Page 7 of Savage Love

It’s been nearly a month since I arrived in Boston, and for the last few weeks, I’ve felt varying degrees of sick. When it started, we chalked it up to exhaustion from everything that had happened. I can still hear Isabella’s voice in my head—a plane crash, running all over the city, sleeping in uncomfortable motels, trying to get back home. Of course, you don’t feel well. You’ve probably barely slept in weeks.

I didn’t tell her that for a lot of those nights, I’d slept perfectly well, tired and satisfied after Levin and I were finished or nestled up next to him. That wouldn’t have helped anything, because if there’s one thing I figured out very quickly, it was that Isabella was determined to blame Levin for anything that might have gone wrong, or was wrong with me.

From what I gathered, overhearing a few conversations, Levin and Niall were quite close. Isabella knew him slightly less well, but there wasn’t any indication that once upon a time, she hadn’t liked him well enough. It was just that once he had something to do with me that she didn’t approve of, she decided there must have been something off about him all along.

I’d tried to tell her that I was fine, to get her to focus all that motherly instinct on Aisling and not on me. Still, she took our parents’ insistence that she needed to take care of me very much to heart. It wasn’t all that strange—Isabella has always taken care of me, all our lives…but it was dialed up to eleven after this. As I steadily started to feel worse, she became more and more concerned.

For the past week, I’ve been certain I have a stomach flu. I’ve barely been able to keep anything down, throwing up after every meal, only able to manage to drink a protein shake here and there, water, and the occasional bland soup. Isabella has pestered me nonstop to go to the doctor, worried that I picked up some parasite in Rio or an exotic disease, but I haven’t wanted to go. I’ve convinced her to put it off again and again, telling her I’ll go if I don’t feel better next week—and I know it’s at least partially because, in the back of my mind, there’s another worry as to why I might be so sick.

I’m surprised Isabella hasn’t latched onto it yet.

The thought reoccurs just as I’m forced to lean over the toilet again.

“I’m making you a doctor’s appointment.”

Isabella’s voice from the doorway makes me jump, just as I’m reaching for a piece of toilet paper to wipe off my mouth. “You scared me,” I gasp, standing up unsteadily, and she lets out a sigh.

“I knocked, but you didn’t hear me. Elena, this is the eighth day straight I’ve heard you puking from the moment you wake up. You’ve got to go to the doctor.”

“I hate doctors.” I reach for the mouthwash, feeling exhausted. I also hate throwing up. I feel like every ounce of energy has been drained out of me.

“I know, but Elena—” Isabella runs one hand through her thick black hair, and I can see shadows under her eyes. It makes me feel guilty, because I don’t think it’s just from Aisling keeping her up. My niece is a surprisingly good baby—she sleeps through the night more often than not, from what I can tell. “When was your last period?”

There it is.I turn to see Isabella giving me a narrow look, and I know she’s been hanging onto this question for a while, waiting to see if it needed asking. I guess, at this point, she’s decided that it does.

I try to think.Surely it hasn’t been that long?But I hadn’t needed anything for it the entire time we were in Rio. I didn’t need anything before then. I can’t recall where I was in my cycle when Diego kidnapped me or when Levin and I finally—on the beach….

My cheeks flush red as I think of the many, many times we had sex without protection. I’d told myself it was fine every time, that surely it was harder to get pregnant than it seemed, that my mother had always said women needed to be in an exact point in their cycles to conceive, something she’d told us to keep in mind if we wanted to plan out the children we had with our husbands. And truthfully, at the moment—I had never been able to make myself care. The pleasure of the moment with Levin had always been what I wanted—the possible consequences were something for a future version of me to worry about.

Well, now you’re that future version of yourself. And it’s probably time to start worrying.

“Elena?” Isabella prompts, and my cheeks flush deeper. I hear her sigh, and I know she can see how hard I’m blushing. “Was it only the one time, on the beach? When you thought you weren’t going to make it off?”

I should tell her yes. That we only did it once. That if my reason for puking every morningisthe reason I’m most afraid of, it was because of one split-second decision made when we both thought we were going to die. But I take too long to answer, and my sister isn’t an innocent virgin any longer, either. She knows enough to know what happened in Rio.

“I’m going to kill him,” she says through gritted teeth. “Please tell me he at least bought condoms, when the two of you—”

My silence tells her everything she needs to know. When I finally find the nerve to look up at her, the furious expression in her eyes tells me that she’s found another reason to be utterly and completely pissed at Levin.

“You’ve got to befuckingkidding me,” she grinds out through her teeth. “He didn’t use a fuckingcondom? Sweet Christ, Elena, he pulled out at least, right?”

“I really don’t want to talk about this—” I’m blushing so hard it feels like my face is going to melt.

“It’s past the point where you get to be shy about this.” Isabella crosses her arms over her chest. “That time was when you were staying in hotel rooms with a man almosttwenty years olderthan you–”

“Areyoumy mother now?” The words come out more sharply than I mean for them to, but I feel like warmed-over death, my stomach doing flips again despite the fact that there’s absolutely nothing left in it for me to throw up. I’m so tired of Isabella hating Levin for something that I pushed him to, again and again, something that I wanted every bit as bad as he did, despite how convinced she seems to be that he must have taken advantage of me by virtue of his age and experience, no matter how much I had a say in it too.

“No,” Isabella says tartly. “But it seems like you’re about to be one.”

The two of us face each other from opposite ends of the bathroom counter, and the silence stretches out for several long moments, the words hanging between us.

Isabella lets out a long breath finally. “I’m sorry, Elena,” she says, leaning against the doorway. “It’s just—this isn’t what I wanted for you. You know it’s not what our parents wanted for you when they sent you here. We’re supposed to be talking about enrolling you in college classes in the fall and if you want to start going to yoga with me, not—”

“You hate yoga.” I feel my lips twitch in what might be the start of a smile, and I wonder if I’m going to laugh or cry.

“I do hate yoga,” Isabella admits. “But I hate cardio more, and after the baby—”

It’s an absolutely ridiculous thing for her to say—she looks every bit as perfect as she always has, and from that one conversation I overheard between her and Niall, I’m certain he thinks the same. I look at her, feeling my eyes burn with the start of tears, wondering if, in eight or nine months, I’m going to be thinking the same thing.

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