Chapter 3 Two Lines
By the third week I told myself it was just stress. The nausea, the dizziness, it had to be my nerves trying to survive the constant panic. I hadn’t been sleeping. I barely drank water. The nightmares didn’t help.
It made sense… didn’t it?
But deep down, something felt off. My body ached in ways that didn’t make sense. I’d catch myself pressing a hand against my stomach without realizing it, like I was trying to hold myself together from the inside out.
I tried to keep busy. I cleaned the apartment until my fingers bled, rearranged furniture, scrubbed the walls like maybe I could wash away the shame clinging to me.
I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore.
My skin looked pale, my eyes hollow, I looked like someone who’d been through a war and lost.
One night I found myself scrolling through old photos: me and Payton laughing over coffee, me and Nick at the beach with his arm around my shoulders, Apple grinning in the background. My chest hurt so badly I could hardly breathe.
Then came the morning I almost fainted.
I stood up too fast and the room tilted. The edges of my vision went black. I grabbed the counter and breathed shallowly. My stomach twisted, but there was nothing to bring up, just bitter air and the sharp taste of bile.
That’s when the thought finally crossed my mind. What if this isn’t stress?
Panicked, I checked my calendar.
Two weeks late.
Suddenly, the nausea, the fatigue, the dizziness, they all made sense. And if I was right, if I was really pregnant, then everything was even more complicated than I’d imagined.
Nick hadn’t spoken to me since the wedding. He’d blocked every call and message. It felt like I had been erased.
For the last week I’d been hiding indoors because every time I stepped outside I felt the weight of a thousand eyes. I was hiding. I was cowardly. But today I had to leave the apartment.
I had to know.
At the pharmacy, I moved quietly through the aisles, trying to make myself small.
It didn’t help.
I could feel the stares anyway. The weight of them pressing against my skin, following me from one shelf to the next. Conversations dipped when I passed, then picked back up in low murmurs.
Riverton was too small for anonymity. Too small for mistakes. Everyone thought they knew everything about everyone. And when they didn’t, they filled in the gaps themselves.
And lately, my face had been everywhere.
Internet-famous for all the worst reasons.
A few days after the wedding there had even been a short clip on local news about the disaster. Payton and Nick came from money and influence; people loved to be near that kind of scandal. And I’d become someone to talk about.
I shoved a pregnancy test into a brown paper bag and clutched it to my chest like something shameful and sacred at once, then hurried home. Someone filmed me leaving the shop; the video was online within hours.
New posts bloomed: affair baby coming, homewrecker pregnant?
By the time I locked my door behind me, my hands were shaking.
I didn’t even take my shoes off. I went straight to the bathroom, tearing the box open with clumsy fingers. The instructions blurred for a second before I forced myself to focus.
I followed them mechanically. Then I set the test down on the edge of the sink.
And waited.
Three minutes had never felt so long.
Then the result appeared.
Two lines.
I was pregnant.
Sobbing, hand pressed to my belly, I felt an absurd, aching love for the small life inside me, and terror that scraped the bones.
How would I tell Nick? How would I tell someone who hated me?
And somewhere deep down, part of me thought maybe…
maybe this was something that could fix things.
If he just knew, if we could talk, if he could see that what happened wasn’t my fault, maybe he’d finally believe me.
I thought it couldn’t get worse.
It did.
Two days later, a Friday night, my phone buzzed. Apple’s name flashed on the screen. I almost let it go to voicemail, but something in my gut made me answer.
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
There was a long pause. I knew before she said it that the news wouldn’t be good.
“It’s Payton,” she said. “She’s gone, Ash. She… she crashed her car. They think she’d been drinking.”
The world turned to ice.
“What?” The word came out like a wheeze. “No—no, that can’t be.”
“She hit a tree outside of town,” Apple whispered. “It was instant. It was ugly.”
I couldn’t breathe. My lungs refused to work. The world tilted around me, spinning out of control.
Payton was gone.
And the last thing she ever believed about me was that I’d betrayed her.
The funeral was three days later. I wasn’t invited, I knew that, but I went anyway. I needed to say goodbye, even if no one wanted me there.
I wore black and stood at the very back of the church, away from the family seats. Heads turned as I slipped in, whispers starting up behind me.
Thomas was there too, pale and hollow, avoiding my eyes. Nick sat up front with the family, rigid and closed off.
When the service ended, I waited until most people had left before walking toward the casket. My legs felt like lead.
“Payton,” I whispered, voice breaking. “I’m so—”
“Get away from her.”
The voice behind me was sharp and cold.
I turned. Nick stood there, his face drawn, eyes bloodshot, fists trembling at his sides. His blue eyes, once so warm and familiar, burned with a fury I had never seen before.
I understood his pain, his grief. He had just lost his sister.
But I was grieving too.
Only no one believed me. No one saw that I was a victim too.
“You don’t get to be here,” he spat.
“I just wanted to say goodbye,” I managed.
He took a step forward and the air between us burned. “You did this. You ruined her. You ruined everything. You and Thomas.”
“Nick, please, it’s not—” I started.
“Don’t,” he cut me off, his voice cracking under the weight of grief. “Don’t you dare say her name. After she saw those pregnancy posts, she spiraled even more. This is on you.”
“Nick,” I choked out, tears blurring everything. “I’m carrying your child.”
He laughed, but it was a sound with no humor in it.
“Shut up. Who even knows whose baby that is?”
“Please,” I sobbed. “I’m not lying. I’m scared.”
He didn’t hear me. He crouched so we were eye level, and there was a kind of wildfire in his gaze.
“I swear to you, Ashley,” he said, “I’m going to make sure you pay for what happened to her. I’ll destroy you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Apple stepped forward, hand on his shoulder. “Nick, please. Ashley is hurting too.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, and for a second there was something there, then gone.
Nick’s face hardened. “Get out. Now.”
The room spun, eyes burning into me from every direction.
Someone muttered, “She shouldn’t have come.”
So I did what they wanted.
I left.
Outside the church the air hit me like cold water. I didn’t understand how everything had gone so wrong so fast. How one lie, one impossible, fabricated lie, had managed to destroy everything.