Page 10 of Bride for Keeps

It wasn’t true, but it was sweet of Kaitlin to say so. They’d never been particularly close, but if Sierra had gotten anything out of this shitty few weeks it was a new camaraderie with her sister. Kaitlin wasn’t as hard as she used to be, happily married and about to pop, and Sierra knew she’d changed herself too. Matured in some ways. Or at least was in the process of maturing.

“Still no word from Carter?” Kaitlin asked carefully.

“No. He’s waiting me out.” He probably knew. That she didn’t want to lose him. That she was a coward. Probably thought he could ignore the papers and live in this horrible space of nothingness forever. Well, she wouldn’t let that happen. No. She needed to find her courage. She needed to find her spark again. “He probably doesn’t think I’ll fight dirty.” But maybe it was time.

“Surely he knows you better than that.” Kaitlin smiled, though it was immediately interrupted by a wince.

“You okay?” Sierra asked, not envious of anything her sister was going through physically, even if she’d been pestering Carter about starting a family before the whole…implosion had happened. The reality of pregnancy in front of her made the prospect of a chubby baby to cuddle a little less appealing.

Besides, that wish had been mostly wanting something to bind them together, and wasn’t that warped? Sure, she wanted to be a mother, and so much of that had come from wanting to see Carter as a father because she thought he’d be such a good one.

Apparently she’d been wrong. About everything.

“Just starting to get a contraction here or there. The doctor said not to get excited until they’re more regular, but God I hope this is the beginning. I want to walk normally again.”

Sierra turned to face the stove where Kaitlin had placed a pan of perfectly baked cinnamon rolls. Sierra should be happy and excited for her sister. Eager to meet her niece. But all she could think about was the fact she was about to be evicted.

Sierra shook her head and plated two rolls for each of them. She turned to put them on the table, but something in the smell hit her all wrong. She wrinkled her nose as a wave of nausea hit her. She wished this damn flu thing would just go away already.

She put Kaitlin’s plate in front of her, and sat down with her own, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of eating it.

“I know you like cinnamon rolls. What’s with the pained face?”

Sierra shook her head. “Oh just this same thing. Some weird bug I guess. Maybe I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow.”

Kaitlin nodded, but she kept staring at Sierra with a speculative look on her face. “I have a weird question to ask you.”

“Shoot.”

“It’s just, maybe because I’ve got pregnancy on the brain but light-headedness, nausea, exhaustion…everything you’ve been having the past few weeks. I know it could be the stress and emotional upheaval of everything with Carter, but those can all be signs of pregnancy too.”

Sierra laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Are you sure you couldn’t be pregnant?”

Sierra started to laugh again, because you had to have sex to get pregnant, but then her laugh died. There had been that night. No protection and she’d stopped renewing the prescription for her birth control pills in the five months of hell because it had felt like a cruel joke to bother.

Pregnant.

“So, it’s possible?”

Those words hung in the air and Sierra couldn’t truly wrap her brain around the actual reality of it.Possibleseemed to echo in her head, over and over again.

“Shit,” Kaitlin said on a gasp, pressing her hand to the side of her rounded stomach.

“What? Another contraction?”

“No.” Kaitlin blew out a breath, and then sucked one in. “Well, yes, but I think… I think my water just broke.”

*

Carter had takena few days off from the hospital. He’d ignored his mother’s phone calls. He’d holed himself up in his house to finalize his plans. He was good with plans, with schedules, with figuring out all the steps to get what he wanted.

However, the goal ofstaying married, wasn’t so easy aspassing the MCATorgetting the right residency match.Those had steps to follow, books to read on the subject. It wasn’t foolproof science, but it was close.

There was nothing about Sierra or relationships that was foolproof science. Or had any steps to follow that made any sense to him.

Occasionally over the course of trying to figure out how to fix this mess, he’d wondered if it was worth it. If divorce was the answer. It was what Sierra wanted, and didn’t he want her to be happy most of all?

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