Page 54 of The Wedding Hoax

I didn’t know why it felt like such a big deal to me, since I pretty much knew what the answer was going to be: Not Pregnant.

I comforted myself with the thought as I stepped into my bathroom back at Harry’s home. I did the usual song and dance, peeing on the stick and trying my best to pretend like I didn’t care about the results.

Because I didn’t care. Because I couldn’t care.

Because being invested in the results was historically a very good way to end up with a broken heart.

I pushed the memories away as I waited for the results to pop up on the screen. Memories of Jace trying to comfort me after another negative result. Memories of trying to hold back the tears. Memories of feeling so hopeless, so helpless—

No.

I couldn’t let myself spiral like that. This was different, wasn’t it? This time, I wanted the test to be negative.

I wanted the test to give me its usual answer. I wanted things to be the same as they always were—

“Oh my God.”

My hands shook as I held the test, an unfamiliar reading appearing across the screen.

Pregnant.

“Pregnant?” I mouthed the word, my body feeling almost too heavy to stand. “I’m pregnant?”

I sank down against the side of the bathtub, needing something to lean on for support.

“How?” I turned the test over in my hand, like it was a sacred artifact from a museum. “How is that even possible?”

I needed to tell Taylor. I needed to tell my mom.

Crap.

I needed to tell my OB/GYN!

I reached for my phone, hastily dialing my gynecologist’s number, now desperate for an appointment.

21

HARRY

“Is there a reason we’re not having dinner out on the patio on such a lovely night?” Simone asked as she rolled Eileen into the dining room. “And is there a reason we had to use the side entrance to get in the main house?”

It turned out that getting the bare bones of a greenhouse built in a day wasn’t impossible, it was just very, very expensive. It also didn’t help that the greenhouse had to be built as far away as possible from Eileen’s guesthouse, with added instructions for the builders to be as quiet as mice.

Of course, quiet as mice involved me adding a few thousand dollars onto their invoice.

Still, I was pleased with the fruit of Paul’s idea. I was so pleased that I could hardly contain my excitement–which was a problem since Simone and Eileen were in a sour kind of mood.

Shit.

Did they get bad news about Eileen’s surgery?

“Is everything all right?” I asked. “How did the appointment go?”

“The appointment went great.” Eileen immediately brightened. “I’m a good candidate for the surgery. They just need to run a few more tests.”

That same brightness then faded away as she went on. “I think it’s just a lot to handle. I’ve never had a chance like this before. But it’s not a miracle cure. It’s possible that they perform the surgery and nothing changes for me. Or they somehow make things worse.”

“We made the mistake of looking up the success rates for something like this,” Simone added. “I think maybe we got ahead of ourselves when we got the good news from the doctor.”

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