stay married for five more months while Declan hated me, it would be hell.

Riley left me, taking the tray with her, but once she was gone, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said. About how my husband might treat me now that he knew I couldn’t serve a purpose for him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mumbled as I went to the bathroom to find the stick. I may as well prove her wrong. Declan would want the proof too.

I was sick to my stomach with stress, and as I peed on the stick, I rolled my eyes and wondered why I was bothering.

I left the test in the bathroom to fetch my glass of ice water that I did ask Riley to leave with me, and by the time a minute had passed, I returned to the bathroom to check on the package for how long this test would require to show I was infertile.

Or not.

I blinked, looking from the package to the stick.

Three more minutes remained, but two lines showed clearly already. A pair of parallel streaks darkened, and I gaped at the evidence.

Pregnant.

“Oh, my God…” I grabbed the stick and stared at it like it was a joke. I shook it. I peered at it closely, questioning the lighting of the room.

“It’s got to be a fluke.” I fumbled for another test, dumping out three from the box. My heart raced as I used them all, having a thread of common sense to use a cup to collect the sample in and test again. And again. And again.

I read through every single word of the fine print with the instructions. I pored over the list of steps. It didn’t matter.

Every stick showed positive.

I was pregnant. The impossible had happened.

The doctors must have been wrong. I wasn’t infertile.

I was pregnant.

Shock rendered me numb, but a deeper, stronger sense of excitement filled me to the point that I almost cried. Laughing instead, hysterical, I curled up on the bed and pressed my hand to my flat stomach.

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