Page 37 of Their Virgins Secret

Burke felt his hands tighten into fists. He knew how much Jessa meant to his brother. Cole had gone off on a two day drunk the day they got word she’d married someone else. Burke wasn’t sure Cole hadn’t been trying to kill himself since. He’d been reckless. Dangerous. Never around the women they had saved, but since he’d learned about Jessa’s marriage, he’d taken chances he wouldn’t have before.

Cole had accepted the loss not because he didn’t love her, but because he didn’t think he deserved her or that she could ever love him in return.

His mouth a flat line, Cole turned back to him. “I’ll kill Marco. My wedding gift to you two. I’ll kill him for her if it’s the last thing I do. ”

Burke was suddenly afraid that Cole’s words would prove all too true.

* * * *

Eleven months earlier, February 14 – New York City

“What did you say?” Jessa asked, her mind not able to really register the doctor’s words.

The middle-aged woman looked entirely competent in her white coat. “You’re pregnant. ”

Pregnant. With child. Knocked up. Left behind.

“But I was on birth control,” she sputtered.

The doctor shrugged. She worked a low cost clinic for women. She’d obviously heard it all before. “No birth control is one hundred percent effective. I noticed on your chart that you came in and got the prescription about seven weeks ago. Did our pharmacist explain how it worked? You have to take them every day. ”

She wasn’t stupid. “I know that. ”

“And you should use condoms for the first month. It takes some time for the hormones to take effect in your body. ” The doctor raised her eyebrows over very sensible looking glasses. “Did she go over all of that with you?”

Jessa shook her head, the reality starting to set in. “I told her I didn’t need a lecture. I was running late to a meeting. I thought I knew what I was doing. ”

“You’ve never had girlfriends who were on the pill?” the doctor asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“No. ” She’d never had real girlfriends, period. Not since sixth grade when her father decided she was far too smart to stay behind with her friends. She’d been accelerated, moved through grades with no thought to her social life. She hadn’t had one. She’d studied and when she could, worked on her art. She’d been far too young to be friends with her classmates. She’d gotten used to being alone.

Except for one week when she’d thought, just for a moment, that she wasn’t any more. Tears spilled on her cheeks.

“Oh, sweetie,” the doctor said, her demeanor changing in an instant. “It’s going to be okay. Can you call the father?”

Which one? She shook her head. She wasn’t going to go into her ménage relationship now. “I lost his number. ”

The doctor took Jessa’s hand in hers. “You should look him up. He should know what’s happened. Look, you have options. ”

“No. I want my baby. ”

“Good. You’re not a child. You have a job. You can come here for your appointments. It’s going to be okay. But he should know. ”

The doctor gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and left her to get dressed.

Twenty minutes later, she walked out, the frozen blast of Manhattan air hitting her straight in the chest. What she hadn’t told the doctor was that she’d already tried to find them. After she’d realized she had lost the number, she’d tried looking them up. She knew they lived in Dallas. She knew the name of their business.

Except it didn’t exist. Neither did they.

She walked back toward the hotel where she had to tell her sweet but flighty aunt that she was in trouble again. She was jostled and shoved by the crowd. She was surrounded by a throng of humanity, but she was alone.

They weren’t coming back. They had used her, and in what seemed to be the cruelest way possible. If they had just told her what they wanted, she might have gone along anyway, but she wouldn’t have fallen in love. She would have guarded her heart.

But they had told her they loved her.

A ruthless little lie.

She was alone. Except she wasn’t any more. Her hand went to her belly. She would never be alone again. She would have someone who needed her, whom she couldn’t let down. She’d spent weeks drowning in her own misery with tears, but she couldn’t do that now. She had a baby to think of.

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