Page 156 of The Broken Note

“Mom, I already asked you. What is—”

“Plan B.” She spears me with her glazed eyes. I’m stunned when I see genuine fear in them. “You can’t get pregnant, Cadey.”

I blush, feeling exposed. Me? Pregnant? The thought is foreign. I never once dreamed of having a family someday, and I sure as hell don’t dream of having one now.

“Who said I’m pregnant?” I snap.

Mom berates me. “Sex has consequences, girl. It’s a principle. You jump off a roof, gravity doesn’t give a damn about you or what you want for your future. It’s going to pull you down. You sleep with Jarod Cross’s son… it’ll pull you down the same way.” Her eyes cut into me. “You should have never gotten involved with him.”

On that we both agree.

Dutch is temptation wrapped in ink and I kept finding myself under his spell. It’s like he has a hold on me that I can’t break.

“And you should have done this earlier,” mom scolds me. Her hands are trembling as she turns a box over and compares it to the other. “When was the last time you two—?”

“Mom.”

“When?”

I blush harder. “Today.”

Her bottom lip goes stiff.

“But it wasn’t…” My cheeks burn so hard it hurts. “It wasn’t our first time. That was a while ago.”

Mom grits her teeth. “You better hope you didn’t take too long to take your meds.”

“It’s not like I didn’t try,” I mumble. After Dutch took my virginity, I went to ask for medication just in case. The pharmacists said I couldn’t buy the pills if I was under eighteen.

I didn’t freak out about it. Back then, I thought me and Dutch would be a one-and-done thing. I didn’t know he would be this insatiable. I didn’t know… it could happen anywhere, at any time.

And it seems like Dutch wants me all the time.

“Stop.” I push the pills back on the shelf because the only thing worse than buying this by myself is buying it with my mother. “I’ll handle it.”

“Oh, you’ll handle it?” Mom taunts.

“I’ll come back. I swear.” I lower my voice. “But right now, I don’t have enough money to get all this.”

“So you’re going to throw away your future because you don’t have a couple hundred?”

“Dutch and I will talk about—”

She lets loose a cackle so loud, that a couple in the row behind us peer around the corner.

“Dutch isn’t going to take care of this for you, Cadey. Hewantsthis problem.”

My eyebrows knot.

“How could you let him use you?” Mom hesitates, her hands over the pregnancy test. She swipes it into her arms. “How could you be so unbelievably stupid? At the very least, you should have made sure you were on the pill.”

I lower my head. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about this, especially not Breeze who would rake me over the coals for getting this deep into the boy who tortured me.

“If Dutch gets what he wants, it’s over for you,” mom hisses. “Over!”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes dart back and forth as if someone is watching her. “Hurry and pay for this. You’re taking one right now.”

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