Chapter 15 Jamie
Three weeks to the day after I left the cabin, Akari corners me in the kitchen.
"Have you taken the test yet?"
I'm making coffee, measuring out grounds. "No, I’ll do it today."
She crosses her arms and leans against the doorframe. Her expression is the one she uses when she thinks I'm being deliberately obtuse. I’m not.
"It's been over two weeks," she says. "That's when you can test. You know that."
"I'm on contraceptives. It’s unlikely and even if I were pregnant, it’s not going to make a difference if I find out today or tomorrow.
I’ll take it once I’ve had my coffee." I fit the filter to the coffee machine and turn it on.
The machine immediately starts gurgling. "Why does it matter so much to you?"
Akari pushes off the doorframe and comes to stand beside me. Her voice is gentler when she speaks. "Because you told me to keep you honest, but also… you've been weird. Not bad weird, just off. And I want to rule things out."
"I haven't been weird."
"You've been eating pickles."
"I like pickles."
"Since when? You told me they were Satan's cucumbers. Direct quote."
I open my mouth to argue and then close it again.
She's right. I did say that. And I did have a weird craving for pickles, straight from the jar, but that doesn’t mean I’m pregnant.
It just means I had an unusual craving. It happens.
My life has changed completely over the last few months and I’ve spent the last few weeks working round the clock on my latest story.
Maybe my brain has decided it’s been enjoying new experiences.
The coffee maker finishes with a final hiss. I pour myself a mug and take a long sip, buying time.
The truth is, I've been avoiding the test because I don't want to think about the cabin at all.
Every time my mind drifts in that direction, I shut it down hard.
I've been taking the Severex religiously, twice a day as directed, and I think it might actually be working.
The constant pull toward Carter has dulled to something more manageable.
I can go full minutes now without thinking about him.
Taking a pregnancy test means thinking about him, but she’s right. I need to take it and finally draw a line under everything that’s happened.
"Fine." I set down my mug. "I'll pick one up today."
"I already got one." Akari produces a box from behind her pocket like a magician revealing a card. "Picked it up yesterday. Just in case you needed a nudge."
I stare at the box. It's pink and white and aggressively cheerful, with a smiling woman on the front who looks far too happy about peeing on a stick.
"Go on." She pushes the box into my hands. "Might as well get it over with." Akari's expression is worried beneath the teasing, and I know she's only pushing because she cares. That’s who she is. She’s the kind of person who fusses when she’s worried. This is exactly why she’s my best friend.
I take the box and head for the bathroom.
The instructions are simple enough. Pee on the stick, wait three minutes, check the result. One line means negative. Two lines means positive. Even I can handle that.
I do what I need to do and set the test on the edge of the sink. Then I wash my hands, dry them on the towel, and check my reflection in the mirror.
I look normal. Tired, maybe, but I've been tired for months. There's no visible evidence of anything unusual. No glow, no obvious changes. I look exactly like I did before I went to that cabin.
See? I tell myself. Nothing to worry about.
I check the time on my phone. Two minutes left.
I should probably wait in the kitchen with Akari. That's what a normal person would do. But I find myself staying, staring at the little plastic stick like it might do something interesting if I watch closely enough.
One minute.
I think about the cabin. About Carter's hands on my skin, his mouth on my neck, the tender way he held me through the worst of the heat.
Stop it.
I think about the argument instead. The casual cruelty of his words. You want to play with the big boys. The way he defended his family's smear campaign like it was just business and destroying my reputation was simply the cost of doing my job.
Better. Anger is better than whatever that other feeling was.
I pick up the test. The display window is still processing, the result not yet visible. I hold it up to the light like that might speed things along.
Just be negative. Just be one line. Just let me go back to my coffee and my pickle-free existence and my carefully constructed life where Carter Crane doesn't exist.
The second line appears.
I blink.
It's faint but it's definitely there. A thin pink stripe next to the control line, clear and unmistakable.
I stare at it for a long moment. Then I set the test down very carefully on the edge of the sink, as if it might explode if I move too quickly.
Two lines. That means...
I can't finish the thought.
I pick up the test again. Look at it from a different angle. I tilt it toward the light, away from the light. The second line is still there, quiet and damning.
"Jamie?" Akari's voice comes through the door. "Everything okay in there?"
No. Everything is not okay. Everything is the opposite of okay.
"Just a minute," I call back. My voice sounds strange. Distant.
I look at the box. There are two tests inside. Maybe the first one was defective. Maybe I did something wrong. People get false positives all the time, don't they?
I drink three glasses of water and wait twenty minutes and take the second test.
Two lines.
I sit down on the closed toilet lid because my legs don't seem to want to hold me anymore. The bathroom floor is cold tile, the walls are painted a cheerful yellow that Akari chose when we moved in, and I am pregnant with Carter Crane's baby.
Carter Crane's baby.
The words keep repeating in my head, but they don't make sense. I'm pregnant. With Carter Crane's baby.
Carter Crane's baby.
I've been actively trying so hard to purge him from my system and instead he left something behind.
I look down at my stomach. Flat. Normal. Completely unchanged. There's no visible evidence that anything is different, and yet everything is different. Everything has been different for weeks and I didn't even know it.
I was taking Severex while pregnant. The thought arrives with a cold jolt of panic. Is that dangerous? It's not FDA approved. I don't know what's in it. I've been swallowing pills twice a day that might have been doing god knows what to...
To what, exactly?
My hand goes to my stomach automatically, which is ridiculous because there's nothing to feel.
The thing inside me, if the tests are even accurate, is barely more than a cluster of cells.
But my hand stays there anyway, pressed flat against my abdomen like I'm trying to feel a heartbeat that doesn't exist yet.
I should google what Severex does to pregnancies. I should call a doctor. I should do something other than sit here on the toilet with my hand on my belly like a statue.
I don't move.
A knock on the door makes me jump.
"Jamie. You've been in there for almost an hour. I'm starting to get worried."
An hour? I check my phone. She's right. I've been sitting here for nearly sixty minutes, staring at two pink lines on a plastic stick.
I stand up and gather both tests. I open the door.
Akari already knows, of course, she does. Why else would I suddenly hide in the bathroom?
She doesn't say anything. She just pulls me into a hug, and I let her, because I don't know what else to do.
"What do you want to do?" she asks eventually, pulling back.
It's the right question. Not what are you going to do or have you thought about options or any of the other ways people phrase it when they want to steer you toward a particular answer. Just what do you want.
"I don't know," I say honestly.
"That's okay. You don't have to decide anything right now."
"I know."
My mind keeps cycling through the same thoughts, over and over.
I'm pregnant. The father is Carter Crane.
I'm pregnant with Carter Crane's baby. Carter Crane, whose family I exposed.
Carter Crane, who I've been having sex with in secret for months.
Carter Crane, who I cut out of my life two weeks ago.
Carter fucking Crane.
I try to imagine telling him. Picking up a new phone, calling some number I'd have to dig up from somewhere, and saying... what? Hey, remember that week at your cabin? Turns out we made a baby. Surprise.
He'd probably think it was a scheme. He'd wonder if I'd somehow planned it, engineered it to trap him.
"I just need... I need to process," I say out loud.
"Okay." Akari hugs me again. "Whatever you need. I'm here."
"I'm going to lie down for a bit."
"Do you want company?"
"No. Thanks. I just need to be alone."
In my room, I lie on my bed and try to work out what the hell I’m going to do now.
The afternoon light filters through the curtains, casting soft shadows on the walls.
It's a perfectly ordinary day. Birds are singing outside.
Someone is playing music in the apartment below, something with a heavy bass line that I can feel more than hear.
Somewhere out there, Carter Crane is living his life, being the golden boy of a crumbling dynasty. He has no idea that I'm lying here with my hand on my stomach, thinking about a future that includes a piece of both of us.
I put my hand on my stomach again.
Hello, I think, and then feel immediately stupid. It's a clump of cells. It doesn't have ears. It can’t mind read. It doesn't have anything yet.
But my hand stays there anyway.
I think about my mother and how she told me that she'd almost given up hope before I came along and how she'd known, from the first moment she found out she was pregnant, that she'd do anything to protect me.
"You were my miracle," she used to say. "My little miracle."
I never understood what she meant. Now, lying here with my hand pressed to a belly that doesn't look any different than it did yesterday, I think I'm starting to.
She raised me alone. No alpha, no partner, no support except what she could scrape together from two jobs and sheer force of will. And she did it.
I could do that too.
The thought surfaces unbidden, and I don't push it away.
I could do this. On my own, if I had to. I have savings. I have a great career. I have Akari. I'm not my mother, struggling to make ends meet in a system designed to punish single omegas. I have options she never had.
But do I want to?
A baby doesn't fit neatly into my life plans. A baby, especially one fathered by Carter Crane, would complicate everything.
And yet.
My hand is still on my stomach. I can't seem to move it. Lying here in my quiet room with the afternoon sun on my face and my hand pressed to my belly, I already know that I’ve already made my choice because it doesn’t feel like a choice at all.
The little clump of cells is already my child, my son or daughter, and I know I’d do anything for them.
I grab my phone from the nightstand and open the browser. I type "early pregnancy Severex" into the search bar and hold my breath.
The results are sparse. A few forum posts, mostly inconclusive. One person says they took it before they knew and their baby was fine. Another says they miscarried but doesn't know if it was connected. There's nothing concrete.
I should see a real doctor, not Dr. Google. I need actual information from someone who knows what they're talking about.
Tomorrow. I'll make an appointment tomorrow.
For now, I close my eyes and let my hand rest where it is. The music from downstairs has stopped. The room is quiet except for my own breathing.
The only thing I know for sure is that I am keeping my baby and I don’t want Carter to know anything about it.