Page 36 of Puck Prince

“But he was wearing a condom!” I argue to absolutely no one. I’m alone. Well… I guess I’m never alone anymore…

I glance down at my stomach with a grimace.

Jesus.

This shouldn’t be happening. It can’t be happening. Like, from a justice perspective, these scales seem hella unbalanced against little old me.

But from a scientific perspective, I have to admit there’s some merit to the possibility. If I dive deep down into the dreary depths of my psyche, did I suspect I was pregnant four weeks ago when I missed my period? Perhaps.

And did I proceed to repress the hell out of that in the interest of moving to a new city, starting a new job, and not spiraling into a tight knot of woe-is-me, anxious energy? One hundo percent.

I think back, and yeah, we absolutely used a condom.

He tossed me on the bed like I weighed almost nothing—very flattering. He grabbed a condom from the nightstand drawer. Crawled on top of me. Let out a gritty laugh and?—

Oh, fuck me…

“That motherfucker opened the damn thing with his teeth.” I sit back against the tub. In one aggressive move that was probably meant to look sexy—to be fair, it did look sexy—he probably broke the condom.

No protection is strong enough to withstand a hockey player-sized ego. I should’ve known better.

But I didn’t. And I don’t.

So I dust myself off and stand up, snatching all the tests off the counter. I don’t need Kennedy finding them. What I do need is to deal with this myself.

In the few fleeting seconds when I let myself entertain the possibility that I was with child over the past month, I considered just dropping into a clinic. It would be an in and out situation. I could pretend it never happened.

But now, as it did every other time I thought about it, the idea makes my stomach go sour.

I know, deep down, I can’t do that.

It’s not the baby’s fault I fucked up and fucked a hockey player.

Either way, I want to know for sure that this is happening. I grab my purse, shoving the tests in it, and decide I should go to the doctor just to be sure. Once I have a positive blood test, I will figure out what to do.

Starting with getting my own place so Kennedy doesn’t suspect…

And so I can avoid Owen Sharpe for the next eighteen years or so.

I’ve stopped getting nauseous over worrying if I am going to run into Owen in the elevator. Probably because I also run the risk of running into him at work. The Fearless lipstick hasn’t been as helpful as I hoped, but exposure therapy is working wonders.

Or maybe it’s that I am always nauseous these days, Hockey Boy or not.

I make my way outside, reaching in my purse for my sunglasses when the light hits. Note to self: sudden bursts of sunlight make me nauseous as well. Jesus, this is gonna be a whole thing.

I grab my Michael Kors shades, but as I tug them from the bottomless trash pit that is my purse, they get caught, yanking a pen, my lipstick, and one of the tests out. Everything dumps on the ground.

“Shit,” I mutter, bending down to pick everything up.

I hear footsteps and glance up to see the woman and baby from the other day approaching the building. She hasn’t noticed me yet. I work frantically to get everything shoved back in my purse before she does.

Suddenly, I hear a click and see a flash. A photographer is hiding around the corner, snapping pictures like there’s no tomorrow.

I stand up. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” I am half-raging and half-panicked. Did he see what I dropped? Does heknow who I am? He knows enough to be here and the camera was obviously aimed at?—

The door behind me opens, and I turn to see…

Owen.

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