I don’t care who, as long as it isn’t Owen.
“Go to your room, Emma,” he eventually snaps. “I need you cleaned up and ready. Get rested so we can put on a united front for the rest of the world. Now that you’re back, I need the other Families to see us strong as ever.”
I resist the urge to sigh.
That isn’t what I came for.
But where else am I going to go?
“Yeah, okay. Well I guess I will see you soon then.”
“I’ll call you when I need you, Emma.”
Because of his reaction, I don’t have the strength to see anyone else in the family.
Dad has disappointed me.
I don’t want my brothers to do the same thing.
So I do head up the stairs, with something in mind. Something I haven’t managed to tackle until now, but I suppose I should do this sooner rather than later.
I still haven’t had the time to take those other pregnancy tests yet.
It’ll be even harder now with Owen out of the picture.
But I suppose I need to know.
I have my own bathroom in this house, which means I can do this in private, but that doesn’t make it any less unnerving as I prepare myself for what’s next.
“It might just be stress,” I try to tell myself as I pull out the pregnancy test to take it, trying to calm myself down just a little. “You have just been kidnapped after all.”
But there’s just a small part of me that already knows which way this is going to go. I’ve always been able to rely on my cycle, it’s never let me down before.
I don’t think this is going to be good news.
With a deep breath, before I collapse and sleep for days, I pee on the stick. It feels like an out of body experience, like none of this is really happening, but in a bad way.
Two lines.
Positive.
Holy fuck.
I take another.
And another.
There’s no way they are all false positives.
I’m having a baby with a man who’s vanished, in a world where everyone is fighting over me, wanting to treat me like a fucking commodity.
What the hell do I do now?
I leave the bathroom and sag onto my bed. I close my eyes, but I don’t even get respite. Instead, all I see is horrible images of Owen covered in blood somewhere. Dead. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
I don’t want him to die.
I want him back here in my arms.