Page 19 of Forking the Billionaire

I stared at the white blades of my ceiling fan and imagined they were sheep riding a playground spinner. Of course it would be the biggest, strongest sheep’s job to run around the outside pushing the thing, making sure everyone in the middle felt like their eyeballs were about to be sucked through the back of their skulls.

That’s what you’re supposed to do when your brain was trapped in panic mode, when you should have fallen asleep hours ago, and when pure adrenaline shackled you to the waking world with certainty that you’d never ever sleep again. Right?

The wood-turned-imaginary-fluffy-shapes bounded through the air in a way I was pretty sure defied sheep physics. Fortunately for them, being of an imaginary nature meant they didn’t need to follow the laws of physics, or social rules, or the nature of biology, either. Lucky bastards.

Soft white fluff transformed to sharp black spikes. Each sheep became a ticking, stabby bomb, and instead of riding playground equipment, they dove down into my bed and chained themselves to my neck. It was only a matter of time before each and every sheep bomb exploded.

Stupid imagination.

I sat upright and gave up on trying to rest. There was no way to force it, not with all the social and emotional explosives.

There was nothing I could do at the moment about the stress of Gabe being in town. There was nothing I could do to stop him from judging my life beyond hiding my dirty clothes in the closet and scrubbing the floors. I’d already done that. All that there was left to do on the Gabe front was put on my happiest my-life-is-not-a-shit-show smile and try not to let his inevitable disapproval crush me.

Eventually Gabe would go home. I’d made it through one day with him here. Only seven more to go.

There was nothing I could do about Jasper the Disaster Carrington’s easy smiles or his begrudging scowls. The only way I could prevent him from getting under my skin was to get under his first, or avoid him completely. Avoidance was my preferred plan here. But of course that was entirely impossible during the wedding events we both had to attend.

That left the biggest, baddest, scariest bomb. It was also the only one I had any control over.

I couldn’t say the word out loud, or even in my head for that matter. It started with a B and ended with me losing my entire hard-fought identity. The B bomb couldn’t be disarmed, or thrown into space, or whatever it was you did with bombs.

There were options if the B bomb was real.

But it wasn’t. I wasn’t really having a B anyway. The whole situation was a mistake. All I had to do was take another test to confirm the first one was wrong, and I could breathe again. The other stressors would remain, sure, they were temporary.

B was forever.

Oh my goodness, why couldn’t I say the word in my own head? If ever there was a sign that someone was not remotely ready to be in charge of another person’s life, it was that.

Clearly the universe would understand this, and had definitely not made this mistake.

I was not pregnant.

All I had to do was find a test that would prove it. Just to be sure I found the right one, I’d buy every single test on the island. It was the perfect plan.

Great, I was being proactive. I could do something to regain some semblance of control. First step—put on pants.

I opted for some oversized jeans, tucked in my nearly threadbare Green Day t-shirt, and laced up my Chucks. Cash and skateboard in hand, I headed out the door.

There was no bad time of day to be outside in Calypso Caribella, but my favorite was late at night. People didn’t clog up the streets and the beaches. The night sky was so clear the stars were always bright. The air was still salty, but the heat was gone. It carried different scents, like a whole alternate set of flowers decided to wake up for the moon.

Unfortunately, not all of the shops were open twenty-four hours, which I didn’t think of until I stopped by the first pharmacy and found the lights out and the doors locked up for the night.

There was one small general store on the resort grounds that was open twenty-four hours, though, so I went there next. I started down the feminine hygiene aisle, because where else would they keep the pee sticks? And I found them, with the condoms, fancy toothbrushes, and the teeth whitening strips.

In a locked case.

I guessed thieves' priorities were pretty smiles, sex, and the aftermath of smiley sex. It made sense.

Someone was going to have to open this case for me. Someone was going to have to check me out at the counter. And that someone could be someone I knew.

I crept to the end of the aisle and slowly peeked my head out the end to see if I could spot whoever was working. If I was lucky, it’d be a complete stranger. Was that too much to ask?

“Esme?”

I jumped, righted myself completely, and pretended that I hadn’t been creeping around like a weirdo. I recognized the voice.

A finger poked me in the shoulder. I smiled, turned around, and forced myself to breathe like I wasn’t about to have a full-on panic attack.

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