Page 32 of Secret Daddies

“Yeah, it was fine,” I replied, and she leaned forward, lowering her voice pointedly.

“So no trouble from the guys…?”

I shook my head.

“I’m keeping out of their way,” I confided. “And it seems like it’s going okay so far. I mean, it’s not easy and all, given that we’re working together, but they seem to have gotten the picture that I don’t want anything to do with them.”

She chewed her lip, looking doubtful.

“I can’t believe you were with all three of them,” she blurted out, finally. “All the time I’ve known you, practically, you’ve been a nun, and now?—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I cut her off, glancing over my shoulder toward Matty’s room to make sure he wasn’t overhearing any of this. “It’s just…it’s not a good idea. If they were three random guys, maybe, but they’re not. Everyone knows who they are. And if I’m seen with even one of them, then everyone knows who I am too. And Matty. I can’t risk that.”

“Well, you’re a stronger woman than me,” she admitted as she shrugged off her coat and headed to the kitchen to get herself a drink. “If one of those guys even looked at me in the right way…”

“It’s easier when you’ve got a kid to think about,” I told her, which was mostly the truth. Sometimes, I longed to go to Devon and come clean to him about the fact he was Matty’s father. For so long, when I first became a mom, I had thought about him coming back into our lives and just picking up where he left off, even though I knew it was crazy. There was still a shadow of that left over in my head, as stupid as I knew it was.

“Yeah, and at least you’re not going to be accidentally giving Matty a little brother or sister anytime soon, right?” she joked, and I laughed.

And then, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Fuck.Hold on a damn second. How long had it been since my last period? I had been so busy with work and everything else that I hadn’t really been keeping track of my cycle, but now that I thought about it…

I counted back frantically in my head. I was two weeks late. Two whole weeks. And my cycle was usually pretty regular. I mean, it could easily just be the stress of work combined with the chaos of my personal life causing havoc in my body, or…

Or it could be something else entirely.

“Hey, you okay?” Lana prompted. “You look a little?—”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I brushed her off quickly. No way was I going to havethatconversation with her. “Let’s make the popcorn and get the movie set up, huh…?”

I managed to keep my game face on for the rest of the night. I could hardly pay attention to the movie, which was one that I’d picked, so at least I didn’t have to worry about being confronted with any of the guys at short notice. But my head was spinning as I tried to make sense of what I’d just realized. Could I be…could I be pregnant?

I knew the answer to that question, of course. Icouldbe. Because I’d had unprotected sex with all three of them a little over a month ago, and any one of those times could have been enough to knock me up. Fuck, how stupid could I be? I had already gotten pregnant by accident once, and here I was, out playing with fate as though I didn’t care about myself at all…

I put my arm around Matty as we watched the movie, and he leaned against me. I glanced down at the light from the screen flickering on his face, and felt a pang in my chest. It had just been the two of us for so long. Could I really change that?

By the time the movie was done, I was busting to run down to the pharmacy nearby and grab a pregnancy test. Just to put it out of my mind. Lana seemed to notice there was something wrong asshe hugged me goodbye at the door, pulling back and looking me up and down.

“You sure you’re alright…?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I promised her, pasting a smile on my face as best I could. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure, but if you need anything?—”

“See you!”

I closed the door before she could get out another word, squeezing my eyes shut and leaning back against it as I tried to gather myself. Okay. I would get Matty to bed, and then I would go out to the pharmacy and put this to rest.

“Okay, honey, get washed up and you can go to bed,” I told Matty. He was practically bouncing off the walls, though, after the movie and spending the day with his friend, and it took me the better part of an hour to get him settled and ready to sleep. Finally, I pulled the covers up over him and dropped a kiss on the top of his head. He yawned, clearly exhausted from all the excitement today.

“Love you, baby,” I whispered to him as his eyes drifted shut. Just as soon as I was sure he was asleep, I made a break for the door and rushed down to the all-night pharmacy on the other side of the block. I filled my basket with a few different items, trying to disguise the pregnancy test amongst them, but the pharmacist still hit me with a very hard look when she ran it through the till. I didn’t make eye contact with her, refusing to even entertain that this was happening.

I dashed back to the apartment and headed straight for the bathroom, emptying the bag onto the floor and unwrapping thetest. Checking the instructions, I took it, placed it on the edge of the bath, and started to pace as I counted out the seconds until it would be ready to give me an answer.

I just couldn’t be pregnant. I didn’t know what the hell I woulddoif I was pregnant. Which one of the guys would be the father? Would any of them want anything to do with it? What would they think of me, when they clocked that I wasn’t even able to tell which of the guys I had slept with in order to get knocked up? This was the craziest predicament I had ever been in over the course of my entire life, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was meant to do…

Finally, the seconds dropped away to nothing, and I turned back to the test. Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a deep, shuddering breath before I opened them to look at the result.

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