Page 5 of Pregnant in Plaid
Two pink lines.
One impossible situation.
And approximately seven months to figure out what the hell I'm going to do.
I pull the pregnancy test out of my pocket and stare at it one more time, as if maybe the lines will have changed their minds. They haven't. They're still there, still pink, still certain.
"Alright, raspberry," I murmur to my stomach. "Looks like it's you and me against the world. Let's try not to screw this up too badly."
The test goes into my purse, buried under receipts and lip gloss and the wreckage of my five-year plan.
I pull up my calendar and stare at the January interview date. Four months away. Four months to figure out how to tell a man I don't know how to contact, without involving Tessa who I also haven’t told, that he's going to be a father.
Four months to decide if I'm brave enough—or stupid enough—to walk back into his life.
My hand drifts to my stomach one last time. "Looks like we're going to Alaska, raspberry. Try not to judge me too hard for what happens next.”
Chapter 1
Trace
The chisel slips, and I nearly carve a chunk out of my thumb instead of the eagle's wing I'm working on. Which would be bad for multiple reasons—bleeding all over the workshop, explaining to customers why their commemorative Alaska statue has DNA evidence embedded in it, and the fact that I need all ten fingers to do literally anything useful.
I set down the tool and flex my hand, staring at the half-finished carving like it personally offended me. It didn't. I'm just distracted, which is unprofessional and stupid and entirely the fault of a woman who left my cabin six months ago without so much as a goodbye.
"Get it together, MacKenzie," I mutter, picking up sandpaper to smooth the rough edges. "She was one night. One really good night, but still. One."
The picture of my dog, Kodiak—Kodi for short—sits with his head lifted where he was sprawled acrossthe workshop floor, giving me a look that clearly says, You're talking to yourself again. This is concerning.
"Don't judge me," I tell the picture. "You licked your own ass for entertainment."
The thing is, I can't stop thinking about her. Patrice. With her sharp wit and sharper laugh, the way she looked at me like I was actually interesting instead of just another small-town guy with wood shavings in his hair. She was confident and funny and had this way of tilting her head when she listened that made me want to tell her everything.
Also, she was gorgeous. Like, stupid gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that makes you forget how to form complete sentences and suddenly understand why people write terrible poetry.
We danced. We laughed. We went back to my place and proceeded to have the kind of night that should come with a warning label: May cause obsessive thoughts, recurring daydreams, and the inability to look at your bed without remembering what happened there.
And then she vanished.
Gone. Poof. Disappeared like a sexy, sarcastic Cinderella who didn't even leave a shoe behind, just the faint scent of her perfume on my pillow and a crushing sense of what the hell just happened.
I checked with Gage the next day—casually, because I'm not a complete disaster—and he said she'dalready flown back to Florida. Didn't leave a number. Didn't ask for mine. Just... left.
Which, fine. I'm an adult. I can handle a one-night stand. People do it all the time. It doesn't have to mean anything.
Except it did. At least to me.
I've tried to move on. I've gone on exactly two dates since she left, both set up by well-meaning friends who seem to think I'm too young to live alone in the woods like a slightly feral hermit. Date one was with a nice woman named Sarah who talked about her ex-boyfriend for forty-five minutes straight. Date two was with another nice woman named Michelle who asked if I wanted kids within the first ten minutes.
"Eventually?" I'd said, caught off guard.
"How many?" she'd pressed.
"Uh... two? Three? I don't know, I haven't really?—"
"I want five," she'd announced. "Minimum."
I'd made an excuse about an early morning and never called her back.
