Chapter Seventeen – Chelsea
Hunched over the toilet, I tried to hold back the waves of panic that were flooding my body.
I didn’t even know what this was about, this panic. I had been feeling it since my father had driven out to get his hands on Zane again, and I didn’t know what had been happening since. Was Zane okay? Was my father? I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I knew more people had gotten hurt on account of everything that had happened with me, but I was helpless in the face of stopping it. They were in their own battle now, and I couldn’t force them to change their minds.
But this fear, it felt like something else, something other than worry, though I hated to admit it. No, it felt like... it felt like something I couldn’t even consider. Or, at least, what I had always imagined that would feel like.
When the panic had started to grip me a few hours ago, I thought it was just stress or the start of my period. But then I realized it had been weeks since the last time I menstruated. I had been with Zane for the better part of three weeks, plus the days since I had returned to my father, and before that, I had been so caught up in the stress of moving I’d hardly had time to think about my period.
But now, as I tracked it back, I realized it was late. Really late. And I... well, I hadn’t exactly been careful with the sex I’d had with Zane. When I was with him, it felt like all the consequences flew out the window. We were so far removed from the real world that it seemed impossible that anything could really come from what we had shared together.
But now I was back here, in reality once more. I knew there was a chance I was pregnant.
If I was, it was going to make everything even more chaotic.
I had been trying not to think about the possibility, but what choice did I have? The reality of it, it had settled in as I had paced the apartment overnight, thinking about what my father might have been doing. I was sure he would bring Zane back to the Dogs compound, and we lived in an apartment right opposite it, so I was able to keep an eye all evening to see if he was there, but no sign of him yet...
Which gave me a chance to run to the all-night pharmacy and get my hands on a pregnancy test, just to get this stupid thought out of my head. Because there was no way I had actually gotten pregnant from the few times we were together, just no way. I refused to believe that. Yes, I had been reckless in doing it without protection, but still... there was no way that the universe would have thrown something that crazy at me. After everything else that had happened, didn’t I deserve a break...?
But I knew damn well that wasn’t how it worked. The universe didn’t just benevolently give you a break from the hardship because you were due one. No. If anything, when the shit hit the fan, it dumped even more craziness on your plate and left you to deal with it all alone. Which was what I was facing now.
But I could handle it. I could. I was going to have to, wasn’t I? I had picked up the pregnancy test, not bothering to hide it from the cashier. My head was too busy, too full of the nightmare unfolding around me to bother with any of that.
And now, it was sitting on the bathtub beside me as I tried to keep myself from throwing up, hanging over my head like a threat. I had to take it. I had to just get it over with.
I forced myself to sit up, leaning my back against the door and staring at the small packet sitting opposite me. It didn’t look like it could ruin my life, did it? It seemed almost innocent, planted there a few feet away from me, but I knew the results of this test could change everything, everything I had ever been through, everything I was about to face. I had no idea what I would do if it was positive.
But I needed to actually take the damn thing before I found that out, didn’t I? I snatched the box up, tearing it open and pouring the contents into my hand. I read the instructions quickly. These things were meant to be easy, right? Just pee on the stick, wait a few minutes, and then you had your answer.
I grabbed the stick, took the test, and sat it on the floor in front of me. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to come up right now. Negative would have been the sensible answer, but there was a part of me, a stupid part of me, that wanted something... some connection between Zane and I, something that would keep us tied together, even though we were apart right now.
And this would be exactly that.
It was three minutes I had to wait, and they were the longest three minutes of my entire life. I tapped on the floor, drumming my fingers against the familiar tile as I waited for it to come up.
Come on, come on...
And then, the small box flashed up with two pink lines.
Positive. That meant positive, didn’t it? I flipped the box over in my shaking hands, double-checking, making sure I had gotten it right, and sure enough...
That’s exactly what it meant. I stared down at the test for a long moment, my ears ringing with the pure shock of it all. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It had to be some kind of mistake...
I grabbed the other test out of the box and took it as well, just needing to make sure I had actually seen the right answer because I felt like this must have been some kind of mistake. No way could this be real. It was a false positive, something like that. I just refused to believe it could be...
But the second test came back positive, too. And I knew the chances of that happening were pretty slim. Next to zero. If both of these tests said I was pregnant...
Then chances were I was actually pregnant.
I slumped back against the bath, sickness stirring in my guts again. Could this be real? It felt like a dream, like a nightmare, like some overlap of the two, and I didn’t know where reality ended and this began.
But before I could linger on it too long, I heard the door to the apartment open. I quickly scrabbled to gather all of the evidence of what I had just been doing and stuffed it down the back of the toilet, vowing to myself that I would get rid of it just as soon as I got the chance.
Pushing open the door, I found my father standing in the hallway, his jacket over one arm, his eyes gleaming with a look I hadn’t seen before.
“What happened?” I asked him, hardly sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“What are you doing up?” he replied, frowning.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied. “I... what happened, Dad?”
He grinned, his face lighting up.
“We got him, Chelsea. We got him.”
And I had to bite back tears as I tried to figure out just what that meant. Not just for me—but for our baby, too.