Page 9 of Savage Love

“You said the smoothies were fine when you were pregnant,” I protest weakly as we go back out to the car. “So maybe itisjust a stomach bug since I can’t keepanythingdown.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Isabella says darkly as she starts the car.

I don’t want to take the tests with her hovering over me, as well-intentioned as I know her worry is. I know she’s trying to take care of me in the absence of our mother, that she’s trying to be a good older sister and protect me. But I need some time with my own thoughts before I can handle anyone else’s.

“Can you wait somewhere else while I do this?” I ask her as we stand in the hall, the plastic bag containing the boxes in my hand. “I just—I need some privacy.”

Isabella presses her lips together. “Won’t you need help figuring it out? I mean, I’ve done it before—”

“I can manage. Just—please. You can come check on me in a little while. I need to do this by myself.”

What I don’t say, because I know what her reaction would be, is that the only person I want waiting with me while I find out whether or not I’m pregnant is Levin. But he’s hundreds of miles away—and he made it very clear that he doesn’t think I should contact him again.

The act of getting ready to take the test is oddly comforting. There’s an intensity to it, a means of focusing on something other than my own anxiety as I read the instructions. It’s simple enough. I tell myself that it’s nothing, that I just drank some bad water in Rio, or I picked up the flu from someone else—even though if it was the flu, surely someone else in the house would be sick by now. I take the test, and then I stand at the sink, staring down at it as if I can convince it to be negative just by wishing hard enough.

One pink line appears almost instantly. I sink my teeth into my lower lip, willing that to be it. Willing it not to change further.

And then another line appears.

It doesn’t seem real at first. I convince myself that it’s not real, that it must be an error. A bad test. There are two boxes in the drugstore bag, four tests total, and I take all of them before I find myself sitting on the tile floor in front of the same sink, the tests scattered around me, all of them with the same result.

Added up, eight pink lines in total. All of them are bright and clear and without the slightest doubt.

I’m pregnant.

Tears well up in my eyes, both from the shock and complete unknown of it as well as the sharp, piercing knowledge that Levin isn’t here. He’ll find out at some point—whatever my decision is, I’ll need to let him know. I can’t go my whole life keeping that a secret from him, even if I never see him again, and I don’t want to. Iwantto tell him. But we’ll never have the moment where I open the door and show him the result, for good or for ill. There was no chance of him standing in the bathroom with me, watching the lines appear.

For this, I’m all alone.

I know I won’t be, whatever comes. If I want to keep the baby, Isabella will help me. Niall will tell me to stay for as long as I want or need to. I have family here, safety, security, and support. It’s more than a lot of girls my age, in my position, with the kinds of expectations my family had for me would have. I know I’m lucky. If I had wanted Isabella in here with me, she would have been.

But I wanted Levin. And he’s the only thing I can’t have.

I crack the door open a little and call for Isabella. A few moments later, I hear her footsteps hurrying down the hall, and then she pushes the door open, looking down at me with her hair starting to come out of her ponytail, a little loose around her face.

“Elena–” She starts to say my name, as if to ask me the question that I know she’s been waiting to ask for half an hour now, and then she sees the look on my face and the tests scattered around me. “Oh, Elena.”

That’s what does it—what tips me over the edge into tears. I let out a small, strangled sob, tears welling up in my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. Isabella instantly comes into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and sinking down onto the floor next to me, her hand wrapping around mine.

She sits there with me for several long moments in silence, her thumb rubbing back and forth against the back of my hand, while I cry. I cry and cry, until I feel entirely wrung out, even more so than I had this morning. Then I wipe my other hand across my face, blowing my nose as Isabella hands me a wad of tissue.

“Let’s go sit down somewhere more comfortable,” she says finally, “and we’ll figure out what to do.”

I don’t realize that Niall is still home until we go out to the living room, and I catch a glimpse of him in the kitchen as we pass, Aisling in her high chair as he feeds her bites of cereal. I wince, because I don’t really want him to know about this yet, but there’s nothing for it now. He’s going to find out—and he would have eventually, anyway, so I don’t suppose it really matters.

Isabella goes to the living room with me, sitting me down on the couch. “It’s going to be okay,” she tells me, squeezing my hand. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I think she means for me to not hear their conversation, but it’s hard not to, as angry as she is. I can tell that she’s trying to keep her voice down, but Isabella has never been good at hiding her emotions or keeping them in check.

“You need to tell him to get thefuckback to Boston,” I hear her hiss angrily. “He…irresponsible…now Elena…kiddingme?”

I only catch snippets, but it’s enough to guess at what she’s saying and just how pissed she is. Even Niall has a terse edge to his voice, but I hear him trying to reassure her, to talk her down.

“How do you think Aisling got here, lass? We weren’t exactly careful, either–”

“Stopmaking this about us! This is about mysister, and that man was meant to protect her. You and I were never—”

Her voice lowers then, and I don’t hear what comes after that, but frustration wells up in me, mingled with the aching sadness that seems to have settled into a yawning pit in my chest.

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