Page 59 of Viktor at Sea

“No.” I shook my head firmly. “I didn’t.”

“And you’re sure of it?”

“Yes. I’m certain.” That was the second thing I was most sure of. The first was that I was madly in love with Astrid and would always be.

“And how long ago did you sleep with her?”

“Three weeks ago, maybe four. It was the day I got back,” I answered. “And I haven’t regretted anything more in my life before.”

“If you both slept together the day you got back, that must mean that she’s three weeks pregnant at the most,” Katarinaannounced, seemingly snapping out of her daze. “I wasn’t showing until two months into both my pregnancies. Did it look like she was showing, Viktor?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. She didn’t look any different to me.”

“There was no glow?” Sally asked. “All pregnant women get this glow about them when they’re carrying.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t notice a glow. She didn’t look any different to me.”

“We need to speak to Chara,” Astrid finally said.

“And the doctor,” Katarina announced. “If she knows she’s pregnant at three weeks, then she must have gone to the doctor for confirmation.”

“Are you suggesting that Chara could be lying about it?” Sallie asked. “What am I asking? Of course, Chara could be lying about it. Perhaps I’m prejudiced against her, but I know that girl well enough to know she doesn’t have a truthful bone in her entire body.”

“Let me get the doctor.” Katarina stood up and moved toward me. If she hadn’t announced what she was doing, I would have feared that she was planning on striking me. I moved out of the way and watched as she let herself out of the hut.

“And I’ll go and get Chara,” Sallie announced, quick to follow after Katarina.

“There’s something really fishy about this,” Freja mused aloud, but neither Astrid nor I could bring ourselves to say anything.

In fact, despite all the questions and sudden turn of the conversation, Astrid was eerily calm, and that was what scared me the most. I had so much to say to her, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak anymore.

Not when I was so disgusted with myself and had potentially ruined things between us forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Ihadn’t moved from my spot by the door the entire time Sallie and Katarina had been away, and no one had spoken since Freja voiced aloud how fishy the situation was. Yet, Astrid’s eyes didn’t sway from me for a single moment. There was an indiscernible look in them I couldn’t make out, and that made me more scared than I had ever been before.

“Viktor?” Astrid called out to me in a quiet, cautious voice. “Are you still there?”

I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded instead.

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Viktor,” Freja tried to assure me, a pitiful expression on her face. “We’re going to find out the truth, and then we’ll figure out where to go from here.”

“Thank you,” I whispered, but it didn’t look like either of them had heard me.

Regardless of whether they heard me or not, the reality of the situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon. The fact of the matter was that Chara was pregnant, and she claimed it was my baby. I couldn’t even refute the claim as I had indeed slept with her not long ago.

How could I have messed up like that? How could I have gotten Chara pregnant?

As much as I despised Chara and found her completely insufferable, I had been the one to act irresponsibly, and now I would reap the consequences. If Chara really was pregnant with my child, I would not abandon it. I would accept the child as mine and play the role of a doting father, but I would never accept Chara. I simply could not.

I was not willing to accept her as a friend, wife or anything else. My morals could be damned because I couldn’t marry Chara for the sole purpose of raising the child in a nuclear family. There was no way I could go through with marrying her. Not when I was in love with another.

But how could I expect Astrid to accept this?

The answer was simple. I couldn’t.

I didn’t expect Astrid to accept Chara’s pregnancy, especially not when I was struggling to accept the news myself.

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