Chapter One
~ Carter ~
It turned out that the little plastic sticks lied a hell of a lot less than people did. Five sticks, five identical results. The universe had a sense of humor and it was the color pink.
The bathroom in my penthouse in Fort Worth was a shrine to minimalism—white marble, slate tile, a mirror big enough to reflect all my worst decisions.
The light over the vanity was less “spa retreat” and more “police interrogation,” which meant every line, bruise, and defect on my skin was thrown into high definition.
I could see the veins in my eyelids, the trembling in my jaw. But mostly I could see the test in my hand, the two lines as bold and permanent as a prison tattoo.
I braced myself against the quartz counter, not because I was dramatic but because the room had started to list sideways.
For a second, I pictured the stick flying out of my hand, shattering the mirror and punctuating the moment with a dramatic rain of glass.
But that would require energy, and these days my bones felt filled with sand.
The dizziness passed, replaced by the usual chorus of symptoms: morning nausea, a tongue that tasted like pennies, and a craving so perverse I’d started hiding jars of pickles in the linen closet.
Last week I’d dipped a spear in Nutella and eaten it in the shower, standing under hot water so no one would hear me retch after.
Pregnant. Fucking pregnant. Like a goddamn afterschool special.
My fingers drifted to my stomach, hovering just above the waistband of my sweatpants. I didn’t look different yet, not really. But if I squinted, I could make out the faintest rise, a swelling that had no right to exist on a body maintained by intermittent fasting and shame.
I pressed my palm there, feeling for anything that could prove it was real.
Maybe it was a joke. Maybe the tests were expired, or maybe all five had been manufactured by a prank company out of Ohio. I pictured some guy in a warehouse cackling as he stamped DOUBLE POSITIVE on a case of discount tests, then shipping them straight to the CVS on 54th.
Statistically possible, right?
I turned the stick over. “Clinical Guard,” it said, in blocky sans-serif. The font of doom.
I laughed, which hurt my chest and made my stomach spasm. I grabbed the edge of the counter, knuckles going white.
In the mirror, my face looked thinner than I remembered. The circles under my eyes were no longer a beauty mark, but a warning. My hair was down, damp from a too-hot shower, the color muddier than usual. I hadn’t bothered with product, so the strands clung to my temples in defeat.
For a moment, I stood frozen, like one of those forensic models of a disaster victim, preserved at the moment of impact.
Then I snapped out of it. Steele family rule: When faced with catastrophe, do not weep, do not panic, do not call for help. Clean up, dress up, show up. Preferably in something that retails for four figures.
I set the test stick on the counter, lined up neatly with its four predecessors like a firing squad. I swept them into a paper bag and knotted the top, then tossed the whole mess into the trash can under the sink. There was a brief, echoing rattle as they hit the metal, and then silence.
My phone was on the counter. I unlocked it, thumbs moving by muscle memory to the search bar.
“Can pregnancy tests be wrong?” I typed.
The search results were a car crash of forums, medical sites, and the odd anecdote about a woman who only discovered her baby at seven months when it kicked her so hard she thought her appendix had exploded.
I read three articles, none of which helped.
I put the phone down.
I thought about the last two months. The headaches that wouldn’t quit, the morning sprints to the toilet, the heaviness in my limbs.
The cravings that started as a joke—Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I ate this ice cream with sriracha?
—and escalated into a covert operation to restock the fridge every night so the housekeeper wouldn’t get suspicious.
I hadn’t told anyone. Not the doctor, not the siblings, not even the group chat I maintained for the sole purpose of sharing pictures of baby goats and conspiracy theory memes.
I hadn’t told Macon. Of course I hadn’t. The man had ghosted before the sheets cooled.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced the thought away. No, not Macon. Not now. Not ever again.
But it was useless. The memory of that night was burned into my skull, as vivid as if it was happening in the room with me.
His hands on my hips, rough, but careful. The heat of his mouth on my skin. The way he had looked at me—not like a conquest, but like a discovery. Like he was reading my DNA, cell by cell, and finding nothing worth erasing.
And then, the next morning, nothing. No note. No trace. Just a cold spot in the hay, the barn door swinging on its hinges. I’d walked home with a limp and a mouthful of apologies I’d never get to say.
I opened my eyes, counted to ten, then reached for the faucet. The water was ice cold, but I splashed it on my face anyway, letting it shock me back to the present.
I had made it through worse. I had made it through years of being invisible, of being the family mascot, the punch line, the mistake they didn’t want to admit to. I could make it through this.
I straightened up, set my jaw, and looked myself in the eye. “No more tears,” I said, voice flat. “You already know how this goes.”
The mirror didn’t answer. It just stared back, impassive, waiting to see if I would blink first.
I didn’t.
I should have gone back to bed, or at least to the kitchen, where the leftover takeout and half-eaten chocolate bars waited for my midnight shame spiral.
Instead, I stayed. The overhead lights hummed, a relentless neon that made my head throb in time with my pulse.
I perched on the edge of the tub, still in my suit pants from work.
The porcelain was freezing through the fabric, numbing my thighs.
I pressed my knees together and waited for my heart to stop racing.
In my hand, my phone vibrated, a silent alert that someone somewhere needed me to reply. I ignored it, staring instead at my own reflection in the chrome faucet.
One phone call. That’s all it would take.
I knew the number by heart: my doctor, the one on retainer for the Steele family’s embarrassing medical problems. He’d done my stitches after the ski accident in Aspen.
He’d patched up my older brother Barrett more times than a Formula One pit crew.
He specialized in discretion and invoices with extra zeroes.
I hovered my thumb over the number.
I imagined the conversation. “Hi, I need to schedule a procedure. No, I can’t come to the office. No, my family can’t know. Yes, I’m sure.” He’d take care of it. A car would arrive, blacked-out windows, a nurse with no name. By morning, there would be no trace.
Just a new, emptier kind of ache.
The thought made my stomach turn—not the pregnancy nausea, but a different, deeper sickness. Something cold and ancient that crept up my spine and told me to run.
I put the phone face-down on the edge of the tub and stared at the grout lines on the wall. They weren’t perfectly straight. I’d never noticed before.
I thought about the baby inside me—no bigger than a thumbprint, but already more alive than most of the people I’d ever met. I pictured its heart, tiny and determined, beating away in the darkness. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel it: a second pulse beneath my own, stubborn and impossible.
My other hand drifted to my belly again, flattening against the soft, unfamiliar curve. There was a gentleness to the motion I didn’t expect. Like I was apologizing for something I hadn’t even done yet.
Another vibration from the phone, this time a text from Barrett. “Dad wants to know if you’re coming for the board dinner tomorrow. He’s getting impatient. Don’t be late.”
I imagined the look on my father’s face if he ever found out.
The contempt. The cold, glacial disappointment reserved for things that couldn’t be fixed with money or power.
He’d always seen my omega status as a defect, an evolutionary dead end.
I’d overheard him telling Barrett once, “At least you’re a real man. That one’s just a... well, you know.”
Yeah, I knew.
If I had the baby, if anyone found out, there’d be no end to it. The PR team would swing into action, the lawyers would have a field day, and my life would collapse into a spectacle of shame and legalese.
But for the first time in years, I felt something like resolve. Not hope—not yet—but the ghost of it.
I closed my eyes, drew a shaky breath, and remembered the other scar, the one on my left wrist. The family never talked about that, either.
After the hospital, Dad had flown me to a “wellness center” in Switzerland, where the only rule was no questions.
I learned to hide the mark, but it itched in winter, especially when I was sad.
I ran my thumb across it now, a nervous tic.
I thought about the thing inside me, the tiny scrap of a person with my DNA and maybe his eyes and maybe his hands. I thought about what it would mean to give it up, to let it be erased before it even had a chance.
And I thought about Macon, the one person who made me feel substantial instead of invisible. Even if it was only for one night.
I let out a sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh. I pressed my palm to my belly and rocked forward, folding over myself. “You’re safe,” I whispered, the words sticking in my throat. “I won’t let him touch you. I won’t let anyone.”
I stayed like that for a long time, hunched and shaking, until the sun started to leak into the sky outside my window, turning the white tile pink.
* * * *