Page 43 of Devil to Pay: Cutter

His response: Sexual healing ;-)

I roll my eyes. He may never want sexual healing from me ever again. The whole way to Middlesboro, Dusty tries to calm me down, probably to prevent my jackhammering foot from punching a hole through Reaper’s floorboard.

“Calm down,” she says. “It’s going to be all right.”

“All right? How can I be somebody’s mother? Does anything about me saynurturing and stable?”

“Yes.”

I stare at her blankly. What? Cutter and I have been together, like, two seconds. How is that stability? She clicks the blinker, turning into the parking lot of her office. We climb out, going in the backdoor as usual.

Dusty washes her hands and puts a clean lab coat on over her weekend clothes, then she walks over to the supply closet. She rips open the crinkly packaging of a cup. “Take this to the bathroom.”

“You want me to pee into it, right?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I grumble as I grab the cup from her while stomping toward the bathroom.

It’s not her fault and I know I shouldn’t be taking it out on her. Once in the bathroom, I drop my drawers, sit on the toilet then position the cup and… nothing. The pressure and nerves are giving me apparent pee-formance anxiety.

There are ways to make yourself go. I just have to remember. Wait—if I turn on the sink faucet, the sound should help, I think. I lean over to turn on the tap. The twinges have started but nothing more.

Fucking great.

Since I don’t know what else to do, I move my left hand into the stream of sink water while holding the cup in place with my right. It takes another minute, but I swear I could cry when I’m actually able to fill the cup a quarter of the way.

So gross. I wipe my hand off, pull up my pants, and wash my hands. Then I flush, rewash my hands, and bring Dusty the sample.

She ushers me into one of the exam rooms and tells me to wait. I hate waiting. After a few minutes, she walks back into the exam room. “Okay, girlie. Here’s the deal: I can do a blood test if you want, but the pee test says you are definitely pregnant.”

“No.”

“Can’t justnothis away.”

“But I can’t be pregnant. We use condoms and I have one of those implants.”

“An IUD?”

I shake my head, lifting up my arm, I point to the underside.. “No. An implant.”

“Condoms, although quite reliable, aren’t one hundred percent effective. How long have you had the implant?”

“I don’t know. I think I got it when I was sixteen.”

“Aja, those only last four years.”

Four?I thought it was like seven or eight years. “And those test are never wrong?” I’m beginning to feel the bile rise up in my throat.

“Not with positives. Only in very rare cases when there’s something else wrong causing the hormone increase.”

And now that I think about it, I don’t know that Cutter always used a condom. What is wrong with me? Before him, I never, and that’s a sticking point,neverlet a man inside me without a full wrap.

“I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do.” When I look up at Dusty, she has a pen and a file in hand.

“When was your last period?”

“What?”

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